Against equality

The Herald reports:

The plan to introduce “charter schools” changed again yesterday after the policy’s champion, John Banks, said the schools would be under no obligation to accept students in their local areas.

I never thought they would be.

In response to a written question from Ms Delahunty, Act Party leader Mr Banks said charter schools would not have geographic enrolment zones if demand for places exceeded supply. Instead, students would be chosen by a ballot, he said.

The terms of reference for the working group set up to implement the introduction of charter, or partnership schools, says the first schools would serve “areas of significant disadvantage” where the risk of educational underachievement is the greatest.

You don’t need school zones to do that. If charter schools prove so popular that those set up in South Auckland are over-subscribed – then the answer is to set up more charter schools!

“The Government should just come out and admit and say we want to use public money to create schools where students can be cherrypicked at the expense of local communities.”

Quite the opposite. If charter schools are so popular that they are over-subscribed then they use random ballots.

Zoning is a form of cherry picking. Poor families can’t afford to live in zones of some of the more desirable schools. Random ballots will allow poor families to have an equal chance to a wealthy family of gaining a place as a popular charter school.

God knows why the Greens are against this.