The Education (Charter Schools Abolition) Amendment Bill

This bill by Chris Hipkins would abolish and close every charter school in New Zealand, forcing the pupils and parents who have chosen to enrol there, back into state schools.

Even worse, the bill retrospectively abolishes them from the 1st of January 2016.

I’m glad this has got drawn from the ballot as it will remind people how Labour puts ideology and unions ahead of students. They want to close down schools like Vanguard, despite the fact they have 95% of Maori students achieving NCEA Level 1 – 22% higher than the NZ average. And their students come from some of the most disadvantaged and low decile areas.

It will be interesting to see if every Labour MP  votes for this bill, as some of their Maori MPs such as Peeni Henare and Kelvin Davis have praised the work being done by certain charter schools.