Not COOL

Yesterday Education Minister Hekia Parata announced a major piece of education policy: closing schools and replacing them with online learning centres:

School-age students will be able to enrol in an accredited online learning provider instead of attending school, under new Government legislation.

The move has dismayed the primary school teachers' union who say education is about learning to work and play with other children.

The radical change will see any registered school, tertiary provider such as a polytechnic or an approved body corporate be able to apply to be a "community of online learning" (COOL).

Any student of compulsory schooling age will be able to enrol in a COOL - and that provider will determine whether students will need to physically attend for all or some of the school day.

Firstly, the idea of allowing more distance education isn't necessarily bad. There may be people who might do better under such a scheme, and there might be a couple of providers who could usefully supplement Te Kura in providing it at a primary and secondary level. It could be usefully looked at. And if the idea was coming from the education sector and driven by education professionals who were interested in outcomes and the welfare of those kids, it would be worth considering. But when it comes from an education minister whose sole priority in office seems to be trying to find ways to close schools, cut costs, and funnel public money to her private donors and cronies, its hard to view it as anything other than yet another means to achieve those ends. The logic for the government is just a little too naked: "schools are expensive and troublesome, so lets close them down, sack the teachers, and replace it all with online learning we can contract out to the lowest bidder / our donors". Yeah, nah. I'd rather have schools, sorry.

Hopefully this idea will be buried in a pit and the earth salted, along with every other idea Hekia Parata has ever had. If not, I pity the kids who end up as the victims of her cost-cutting exercise - and pity us when we end up paying for her mistake through the welfare, mental health and criminal justice budgets fifteen years later.

Charter schools are a rort

Surprise, surprise - it turns out that three-quarters of National's charter schools are failing, but they'll all be paid their bonuses anyway:

The four remaining charter schools which opened in 2014 have all been paid a performance bonus despite three not meeting their targets.

Documents released to the Labour Party under the Official Information Act show that Education Minister Hekia Parata approved the payments - 1 per cent of the school's budget - on advice from the Education Ministry and Charter School Authorisation Board.

The payments total around $60,000 and were made to Vanguard Military School, Terenga Paraoa, the Rise UP Academy and South Auckland Middle School.

The "justification" for charter schools is that the financial incentives on private providers, the risk of not getting paid if they fail to deliver contracted-for services, and the possibility of getting bonuses if they do well, will produce greater performance. But what we're seeing here is the same problem we saw with Whangaruru school: the Minister has an incentive not to admit failure. And that means that schools get bonuses even if they are failing, because to do otherwise requires the Minister to admit that she made a mistake. The net result: the victims of these schools get a poor education, a failure which will cost us millions in the long-term, while their fatcat private providers laugh all the way to the bank. It's a rort, pure and simple. But its also a potent reminder of why we should never privatise services.

Good riddance

The government has finally decided to close one of its failing charter schools:

A troubled Northland charter school has had its doors shut by the Education Minister after two years of operation.

Te Pumanawa o te Wairua, whose future has been uncertain since a final performance notice in July, will officially close on March 7 after Education Minister Hekia Parata concluded the challenges facing the charter school are "too great to overcome".

Among those challenges are the school's heavy reliance on third parties to take it forward, lack of internal capability, the difficulty of attracting suitably qualified teaching staff and concerns over whether there are enough students to keep the school afloat.

...not to mention problems with poor attendance, bullying, drug use and management infighting and potential fraud by staff. Basicly, this school was a disaster from start to finish. And yet Parata shovelled money at it for two years in a desperate attempt to delay today's inevitable headline, while downplaying and minimising its problems. In the process, she's cost us millions of dollars. And she needs to be held accountable for that.

Also needing to be held accountable are the muppets who drafted the government's contract with this shady outfit, which let them take $3 million in establishment costs and basicly pocket it. They've bought themselves a farm, and now that the school has been closed, they'll apparently get to keep it - or we'll have to buy them out. Either way, they'll be laughing all the way to the bank.

Whitewashing Charter Schools

When the National government foisted its charter schools on us, they promised that they would be subject to rigorous assessment. But it turns out that that is exactly what they don't want:

The Education Minister shut down comparing student achievement results from charter schools with those of state schools despite ministry advice to do so.

[...]

The ministry's plan was to draw comparisons between the achievement of students in charter schools with a matched group of students in state schools.

Parata scribbled "do not agree" next to the recommendation before signing off on the report, which was passed on to Parliamentary under-secretary for education, David Seymour, who was instructed to notify the board.

In addition to student achievement information, the board had asked that the first phase of the evaluation be deferred while its re-scoped "to better reflect Cabinet's intent".

Which suggests that Parata really isn't very confident that her charter schools would measure up. But if they're not delivering, that's exactly the sort of information we should know, so we can hold the government to account for their failure.

One hell of a backflip

I was intending to write a post sneering at the idea that an official inquiry could clear someone without ever investigating the core allegations. But events have moved too quickly: last night's whitewash has suddenly turned into an SFO referral. Which is one hell of a backflip from a Minister who less than 24 hours ago was saying "nothing to see here, move along". But it does conveniently mean that they no longer have to answer questions about it in Parliament or from the media.

The Phillipstown decision

The government's decision to merge Woolston and Phillipstown schools has been ruled unlawful due to poor consultation. This isn't the first time this has happened to Hekia Parata - last year her decision to merge Salisbury School was also ruled unlawful. Which raises the question: can Parata do anything right? To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one High Court judicial review may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose a second looks like carelessness...

But snark at Parata aside, this does raise an obvious question: how many other Christchurch school closures would be found unlawful if they were tested in the courts? Sadly, due to the expense of judicial review proceedings, we'll probably never know.

Connecting the dots II

Why is the government closing schools in Christchurch? So it can pay its cronies to build their replacements:

The Education Ministry's $41 million proposed year 1-13 super school for Christchurch is set to be funded by the private sector, a document reveals.

The document, obtained by APNZ, outlines advice given to Education Minister Hekia Parata and shows she signed off on five of eight recommendations.

Ms Parata added in her handwriting that four Christchurch eastern suburb schools should close a year later, in December 2016, to allow for "considerations of public-private partnership procurement."

The privately funded school, known as a public-private partnership (PPP) school, would be the second in New Zealand after the Hobsonville Point primary school opened this year in Auckland.

A PPP means that a company designs, builds and maintains the school buildings. While this is supposed to save the government money, experience overseas (particularly in the UK, where PPPs have been widely used) shows that they are a scam which sees the government pay significantly more for infrastructure than if they built it themselves. And that's the experience here as well - the Transmission Gully PPP will see us pay an extra $300 million straight into the pockets of the private operator.

The advantage of PPPs? They hide debt, which allows politicians to pretend to be "good financial managers". Of course, that service costs money - but its us, rather than the politicians, who are paying for it.

Wouldn't it be nice to have an Education Minister who focuse don education, rather than enriching her parties cronies?

A sacrificial public servant

Education Secretary Lesley Longstone has resigned. Good riddance. Since being parachuted into the job last year, she's presided over the NovoPay fiasco, which has seen hundreds of teachers go unpaid, and led the Christchurch school closure mess. In addition, under her tenure the Ministry has been strongly criticised by the Ombudsman for its OIA handling processes. As the person in charge, it is right and proper that she carry the can for that.

...of course, the same applies to the Minister. These are her policies, and she is ultimately responsible to Parliament for her department. She should be resigning too. Instead, she's thrown her chief executive under the bus in the hop that this will carry the blame away. But if the problems continue next year, she will not be able to do the same to her acting chief executive.

(Meanwhile, I'm now wondering how much the next permanent Secretary of Education will want extra in salary and severance as compensation for the risk of being similarly sacrificed by Parata. Her refusal to accept blame for her own incompetence has just cost us a lot of money...)

Disturbing

Campbell Live had a disturbing piece last night on the Ministry of Education's secrecy around the Christchurch school closures. OIA requests by local communities for information necessary to inform their submissions in the "consultation" process are rejected out of hand. Worse, the Ministry appears to have instructed the Christchurch City Council - which is also a target of OIAs on the matter - to lie and claim that they did not hold information in order to thwart requests. while OIA expert Steven Price did suggest an innocent interpretation of that - that they were really trying to claim that CCC held the information on their behalf - I think that explanation can be discounted. Why? Because when Campbell Live asked the Secretary of Education about it, she didn't use that explanation, and instead resorted to blanket denials.

This is deeply disturbing, and it does not add to confidence in the process the Ministry is following. If they were running a real consultation process, they'd release this information, so the community can have their say and make their own judgement about whether the closures were necessary. The secrecy simply makes it seem like they've already made their minds up - on highly questionable grounds in some cases - and that the "consultation" is a total sham aimed simply at ticking the box before imposing a predetermined outcome. Which is simply not acceptable in a democracy.

The Ministry and Education and their Minister owe us some serious answers about what is going on here and why they are not being straight with the public. Sadly, I think that is the last thing on their minds.

Not a conflict

Labour is accusing Education Minister Hekia Parata of a conflict of interest over a new Christchurch character school. why? Because it will be run by her second cousin:

The school, Te Pa O Rakaihautu, was endorsed by the ministry just weeks before work began on the overhaul of the city's education in October last year.

It is understood the final application is lodged and awaiting approval. Te Pa is chaired by Parata's second cousin, Rangimarie Parata Takurua, sparking accusations from Labour of a conflict of interest.

I oppose nepotism and corruption, but this is ridiculous. Most people don't even know who their second cousins are. Its a relationship so tenuous that it matters only to genealogists; the idea that it could constitute a conflict of interest in and of itself is simply absurd.

There may be good reasons to oppose this school's application, but this is simply not one of them. Labour needs to find better ammunition than this.

Charter schools are bad schools II

When the government announced its charter schools policy last month, one of the key points was the use of unregistered, untrained staff. Now it turns out that that decision was against strong advice from the Ministry of Education:

The Ministry of Education released official documents yesterday that recommended all teachers be registered in the schools to give the students the greatest learning opportunities.

[...]

Before the announcement was made, the Education Ministry's documents warned the overall potential for a negative impact on students' education from teachers who did not meet the minimum standards for the profession was high.

"Teacher registration is one the most influential levers in raising teacher quality across the profession in both state and private schools. Allowing charter schools to stand outside this work will significantly damage the credibility of the Crown."

This is the bureaucratic equivalent of saying "this idea is a stinking pile of shit", and a competent Minister of Education would take it seriously. Hekia Parata didn't, and instead allowed the ACT vision of unqualified staff - which would somehow assure higher quality teaching - in order to keep her coalition partner happy. That's her prerogative as an elected representative - but if she wants to stay as an elected representative, she should probably start making better decisions.

Nothing to do with her

Last month, when John Banks purported to appoint ACT crony Catherine Isaac to head the government's new charter school implementation committee, I fired off an OIA request. It was rejected, on the grounds that the appointment hadn't actually been made, but in doing so Banks outlined the process that would be followed:

Cabinet will approve the establishment of this Working Group in the normal way. The Minister of Education and I will identify our nominees for membership of the Working Group. These nominations will be approved by Cabinet via Appointments and Honours (APH) Committee. Once they are approved, the Minister of Education will make the appointments.

(Emphasis added).

Yesterday, Isaac was (finally) formally appointed. Following Banks' advice, I sent off an OIA to the Minister of Education Hekia Parata. She has responded by immediately transferring it to Banks. Translation? The appointment is entirely Banks' doing. Its nothing to do with her.

(And now I guess we get to see if Banks can run a credible appointments process, having been effectively warned that he will be under scrutiny)