5 December 2011
Charter schools failed when introduced in countries such as the US and the UK and they will fail here too, says PPTA president Robin Duff.
“A proposed school charter system outlined in National and ACT’s confidence and supply agreement today is simply an attempt to replicate a failed experiment on the children of the poor,” he said.
“The proposal’s targeting of low-decile areas places our most at-risk at greater risk.”
A study of charter schools conducted by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) in 2009 showed that 37% of charter schools reported that their students were struggling academically compared to their counterparts in the public education system, 46% did just as well, and only 17% reported having students doing significantly better.
Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States (CREDO, June 2009)
“Placing the responsibility of delivering a curriculum to young people in the hands of businesses and organisations with little or no experience of education isn’t a recipe for success,” said Duff.
“Promoting charter schools would only become a source of embarrassment for the government and a betrayal of our most vulnerable children.”
“Why would anyone propose to sell state assets only to pump the proceeds into a wasteful educational experiment that failed everywhere it was introduced?”
Contact: Robin Duff, PPTA president 021 636 108 or 04 499 9493
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