ACT Education Policies Would Destroy East Coast Schools

ACT's education policies would destroy the very schools its education spokesperson claims to want to help, according to Associate Education Minister Brian Donnelly.

"Donna Awatere-Huata's angry lashing out, blaming officials for the failure of many schools on the East Coast to educate their students well, ignores the shambles that her party's policy would create," Mr. Donnelly said.

"The Education Review Office has made some very good recommendations, which the government is taking seriously."

"ACT, on the other hand, has only one policy; fixed-value vouchers and compulsory bulk-funding spent in private schools. Under this policy, school pupils would get the average national funding, which they could take to any school they choose."

"However, families in rural areas on the East Coast have little choice in which school they send their children to. There would be no capacity to provide the positive and constructive intervention that this government will take. Also, the vouchers would be some $2,000 less per child each year that they are currently getting from the Government. With this reduced money, schools would have to lure teachers to an area that is notoriously hard to attract teachers to."

"Fixed-value vouchers would be a disaster. They simply transfer equity funding and transport money from poor rural schools to rich urban schools."

"ACT's first response to this report is to call a meeting of MPs. Political grandstanding is not what the East Coast needs. The solution lies in local communities working with officials to get the best for their children."

"The irony is, with ACT's hatred of bureaucrats, there is no guarantee that the Education Review Office would even survive under an ACT government."

"ACT, for all its big talk and grand plans for more talk, offers a solution that would destroy any chance for children on the East Coast of getting any education whatsoever because all their schools would have gone broke," Mr. Donnelly said.