Too soon to compare charter and state schools, says Seymour

David Seymour is batting away suggestions he’s flip-flopped on the need for more robust quantitative analysis of charter school performances.

In the process, ACT’s leader and sole MP took the opportunity to suggest the controversial education initiative represents “an existential crisis for the Labour Party.”

Documents recently released to media show the government-appointed board overseeing the charter school experiment has raised concerns over the scope of an evaluation by consultancy MartinJenkins, particularly in the lack of a comparison between the achievement of students at charter schools and state schools.

They also indicate that Education Minister Hekia Parata disagreed with officials’ intent to append such analysis – based on ministry data – to the report.

Labour education spokesman Chris Hipkins claimed Ms Parata “didn't want the analysis done because it almost certainly would show up that charter schools aren't performing in the way that the government promised that they should be."

New Zealand First education spokeswoman Tracey Martin has echoed this sentiment, saying she’s not surprised the minister wasn’t interested in the results because there are early indications charter schools are failing to produce superior results to state schools.

According to a spokesman for Ms Parata, the reason for not conducting a comparison between charter and state school outcomes is that "retrospectively requiring the schools to jump over another hurdle shortly after they had been established was not in the best interests of students.”

Mr Seymour, who is also under-secretary to the minister of education, is happy to elaborate the point.

Noting that he wasn’t involved in the initial decisions about what the consultancy would report on – “I was campaigning to be elected up a driveway in Epsom at the time, probably” – Mr Seymour says that “Where we’ve landed is I think we need more than what MartinJenkins was originally scoped to do.

“I’ve taken a position consistently that this – although many people seem to have forgotten – is still officially a pilot of a new type of policy. And part of the commitment is that the policy will be assessed in such a way that we can answer the question: ‘What if all these kids just stayed at state schools, would they have done better or worse?’”

However, he says, it’s too soon for such an analysis to be undertaken.

“It definitely won’t be this year or next. I think realistically there’s three years of examinations in secondary school, so three years is the minimum period to get a lifecycle of students having gone through. Given 2014 was year one for four of these schools, I would say 2017 will be the first time it’s possible to get enough data to make statistically valid conclusions.”

Labouring the point?
Mr Seymour also can’t resist the chance to use the charter schools issue as a cudgel against the Labour Party.

“I think the real story with partnership schools is actually an identity crisis for the Labour Party,” he claims, “because they’re torn between representing interests of unionised teachers with relatively high paying jobs and fairly well advocated-for conditions on the one hand, and poorer kids and a lot of Maori and Pasifika kids and families who say they’re not getting the benefit of what Peter Fraser promised 70 years ago on the other hand.

“For the Labour Party that’s an existential crisis and they’ve got to decide which side they’re on because right now it’s the Act Party in cahoots with Pasifika groups, the Iwi Leaders Forum and the occasional rebellious MP that are supporting the initiative.

“You don’t even have to believe it’s a silver bullet, you just have to believe it’s worth trying to get behind the policy,” Mr Seymour insists. “These guys have to work out if they’re so hellishly protective of the one particular power base they have that they’re not even going to allow people to try stuff when you’ve got OECD PISA results broken down along ethnic lines in such a way that European New Zealanders are first in the world if counted as a separate country and Pasifika and Maori are somewhere between Czechoslovakia and Mexico. That’s the challenge for New Zealand and is especially a dilemma for Labour.

“If I had to bet, and obviously I’m a bit biased on this,” he rather redundantly concedes, “I reckon that in time Labour will become either accepting or even possibly in favour of partnership schools.”

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