I’d protest, but my diary’s full

Boxing Day should be a family day where you sit in the car for eight hours raging at the gridlocked traffic and telling off the kids for getting restless. But as I contemplate which high-decile school to send my youngest to next year, I realise that this Labour-led socialist government has gone way too far with its Stalinist Tomorrow’s Schools taskforce.

They want to limit school zones, take the power to expel students away from boards of trustees members like me, and compel schools to accept inzone students they clearly don’t want.

Since Tomorrow’s Schools was introduced, schools have been run by boards of elected parents. They take care of things in which they are expert – the finer points of employment law, property maintenance, leaky building legislation, detailed health and safety regulations and, if there is any time left, the education of kids.

I loved my time as a board of trustee member. Just as the board was on the verge of hiring a liberal, Left-wing bilingual woman with a PhD in education as principal, I would rave on about the importance of technology and marketing the school for overseas students. Suddenly, thanks to me, the new principal would be a strict ‘‘old school’’ male teacher with a background in IT. But now such important educational decisions will be made by educational experts. Bah humbug!

Bali Haque and his henchpersons say the decile system is outdated as it punishes low-decile schools. That’s the whole point! If Mr Haque was a real estate agent like me, he would know that the first question most prospective homebuyers ask is ‘‘What decile is the local school?’’ I usually add a couple of points, though I got into trouble in Remuera when I told a family it was decile 11. Believe me, the abolition of deciles will mean absolute chaos – for real estate agents.

As for these ‘‘education hubs’’. I don’t want government bureaucrats doing jobs that could be efficiently outsourced to the private sector as they do presently with Novopa… Anyway, there is nothing wrong with having poor schools and rich schools – if you’re rich.

There is also nothing wrong with healthy competition. If a school wins a rugby premiership, say St Kentigern’s in Auckland, they do it because they are a good school that transforms those weedy little year 9 kids into bruisers by year 13. Schools like ours stand for excellence. Whether we produce it or poach it, that’s our business – and business is our favourite word.

My motto has always been sink or swim – which is a bit unfortunate because I was the board of trustees member in charge of safety at the school swimming sports last year – but you get my drift.

And do we want faceless bureaucrats telling schools who we can and can’t enrol? My school has spent valuable time developing strategies (‘‘she won’t be happy’’, ‘‘he could be bullied’’, ‘‘we have no ramps’’ etc) for turning down kids (who don’t play rugby) from low socio-economic areas or with disabilities – all for nothing.

We are furious and we’re going to get militant. A march on Parliament is being planned for – um, we don’t quite know when yet. Most of us spend January in the Coromandel, then there’s Wellington and Auckland anniversaries then Waitangi so we’re not really in town until March. Then it’s school holidays, then the school French trip to Paris, then the New Zealand ski season.

But mark my words, we traditional, high-decile schools will be marching on Parliament at the first available stained-glassed window of opportunity that we get. Watch out!