Charter schools require scrutiny

According to one school of thought on child-raising, our kids are better off not knowing the score in the classroom (where they are all A-plus students) or on the sports field (where they are all winners).

Some sports organisers won’t publish results or league tables where kiddies’ teams are involved.

And under a fair play charter introduced to East Auckland primary schools, coaches can

(Some) may suspect

Parata isn’t sure charter schools can hack it alongside

state schools.

rebalance the strengths of competing teams by swapping players if one team too strongly outplays another. This is comforting for parents who believe competitive sports encourage aggression and can damage selfesteem. It is discomforting for parents who want their kids to be exposed to competition to prepare them for the realities of adult life.

In the adult world, Hekia Parata had to belong to the team that won the general election to become Minister of Education. But she has flexed her ministerial muscle to molly-coddle charter schools – the infants of our school system – so their self-esteem is not damaged by bad scores and taxpayers’ willingness to support them is not undermined. Her disinclination to show how charter schools are faring became known last week.

The Government had commissioned a report by a consultancy firm to examine whether three of the first five charter schools set up in 2014 were delivering anything new. But the Ministry of Education had recommended the report be supplemented with information about student achievements. Parata vetoed the proposal. She obviously appreciates how losing players might become dispirited, saying it wasn’t in students’ best interests to require charter schools to ‘‘jump over another hurdle shortly after they had been established’’.

Taxpayers – at least, those who think charter schools would benefit from knowing how their students’ achievements compare with those from amatched group of state-school students – will be disappointed. They may suspect Parata isn’t sure the charter schools can hack it alongside state schools.

Their bigger concern should be that she doesn’t rebalance the teams, to ensure there are neither winners nor losers and ruin any chance of the public seeing for themselves if charter schools are as great as they’ve been cracked up to be.