reader Gaynor says:

Here is an education issue that I believe is very important — parents’ free choice . Many schools have been captured by Woke agendas and prioritize social engineering over teaching the basics. Most parents are unhappy about this. In fact many parents have been unhappy with our schools for decades. Deborah Coddington has been an MP, with an interest in education for decades.

by Deborah Coddington

If the special vote count favours the left bloc, and if the Opportunity Party agrees to favour Labour, the Greens, and Te Pāti Māori into a coalition government of the left, we know for sure some 2000 New Zealand school children will have their education totally disrupted.

Labour’s education spokesperson, Ginny Andersen, has promised to abolish Charter Schools.

The left doesn’t trust parents to choose schools for their children – that job is the state’s. They want them to have choice in where they shop for groceries, but they want to control where families send their kids to schools. Particularly families in low socio-economic brackets.

Currently, parents who can’t afford to school their children at private or state integrated (semi-private) schools, or move into a so-called grammar zone where house prices are around 20 per cent higher, must either home school, or school in-zone.

If they’re lucky, there may be a Charter School nearby, but after the election, a Labour led coalition will abolish all Charter schools and absorb them into the state system.

I realise I’m comparing state-funded education (mostly) with private enterprise here, but I trust you to get my theme. The state trusts parents to choose between Foodstuffs, Woolworths, dairies, butchers, markets, Pak’n’Save, Big Fresh, New World, 4Square, Gilmours, Costco, Bin Inn, Farro Fresh, Moore Wilson’s, Asian and Pacific groceries, organic specialists, halal – you get my drift. But somehow, parents are too stupid to decide which school suits best their children’s needs, personality, talents, ethnicity, or dreams for the future.

In a recent interview (October 11, Stuff) Chris Hipkins stated loosening zones in 1989, enabled by Tomorrow’s Schools (and bulk funding) which gave parents greater choice of schools, was “an absolute failure”. Why? Because parents withdrew students from unpopular schools where kids weren’t learning. This was, according to Hipkins, a “flawed ideology”. The home zoning was reinstated in 1999 under Clark’s Labour government, and parents once more had to use schools closest to their home even if they didn’t like the school. All in the interests of ‘equity’.

Equity for whom? Families or teachers? Bulk funding meant the higher the roll, the more money paid to the school. Teacher unions weren’t happy to see outstanding teachers being rewarded; when resources formerly paid out by the regional education boards was replaced and controlled by the Boards of Trustees. Lose 200 students to another school, and the funding dropped commensurately. But instead of examining why, when given choice, parents favoured some state schools over others, the Labour Alliance government wheeled out control and command.

If a school roll drops considerably then the school needs fixing, not the ideology.

What is schooling’s primary focus? Keeping adults in a job? Or educating our children so they can learn; grow up to live a good life?

The only individuals who have any meaningful choice in our state funded compulsory education sector are the teachers – not the parents, not the pupils. This is underscored by their unions’ monikers: Education Institute, Post Primary Teachers Association, Secondary Principals Association, and the regulatory agency Teaching Council – no mention of families or students. Teachers can choose their schools, why not parents? Only recently has a small group of parents organised themselves into a ‘union’ of sorts, the Parents Alliance.

I find opposition to parental choice inconsistent, bemusing, and bonkers, for several reasons.

Inconsistent, because outside the compulsory sector parents can choose, for example, which pre-school, kindergarten, daycare, private early childcare, or in-home care, regardless of where they live. When pupils leave secondary school they might go to any university across the motu, choose an apprenticeship, trade, polytechnic, enter in-work training, be a share-milker.

Bemusing because I know many teachers, I’ve raised four kids, I’ve encountered gifted teachers who are highly intelligent, warm and caring, push their pupils to great heights. Most of us can remember at least one teacher with whom we clicked. Mine was a teacher of English who, despite my constant misbehaviour including running away, persisted and pushed me succeed, even coming to my maiden speech in Parliament.

These teachers can change a child’s future.

Bonkers because students often fail when they’re proverbial square pegs in round holes. The students whose parents can’t afford to buy or rent houses in the so-called zones, or enrol their children at private or integrated schools, children who are neurodiverse, on the autism spectrum, who are bullied, or don’t fit in for a zillion reasons. Chances are their adult life will be hard – why force them to endure misery?

The supermarket comparison reminds me of an advertisement I saw in London on the Underground, picturing a grubby-faced boy saying, ‘I want the food I ordered. And a puppy. That plays football.’ Underneath was written, ‘You spend £4000 a year on supermarkets. Start making demands.’

It was 2002, and I was at Cambridge University on a Press Fellowship to Wolfson College, studying parental choice in schooling, particularly The Netherlands and Sweden. I imagined a similar advert stating, ‘I want my child to be a rocket scientist. An award-winning novelist. Fluent in several languages,’ followed by, ‘You spend $8000 in tax annually on schooling. Start making choices.’

Twenty-four years later the closest New Zealand has in state-funded parental choice are Charter Schools, introduced two years ago by the Act party under the National/NZ First/Act Coalition government and now so popular that in mid-October the first state school, Northland’s Pakaraka School converted to a charter school. But they’re under threat. Despite David Seymour predicting 6000 pupils will be enrolled in 21 charter schools next year, Labour insists they are doomed.

There is no rational reason for this. Charter schools are not experimental. They must prove students achieve as well as state schools, using the same testing methods, and don’t drain money from the state system. Charter schools cost taxpayers roughly the same per child as state schools. Using the figures from 2024 (latest available) it costs $8,762 per primary pupil per year at a state school, and $8,8278 at a charter school. For secondary it’s $11,040 at a state school, and $10,741 at a charter school.

Teacher unions, which wield great influence on Labour, want them gone. Multi-employer collective agreement bargaining can’t be negotiated for charter school staff. Do they care more about wage agreements than the 2000 students successfully studying at the 17 charter schools (up from seven schools 12 in July 2025), kids whose parents and educators have founded a school which probably, like Pakaraka, suits a whole community? Do they know about Tipene (formerly St Stephens at Bombay) closed for 25 years, reopened last year and now flourishing because it caters specifically to its pupils needs, not being met by the state system. What will Labour tell the pupils at full immersion the charter te reo kura, autism schools, arts and performance schools, and Sisters Pacifika school?

It shows how far Labour has strayed. In 1939 Peter Fraser, Minister of Education in the first Labour government (and also Minister when he was prime minister) enunciated the role of education: ‘The government’s objective, broadly expressed, is that every person, whatever his academic ability, whether he be rich or poor, whether he lives in town or country, has a right as a citizen to a free education of the kind for which he is best fitted, and to the fullest extent of his powers.’