Listen Now: 
Greens co-leader Metiria Turei says the naming of the first five charter schools shows it’s a step back for Maori education.
The list includes a south Auckland primary school targeting Maori and Pasifika children, a south Auckland intermediate run by a Christian trust, a military academy on the North Shore which aims to turn disengaged senior students into candidates for the armed services or police, and two Northland Maori trusts running secondary schools in Whangarei and Whangaruru.
Ms Turei says Education Minister Hekia Parata has sold the policy as being a response to low Maori academic achievement, but the so called partnership schools seem focused on training for work in the military, farming or trade sectors.
"These are not schools that are focused on high academic achievement of Maori kids. It looks to me very like that old style system we had in the 1940s and 50s where Maori boys were funnelled into farming and Maori girls were funnelled into nursing, treatin g Maori and Pacific as if they were only capable of doing service jobs and not that high academic level" she says.
Metiria Turei says internationally charter schools have not proved the answer for indigenous or low income children.
Copyright © 2013, UMA Broadcasting Ltd
RELATED NEWS
