Election 2020 - Party Policies - Education
25th Jul 20, 5:55am
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Education
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- Provide every child with a Student Education Account. A child will receive $250,000 of taxpayer-funded education over their life, but parents have little choice in how it’s spent. ACT will empower parents by placing this money in a Student Education Account. Parents will be able to use it at any registered educational institution that will accept their child’s enrolment, public or private.
- Increase choice in our education system by allowing any state school to apply to become a Partnership School. Government should fund a range of schools, letting parents and children choose what is right for them, not simply forcing them to go to their local state school. ACT believes we should celebrate diversity, not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.
- Reduce the number of back office bureaucrats at the Ministry of Education by 50 per cent, saving $240 million a year. We will put this money back into frontline education.
- Read more here.
- Ensure that all state schools are fully funded to a level where high quality educational delivery is not dependant on the collection of fees, private donations, fundraising, nor private investment.
- Improve the pay, job status and job security for teachers and support staff so that remuneration reflects the training undertaken, responsibilities of the roles, and supports career pathways.
- Oppose the system of National Standards that was introduced in 2010, and remove the requirement for schools to report against them and oppose publication of league tables which rank schools on academic achievement.
- Work with Māori based organisations and representative groups to develop a programme of enhancing rangatiratanga in Māori education at all levels and ensure that Pasifika learning is embedded throughout the New Zealand Curriculum.
- Read more here and here.
- Significantly close the pay gap for teachers working in education and care centres.
- Replace the decile system with the Equity Index.
- Roll out the Free and Healthy School Lunches programme to a quarter of all school-aged children.
- Targeting funding in areas such as trades training and apprenticeships in the post-COVID environment supported by the Reform of Vocational Education.
- Read more here.
- Ensure there is better support for children with additional learning, behavioural and physical needs by providing schools with a $480 million boost in learning support.
- Increase the number of teacher aides in our schools by investing $150 million over four years to fund about six million additional hours of teacher aide support in classrooms, equivalent to around 1500 new teacher aides.
- Support more families to have choice about their child’s schooling by reversing the Government takeover of school zoning schemes, investing in fast-growing state and state-integrated schools, and supporting the establishment of additional kura kaupapa, integrated, special character and partnership schools.
- Ensure all children have the opportunity to learn at least one second language at primary and intermediate school, with a funding boost of $40 million per year to deliver this.
- Identify which schools are having the greatest positive impact on student achievement and tasking education officials with seeing how this can be replicated in other schools.
- Develop a 30-year growth plan for new schools and classrooms that will be reviewed and updated annually.
- Commit $2.8 billion in new spending to fully fund the first ten years of the plan.
- Invest another $2 billion in new spending to fast-track school repairs and upgrades over the first five years.
- Continue to allocate funding for education infrastructure on a rolling ten-year basis.
- Read more here and here.
- Deliver the final and full tranche of Learning Support Coordinators (1200) across New Zealand to all schools.
- Build on the recent pilot of access to counsellors for primary students and progress counsellor/student ratios at secondary schools.
- Review the representation on the Teachers Council in line with requests from sector representatives and remove certain tasks that have increased costs and should be the responsibility of Government.
- Review Section 156 Designated Character Schools in the Education Act 1989 to recognise schools such as Hohepa and the education they deliver for a certain number of our students.
- Continue the work required to shift from the decile system to better address equity challenges and ‘outside of school’ factors that impact on student achievement.
- Complete the creation of consistent School Entry Assessment tools and practices that teachers and school leaders use to identify those students with learning needs.
- Continue the work with the sector to develop screening tools, funding and resourcing models to best meet the needs of children challenged by dyslexia, dyspraxia, Asperger’s and autism.
- Continue to advocate for increases in the Ongoing Reviewable Resource Scheme (ORRS) to cover the 3 percent of the school population identified by the Ministry of Education as high needs.
- Read more here.
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