The 2013 New Zealand Post Primary Teachers' Association / Te Wehengarua (PPTA) Komiti Pasifika representatives.

Komiti Pasifika meet regularly, have a representative on the PPTA National Executive and are happy to hear from members and raise any issues or queries from members for discussion at meetings.

The current Komiti Pasifika members are:

Natalie Faitala, Perry Petelo, Vijeshwar Prasad, Pushpa Reddy, Clint Samaseia.

Area 1 includes the following regions: Upper Central & Lower Northland, Auckland, Counties Manukau, Waikato, Central Plateau, Thames Valley, Bay of Plenty, Western Bay of Plenty, Taranaki and East Coast.

Area 2 includes the following regions: Hawkes Bay, Manawatu-Wanganui, Wairarapa, Wellington, Hutt Valley, Nelson, Marlborough, West Coast, Canterbury, Aoraki, Otago and Southland.

The Association’s Komiti Pasifika is the elected Pasifika member advisory committee to the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers' Association / Te Wehengarua (PPTA) Executive. This submission is presented on behalf of the PPTA Komiti Pasifika.
The Komiti strongly opposes the provisions in the Education Amendment Bill, which seek to establish charter schools.

In this submission the Komiti wishes to comment specifically on the factors that currently impact negatively on Pasifika students’ educational achievement and on those provisions in the Bill that we believe can only worsen it.

Download Komiti Pasifika submission

Could charter schools in New Zealand raise levels of Pasifika student achievement?

It is extremely difficult to see how charter schools as proposed in this Bill can address the issues we believe are truly responsible for the lower levels of student achievement of Pasifika students. There is no reputable evidence that students in charter schools overseas perform better. In many cases where this has been claimed, eg in US KIPP schools, it has been found that where they may, initially at least, appear to have higher levels of achievement, this is due to selective student intake, removal of lower performing students, ‘teaching to the test’ pedagogy, high levels of segregation and increased levels of government  funding and resourcing than public schools^[1]. The 2010 Civil Rights Project at UCLA issued a nationwide report ^[2] based on the analysis of federal government data in 40 states and the District of Columbia and several dozen metropolitan cities. The report found that charter schools stratified students by race, class and language and were far more segregated and racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually all these areas.