Government refusal to release charter school information unreasonable and unlawful - Ombudsman
A complaint by PPTA Te Wehengarua about the Government’s refusal to release a range of information about its plans for charter schools, has been sustained by the Ombudsman.
The complaint from PPTA Te Wehengarua related to its request back in March this year for information about the Government’s policy, advice and costings for the re-introduction of charter schools.
“We are pleased that the Ombudsman has sustained our complaint,” says Chris Abercrombie, PPTA Te Wehengarua president.
“We agree with the Ombudsman’s finding that the refusal to release this information was unreasonable and unlawful and that there was a legitimate reason for our request to be given urgency.”
“If the Associate Education Minister had set a more reasonable timeline for the charter schools legislation and establishment then the Ministry of Education may not have run into such difficulties.”
The Ministry’s original response to the request identified 25 documents as in scope of the request. Only two of the documents were released in part. Four documents had even their titles withheld and 17 documents were withheld under section 18(d) as ‘soon to be publicly available’.
As a result of the Ombudsman’s investigation the Ministry has apologised to PPTA and has recently released all the information requested – nine months after PPTA’s original request.
Chris Abercrombie said PPTA Te Wehengarua had a keen interest in understanding the proposed model for charter schools, particularly now that state schools will be able to convert to charter schools.
“The continuing lack of transparency around the plans for charter schools gives us cause for serious concern about how they will operate. More than $150 million of taxpayers’ money is being poured into charter schools under a huge cloud of secrecy. This is totally inappropriate for the use of New Zealanders’ hard earned taxes – they have a right to know how that money is being spent.”