Utterly reliable source: Statutory managers to be allocated to schools on Monday, 21 November

This brief posting is to inform you that people are being approached to be statutory managers and the date for their allocation to schools has been set for the Monday before the election. It is also to suggest that the teacher organisations, and apparently their lawyers, have been drawn into a ministry trap over the matter of ‘disclaimers’.

First to the statutory managers. To the charge that schools were being threatened with limited statutory managers (LSMs), the ministry has simply denied that such a threat was ever made. (At one stage, an informant told me that another ministry person said she had listened to the conversations and LSMs had never been mentioned – I challenge that person to identify herself and repeat the statement.) The ministry has also said that no statutory managers had been appointed – which is true, but the process has begun with the ministry first approaching those who have been statutory managers in the past.

The really significant point is that the day for allocating these to schools is Monday, 21 November, the Monday before the election. John Key has okayed the move. Clearly, it is intended to make the government appear strong; the education of our children an election play thing.

As a person who reads most articles on education from Australia, America, and England, I cannot begin to tell you of the education horrors that lie ahead.

As rampant capitalism frays, its  right-wing proponents are intent on scapegoating public education to take over schools to shore themselves up ideologically and to boost the education of the privileged to establish a ruling elite for social control.

I challenge you to read what I read on a daily basis and come to a different conclusion.

Second to the trap set by the ministry over ‘disclaimers’.

Who first used the term ‘disclaimer’? Yes, the ministry to the principal of Aranga, and it was put forward as the reason why the ministry was intervening in the school.

In an earlier posting I pleaded with schools to use the expression ‘moral declaration’, I now prefer ‘moral statement’. The teacher organisations seem to be persisting with ‘disclaimer’ on the basis that it is a ‘moral’ disclaimer.

Well, why not go straight to it and use the expression ‘moral statement’? It takes away any ambiguity and the purpose can be immediately understood in media releases.

The ministry was quick to set the trap. Pauline Cleaver said: ‘The ministry has not yet recommended the appointment of a limited statutory manager to any board in such circumstances.’

For goodness sake doesn’t the reference to ‘not yet recommended’ ring alarm bells?

‘Nor have we told schools to remove disclaimers as described,’ Cleaver goes on to say.

Well, of course not, because, if it is a disclaimer, they will have good grounds for intervention.

I’m so vexed to be writing this instead of watching the France game.

She goes on to say: ‘The inclusion of the disclaimer did not make a charter non-compliant. In the cases where a disclaimer statement has been included, the ministry will work with schools to ensure the charter is implemented.’

The ministry, however, to work with schools in such a way, must invoke statutory intervention, so, what this Cleaver person is really saying is: The inclusion of the disclaimer does not lead to statutory intervention but the inclusion of the disclaimer will lead to statutory intervention.’

As I wrote to a teacher organisation: ‘You cannot put a disclaimer into a document intended for compliance – that is illegal, and if something is illegal it cannot be defended by an injunction.’

Please, please, please  – use the expression ‘moral statement’ and take away any ambiguity.

So there we have it: Monday, 21 November – though, of course, now the plan has been sprung the ministry will deny and lie.

And please let us help ourselves legally and to get our message across to the public.

Let’s act smart New Zealand.

Ditto the All Blacks.