The building issues at Aorangi had nothing to do with not being maintained – research is a wonderful thing – when it was built 50yrs ago, it was not built with building paper – over the many years between then and discovery, the main struts holding the place up (but hidden under the block work) was slowly rotting away. It was only discovered when a major building and extn programme started and they had to remove the block work. That can not be held as labours fault. The bot maintained the school well, including a maintenance contract. For many reasons, the school should not have been closed. It pays to know a situation well before judging – or worse, buying tolleys lies. Lies that were uncovered under oia. The fact is, Brownlie sold the school out way back – but instead of telling them that, told them he was going to help get the situation sorted, only to start the closure process rolling – and they did not know. At the time, Lab was trying to get it rebuilt, and valued the good job that was going on there. Its more a case of moe incompetence with Nat stirring, than anything Lab did.

ps the bot at Aorangi were also hardworking, full time people ’slogging’ it out for their families – but they wanted to make a difference for that community and their kids. If you want to make a difference, you can make the time. Its all about what your priorities are.

As for your so-called knowledge of the Wellington region – clearly you live in an insular area surrounded by cotton wool as the MOE’s truancy’s statistics tell a very different story. As do the parents whose children went to the school mentioned in my earlier post.

With regards to your rather pompous last remark – some of us are too busy slogging our guts out to provide for a children. Any more time away from them including that spent at board meetings is time we can’t afford.

Again, those of us faced with the realities of life do not have the luxury of lofty, self-righteous opinions.

BTW I know the Wellington region quite well and can’t think of any part that doesn’t have good state primary and secondary schools nearby, and often it is the lower decile ones that are doing the more innovative work. And by good I mean, some great student centred teaching, addressing bullying, engaging with families, welcoming and doing their best for all their local children including those with special needs etc. Some of the higher decile schools and many of the privates do all of this less well but it doesn’t matter to many of the parents who only see the nice buildings and flash school PR.

If you don’t like your local school stand for election at the board elections in March and have a go at changing it.

Or perhaps in the area s/he lives in they *are* better than the local free options? We have some superb state schools (at all decile levels), but we also have some dogs. Perhaps this person is in the unfortunate position of being zoned for the latter?

As a parent s/he will have a view on that which is as valid as those of party activists and union militants. Please accord that view some respect.

I will ask one thing of Labour though: how much did it cost the tax payer to convince the public that the Working for Families package and the 20 hours Free Early Childhood Education package were sound ideas? Ideas that National opposed?

All changes require some PR which costs us, the tax payer, money.

You never know, perhaps the National Standards will work out as hell, it’s better than doing nothing. In my area there are more crap schools than there are good. I know for a fact that the standards of these schools isn’t even close to the one that our children are attending and that’s just at the primary level. The parents don’t give a damn and the teachers are struggling to cope – big classes of dysfunctional kids isn’t easy. This means our children, if they went to these schools, would be left behind. Note that I have got this from the ERO reports and word of mouth – the latter is always fairly up-to-date.

Perhaps by giving a general guide by which all schools are judged, it may bring the standard up for some of them so that parents like us, actually have a choice in terms of where their kids can go.

All we want is the same good, free public education that we had growing up. These days it seems too much too ask – I dread the day our children hit high school as there is not one school in our area that we would want to send them to. But private is unaffordable so we have no choice.