National Minister Erica Stanford and Labour MP Willie Jackson talk NCEA, emergency alerts, oil and gas. Video / Herald NOW
Willie Jackson’s decision to send his children to the exclusive Auckland private school King’s College has sparked fireworks between the Labour MP and Education Minister Erica Stanford as the pair discussed the future of NCEA.
Jackson and Stanford were speaking with Ryan Bridge on Herald NOW this morning aboutStanford’s anticipated changes to the country’s main secondary school qualification when Jackson said he’d previously taken his children out of state schools and sent them to $32,000+ a year King’s College.
“Can I just point out a hypocrisy here?,” said Stanford in response.
Education Minister Erica Stanford pictured at Mt Albert Grammar School in Auckland in May, just before a damning report on NCEA came out. Photo / Alyse Wright
Asked by Bridge if he supported the increase in subsidies for independent schools announced by Associate Education Minister David Seymour in the last Budget, Jackson said, “No, that’s very questionable”.
“I won’t support David Seymour over anything, really, at the moment.”
His kids were “in the mainstream … doing NCEA” when he moved them to King’s, Jackson said.
The national qualification appears set to change after its credibility was the subject of a damning Government briefing in June, and Stanford subsequently indicated substantial changes were planned.
Asked by Bridge if he switched his kids to private school because NCEA was “crap”, Jackson disagreed.
There’d been some “great things that came out of the public schooling system” including the award-winning Te Kura Māori o Ngā Tapuwae, which one of his children had attended.
“You know, a lot of our kids have been failing in the education system. And so for me, I try to get my kids the best of everything … [my kids’ state education] was no big failure, it was just I wanted the best of both worlds.”
Education Minister Erica Stanford has indicated high school qualifications will be reformed after a damning report into NCEA.
The previous School Certificate and University Entrance qualifications had made students “either a failure or a success - in my case, I was a failure, and there was a lot of kids like myself”.
“So you had to reshape the education system to make it more palatable for everyone … I respect what Erica is saying … but I think there’s a lot of parts of the [NCEA] system where kids were feeling like they were successful, and they were absolute failures under the old system.”
His kids “had some great years” at King’s, although it was “tough” and a “huge cultural transition”.
However, Jackson’s decision was why change was needed, Stanford said.
“People are sending their children to private schools to escape schools and a system they don’t believe in. We have to change that.
“That’s why we need a national qualification that we can all stand behind and be proud of.”
Her two teenage children were at a state high school, but had previously attended a mix of public and private schools, Stanford told the Herald after the on-air stoush.
“I went to a private school myself for a very short period of primary school, before I went to [state] Rangitoto College.”
Her comments on Herald Now were “not a criticism” of private schools, Stanford said.
“It’s the hypocrisy of saying, ‘You shouldn’t have health insurance, you shouldn’t rely on the state’, and yet their own kids [are] going to private schools.”
Cherie Howie is an Auckland-based reporter who joined the Herald in 2011. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years and specialises in general news and features.
