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Students line up at Pioneer Military School, an Oakland charter school.
photo: RNZ/Nick Monro
The Ministry of Education deleted the previous version of Charter Schools Start from their website announced that it would reintroducebecause people were concerned that it would be confusing and outdated.
While the Department of Education said it was part of regular maintenance of the website, the Greens questioned the timing and said legislation submitters and prospective parents should have access to the information.
Meanwhile, the minister responsible for charter schools believes the Greens are playing politics.
In May, 15 pages of content and related documents were deleted from the ministry’s website.
It includes information about preexisting charter school models, such as the development of the policy and its eventual repeal, as well as a “closing report” containing a detailed assessment of the program’s first implementation, including what went well and what fell short.
Green Party education spokesman Lawrence Xu-Nan said the information could have been useful, but he was concerned it had been removed.
“When people come in with comments, they want to know the most information, especially the lessons learned the last time we started a charter school,” he said.
Green Party education spokesman Lawrence Xu-Nan.
photo: RNZ/Lin Yiting
“If they remove that information, it means we lack transparency and even the ability to make appropriate decisions when reviewing whether submitters are able to submit materials with full information.”
The reintroduction of charter schools is part of the National-ACT coalition agreement, with the effort being led by Associate Education Minister David Seymour.
The pages were archived from the Department of Education website on May 8.
Seymour Funding for 50 charter schools officially announced on May 14The bill was introduced on June 26. Applications open July 11.
There was no directive from Seymour or his office to remove the material.
A series of emails obtained by the Greens under the Official Information Act show the department had requested the information be removed.
“I stumbled across these pages while doing some research for queries our office has received,” a lead counselor said on May 7.
“You’ll notice that these are highly inconsistent with what charter schools do. Could you please ask your team to review and remove (as soon as possible) any pages that contain outdated and incorrect information?”
A major business partner then instructed the head of the ministry’s web team to remove the pages.
“The web team was going to remove these long time ago but the customer service team wanted to keep them as they were using them. We offered them alternatives but I have not heard back,” they said.
The files were deleted the next day. The page on the website still says “Page Not Found”.
In a response to the Green Party, the department’s acting deputy secretary, Rob Campbell, said deleting the information was part of the department’s normal maintenance process.
“The Department of Education regularly reviews the content on our website for relevance and correctness. Where pages and documents are found to be out of date or no longer relevant, we archive them,” Campbell said.
Xu argued that the information is not outdated because the public may want to refer to it when commenting on the bill or when deciding whether to send their children to a charter school.
“If they said it was part of maintenance, then they wouldn’t be asking the team to intentionally remove it,” he said.
“This seems contrary to proper decision-making and not providing as much information as possible to the public when making decisions or making submissions.”
photo: RNZ/Nick Monro
David Seymour said the Greens were desperate.
“The Greens should be focusing on student outcomes but instead they are playing politics over website maintenance.”
Campbell told ABC New Zealand the files were removed following a quality check of the charter school webpages to prevent confusion about current and historical charter school information.
“Our website is approximately nine years old (twice the average lifespan of a website), and we have not established robust processes to ensure that the information on the website is continually reviewed for relevance and updated, replaced or removed when appropriate,” he said in a statement.
“There are over 16,000 documents hosted on the site. Combined with an outdated search function and a lack of other user-friendly features, it is difficult for users to reliably find relevant and up-to-date information.”
Campbell said that for this reason, pages with high current relevance are often censored.
He said efforts are underway to develop a dedicated page for proactively posting advice and information related to the reintroduction of charter schools. A new website Information about its reintroduction has been established.
A copy of the investigation report is available on the ministry’s website. OIA Response Section.
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