Kelvin Davis

Heather Roy's "Step Change" report is a logistical nightmare and a load of rubbish, says Labour Associate Education Spokesperson Kelvin Davis.

"The more you read, the more bizarre it becomes.

"The authors are so out of touch with educational reality it defies belief. It proves that no one in National, the Maori Party or ACT have any clue about education.

"The working party obviously never considered the logistics of transporting 25 per cent of our school population to alternative "providers" of education each day. This would affect almost 190,000 students making 380,000 daily trips to and from alternative providers, if they only have one alternative provider. What happens if they have two or more alternative providers?

"That's a heck of a lot of taxi chits and time spent looking out the window of a car when they should be in class learning," says Kelvin Davis.

"For a student living in country areas, they may have to spend upwards of two hours a day just travelling to alternative providers.

"Who is going to keep track of these 190,000 kids as they zip around the country? It's not only stupid, it's dangerous.

"All schools will have to standardise teaching timetables. There's little point in a child going off to a maths lesson with an alternative provider in the morning, only to return to the regular school and find maths is being taught there in the afternoon," Kelvin Davis says.

"Instead of providing choice it will simply provide conformity and confusion."