“90% of parents thought Mark Thornton handled it badly”
Sean Gribben - Chairman of the Board

Talking of statistics, that’s a pretty shocking one for you!  But it does go to illustrate why filling in private schools survey 2010 is a good idea.  www.pss2010.net   The way it works is this, parents (and students) fill in the survey, the results are collated and Rodney Hide (now Minister for Special Education) gets to find out whether or not parents would like their children’s welfare at private schools to be covered under the Education Act, just a bit, you know “light-handed” as the Review suggested.....just enough to stop illegal expulsions etc., 

Now we know that some of you believe that our children were expelled because of something we did, (some poor parents even think that parents can actually be expelled from a school, which is a bit sad) and so you might be tempted to think that nothing untoward could happen to you just because private schools aren’t properly legislated.  

But isn’t that the point?  That actually it could and that’s what the legislation is for?  

If the suggested reforms had been law on 8th June last year, Mark Thornton would not have been able to do what he did.  That is a fact.  That means, among other things, that this web-site would not exist.

Now we know exactly how many people have read about the survey on this site and how many have filled it in, and there is a slight discrepancy.  Thank you to those who have already completed it, not just from us, but from the whole team, and we want to encourage others to put their fear and prejudice away and notice a time-sensitive opportunity to do something good before illegal expulsions are enshrined in law for another 100 years......

Otherwise it would appear that we care more about your own children’s welfare than some of you do! That would be ridiculous, don’t you agree (your details will not be kept or used, but the survey needs to be verified or Rodders will be able to ignore it). 

Also, if the parents who have filled in the survey could encourage others to do it too that would be fabulous! 

If our kids trauma can serve any purpose, surely it’s a good thing that it alerted us to this possibility, which has the power to help your kids and others now and in the future.  In fact there are 33,000 children at private schools in New Zealand......if numbers make any difference to you.

Here’s a piece of interesting information from someone who filled in the survey - they were expelled, “asked to leave”, from a New Zealand private school 30 years ago, suddenly, with no warning, or proper reason given.  Sound familiar? This person said that it still affects them today (take note the “get over it” brigade).

Anyway, back to Mark Thornton..... (did he tell you about the survey btw?)  So......

“90% of parents thought
Mark Thornton handled it badly”  
Sean Gribben - Chairman of the Board

Yes, Mr Gribben really did say that to us, and it is not really surprising because Mark Thornton really did handle it appallingly, illegally in fact, although we don’t have the money to prove it. (Given the high numbers of unique visitors to this site though, I guess we could always set up a ‘donate here’ button, to raise the money to sue :)  

Gosh, but hasn’t he been busy shoring up his position though: below are the responsibilities Mark Thornton now has in the Rudolf Steiner Federation of New Zealand...

We particularly like the “any situation not covered by the following”.  That’s basically.....well...everything, isn’t it.   He vets everything and everyone, knows everything, is responsible for all published information, manages the money, future initiatives, the legalities and he is Executive with Portfolio for Communications, which means nothing comes in or out without him knowing about it, in the whole of New Zealand!

What a lot of power for someone with three illegal expulsions to his name.....but hardly surprising.  In view of Sean Gribben’s comment above, Mark had a lot of hatches to batten down.  We can still hear the hammering from here!

So I guess, in some sense Sean Gribben was right when he also said that our democratic protest was “playing into Mark Thornton’s hands”.  

because.....now he’s in charge of....... everything!  How indispensible is that!

do your kids a favour - not ours, yours

fill in the survey 

www.pss2010.net