It's all a matter of perspective mr Brown the system was vandalised before National was in power, look at facts we have being sliding down the rankings for the last twenty years it's just that that the previous government made no difference .
Clearly our philosophies are different but I suspect we want to see the same result,has it ever occurred to you there is more than one way to get to the same answer .

At the risk of swimming against the tide here......oh well it's a democracy,our education system is slowly (maybe quite quickly) but surely slipping down the OECD ranks and if you keep doing the same things the same things happen.
We are losing a whole lot of kids through the cracks ,yes their parents should step up first but that is not and will not happen for many kids today or tommorrow.So for Gods sake what is wrong with trying something new to try to see if there is another way to help these kids.
It's not as though we are turning every school into a charter school I went to the lowest decile college and have made it out the other side but many of my mates didn't many went to jail or are not here any more.i look at them and ask if it would it have been better under a charter or partnership school program and the answer is maybe but we won't know unless we try something new.It is about time this was about the kids not the teachers or more importantly the union lets see if we can make a difference to some of those kids rather than blocking every bit of change that is introduced.
No one is setting out to reduce the quality of the system I have faith that everyone is trying to get us to a better place our system is failing some kids lets try something new at least in a limited way.