Hekia Parata awaits her orders.

Victory by 156 primary school kids over a John Key adored Minister of Education Hekia Parata has led directly to many other schools considering taking action to correct the Minister’s invalid and ongoing bad behaviour.

Christchurch schools facing forced closure in the city’s education shake-up are reconsidering their legal options after a High Court judge declared one merger unlawful.

When I was at school smacking was still permitted, and a pupil who disobeyed the rules often felt the heavy hand of the teacher. But it would seem that nowadays Ministers of Education, well ones named Parata, can get away with shocking behaviour because her head master is named John Key and he runs a sloppy but profit charter school.

It would seem that Parata is the teachers pet, for whenever she is caught out breaking long standing school rules he simply smiles and softly pats her on the head and says ‘well done for being so assertive’ and she curtsies while giving her biggest childlike colgate toothpaste gleaming and sparkling smile and utters ‘Thank you sire’, John Key holds out his hand and she gently kisses that self same hand and skips off and joins her class mates in the playground nicknamed Cabinet, John E and Jerry B and Steven J,  Judith C as they bully the smaller kids like John B and Peter D. It is of cause at the new charter school known as ‘Privileged Brats KFC Learning Centre for future leaders’ in the heart of Wellington.

While Phillipstown School, a decile 1 primary school with 163 pupils, may yet face closure, the community has welcomed the ruling as a major win. Justice John Fogarty declared that the Ministry of Education’s consultation process failed to meet the requirements of the Education Act in two respects. First, the importance of the cost of Phillipstown continuing on its current site was mistakenly played down. Second, the financial information Education minister Hekia Parata relied on was not reasonably broken down and explained in a manner that would have enabled a critique.

‘‘These failures of process mean that the minister has not lawfully merged Phillipstown with Woolston,’’ Justice Fogarty said.

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‘Her decision is declared unlawful and is not valid. ’’It was the second time a Parata decision to close a school had been overturned by the High Court. Her decision to close Nelson’s Salisbury School, subject to a judicial review in December, was also deemed unlawful.

Now just imagine if you or I broke the law in such a manner would, we be lucky enough to have a smiling and understand, caring bundle of wisdom to protect our backsides.

Just imagine for one minute that Ms Parata was a simple but hard working public servant who was on an individual contract, as most seem to be now days…I’m sure that Head Master John Key would have named her publicly and said that what she did or failed to do was completely out of line, and was not up to the high standard of behaviour that he expects of his pupils [ministers]. He would no doubt add that she not only did it once, but twice.

He would also I’m sure remind us all, that when a past pupil Nick Smith failed to adhere to his stiff rules he was dumped and was brought back only when he had begged and pleaded that he simply couldn’t live on the unemployment benefit. It has been reported that others are now considering laying complaints against the dictatorial behaviour of his favorite class room pet Hekia Parata.

Branston Intermediate School Principal Jennifer O’Leary said she felt ‘‘sick’’ that she had not taken further action to prevent her own school from being closed. 

The Hornby School was set to close at the end of the year, with most pupils expected to go to Hornby High School. O’Leary said it was too early to say whether the court’s decision would prompt Branston to appeal too, but she would be speaking to the school’s board of trustees to determine their next move. ‘‘My initial reaction is if the consultation was illegal in Phillipstown’s respect and the costings were illegal in their respect then it would be the same for all the schools because the consultation was the same for each school.’’ 

There now needed to be some ‘‘political pressure’’ on the Ministry of Education and Parata to cancel all of the proposed closures and mergers, she said.

Parata has so far given no hint of whether she will appeal against the Phillipstown merger decision, resume consultation or concede defeat. This normal Key at the time of writing is out of the country being patted on the head by best mates and their financial whiz-kids.

Parata refused to front for interviews yesterday, and her press secretary, Florence Aiono, said she was also unlikely to do so today.

Prime Minister John Key said he still had ‘‘absolute confidence’’ in Parata despite the second bungled school closure. ‘‘We face court action all the time as the Government; the truth is the Government does lots and lots of things and in a democracy people have absolutely the right to challenge the decision. Many of them go our way, some of them go against us.’’ He rejected suggestions Parata had botched the process. This is true in some cases other than those relating to the GCSB, selling state assets, the Police, and anything to with John Banks.

Phillipstown School’s lawyer, Mai Chen, said if Parata opted to continue consultation based on the merger idea she would need to be very clear about why, then provides all the relevant information so the community could respond.