Liz Gregory: Leavers' Trust Founder on the Government cancelling the registration of Gloriavale's school

A push for the Government to use its powers to begin dismantling Gloriavale. 

The Secretary for Education has cancelled the Christian sect school’s licence, forcing it closed from January.  

The call comes just a week after former leader Howard Temple was sentenced to more than two years in prison for sex offending. 

Leavers' Trust Founder Liz Gregory told Heather du Plessis-Allan she’s now urging the Government to go further, starting with de-registering the community’s charity. 

She expects that to be the next step and anticipates it could be shut down before Christmas. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
There is a big development in the Glory of l case,

(00:01):
which is that the Secretary of Education has canceled Glory
of Our Christian School's license, effectively closing it down from
twenty three January next year. Liz Gregory is the founder
of the Glory of Oale Leavers Trust.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Morning, Liz, good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Is this good because it starts the process of making
it hard to live in Gloriavale? Or is this bad
because it's the kids who get punished first?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Oh? Look, I think this is a positive step. The
ministry has made a courageous decision that the children actually
met it since the school at Glaorivale was a cornerstone
of their community. I guess a device for entreatment and
isolation which was consessed by leaders in the employment court hearing.
So this is only a positive step forward.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
So what's most likely to happen here? Are these kids
going to be homeschooled by their parents or are they
going to get sent to public schools outside nearby?

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah, a lot of people think homeschooling will be their
next option, but last week every family who are homeschooling
failed in Glorivale. That fails the aero review and so
that's clearly a signal that homeschooling isn't working either. I
doubt sale jumpon to correspondent schooling to KUDA because they
don't need to meet the criteria for that. So I
assume that state school integration is going to be the option,

(01:09):
although we would strongly suggest and have that a hub
or transition programs are set up whereby various buildings are
added to other school sites potentially, and that it's the
carefully supported process and it will toss money, but these
kids are worth it, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
So this was always going to be the first step
that any government would take in order to start putting
the pressure on Gloria l What's the next.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
One, obviously the announcement of a deregistration of their charity.
I've anticipating that will be before Christmas, and that was
signal to Gloryvale in July and they objected to it
and have had healed hearings, and so I expect that's
the next step. They do have various leavers on offers

(01:54):
for them, but all government successive ones over fifty years
have been very reluctant to pull those around safety and yeah,
we would say that didn't need to be done carefully
and with survivor input. The people who've left Gloraval are
actually the experts on how people in there think, and
they must be at the table sitting there giving ideas
and options for how this can be done in a

(02:15):
really carefully traumer informed way.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Liz, thanks very much for your time. Liz Gregory are
founder of the Glory of Our Leavers Trust. Heather, my
daughter is a teacher. The local schools didn't find out
about the closure of Glory of Our School until an
hour before the media. They won't know how many kids
they will get until January. It doesn't give them much
time to hire more teachers and get things organized. Brian,
I somehow feel I just have a sneaky suspicion not
that many kids are going to come out, so you know,

(02:41):
probably have nothing to worry about. For more from the
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