Urgent Debates — Education—School Review Programme

I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. It was ironic indeed to hear the Prime Minister giving instructions to this House today that MPs should tell the truth. It was advice that I believe she should take herself. Her record would stand less scrutiny than Lianne Dalziel’s when it came to the finer art of deception in politics. However, the truth about school closures is pretty simple. An overrated, overconfident Minister underestimated New Zealand’s parents. Closures of our schools have never been advocated on this scale—never. There has always been a continuous process of school closures, and that is without question, regardless of party. My own electorate of Southland has had demographic change for the last 15 years. I can tell the House that in the last 5 years over a dozen schools have closed in my electorate. Two were closed just before Christmas without getting in the newspaper. So before Labour gets precious about who closed what, let us get the scale of these closures in mind.

Currently, 71 schools are designated for closure, and the cynical head-grabbing exercise yesterday does not save one of them. Many New Zealanders now believe that school closures will not go ahead, but they are going ahead and 71 school closures have been proposed. Let us remind ourselves about the nature of many of these schools. I have found people, even in the press gallery, who believe that this is just about the closure of some small rural schools. Well, there are, maybe, a couple of dozen out of the 71—maybe 20. What we are talking about are schools like Watlington Intermediate in Timaru. That school has a roll of over 250 children, and it has a very special characteristic in that its staff, uniquely almost, in primary and intermediate schooling, are half male and half female. It is very successful, is strongly supported, has excellent facilities, and it will be closed. I could go through a whole raft of such schools, each of which has the same characteristics—that is, is successful in its education, has good facilities, has strong community support and strong parental involvement, and is in no way failing in its duty, which is to educate our young New Zealanders.

The Minister of Education thought he would get away with it. He thought he would get away with it because he and the unions sat in his office and did the deal. That is how everything is done in education these days—if they decide, then that is what will happen. I say to the teacher unions that they have made the biggest mistake they have made since I can remember watching them, and that is to get offside with parents. They will pay the price for helping Trevor Mallard. They will pay a price because for the first time in a long time parents have not had to rely on the unions to lead their position in an argument about education. Parents have done it themselves, and for reasons that shock the Minister. I saw the look on his face when he stood up in front of 600 people in Invercargill and parents made it clear to him why they were opposing his network reviews.

Labour members have always believed that the concept of parents choosing schools is a nasty, right-wing, Tory idea that has to be stamped out. Government members believe choice is bad and that parents who want it have been duped by right-wing extremists. Well, the Minister is wrong. I saw mothers from decile 1 and 2 schools who have voted Labour all their lives stand up and tell him to get back in his taxi, get out of their community, and stop telling them where to send their children to school. Timaru has elected Jim Sutton overwhelmingly for a number of elections. Forty-five percent of Timaru parents drive past their nearest school. Why? Well, actually, that is none of his business. Parents make choices not for ideological reasons but because they have children and each of those children is unique. Even when one has six of them, they are all different. At the very least, parents have the right to withdraw their child from a school where that child is not fitting in, not succeeding, or, in fact, may be having his or her educational experience destroyed—not because the whole system is wrong but because in that classroom, with that peer group and that teacher, it does not work. Trevor Mallard and Labour believe it is wrong to want to do that. That is why they are closing schools; to make sure parents lose those choices—because falling rolls are an opportunity.

I know about falling rolls; they have been falling in my electorate the whole time I have been in Parliament. That situation puts a huge pressure for performance on the schools. I will tell members what happens. The school that does not deal with the hopeless principal or make sure its teachers are doing their job competently gets crunched, and quickly, because the parents can go—and they do, and that is right, and that is how it should be. Parents do not trust the highly centralised, bureaucratic, State-monopoly mindset of Labour and the unions, who say that: “Whatever teacher is in your classroom, your child just has to put up with it, because that is your zone.” They say: “State education is about creating a democracy.” Actually, it is not. It is about educating “my child”. That is what those parents out there were protesting about today. The Minister would not come down to talk to them. Those parents were not there to make some political statement; they were standing up for their children—actually, their children ahead of their school.

Parents are standing up for their children, and that is why the network reviews have stopped. I have been saying for 2 months that the Minister would not start another round of them because of the anger of those parents. Is it not strange how 2 weeks ago the Minister went around the country saying that network reviews were absolutely necessary for a sustainable education system, and yesterday he decided they were not necessary? What changed? Two things. It was not just the poll, but of course the poll made a difference. Invercargill has gone; Labour can forget about it. Mr “Hopeless” Peck will never recover from his pathetic display, and Jim Sutton will be very fortunate to recover from his. Their colleague has done them in. Trevor Mallard has done those Labour MPs in, and they are starting to send the message back to the leader’s runner. They are sick of being done in. Jill Pettis is finished. She has just been promoted to senior whip, but her seat is gone. Trevor Mallard did her in because he overrated himself, and it is the sheer arrogance of the network reviews that shows the Government is completely out of step with public and parental opinion about education. It is off on some centralised, bureaucratic, monopoly trip, but parents are out there making well-informed, well-judged choices for their children, and they will fight to keep those choices.

The network reviews will not start up again, and that is why the Minister must back off on 71 closures. What is the difference between the parents in Invercargill when Labour was polling 45 percent and the parents of rural Southland who would have had a review if Labour was not polling 35 percent? That is the only difference. Three months in the polls is the only difference between having the heart ripped out of the schools and being able to keep them. So whatever arguments the Minister has put up, I would ask him to address this, because it is a core principle of his own party: a fair go. What about a fair go for the thousands of families who are facing the closure of their schools? The Minister has no mandate to do it.

Yesterday the Government owned up to the fact that it does not have a mandate for the radical school closures it plans. Having lost his mandate, that Minister should give away his policy. Certainly it will cost Labour politically, and he knows that, but it is too late. Most of those bills have been sent already. But out of a sense of a Kiwi fair go, why should one community that fell on the wrong side of a poll have to go through this when a community that fell on the right side of a poll does not have to? How do I explain that to the 10 and 12-year-old children I will be speaking to in Invercargill tomorrow?

💬 Rodney Hide: What’s the principle?

As he said on the radio, he is a politician. He is an overrated, overconfident, and destructive politician, so why has Helen Clark appointed him Minister for race relations? Tell that to the people of Invercargill! He is the man who will bring us all together! Well, parents know that Fraser Crescent School will close because the Minister does not like the way the parents are protesting. Pareora East School will close because he implied on the radio that it was a ghetto school, and it asked for an apology. Other parents say to me: “Gosh, they shouldn’t have done that because now he’ll close them.” They see the Minister as vindictive. They see not only that he has abandoned any pretence of educational outcomes driving these changes but also that he is vindictive. Of course, it is not about educational outcomes, at all. I will tell members who wins. Single-sex schools do not get touched. High-decile schools win their arguments, and low-decile schools lose. It is that simple. It is the poorer areas of those cities that are being stripped of their schools, not the high-decile areas so much. They tend to win. The Minister says he likes intermediate schools, but he is closing them all. He says he likes intermediate schools because they produce good educational outcomes, but: “By the way, in Timaru and Invercargill, I’m closing them all.” Some of the answers are just stupid. The “super school” in Invercargill, James Hargest High School, is merging a 1,200-pupil primary school with two intermediate schools on to two sites. If James Hargest High puts the intermediate kids on their site, they will get $9 million, and if they stay on the other site, they will get $4 million. So he is paying them $5 million just to push them all on to one site. The class rooms are already there on the other site, and they will be full of intermediate kids, so why not just call it an intermediate school and leave James Hargest High alone, instead of shifting 2,000 pupils around and making every teacher of those 2,000 pupils reapply for their jobs?

I say to the Minister that he can escape from this with some credibility if he backs right off on those 71 schools. In most of those communities, there will be agreement about the closure of a small number of schools. In the Grey Valley, people will agree to close four schools and keep four. In Invercargill, they will agree to close some schools, but a lot fewer than 13. In Timaru, they will agree to close some schools, but a lot fewer than 15. A Government without a mandate and a discredited Minister who have already changed their policy cannot be allowed to punish those communities. I say to the House that they are angrier today than they have ever been, because they are being done over in a way that is grossly unfair and highly political. The Minister has some choices left if he wants to rescue his credibility, and he will need to, because why will anyone else in education believe anything he says? He went around saying how brave he was in fronting up and how convinced he was of his policy. He made a virtue out of it, and some people believed it. I never believed that but some people did. What other policy can he ever announce that he might stick to under pressure? There is none. The only way for him to escape with some credibility will be to back off on the closures, leave most of those schools open, and let us all get on with teaching our kids instead of punishing a Government.

I think I can now understand why Don Brash is the leader of the National Party. The member who has just resumed his seat is the member who, not more than 3 weeks ago, described my policy in that area as “sensible”. That is what he said. He is the member who said: “Falling rolls are a reality and will be for decades to come. Birth rates are dropping, and according to even the most optimistic immigration forecasts, there will be fewer children entering school. That much is understood.” He is the member who said that he proposes three restrictions on the freedom to choose. First, if a school becomes a one-teacher school, it must take part—not choose to take part—in an educational development initiative. He agrees that education development initiatives can empower school boards to find their own solutions for improving education provision. He would force 126 schools into education development initiatives, and he would require even the schools we have just reviewed to go into education development initiatives.

💬 Hon Bill English: Don’t be stupid.

I agree with the member: his policy is stupid. He would also require that if a school became 30 percent empty, it must also take part in a education development initiative.

In New Zealand, over 400 schools have more than 30 percent spare capacity. It is in the nature of the changes that have occurred. So what do we have now? We have the National Party spokesperson on education announcing that over 500 schools would be the subject of a review, if he were the Minister—over 500 schools. He then says that if a school consistently failed to provide adequate education to its pupils, it could be closed or required to join an education development initiative. The only measures we have of that are Education Review Office reports and supplementary reviews. I understand that out of about 2,600 schools, 129 are currently having supplementary reviews—and he would put them into a review process, as well. That member, 3 weeks ago, used the description “sensible”, and on 4 February he announced that 650 schools would go into review, according to National Party policy. That was not quoted by some journalist; that was from an article he wrote himself—or from an article some stooge wrote for him, which he put his name to. That is what Bill English said. He said that under National Party policy, 650 schools would go into review. That is much more extensive than anything that has occurred under this Government. Because this Government has made some decisions in order to focus on education, he is now recanting on his promises to review. Or is he? I did not hear him withdraw. I did not hear him apologise. I did not hear him say: “Sorry, I was wrong when I promised to review 650 schools if I became the Minister.” What we have now is quite a lot of silence. There is not a whisper from him—not a murmur, not a word. That member is quiet now, because he knows he has been caught.

💬 Hon Bill English: No one believes you.

No one has to believe me. All that people have to do is to read the second edition of the Dominion Post of 4 February to see the words spoken by the Hon Bill English, formerly the Leader of the Opposition, and to read what he said he would do. In this House, we are required to believe members. I believe him. I believe what he said. I believe he is honest. I believe he would put 650 schools under review, because that is what he said in an article in the paper.

Having said that, as I explained to people yesterday, the Government—and I in particular—came to a point where we found that on just about every occasion I made an appointment to see a school, the school would get anxious about whether it was to be reviewed. There was a classic case of a school up in Northland—I have lost the name of the school, but I think it was in Peter Jones’ area—which was providing wonderful environmental education. I popped in to see the school, and I saw there an enormous number of parents. The cars were lined up—they were all over the place. I thought: “Hell, it’s early in the morning. This is a great welcome!” Of course, the parents were scared that I had come to announce a review of their school. Their school is a good, successful school with a growing roll, in an area of the country that has growing rolls. But I found that when I made an appointment to visit a school—and even schools in those parts of my own electorate that have roll growth and are not areas of review—it would think that I was doing a review.

This Government is doing some wonderful things in education this year. Later in the year, some early childhood education announcements will be made that will reinforce the position we already have as a world leader in early childhood education. We have AsTTle rolling out, which makes an enormous difference. These tools help teachers and parents to understand their kids and to learn what their strengths and weaknesses are. They are world-leading tools—the work of the University of Auckland, which has been contracted to do it for the ministry since I have been the Minister. People from all around the world are coming to have a look at them. We have planning and reporting, around which there is some debate and anxiety in some quarters. But it will mean that parents will be able to see, in the reports of their schools, what the schools are planning to do. The reporting against those objectives will be of a quality we have never seen before. That is rolling out now. From the annual reports I have received from last year, that information will be available. It will be quality information about educational objectives of a sort we have never seen before in New Zealand.

At the top end of the scale—as I was explaining to my colleague the Minister of Finance, who had slightly mixed views on it—it appears that as a result of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement, we might have retention rates at the top end of our schools higher than we have had previously. It is all anecdotal so far, but we will get the 1 March returns and have a good look at them. Some people who were not succeeding are now succeeding. I think that is great. It is making an enormous difference in our schools.

This year, for the first time in many years, we will have a scholarship examination. It will be a separate examination, externally assessed—and really difficult—for year 13 students, as part of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement. It will stretch people. It is our expectation that students who pass it in a particular subject will go straight into stage II courses at universities. I have put a warning out to schools to try to discourage them from entering too many students, because the standards will be so high. There will be rewards for those students There will be rewards from each school, as long as they pass the scholarship—that is, three passes in three subjects. The top student at every school will get a 3-year scholarship. There will be scholarships for the top student in each subject within the scholarship examinations, and, for those who do not have a scholarship examination, in the National Certificate of Educational Achievement at level 3. So the top student in the country will get a reward. There will be $5,000-a-year scholarships for 3 years for those students who get three of the outstanding level passes. So if they are outstanding in three subjects, they will get a scholarship worth $5,000 a year. That is a real reward for academic performance. For the very top students, there will be $15,000 a year for the top student in New Zealand for 3 years, and $10,000 for the second-placed student.

This Government is into promoting excellence. But the problem I have is that with all these—and many more—wonderful things happening in education, when I try to go to a school to talk to people about them, they think I am coming to close it. That is just hopeless. That is why we have made the policy change. I hope we can now focus on positive aspects of education. Most of all, I will be ensuring that schools all over the country get a copy of Mr English’s promise to review 650 of them if he becomes the Minister.

I have to ask the Minister: at the school that he went to in Northland, when all the parents were waiting outside, were they waiting for their T-shirts?

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: I have to get a bigger size for the member now.

In Peter Jones’ territory, yes, that is definitely so. The second element that arose from the Minister’s speech was this: he is using as an excuse the fact that if he turns up at a school, people might think he is going to close it. All I have to say to the Minister is: “What appalling communication!”. It is appalling communication from himself and from his ministry if the parents at a school do not know, when he turns up there, whether he will close it or whether the visit is about anything else. That is a very limp excuse for this U-turn in policy.

The case of Taipuha School, which I pointed out today, is a true case. That school went through a heart-rending process. It had been going for 75 years, but realised that, on behalf of its children, it needed to close down and merge with another school. It had asked in plenty of time for this to take place before the beginning of the school year this year, and that request sat on officials’ desks for month after month. The school had to come to me to get it moving, and even now, it has not been moved in time to close the school in a timely fashion. This shows that ministry officials have been so tied up with these school network reviews that they have not been able to get on with the other bread-and-butter tasks that they should be doing. I believe that is appalling.

It is an appalling thing for a Minister to say: “The days of people worrying that when the Minister’s coming to your school, he’s coming not to praise you but to bury you, are over.” If that is what the parents of our nation’s schools have been perceiving over the last 12 months, that is an appalling statement for the Minister to make about his own performance. That is why he was doing it. I think that we need to listen to the quotations of Trevor Mallard within the last 3 months—the justifications for the policy were there. Here is one: “It is about ensuring the school network as a whole is viable enough to continue to provide local children with the quality education they deserve in 10 to 15 years’ time. It is about using the best of education that is provided now, and joining forces to provide an even better education in the future”. I cannot really argue with that. New Zealand First would support that. Here is another one from 25 October 2003: “It is far more prudent to plan for change now, from a position of relative strength, than to wait for the damage to set in and for schools to start self-destructing.” And from the same press release: “The new policy means that taxpayers’ money is spent on teaching and learning, and not on the upkeep of unnecessary grounds and buildings”. Then we move to 15 November 2003: “I do believe it is essential to seize the opportunity and start planning from a position of relative strength, rather than wait for schools to spontaneously self-destruct as population decline starts to hit hard on school rolls.” I could go on and on with statements the Minister has made that he would rather spend money on quality education for students than on bricks and mortar.

The question that has to be asked in this debate—which, I remind people, is a debate about the decision yesterday to impose a moratorium on school network reviews for 5 years—is this: if those conditions were true 2 days ago, or 2 months ago, how come they not true today? If those statements are true and the policy is justified, why is it not justified now? Are we going to have a nation run by protest and polls, or are we going to have a nation run by good policy? What Mr Mallard has done in this particular case, for all educationists, is prevent us from having any confidence in the validity of any policy—because it will be determined by what people say in the polls.

Bill English is correct in one respect. He is correct in saying that the determination of the school network—the future of schools in New Zealand for the next 5 years—has been made according to which side of a poll communities have fallen on. So if a community was in the programme on one side of the poll, it is now out. Its schools will be closed left, right, and centre, ruthlessly, callously, to future-proof that community. The programme was to future-proof communities for the next 15 to 20 years, and therefore it was in the best interests of the community’s children, regardless of what adults thought and the points they had been making. But if a community falls on the other side of a couple of polls, then its schools can continue, with a lot of wasted educational money in that community and not the best education for the community’s children. The Government is not prepared to make any changes in that community because if it makes those changes, people might not like it any more. Is that what our Government is supposed to be about?

Mr Mallard has made the statement that National Ministers never fronted up to communities. I can say that I, as an Associate Minister, fronted up to the community of Oamaru, and I can say that it is a very passionate, emotional situation. But Mr Mallard then turned round and accused those National Ministers of not having any guts. Well, what is this U-turn? He is a Minister who firmly believes in the review programme. He has his whole ministry geared towards it so that the ministry cannot do the bread-and-butter tasks it needs to do to support schools. Yet, after two polls, the policy is reversed. We have to ask ourselves: what is that?

I have to say that New Zealand First has not opposed, ideologically, any network reviews. We are not like some who, for example, during the period between 1996 and 1999 closed 95 schools and then said that no schools at all should be closed. We are not like some who said that it should be parents’ choice when the policy of their party—which is the use of vouchers—would close every small school in this country. New Zealand First has said: “Let’s take this on a case by case basis.” We have watched on a case by case basis, and I must say that we have become increasingly disturbed on a case by case basis. What has been happening is not rational decision-making in the best interests of education—or saving money and making the best use of the educational dollar. There were some very good decisions, and they were accepted by the Northland community, up in the mid-north—painful as they might have been—and they leave a platform for future development. But in other areas there were increasing concerns about situations where viable, constructive, and good schools were being shut down and monster schools were being created, and that is not in the best interests of children.

In some cases, we would have to say that our fears were about the final decisions. I suggest that the one in Timaru really is of concern, because all the recommendations were reversed at the last minute, and do not make any sense, and in fact it was the considerations of local politicians, their concerns, that finally held sway. New Zealand First is extremely concerned about this particular decision, because the decision is saying that in future this Government will run the country according to polls and according to protest. John Minto could be the most powerful man in this country, purely and simply by running protests. He is good at running protests. So anybody who wants this Government to do anything should just mount a protest, and such people can be absolutely certain that this Government will fall into line with them. That is not what we consider to be a very good way to govern a country.

We think that the decision to put off the policy of the network reviews of schools for 5 years has ramifications and implications that are extremely serious for the future governance, during this particular parliamentary session, of this particular Government. In fact, the decision demonstrates that this Government does not know where it is going and is swayed simply by public opinion. That is not a good way to govern a country. People need to know that their Government, which is there to make decisions on their behalf, has firm policies that are sound and resilient, and that it has Ministers who have the guts to stick with them—not just turn round on a poll.

I would actually like to congratulate Trevor Mallard on his decision to introduce a 5-year moratorium on school reviews. It is hard to admit to having made a mistake, and it is especially hard to admit to having made one as big as those reviews. It is big of the Minister to admit yesterday that he was making a major mistake with the school reviews process, and that he was facing an enormous credibility problem: the problem of trying to convince communities that he was taking the right steps. The Minister has acknowledged that his network reviews were detracting from the good work that schools were doing.

It has taken the Minister an awfully long time to reach that conclusion, however. He said that it dawned on him late last year, so I have to ask why he then carried on cutting a path of destruction through 11 communities from Northland to Invercargill, and including Wairoa, Taranaki, Upper Hutt, the West Coast, Timaru, and others in between. Why did he cut a path of destruction through those communities in January and February of this year? Why did he announce a further 67 closures—or mergers, as he prefers to call them—when he knew what effects his actions would have on those communities? Why is the Minister saving the rest of New Zealand from his brutal, divisive, and unnecessary network reviews, when at the same time he is continuing to inflict pain and suffering on the 11 communities I have just mentioned? I appeal to the Minister to listen to the widespread concerns being expressed about his decision to force through the existing reviews.

It is pleasing to see that finally organisations like the Principals Federation and the New Zealand Educational Institute, as well as local body leaders and most political parties in this House, are now calling on the Minister to stop the process. There are very good reasons why we are doing that. It is quite plain from the reviews already completed, such as the one in Mosgiel-Taieri, that they have been, and continue to be, a disaster. But, most important of all, it is great to see the parents of our future leaders, the parents of our young people and young children attending those schools, asking the Minister to have a heart. So I have no problem—whereas it appears that Brian Donnelly does—with the fact that the Minister has changed his mind on future reviews. My only problem is that he is not making the decision right now to cancel the reviews already under way.

If Mr Mallard had turned up on the steps of Parliament today, and had met parents who had come from as far afield as Ngahere and Kaiata on the West Coast, or Kapuni in Taranaki, let alone from Pinehaven, Fraser Crescent, Brentwood, and other schools from Upper Hutt, he would have seen the anger, the hurt, and the bewilderment that those parents feel. They believe in their schools. They know that they provide their children with a quality education. They know that their schools are at the heart of their local communities, and they want their schools to stay open. I tell the Minister that it is not too late to have the courage to change his mind on the existing reviews, in the same way that he has changed his mind on the reviews that he had intended to announce in June. Trevor Mallard admitted today that parents, teachers, and pupils are hurting in the communities currently facing the chop. He has the power to end that hurt and to begin the healing process. I appeal one last time to him, to this Government, and to the Prime Minister—who herself attended a small rural school, Te Pahu, with a current roll of 133, which is below Mr Mallard’s arbitrary cut-off point of 160—to show some compassion and some common sense.

The Minister says that he will treat each school under review on the basis of its rational merits. I believe that the current reviews have gone past that point. School communities have found the review process to be brutal, coercive, divisive, and destructive. Yesterday I visited six schools in the Invercargill area. Some I had been to before, and some were brand new to me. All expressed similar sentiments to the schools that I had visited in Timaru and on the West Coast. All want Mr Mallard to stop the reviews, and to stop them now. As Bill English conceded, some of those schools will probably close. Some of them recognise that their rolls are too small, or that there are other factors that may lead to a closure. But we should let them do that in their own way and in their own time. We should let them close willingly, rather than force closure upon them in the way that this network review process has done. Most of the schools that I have visited want to stay open, and they deserve to stay open—they have every good reason to stay open.

There is an extraordinary contradiction in Invercargill, for example, in the current proposal. An excellent school such as Invercargill Middle School, which has a roll of 130-plus, has been recommended to stay open, when just down the road Waverley Park School, with over 240 pupils, has been told it has to merge with Ascot Community School. Invercargill South School is being told it has to merge, even though its roll is only a little below that of Invercargill Middle School. Salford School, with over 270 pupils, has been told it has to merge with Invercargill North School, which has over 200 students. And so on it goes. The process includes Waikiwi School, which is an excellent school with well over 100 pupils. Those are not tiny rural schools. There are some tiny rural schools included, but I think many of them have good grounds to stay open—especially when, if they close, some 5-year-olds will have to travel for more than an hour to school. But to focus back on the schools I was talking about in Invercargill, they do not want to go through a forced merger process. Ascot Community School, for example, has already been through that process only very recently. That school is still trying to heal the wounds from the last merger, when Surrey Park School closed.

💬 Hon Brian Donnelly: It opened in 2000.

In fact, Ascot Community School opened on 27 January 1999, but what is extraordinary is that yesterday when I visited that school the staff gave me a photocopy of the school plaque. It states: “Officially dedicated by the Hon Trevor Mallard on 16 March 2001”. That was meant to be a fresh beginning for that school. Now it is going through major upheaval yet again, because of this review process. It should not have to face that.

Children like Michelle Fogarty should not have to write poems stating: “Our school is an endangered species. Like the kiwi and the kākāpo, our school should be valued and treasured.” Parents such as Andrew Kerr, whose children are at Waikiwi School, should not have to write: “We have no transport and cannot afford to purchase any or to move house. If Waikiwi School closes, our children will have to walk for approximately 40 minutes to and from school each day. This means crossing 17 streets. There are no buses. The proposed changes may save the Government some money, but the costs of these savings is the health and safety of our children and our community structure.”

Those points should be absolutely and completely transparent to the Minister, because he has visited more schools than I have. He should know that the population projections he is basing the closures on do not stack up. Business and Economic Research Ltd showed that Invercargill’s school population will grow 20 percent in the next 20 years—not decline by 37 percent, as the Minister is claiming. He should know that the empty classrooms that he talks about are actually being used for after-school care, for special needs, for computer suites, and for drama suites. He should know that schools, parents, teachers, and communities are angrier today than they were yesterday, because they cannot understand why Mr Mallard is continuing with the current round of reviews, while saying that there will be no further reviews. They are telling Mr Mallard to leave their schools alone.

The Green Party supports that call. We will redouble our efforts to stop Mr Mallard from closing the 67 schools he has already earmarked for closure, because those schools are the hearts of their communities and they deliver quality education to their pupils. Those schools have an important part to play in our future. They are the infrastructure that the Government needs for its own regional development policies, and it should back off while it still has the chance to do so.

Today we saw a precedent set outside. We saw a group of parents, members of boards of trustees, some teachers, and children who came to Parliament to tell the Government that parents want to choose where they send their children to school. At the mere threat of this march on Parliament, the Minister announced yesterday that there would be a moratorium on future reviews. What is wrong with parents wanting to choose where they send their children to school? I do not get it. What is the crime in parents wanting to choose where they send their child to school, whether it be to a small rural school, a co-educational school, or a larger school? I do not get what they have done wrong to have these reviews visited on them. People out there do not get it, either. These schools have good Education Review Office reports, they have very strong community support, and they have great parental commitment.

One of the best things for a child’s education is having at least one parent connected with that child’s education, whether it just be that the parent asks what homework the child has when he or she gets home from school, or that the parent puts the painting the child has done at school on the fridge with a fridge magnet and says: “That’s beautiful, darling.” That is one of the most important things for a child’s educational achievements. How do we achieve, reinforce, and celebrate that? We do that by saying to all of those people who came here today, and all of the people they represent right around the country, that they can choose where their child goes to school.

The ACT party knows that sometimes schools close—that is a fact of life. Sometimes it is sad when a school closes, but it is a matter of attrition. It usually happens when not enough parents want to use that school, so a decision is taken in conjunction with the community—as it should be—that the school will close. But that is not what is happening in this situation. The Minister is just drawing lines on a map and saying: “In that grid, those schools will be reviewed, and these ones over here will be reviewed.” What is the point in having the Education Review Office when it gives these schools glowing reports and they still have to close, anyway? We may as well close down the Education Review Office, and the whole bureaucracy of education as well, if this is how we run education in this country, whereby one Minister can dictate what happens.

The Minister says he is doing this to save money and that $90 million will go back into those schools and into education. He knows that that is not the case, because I have papers from Treasury that show that after 4 years that money will not go back into education, it will go into the consolidated account.

If the future reviews are so bad, why are the current ones good? Why does not the Minister just dump the review process and give parents the choice? He is ripping the heart out of communities in New Zealand, whether they are rural communities, communities like Upper Hutt and Pinehaven, or small provincial towns. In many of these places the school is not there just for children to sit in front of a teacher every day in the classroom. The school is the place where the parents meet. They are the places where sports are played. The parents watch out for each other. This is how we build a civil society where parents watch out and say: “Joe isn’t looking too great these days, I wonder whether there is something wrong on the farm. Perhaps I had better ring him up and check him out.” The schools are where this all happens.

I am a parent of four children. I was able to choose where my children went to school. They went to a little school in Russell, up in Northland. The Minister has been able to choose where his children go to school. Why cannot everybody in New Zealand have that choice? We let them choose their car, we let them choose their house, and we let them choose which general practitioner they send their children to, which family doctor they have. We do not tell them which one they will go to, based on where they live. We do not draw a line on maps and say: “There are too many GPs in this little suburb, or even in this street, so some of them have to close, and you will go to that one.” We allow them to have that choice. We allow them to choose which politicians they want in their House of Representatives, but we will not allow them to choose which school they will send their children to. That is just nuts.

I am really pleased that this issue has grown from something where people were thinking: “Oh, well, if the Minister is closing the schools, it must be right.” It has grown into something really big. It has cross-party support. We have the Greens and ACT agreeing on the fact that the schools should—[Interruption] I am not surprised, because we are both parties of principle.

💬 Hon Parekura Horomia: Oh!

This is a very important principle that we here are debating. Those members over there might laugh. They did not have the courage to go out the front there. Where were those members when the parents were out there asking to talk to someone? The Government sent out the Hon Paul Swain. He was the only one there.

💬 Hon Parekura Horomia: I was there.

Mr Horomia must have been hiding behind the bus, because I missed him. If he was there, I apologise that I did not see him.

Overseas research shows that big schools are, in general, more conducive to bad behaviour, disruption, and truancy—not always, but in general they are disruptive. In New York they are breaking big schools down to small schools—100 to 200 pupils.

The ACT party would not say which school is best for other people’s children. Nobody can tell me which school is best for my children. I cannot tell other people what is best for their child. They might choose a school of 2,500 students; they might want to choose a school like the one of 11 pupils, Wallingford School, that greeted us 2 weeks ago at Wallingford. That has 11 students, and is a sole-charge school. It is a wonderful school that has been there for a long time and has a good history.

We have a crisis in education in this country. We have 20 percent of students leaving school at the most basic state of literacy, who are unable to cope with everyday life. If we had 20 percent of children leaving school physically maimed so that they could not physically cope with everyday life, there would be an outcry. There would be parents on Holmes. The schools would be identified; the Minister would certainly be trying to do something about that. How can we change what the officials call “the tail”, these people who are falling behind in the system? We give choice back to parents. Parents know whether their children can read, write, or add up. Wellington has to stop telling teachers what to teach, turning principals into administrators where they are just filling out forms; and, worst of all, telling and ordering parents which school they should send their children to. Give the power back to the communities, the parents, and let them decide.

I was also in the walk along the boulevard from the railway station to Parliament this morning, and as I was with those parents who were protesting from the schools of the Hutt Valley, I was made aware that the Government had definitely made a grievous mistake in pushing matters too far. It was not a question of whether things should be done, it was a question of how it was to be done, and whether it was being done at all in some places. Mr Mallard started out by saying some months ago that there was a need to save money—among some of the reasons that he gave. As things went on and the reviews were being moved forward, he felt that by having fewer larger schools there would be some savings in money that would then go back into those new or consolidated schools. But as some writer mentioned in a newspaper, the education vote might save money, but other departments may lose money because schools have been made too big. In other words, the vote of the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services might increase down the line because of the inattention given to students in larger schools.

I do not know whether that is true, but as that person pursued the article, I started to wonder. I looked at the research from overseas saying that any education policy that moved toward creating smaller schools—not necessarily small schools, but smaller schools—was a good basis to produce better educational outcomes, certainly better social outcomes, and also better financial outcomes. Surprise, surprise! Nobody has taken the debate to talk about staff-student ratios. When I was growing up going to school, and also as a parent, there was always discussion about staff-student ratios. The lower we could have it—

💬 Hon Brian Donnelly: Under 50 in those years!

Yes. The lower the ratio, the better the educational outcome, supposedly. But now with small schools being down to even 12, 20, or 130 pupils in a school with a number of teachers, I would have thought that those very low staff-student ratios make made for better student outcomes, and therefore would be a basis for arguing more solidly in that direction. The teachers’ unions, as we have them, have not brought up that subject, and I half wonder why. For many, many years in a row they have talked, argued, and pushed for reducing the number of pupils in their classroom so teachers can make a better job of delivering in the classroom.

But it is not hard to understand why small schools are good in the sense they are not small small, but the teachers know who all the pupils are. They know them by name, they quickly realise when a student is having problems, which could be at home, from the farm, or from the local gangs around about. He or she could be misbehaving and that person would be noted very quickly. We know that we have a large problem in New Zealand that we do not seem to be able to deal with—the whole area of truancy. The problem of absentee children from schools becomes very difficult to police if teachers do not know who they are, and certainly other students do not know who they are, and therefore keep a sort of a buddy system of accountability among themselves. Under-performing kids are noticed much earlier and much more regularly in a smaller school. So United Future would encourage the Minister, in his moratorium, to strongly reconsider upholding smaller schools, and looking at educational outcomes a lot more strongly.

I was at a meeting last night where the Minister indicated that it is the teacher who makes the greatest impact in any child’s life in the classroom; the quality of teachers, their life, and everything else, is paramount. I believe that the Minister and the ministry will now probably turn their attention from closing schools—this is what I picked up from the meeting that I noticed Mr Donnelly was also at—to focusing on getting quality teachers into the classroom. I believe, too, that the Minister has noted other matters that have occurred that have come to his notice—not only the angry parents’ and grandparents’ concern for children, but issues such as increased travel times for students in the areas where schools are closing down and being amalgamated. I have heard stories already where travel could be up to 2 to 3 hours a day for some children going one way or the other, or both ways. This really is very emotionally stressful on kids before they get home, and even getting them off to school as early as that.

So I believe that the Minister has looked at some of the arguments that parents have taken to him. I am not at all convinced about some of the rationale given by the Minister initially, either in terms of saving money or looking at school projections. It is an imprecise science, to say the least, to figure out how many kids will be in the nation in total, then to try to divide that up by regions—it is literally a poke in the dark. Over the years it has been almost impossible to predict how many schoolteachers will be needed in every place, in every school, and in every area of New Zealand. If we cannot predict the number of schoolteachers, how do we know how many pupils there will be, because the figure changes from year to year?

I believe that the Minister has realised that the projections he is working on really have such variability that to close schools ad nauseam without reference to local areas and to projections for the future, is really quite a hazardous task. I would certainly hope that he has taken that into account.

In smaller schools there is no question that there is a stronger sense of parental ownership, and certainly stronger parent-teacher relationships. I saw this today on the march to Parliament where the teachers, the parents, and certainly some of the trustees, were involved with the children in that march. It is very, very clear that they played a very strong role in pushing, strengthening, and wanting to stand up for their school so that the proposed mergers and closures would be reversed as a result of this march.

This stronger parent ownership means that they participate at all levels—with working bees, they form a great community spirit, and it leaves a good feeling in the school. The Minister is aware, and we are aware, that if one takes some schools out of some communities, one actually destroys the entire community. That was well voiced today. I believe that localised schools play an important role in a community, and they are even a civil defence focal point in some areas where I have travelled. It is at the school that everything comes together, not only with the playing of tennis on the school courts in the weekends, but the schools are the civil defence centres for the entire area. Pull away those schools, and one undermines something that is very strong and viable and is working at this stage. United Future believes that each school needs to be considered on a case by case basis, and I challenge the Minister and the Government to consider that as they look forward in this 5-year moratorium.

I am puzzled. This is an urgent debate, and I have been struggling to stay awake, because the sense of urgency has kind of gone out of this debate. I want to take some of the arguments that have been put up. The ACT member waxed lyrical about the need for choice. As a former principal, I have always loved this argument about the need for choice, because it presumes that everybody in Auckland wants his or her child to go to Auckland Grammar. I once heard it put out by a member of the Opposition, who argued very strongly on this issue of choice, that 400 Auckland Grammars should be replicated throughout New Zealand, and what would be wrong with that? That would be giving people choice. There is a fallacy in some of these arguments about choice.

But then the member, Deborah Coddington, went against herself, because she said that she had looked at overseas research, which said that big schools produced bad behaviour. Tell that to Auckland Grammar with 2,400 pupils! Tell that to Burnside High School with 2,600 pupils! Tell that to any number of schools that are doing—

💬 Hon Brian Donnelly: Rangitoto!

—I thank the member, Rangitoto College—absolutely marvellous work with their children. Tell them that overseas research undertaken by Deborah Coddington, the member for ACT, absolutely means that big schools produce bad behaviour. What ludicrous argument is that?

I have to say, though not so angrily, that Bernie Ogilvy from United Future—also quoting overseas research—says that smaller schools are better. Let us examine that argument. We now have a quite complex curriculum, particularly with technology. If one goes into a years 7 and 8 classroom—the old intermediate stage, or the top of the primary school—and looks at its technology curriculum and what needs to be provided by the teachers for a school of 40, 50, or 60 pupils, one will see that they cannot; the school has to bus its kids in. When people talk about busing in kids for years 7 and 8 technology, they are talking about quite a long bus ride for some of those kids in the middle of the day. One would rather have them on the buses than integrating the schools.

But let us go even further and look at a school of 120 pupils that is 20 minutes out of a major centre—a 20-minute bus ride on a flat, tar-sealed road. How is that school able to provide year-13 children with physics, chemistry, biology, design technology, and all those things? I think one has to be very careful before getting on one’s high horse and saying either that big schools present problems, or little schools are the only way to go.

Then I come to Bill English, who kind of accepts that closure of schools is inevitable. He said again today—other than the points that he was making 3 weeks ago—that he would have education development initiatives—that is, reviews of one-teacher schools or schools where 30 percent of the classrooms are empty. That is really interesting, because there was a policy once where schools were all built in permanent materials of brick or wood. When Kaikorai Valley High School dropped its roll from 1,400 to 400 or 300, it had all these empty brick classrooms. It is now always so that a school will have 25 percent of its classrooms able to be shifted around, because we always expect that school rolls will fluctuate up and down.

But Bill English accepted that. He said today that communities in Invercargill, Grey Valley, and Timaru would accept some closures. That is actually what is happening in one sense. If we look at the issue that Mr Donnelly raised, that the policy should not be based on protest or polls, I think one will see—if one reads what the Minister has put out—-that if schools have bad reports from the Education Review Office, lack viability, or, for instance, have questions where parents, as in the example the member gave, want to merge, then that will be an exception to the moratorium and they will continue.

That is the same sort of thing that Bill English is arguing for, too. He argued that there should be a review of all one-teacher schools. Some one-teacher schools will always survive because the distance to the school actually mitigates against closing the school. But some one-teacher schools may have to close, and Bill English said that. He accepts that that sort of thing continues.

I want to come to Rod Donald’s process. He said we should stop the current review process already going on in 71 schools. Through being responsible for school buses, I know—for my sins—that parents have been acting for the last 12 months on the potential for their schools to close, and have been transferring their kids. We need to go through this process the full way to be really sure. I understand that the Minister said very clearly that it would be done on a school-by-school basis. That does not mean that 71 schools will close. The review will look at the situation, and continue to do so. The Minister will make that decision in April.

The real reason the Minister said that we should turn away from this policy of constant review over the next 5 years is that he knows he has been doing some amazing work in the early years of primary education, in particular. The work of Russell Bishop on the role of the teacher is absolutely pivotal. I nearly fell out of the shower one morning when I heard it explained and accepted that the teacher is pivotal in how a child learns. For so long everyone has said that it is the size of the school or the socio-economic background of the child. Russell Bishop put it out there very strongly and said: “It is the teacher, and how that child learns, that is absolutely pivotal to success.”

That work has been going on, unrecognised, under this very good Minister of Education, let alone the work being done in literacy and numeracy. We faced a problem in this country that we had our top students, as the Programme for International Student Assessement report stated, rating right at the top of Europe and the OECD. But in New Zealand—within schools, not between schools—we have a tail that is the longest of any country; a tail between the average and the failing. That tail has to be addressed.

Did this Minister ignore that? No way! In no uncertain terms he moved to turn round how children learn numeracy. I wonder whether all those people like Rod Donald, who have been busy going to schools, sat down in a year 1 or year 2 mathematics class and saw the change of work, the change in style of teaching, what has been provided for teachers, and the training that has gone on, because this Government wants to ensure that we do not have that tail, and that every child achieves to the limit of his or her ability. That is what this Minister wants to concentrate on. That is what this Government wants to concentrate on, and if the rumpus around closing schools detracts from what is a really important job, then I absolutely support our Minister in doing that.

He made reference to something called asTTle tools, which have kind of passed people by. Let me say as a former principal that when I was taking students into year 9, I was sometimes quite surprised when parents would roll up and I would put out the test in front of them and say: “Do you know that your kid’s got a bit of a reading problem and we will have to look at some extra work?”. They would say: “A reading problem? Didn’t know my kid had that. School reports didn’t say that.” This Minister, with his asTTle tools, will ensure that parents do understand where their kids are and whether they are succeeding—not in a comparison with schools or a big sheet in the newspaper, but something that is for that child and that learner. It is an assessment for diagnostic tools. That is the way that we ought to go, and I think that this Minister has done an extraordinary job.

I want to end with this comment. Not very often, but sometimes, people say—and I heard it in this debate—that maybe Mr Mallard moved away on this issue because he was sort of running scared. I remind members that the first set of schools that Mr Mallard looked at was in a town in his own electorate—Wainuiomata.

💬 Deborah Coddington: Crocodile tears!

No, not crocodile tears, Ms Coddington, actual facts. Mr Mallard did it in his own electorate. That member does not have an electorate to do that in, but he has. He owned up to his people and he worked with his community to do that. I admire that integrity and that guts.

I am delighted to take part in this urgent debate today about school closures. I certainly want to start with an apology to the Hon Marian Hobbs. I regret that we have kept her awake this afternoon. Clearly, she goes through a process in the afternoon of having a long sleep. I am sorry we have taken the time of the House to do this to her. I hope tomorrow will be a more placid day and she can get back to her sleep.

I also want to say that the National Party will never come into this House and claim that there has ever been a case for any one school not to be looked at carefully and, if the proper consideration, process, and parental involvement take place, perhaps end up facing closure. In most cases, if it is worked through carefully the public will support it. But I have been watching from afar Trevor Mallard’s process in these school closures. Every night, when I see the Vero advertisement on television—some members might have seen it—which involves a very big bull walking through a china shop, past all sorts of delicate things, I think the analogy with Trevor Mallard is nearly complete.

💬 Lindsay Tisch: The bull’s much better looking.

I have to say another thing about the bull: he is more gentle in the way he deals with something. He goes right through the shop, comes out the other side, and everything is still intact, but poor old Mr Mallard turns out to be the bloke holding the vase, and he has dropped it big time.

Why did he drop it? He dropped it because he had been told from on high: “We’re in trouble.” There is not a single person in this country—not a single member of the Labour Party, not a single acolyte of the hard-line left—who believes that this change has occurred for any reason other than the polls having absolutely spooked Government members. The Prime Minister had Trevor Mallard on the carpet on the 9th floor, booted him around, and said: “Look at the mess you’ve helped get us into.” It is interesting that Mr Mallard has been appointed to be the man who, as the Minister of race relations, will get the Government out of the big mess. It is good to see a Prime Minister with a sense of humour—her making an appointment like that.

The way that this issue has been handled has been nothing short of appalling. People should not take the National Party’s view of that; they should look at what the Government has done. It has completely pulled the pin itself. That is the test. If it were right and proper and had been managed well by the Minister, the Government would not have pulled the pin. A Labour Government of the past—and I remember back to the days from 1984 to 1987—did some incredibly unpopular, although I think some very good, things, and it held its nerve. When the Roger Douglas - David Lange Government made changes, there were protests on the lawns of Parliament, and people up and down the country marched, but that Government held its nerve. Its members knew it was right, and they boxed on regardless, and guess what? In 1987 that Government increased its majority in the House.

Members should compare that situation, where a Labour Government was on the right track and doing the right things—for which it needs to be given some credit—with the way that Trevor Mallard has handled this situation. Never have I seen such a bully-boy tactic. Never have I seen such a Minister say to parents: “You don’t know what’s good for your kids. You don’t know what’s right for your community. I’m coming to town.” I love some of the television clips. There he was with his PowerPoint and his big overhead projector, telling people: “This is what’s good for you.” I am delighted that the New Zealand public said: “No, sorry, you aren’t just going to ride into town in your ministerial limo, tell us what’s good for us, and leave again.” Trevor Mallard started to yell at them, as he is likely to do; he screamed at the parents, telling them that they really do not know what is good for them. He was just so far off side. I have talked to some of his own colleagues around the traps, who were saying: “Oh gee, you ought to see what it’s doing in my electorate, mate. I could be gone because of this.”

I ask whether he wanted to work cooperatively with members of Parliament. Let us give him some credit: I understand that Simon Power has worked quite cooperatively with Trevor Mallard in Taihape. We do not know the results yet, we do not know the outcome, but I think they have worked cooperatively, and I hope they can get a realistic outcome. I think the parents will sign up to that. We do not want our kids going to a pathetically small school that has only a handful of pupils, and does not have resources. On the other hand, small is not bad in all cases; nor is big bad in all cases. There is no one size that fits all, and so on.

But here is the irony of this Labour Government—and Marian Hobbs will love this. We are talking about schools that have got a bad Education Review Office report. We are saying we cannot afford to force kids to keep going to them, so we are going to force the schools to merge, amalgamate, or close down, and the kids will go elsewhere. What about the schools in my patch that have bad reviews? In my patch there is growth in population and we do not have a need to close schools. What about the kids who because of zoning have to go to a school that has a bad Education Review Office report? How does the Labour Party reconcile that irony? Parents in some places in my area have been told: “Your kids will go to that school, no matter what.”, even though it has a hopeless Education Review Office report, and schools elsewhere in the area are saying they would love to take those kids. But, no, this is the argument we get from Labour Party members; when it suits them, they are very happy to say they need to shut down a school with a bad Education Review Office report; however, when it does not suit them, they pass a law that forces parents to send their kids to such a school.

When it comes to the Minister himself and the way he handled this issue, I am very confused. I have heard members in this House today from his side saying he is a very good Minister who was doing a great job. That is what I have heard; Marian Hobbs said it, and I have heard other members say it. If he was doing such a great job, why the U-turn? If Trevor Mallard had it all sussed, was taking it comfortably, was taking the public with him, had right on his side, had argued it reasonably, and had the public on his side, why the U-turn? The answer is, simply, that he had not even started to do it in the proper way. He had not even started to think of bringing the public on side. He had not even set out a plan that said there are some schools with falling rolls, there is a need for some rationalisation, and there is a need for us to move to better efficiency and functioning within the schooling system. That is what we did not get from the Minister. We got the “bull in a china shop” approach but, unlike in the Vero advertisement, he took out every vase, every plate, and every piece of cutlery along the way.

Then today he suddenly said: “Oh no, we didn’t change for that.” I listened to the interview on Morning Report this morning, and I have to say I could hardly stay on the road while driving. I was a danger to traffic in Auckland when I was driving and listening to it. It was the funniest interview I had ever heard. That speech on National Radio this morning was a “We’re doing a backtrack when we’re not doing a backtrack.” speech of the very best order. Why did he not just say: “Look, we got it wrong. I went in, boots and all, and tried to kick people around before they were ready.”?

It is quite clear to us that communities can be persuaded with good-quality information. I am a parent, and I have small kids at primary school and a boy at secondary school. I am staggered at how well informed parents are. I am staggered at the knowledge that parents have. I am absolutely of an opinion that we could bring parents onside in this debate. I think some of these schools will have to close—there is no doubt in my mind about that. But I think that if it were done properly, if parents were brought onside, if we argued logically about educational outcomes—teaching and learning being the key focus—most parents would say: “We’re a bit wedded to this school, but OK.” But that will not happen if we start telling parents to listen up, or, as I heard the other night: “Do you want to leave, or do I want to leave? I don’t care.” This is the Trevor Mallard school of diplomacy: “Listen up! Get out, sir! Get out, ma’am! I’m not listening to you. Here’s what’s happening.”

That is all very well if one can carry through on it, but it is a little bit “egg on face” material when, right at the last hurdle, the Prime Minister not only pulls the hurdle out but whips all the vases off the shelves, and there is the poor old bull running around the china shop with nothing left to smash. Trevor Mallard has really screwed up this time, and he should tell the House so.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.