Estimates Debate — Vote Education

Probably the worst report I have ever seen on the public sector is the June 2005 report called Education Sector Review. Those who take an interest in education will find it a very useful summary of the stewardship of the current Minister of Education. The report has been done by the three top civil servants in New Zealand. It is a 64-page saga of a leaderless, confused, demoralised, and chaotic bureaucracy—and not a cheap bureaucracy, I might add; it is one on which the Government spends over $100 million a year. After 5 years of this Government, the leading civil servants of New Zealand have said that this bureaucracy is in such bad shape that we should not do anything to it because it will make it worse. They say we will make things worse if we try to fix it. I invite anyone with an interest in education to read Education Sector Review.

I also invite anyone interested in the effect of interest-free student loans to visit two websites. One is the Labour Party website, which has a calculator on it that tells people what their overall savings will be. The other is the Inland Revenue Department website, which has a calculator that tells people about loan repayments. One would think that if people went to the Inland Revenue Department website and used its calculator, then went to the Labour website and used its calculator, they would get the same answer. But they do not. They do not get the same answer. [Interruption] No, they do not. They get a completely different answer. I do not know why people get completely different answers, depending on whether they use the calculator on the Inland Revenue Department website or the one on the Labour Party website. I am asking the Minister in the chair, Trevor Mallard, to explain it to us, because 78,000 students have been to the Labour Party calculator to work out what they will save with interest-free student loans. Unfortunately, some of those students also went to the Inland Revenue Department calculator and tried to compare like with like.

These people are not economists with degrees in econometrics; they are not accountants. They are just normal graduates who are trying to work out what they will save with an interest-free student loan. If they have the average loan of $15,000—that is the average; not $60,000, as the Labour Party official who appeared on the front page of the New Zealand Herald said; the New Zealand Herald did not say he was a Labour Party official, and nor did he, I understand—and are on an average income of $35,000, and they put those numbers into the two respective calculators, they get completely different answers.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Do you know why?

The Minister has a chance to take a call and tell us why. All I am saying to the Minister is that any student who goes to the websites and tries to compare the results gets a big difference. The Labour Party website tells him or her that it takes 18 years and 4 months to pay off the $15,000 loan, and the Inland Revenue Department website says it takes 11 years and 11 months. That is a big difference. Clearly, someone is misleading the people who use the calculators.

I do not know how Labour’s calculator is set up, and I do not know how the Inland Revenue Department calculator is set up. All I know is that there is public interest in what one can save from having an interest-free student loan, just as, I think, there would be public interest in what one could save with an interest-free mortgage on one’s house. I suggest that if Labour members genuinely believe that removing interest from student loans means students will borrow less, why do they not try legislating against interest on mortgages, because then we will all borrow less and we will be better off? So why do they not do that? This is Social Credit recharged with 21st century atomic energy. The Minister should explain why those numbers are so different.

I rise to speak in this estimates debate particularly on the issue of teachers. The largest line item in the estimates concerns teachers. Because of the largeness of the monies allocated in the estimates in that regard, I would like to talk a little about teachers. Teachers do matter. I do not think anyone would deny that teachers matter, but we are talking about quality teachers. Quality teachers matter. This morning one or two of us, including the Minister, were at Newlands Intermediate for the launch of a national school strategy. That school promotes its teachers and the quality of those teachers. I was impressed by that event, and I know that a lot of really good work is going on in schools around this nation.

In order to get well-qualified, quality teachers we need to bring at least three matters into the equation. I would like the Minister and others to realise that we need to have more strategic direction in teacher recruitment, in order to attract quality candidates into the profession and support them throughout their careers. When it comes to strategic recruitment, we need to have a system that will look at increasing the numbers when there is a shortage of teachers. Right now, there is a shortage in the early childhood area and in some parts of the secondary school sector. At the same time we need an ability within the ministry to see that the number of funded places is reduced when there is an oversupply. I think that is the case at present in the primary sector. So a juggling in the strategic recruitment balance needs to take place.

We want to help hard-to-staff schools to attract teachers. They need them, and I think one of the ways of looking at that—and I am not sure whether this is in the projections in the vote—is to pay more in order to attract those quality teachers. May I also suggest that United Future recognises there is a huge difference, or that a huge difference can occur, when principals are properly recruited, especially for those schools we know are struggling at the tail of the educational queue. Offering higher salaries, and making positions more attractive for exceptional candidates to lead those schools, are issues that I think need to be targeted in these estimates. United Future feels that one of the ways through that for teacher trainees is to bring in a bonded scheme, whereby they are recruited and bonded through scholarships and student loan write-offs—through those types of programmes.

We must make sure that the trainees recruited for schoolteaching are quality trainees. When the Science and Education Committee looked at that issue and at the teaching profession last year, we noted that the minimum entry standards require aptitude, as well as suitability, for teaching. We noted, I believe, that we need to raise the esteem of the profession by appealing to high-performing graduates. Having stated that in that report, the evidence regarding the importance of teacher aptitude is, we noted, far more compelling and clear than any existing evidence about teacher training as such. We heard many discussions from many providers as to what makes a good teacher training programme, but there was a commonality that teacher aptitude was one of the issues that should be developed as part of the assessment of trainees. The pre-service programme should give greater recognition to prior learning, as well.

I am really pleased to take a call to talk about education in New Zealand. I spoke the other night in the Chamber and it was really good to celebrate all the major achievements of this Government. In particular, I spoke about Modern Apprenticeships and how successful that scheme is, and I am really heartened today to see yet another announcement from our Government that we will be bringing in yet another 5,000 Modern Apprenticeships. That scheme was shelved, was scrapped, under the previous National Government.

💬 Mark Peck: Really!

Yes, it was scrapped under a National Government. So it is really good to see that those quality apprenticeships that Labour has brought back will grow, in the next term of a Labour Government.

Also, I cannot go past talking about the wonderful feedback I have had about our announcement of no interest on student loans. That has been a major success. I am really heartened by the young people who have rung me and said that they remember when Labour lifted interest while they were studying, but this is just too good to be true. They said that this gives them hope to look towards their future, and then once they have finished their studying, they know they have employment opportunities in this country under a Labour-led Government and they also know they will have things like paid parental leave when they have their children.

We have quality early childhood education. That is another thing I really want to comment on. When I look at our early childhood education policy I feel really proud. We know how successful children are when they have quality early childhood education. That is what we in Labour are absolutely committed to delivering. When in 2006 we bring in 20 free hours per week of quality early childhood education in community-based centres, that will give tremendous opportunity to young children, but also to young parents because they can go to work or take time out from their children, knowing that the children are getting quality education, education that will give them a good grounding for when they move on to school.

I have to comment about how proud I am of our Government’s commitment to education. I think it is a 40 percent increase that we have put into funding. I just look at my own electorate. When I look at the new developments, extensions, and halls, I see a real celebration of education. It is something I feel really proud of.

Something we in Labour hold very dear is the right of every kid in New Zealand to go to his or her local school. We are absolutely committed to that. What do we hear from the other side? We hear that they would abolish school zoning and abolish the right for any child to go to his or her local school. Whilst we are going down that same old tired, failed policy line, we hear that they would reintroduce bulk funding, but this time make it mandatory.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: That’s right.

Maurice Williamson says that that is right. He is proud of it. I know that going backwards to the failed policies of the tired old National Government of the 1990s would not find favour with people who are visionary and forward-looking about education in New Zealand.

When we look at special education, we see the extra funding that this Labour-led Government has put into special education to support children who need added assistance to set them off on their path in life. We in Labour can hold our heads very high and feel very proud about the things we have delivered, but we know there is much more. Much more will be delivered in the next term of a Labour-led Government.

💬 Hon Paul Swain: Hear, hear!

Paul Swain has a new baby, and he is looking forward to that little girl getting quality early childhood education under a Labour-led Government.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: She’ll be a tertiary student under a Labour Government, too.

Exactly; that is right. And as a tertiary student, she will not be charged interest on her loan. As a tertiary student, that young, hopeful Kiwi will be doing very well.

Firstly, I tell the previous speaker, Lynne Pillay, that in fact the extra funding this Government has put into special education is miserly, compared with the increased amounts that the New Zealand First - National coalition put into the 1997 and 1998 Budgets. Secondly, I say to the Minister that it was a good launch today, but that I am the one education spokesperson who genuinely can give a guarantee to the people there that, following the election, that strategy will be continued. Perhaps it would have been good if the Minister had told people where the $30 million of building money that he has taken out of the code development funding has gone. That would have helped. Nevertheless, it was a very good launch.

I say to the people who are listening to these proceedings that out on the hustings I keep hearing National Party candidates and members say that they are really indignant about the burgeoning bureaucracy that has formed under this particular administration. They often refer to education—they use education as an example of that. People hear the story that 2,000 extra bureaucrats are working for the Ministry of Education. I say that those Nats are being fairly loose with the truth. The reality is that the Special Education Service, which used to include speech therapists, psychologists, and all those things, was absorbed into the ministry, and it had 1,600 people. The Nats call them unnecessary bureaucrats, and say they will cut them. They say they will cut all those bureaucrats, so we will not have psychologists and the people who work in special education. Other people were absorbed into the ministry from Early Childhood Development. There had been a duplication of services, and for efficiency gains that group was put back into the ministry.

Really, in this case National needs to be honest with the people it is trying to portray that story to. I have had a look at what is included in the $423 million increase for education in this Budget, and at what has actually gone towards what we may call bureaucrats: those responsible for the administration of regulations, the administration of education sector resourcing, ministerial services, policy advice, and all those sorts of things. The total increase is $26.7 million—the funding has gone from $227 million to $253.7 million. In most of the areas there has been no increase at all, or there has been a reduction. The marked increase is in the provision of information, funding for which has jumped from $45.9 million to $61.7 million.

Then we can look at what comes out of that output class. What is it? It is work arising from the curriculum stocktake—and National would stop that. That work is critical. In fact, the stocktake was set in place by the previous National Government. It is work on the development of an Internet-capable assessment tool—that refers to asTTle, one of the finest assessment tools that has been developed in the whole world. Will National cut that? It will cut the implementation of an education information programme for families and communities. There is work on effective teaching initiatives and initiatives for adult literacy. When we really look at what National is talking about, we see we have to ask some very serious questions. Listeners should not be sucked in by National’s spin, and National should be a lot more honest with the people out in the electorates.

However, what the public should be concerned about—and this is something the Hon Bill English referred to—is the Education Sector Review. The problem is not one of the numbers that have been exposed through that review, but of the actual quality and operation of the bureaucracy. That is a really damning report. I do not think that the Minister can be very proud of the report. It demonstrates a whole pile of things. It demonstrates the real reason why Simon Power rolls his eyes every time the education bureaucrats come to the Education and Science Committee and start to give off all their verbiage.

💬 Simon Power: I frown, you know.

Oh, no. I say to Mr Power that there is a distinctive rolling of his eyes. The report shows a total non-alignment of the different agencies, and a lack of progress towards any goals established by the present Government. It questions the leadership in the sector, and asks some very serious things, as Bill English said. It states that things are so bad that the agencies should not be realigned at this point in time, because we have to get things on track. It states that the agencies do not listen effectively. That is what we have continually heard from submitters and stakeholders at the select committee—they say that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, in particular, does not listen. In general, the agencies do not have the essential capability, and, let us face it, that has been the Minister’s responsibility for almost 6 years now. His own Education Sector Review states that the education agencies do not have the essential capability at the level required to support the magnitude of the changes that this Government has required of them.

No one else but this Government can be blamed for that. The present Government has to be blamed for saying that those were the changes it wanted to have put in place, but for not putting in place the bureaucratic resources or the capacity for lining things up in a way that would make them happen.

The Minister has a number of questions to answer. When I read the Education Sector Review I see that he has more questions to answer, in fact, than any other Minister I have come across. I want him to answer this one: the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) has been something of a controversial matter—particularly this year. In fact, it has been controversial since it started, but there was a major scandal at the start of the year about scholarship. Given the extensive publicity given to that scandal, I would have thought that any Minister who cared about the young people of New Zealand, and the qualification they get for all their hard work at secondary school, would pay some attention. One would think he would round up all those thousands of officials and tell them that it needed sorting out. The Education Sector Review tells us that he did not do that. On page 41 it states: “There is an urgent need to stabilise NCEA,”. I suppose that is why we pay senior civil servants $300,000, to figure that out! They should just ask sixth-formers.

It goes on to state: “and there is a view that greater Ministerial involvement and drive would assist this.” That is bureaucratese for saying that he is doing nothing. It was the State Services Commissioner, who was responsible to the Minister, who said that. For his own chief official to say that he is lazy is a huge risk, but he said it. He put it in print. I have never seen that before—the most senior official in a department says that a Minister is lazy.

What could be more important than stabilising the NCEA if someone is a Minister of Education? What could be more important than 130,000 young New Zealanders turning up to classrooms every day, working hard, full of aspiration and ambition? Well, they have found out—no one has told them yet, but we will—that the Minister’s senior official thinks he was not doing anything to stabilise NCEA.

I am sure he had plenty of ministerial involvement and drive to get to the test matches, and to get to China to destroy our overseas student market—the more he goes, the quicker the numbers drop. But he was not stabilising the NCEA. That is just one of the sad tales that is laid out in vivid detail in the Education Sector Review.

There are a couple of other ones, and I will hold the Committee’s interest with just one. We have had 2 years of debate about the quality of tertiary courses, and this is what the officials conclude about the Government agencies that overlook quality in tertiary education: “it”—meaning the 10 pages of description beforehand—“means that there is no independent assurance of either the quality of these courses or the credit value which is a key driver of costs”.

So we have spent $100 million on the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, Tertiary Education Commission, and bits of the ministry per year—I do not mean $100 million over 5 years; Labour always inflates its figures—and the conclusion, having spent that $100 million, is that there is no independent assurance of the quality of courses.

I say to the Minister that he may think he is the toughest, smartest, smoothest political operator, and the pride of a generation of the left. That is what he thinks. The only one who thinks more in terms of that is Steve Maharey, who was equally responsible. But Minister Mallard has left the most appalling mess in education, and when I say “left”, I do so advisedly.

I congratulate the member who has just sat down. I think that was probably the best speech of the year from the Opposition. As we are sitting here, a lot of us are contrasting the quality of the questioning from the former and the current Leader of the Opposition. Bill English is the former Leader of the Opposition, and he gets up on his hind legs in the Chamber and asks questions. He is the one whom the whips let speak. Murray McCully says to Don Brash that the National whips will get Bill English to speak, because they really know that Don Brash is not good enough.

I want to get back to some of the questions that have been asked. I thank Bill English for suggesting that I am smooth. He is the first person who has ever suggested that, and it is not something that I have ever claimed. In fact, some people are of the opinion that the opposite of that is true.

I want to make it clear and put it on the record, though, that I stand by the student loan calculator on the Labour website. I want to run through the assumptions that are in that calculator, which shows the massive savings in student loans according to the policy that was announced on Tuesday. First, it is assumed the repayment threshold will increase each year at the rate of inflation. That is the current Government policy. That may not be built into the Inland Revenue Department assumptions, but that is not the responsibility of the Labour Party—it is a matter of looking at that website.Second, the current—[Interruption] John Key is the six-house man, who talks about productivity. The current interest rate is made up of 7 percent—an inflation adjustment of 2.8 percent and base interest of 4.2 percent. That is in the Labour Party system; I do not know whether the same assumption is built into the Inland Revenue Department system. Income growth is set by the user. It is something that works according to what actually happens. People’s incomes grow. The automatic setting is 3 percent, because that is about what income growth has been over the years.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: This is an explanation.

Well, people do not like it. I know that the Tories hate it. They have an inkling of what has happened in the last week, and they know why Don Brash will not get up in this Parliament and ask questions, so I am explaining to them why that is happening. [Interruption]

That member wishes to become the Minister of Finance, but I understand that his colleagues already say that his tax cuts do not add up. [Interruption] No, no—I tell the member that they say his tax cuts do not add up. The reason the National Party is not prepared to release information on its proposed tax cuts is that some of its members, including a former Minister of Finance, say that they do not add up.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.