Financial Review Debate — Ministry of Education

This is an opportunity for the Minister of Education to get up and explain himself to the House. The reason he should explain himself is that no Minister of Education has left a longer trail of policy wreckage than the Hon Steve Maharey.

Today’s announcements about tertiary education policy are about as vacuous as we all expected, but at least they are an attempt to try to clean up his mess. The interesting thing about today’s announcements is that they sound an awful lot like what the Government was saying 6 years ago. But the result of 6 years of strategies, reports, reviews, and bureaucratic expansion has been a total failure by this Minister to achieve any of the objectives that he laid out for himself. Apart from the climate change policy, this is the biggest policy mess I have seen in 20 years of watching public policy in New Zealand as it has unravelled.

The Minister might want to explain why the cost of running the tertiary education system has gone from about $40 million a year when he took over, to $140 million this last financial year. What does $140 million worth of bureaucrats and paper achieve for the tertiary education system? The answer is nothing that matters. It makes the Minister feel good. It makes him feel like he has achieved something. But what does it do for the students out there? It does virtually nothing. The result of the sum total of several hundred million dollars spent on running this tertiary education system has been the cancellation of a number of qualifications no one was doing. That is what has happened. That is the result of the big strategic decision he made, and he could have done it in a week with half a dozen bureaucrats at a cost of about $140,000 instead of $140 million.

So I ask this Minister to get up, to apologise to the taxpayers of New Zealand, and to acknowledge that he has wasted the time, energy, and initiative of so many people with a genuine interest in education, by pursuing a dream that could never come to fruition. I have to say that I, among others, felt some relief when Dr Cullen took over the portfolio, although he has been in charge of it for a while now and I am disappointed with what he produced today. He is talking about the plan taking 2 years to implement. The bits of it that make some sense—a common sense to everyone—actually used to be in the system years ago until this Minister came along.

I would also like the Minister to tell us what initiatives he will take in education, because—like the rest of the Government—he thinks he knows it all. He thinks the job has been done. He has got nothing new to offer to children in New Zealand. He will oversee some of the initiatives that Trevor Mallard put in place. Some of those initiatives had some merit, such as the literacy and numeracy project. But I want to know what he will do to generate a sense of urgency about what we can do for our young children.

I also want him to explain the ridiculous answers he has been giving in the House about the SchoolSmart website. The Government is spending millions putting Tana Umaga on TV to try to get parents interested in education. They get to find out what Tana thinks—and that is fine—but they do not get to find out any useful information about what they can do to make decisions for their children. They do not get the information that is available to the Minister about their child’s school. Is that not a disgrace?

The Minister of Education runs a website containing performance information about schools—information that is well presented and in context. It contains a range of data painting a complex picture about a school. The Minister can see it, the ministry can see it, and the Education Review Office can see it. They all use that information to make decisions about which schools are at risk. The teachers can see it, the principal can see it, and the advisory services can see it. In short, everyone in education who is a bureaucrat, and who has no particular interest in any particular child, is allowed to see the information about school performance. But parents are not allowed to see it unless they go to the principal’s office and sit there and watch the principal tap it out on the keyboard because, as the Minister said, that is the right context. Apparently, this information about schools is too dangerous for parents to look at from the safety of their own homes. The whole world is going digital, with real-time Internet access to everything. We spend millions teaching our children that that is where the world is going, but we will not make a publicly funded, publicly owned website available to the parents.

I would like the Minister to tell us how much he has spent on assembling that information. It is actually a useful initiative. It is not the answer to everything, but it does bring together a range of performance information about schools in a way that no Government has been able to before. It does not create league tables. The Minister gets up and rants on about how all we are trying to do is “tear down the social democratic school system”. Was that not a revealing remark? Who says the school system is a social democratic one? That is a Government that believes it now owns, runs, and defines our school system. It is precisely when we get that kind of arrogance in a Minister who is running our school system that parents need access to the objective data about the performance of their child’s school, because, I say to the Minister, not every parent is a social democrat. Not every parent believes that schools are there as an expression of Labour Party values. In fact, almost all parents believe that schools are there to teach our children to become competent citizens based on the values that we have as parents and communities, not the values that the Minister has as a component in a Labour Party machine that is getting more and more tired by the day.

I want the Minister to explain to the Committee why we should appropriate public money so that it can be spent on a social democratic school system. Because that is the first time I have ever heard a Minister claim New Zealand’s school system as an arm of his or her own ideological views. What a disgrace! It is no wonder he does not want parents to know what is going on. The Minister says that access to this website means there will be league tables and that that is privatisation. What a load of nonsense! The website does not create league tables. It presents information about one school measured against anonymous, similar schools. What could be more harmless than that? It does not compare one school with another.

I tell the Minister that what does lead to comparisons of one school with another, which he does not like, is when he releases public information about school performance—and he has to when I ask him to. I can put that information into league tables if I want to. They will be messy, they will be contradictory, and they will present data out of context, but the media have an endless appetite for them. So he is releasing information that achieves exactly what he does not want—that is, league tables—and he is hiding from parents readily accessible, good-quality contextual information that is not about league tables but that informs a parent about his or her school compared with a range of similar schools. So the Minister needs to get with it.

This is the digital age; we are teaching our children about information technology. The Minister can tell us why that information is all there—all public information, publicly funded—but parents can get it only if they hop in their horse and cart, drive off to school, and make an appointment with the principal. Can members imagine if banks said: “You can’t look at your bank statement unless you make an appointment with the bank manager.” Does the Minister not know that parents in the comfort of their own homes can have access to all sorts of information on the Internet? Is he not aware of that? Why does he think he can stand in the way of low-cost, high-quality technology that will make that information available? The Minister is trying to hold back the tide. The information exists; it is public information—and parents could access it if he just decided to let them have it.

New Zealand is a small nation competing with other nations to find its place in a globalised, market-driven, knowledge-based economy. There is one way, and one way only, that we can find our place in that world, and that is through the initiative and hard work of our people. It is through the ability of our people to read, to write, to do maths and science, and to use technology—not 80 percent of our people, not some of our people, but all of them. Yet, the Education Review Office has reported to the Government that up to 20 percent of New Zealand children—that is, 153,000 children, in the review office’s words, are not experiencing success at school.

I invite the Minister to take a call and explain to the Committee whether he accepts that 20 percent figure. Does he have confidence in the Education Review Office, or does he not? I invite the Minister not to fudge around the issue. I do not want to know how many children are in reading recovery; all I want to know is whether he accepts what the Education Review Office has reported to him—that up to 20 percent of New Zealand children are not experiencing success at school.

I invite the Minister also to explain to us how it can be that a physics teacher with two degrees, including a masters degree in physics, and with a recognised English teacher-training qualification, is being told he cannot teach in New Zealand. As a former school principal, I know how hard it is to staff a school—how difficult it is, particularly in subjects like physics, to find teachers who, first, know their subject, know it backwards, and have a passion for it that they can share with youngsters, and, second, can actually communicate in the language of instruction. But Morrinsville College has found one. So why has the college found that the bureaucracy has said: “Oh, we don't recognise that training programme.”? Those bureaucrats have probably never employed a teacher, or sat—as many principals do—and agonised and worried about who is the best person for the job, the person who is best able to teach those youngsters what they need to know in order to take their place in the New Zealand economy.

The losers are the young men and women who are suddenly, in the middle of this year, going to be without an outstanding schoolteacher. I invite the Minister to take a call and explain how that can be. In fact, I will go further. I invite the Minister also to tell this Committee why the Government does not have confidence in the judgment of principals. Why does this Government seems unable to accept the judgment of a school principal that a particular teacher, who is well qualified with two university degrees and a recognised teacher-training qualification, will not be able to teach in New Zealand?

I invite the Minister to consider the reality of what it means to schools, when they attract good teachers from overseas in the expectation that those teachers will earn, maybe, $50,000, only to find that a bureaucratic decision has been made that those teachers will be paid $26,000. A man has uprooted his family and his children and has come to New Zealand to start a career, but we have insulted that man—a man with a masters degree in physics—by telling him that we will pay him only $26,000 a year. I ask the Minister to explain to this Committee, and to explain to the young men and women of Morrinsville College, why they are likely to lose their science teacher, their physics teacher. Why are they likely to lose a great teacher?

That seems to be the contribution from the National Party. I will begin with Mr Peachey’s contribution, because it is good to see him. The other day we shared a platform together at Rangitoto College, which, of course, was Mr Peachey’s school. I had not been there before, and I thought it was a fantastic school. I say to the member that we might disagree on politics in here but that school is a credit to him, even apart from the physical presence of the island, and so on. The pupils and teachers I met in getting around the school certainly stood him well, and I thought I should pass on to him my observations from that day.

The member touched on two questions. Let me start with the case of the physics teacher. As the member will know, of course, that is a New Zealand Teachers Council registration issue, not a New Zealand Qualifications Authority issue. It is a matter of whether we can register the particular teacher, and I certainly take a personal interest in those kinds of issues. I hope that will help to set the member’s mind at rest a little. I too am concerned, when we are trying to recruit a large number of teachers over the next few years because of changes in policy. We will need more teachers in front of kids throughout the country, and when we are trying to emphasise areas like science we certainly want well-qualified teachers—and this person seems to be one. So I have asked for a particular look at that teacher. The issue is a Teachers Council registration issue, and I think that is appropriate.

I understand the argument being made in relation to the question of trusting the judgment of the school, but the member must think about what it would be like if the situation were transposed. We are talking about an issue of professional status. It would be a little like saying: “Why don’t we trust local city doctors to hire a doctor?”. We would not do that; the Medical Council of New Zealand has to register the doctor. We would make the same argument with engineers, psychologists, or whatever. I am totally committed to the professionalisation of teachers. That means that there needs to be a professional body that registers them, and that is what we will try to do. I think the member makes a good point, but if we can support each other through the process of trying to make sure that that person can be registered, we can probably have him back in that school, and I hope we can do that.

In relation to the 20 percent figure, the Education Review Office has tried to clarify the matter. It was raised in the context of a select committee discussion. What the office has tried to argue is that, like most countries, we share—and I do not like this word—the notion of “tail”, which the underachieving group that we are all concerned about. The office estimates that across different subjects, maths, English, and so on, there are about 20 percent of young New Zealanders spread across our schools—which is the interesting part of our debate here in New Zealand—who are, in one subject or another, probably not doing as well as they should be. They are not illiterate, as originally I heard the member suggest in the House, but they are in a situation where they are not really up to where they ought to be for their age group. That is a big challenge for us, because we are not talking about a particular section of the community lumped into one area of the country; we are talking about a situation where we seem to have that underachievement across our schools, and I think it is right that we identify that. I think it is right that we do something about it.

I do not accept that that is an issue where we should start to say to ourselves that it is somehow to be explained as a revelation. It has always been the case, of course, that we have had young people in our schools who are not achieving to the level they ought to for their age group. The question is: what do we do about it? And that is what I am committed to. That is why I think it is good that the Education Review Office has raised this debate, and that is why it is good that we are talking to schools and asking them what they are doing about underachievement—just as we would ask them about gifted children, and so on. So that is what I understand them to mean. It is not a case of 20 percent—as one group we can point out—who are illiterate, innumerate, and unable to do x, y and z. Young people are experiencing underachievement in different subjects. We need to do something about it to fix the problem.

Let me go back to Mr English for a moment. It is always interesting to start a debate with somebody who, on the whole, is basically angry deep down. He will have to deal with that in any way he wants to as time goes by. He is still a young man; he has a chance to do that. It is interesting to listen to Mr English get up and accuse everybody else of failure, when this is a man who ran the health system in the 1990s and was a Minister of Finance in the National Government during a time of recession and crippling performance in our economy. This is a man who was the education person in the National Party when that party was about as popular as a pork chop in a synagogue. That was about the state of things—I am sure Mr Peachey would agree. Mr English was extraordinarily unpopular.

💬 Darren Hughes: How did he go as a leader?

I will come back to the leadership in a moment. I know that he has been going around telling people what will happen in the National Party. [Interruption] I am starting on him because he started on me, so I am replying to that. He has been going around talking about education and saying that he will not change National Party policy. This means that bulk funding and performance pay are still on the website as National Party policy.

I come back to the leadership issue, as my colleague over here prompts me. Mr English is a man who wants to talk about failure. He was the leader of the National Party but he is not now. I call that failure. He asked me to talk about the tertiary education sector, and I list the following things. Will National Party members change the Gateway programme? It is a staggering success, and we introduced it. Will they change the Modern Apprenticeships programme? I introduced that, and it is staggering success. They will not change that, either. Will they change the industry training policy? It is a staggering success. No, they will not change that, either. Will they change the Performance-based Research Fund? We introduced that. Will they change it? No, they will not change that, either. Will they take out the centres of research excellence? We introduced those. No, they will not change those, either. Will they change the regulation of student fees? No, they will not change that, either. They say they will let it all go, but they will not do that.

Will National members change the loan scheme that we have put in place? No, they will not change that. They will even leave the interest-free loans alone. Will they carry on with allowances? We made changes to them. Will they change them? No, they will not change them, either. Will they change the amalgamation of colleges of education with universities? No, they will not change that, either. Will they change the charters and profiles we have put in place? No, they will not change that, either. Will they change the emphasis on quality? Will they change the emphasis that comes through from the Tertiary Education Commission to have a strategic investment? No, they will not. All of these things have been put in place, and we are now on to the next bit. I say to the member that I will put my record next to his record of failure any day of the week. His record is one of failure and mine is one of success.

I move on to schools. The member did not talk much about schools. He spent most of his time on one very, very small amount of policy called SchoolSmart, but he did not talk much at all about schools apart from that. I notice that he did not make his routine attack on the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). I know that Mr English does not support NCEA. He is obviously opposed to standards-based assessment. If he is not opposed to it, then he spent the whole summer on it, after saying he would leave the issue alone. One person wrote to me and stated that Mr English has put out 13 different releases after saying he was going to leave the issue alone over summer. NCEA performed very well. Karen Sewell, the acting chief executive of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, is a wonderful person.

💬 Hon Bill English: So why are you doing a review?

We are doing a review because we promised to do one. For those at home, I point out that Mr English is interjecting about why we should do a review. We promised to improve the NCEA. We promised to make sure it is something that all New Zealanders can rely on—that it is a blue-chip system of assessment. I know that Mr English disagrees with this and is against standards-based assessment, but we agree with it. We think that this year the NCEA did a good job. We think the teachers worked extraordinarily hard. We know that Mr McCully and Mr English have consistently undermined the professional standing of Karen Sewell, but we happen to think she did a great job. We respect what she has done over the summer period.

We have laid a good foundation for NCEA and scholarship. They are doing well, and now we will review them and carry on reviewing them until they are absolutely perfect. We will have the best assessment system this country has ever seen because that is what our kids deserve, that is what our parents want, that is what our employers need, and that is what we are going to have. I will not allow someone who disagrees with standards-based assessment to get in the way of it by this constant whingeing and carping. Mr English is the only critic of NCEA that I can find left in the country. Everybody else is now committed to make sure this thing works. I think the National Party should take Mr English aside and say to him: “For goodness’ sake, if you have a good idea, let’s hear it, but if you haven’t, let us get on and make sure this thing works.”. That is where I think we are at with that kind of debate. Apart from that, I did not see anything else raised by Mr English. This leads me back to saying—

💬 Hon Bill English: What about SchoolSmart?

I have touched on SchoolSmart and I have given all the answers I am that I am going to, which is that SchoolSmart is accessible to parents. They just go along to the school and they can talk about it, or schools themselves can make it available to parents. I know that Mr English wants to do this in a different way, but that is the way schools want it done, that is the way I believe it should be done, and that is the way parents want it done. I have consulted the New Zealand School Trustees Association, and it wants it done exactly that way. We are all happy but the lone critic is not. So the lone critic can carry on being the lone critic. As long as he is the education spokesperson for the National Party, he will be one of the many reasons why the National Party will never return to Government. No one wants someone who is as isolated as he is in the education debate trying to lead that kind of debate.

I will close by saying that I inherited from Trevor Mallard an outstanding education portfolio. Over the last little while I have travelled, and I have talked to a large number of people in schools and to virtually every stakeholder group right across the country. I am going to many conferences at the present time, and I am talking to groups of people who are absolutely committed to being part of a world-class education system. That is what I am going to emphasise for the next 3 years. We have a fantastic system, and we intend to make it even better.

Report noted.

New Zealand Police