Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. The Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill implements policy changes that this Government is committed to as part of our priority action plan for education. The National-led Government is absolutely committed to raising education standards. This bill delivers on that commitment by raising standards of achievement and attendance in compulsory education. The bill does two things to achieve that: it gives the Minister of Education the power to set national standards in literacy and numeracy, and it strengthens truancy law. At the moment, one in five New Zealand children leaves school without the qualifications he or she needs to succeed.

Our Government wants all children and young people to have the basic skills they need in order to do well at school and to succeed in the workforce. The bill underpins that focus by giving the Minister of Education an explicit power to set national standards in literacy and numeracy. It adds national standards to the National Education Guidelines so that the Minister of Education may publish by notice in the Gazette national standards in literacy and numeracy. The introduction of national standards in literacy and numeracy will provide an external benchmark against which to measure student progress. Making that explicit in the National Education Guidelines will sharpen our focus on the improvement of student achievement.

I want to stress to all involved that this legislation gives the Minister of Education the power to set those standards; the legislation does not itself set the standards. In the new year the Ministry of Education will be leading a consultation round with the wider education sector. At that time the sector will be consulted about the design of the standards, the benchmarks that will need to be in place in order for current assessment tools to be used against the standards, and the form that reporting to parents, to the community, and to the Government will take. We have promised that consultation, and we are keeping our promise.

I will listen to the sector as we undertake that consultation. The process will allow the standards to be published late in 2009 and be ready for implementation in schools at the beginning of 2010. The bill also requires school boards to include in their school charters the boards’ priorities and targets for assessing students against national standards. Schools will report on those as part of their normal planning and reporting processes so as not to create more compliance costs. National standards will apply to all State schools in New Zealand, and they will apply to students from years 1 to 8. They will provide a set of shared expectations about what students should be achieving as they move through primary and intermediate school.

Many teachers already know how well their students are doing in their classes. Many teachers already use a range of assessment tools to identify where to focus attention and ensure better progress. Despite the availability of those tools, the Education Review Office reported in March 2007 that 56 percent of schools recently reviewed were not using worthwhile achievement data. Our policy will ensure that all schools have that achievement data, and the policy will also ensure that they use it to help their students.

An important point is that parents do not always know how their children compare with others, and neither teachers nor parents have a clear picture of how children are doing relative to their peers across the nation. An Education Review Office report published in 2007 found that 49 percent of primary schools were generally ineffective at reporting achievement information to parents and to their community. The aim of this policy is to ensure that parents get that information, and that they get it in a form they can understand. The bill provides teachers and parents with certainty about whether a child is reading, writing, and doing maths at the expected national level. They will also know how many other children are meeting the standard. The standards will not affect those students who are exempt from enrolment in a State school—such as students who are home-schooled—and will not affect students enrolled in private schools, as the National Education Guidelines do not apply to them.

Truancy increased by 41 percent from 2002, under the previous Labour Government. On any given day under that same Government more than 30,000 students were likely to be absent from school. Students who are absent from school miss out on class work and are at risk of falling behind. Persistent truants are at serious risk of leaving school without the literacy and numeracy skills they need. Urgent action is needed. Every parent who fails to ensure his or her child attends school commits an offence. If prosecuted, parents are liable to a fine. At the moment, the maximum fine for a first offence is $150. The maximum fine for a second offence is $400. This bill raises the maximum level of those fines. Parents will be fined up to $300 for a first offence and up to $3,000 for a second or subsequent offence. Parents also commit an offence if they fail to enrol their child at school, and the level of fine for that offence will rise from $1,000 to a maximum of $3,000. Although the maximum level of the fine will be $3,000, judges will still have the discretion to consider a number of factors when deciding the level of the fine to impose.

Some members may want the House to consider alternative measures to prosecution and fines. Let me assure members that prosecuting parents is a last-resort intervention used for persistent, unjustified, and parent-condoned truancy. Prosecution is for when other alternatives fail.

As well as changing the law, this Government will support schools to address issues of truancy. Our election policy outlined additional funding for schools to assist them to deal with truants. The bill allows the Secretary for Education to take prosecutions. The Secretary for Education may assist the school by taking the prosecution. The secretary may also take action if a school does not do so, in cases where chronic parent-condoned truancy is identified.

I ask that this House gives earnest consideration to supporting the two areas that I have outlined: the power to set national standards in literacy, and the strengthening of truancy law. This is a priority area for education. It begins the task of raising the standards of achievement and attendance in our New Zealand schools. I commend this bill to the House.

As I listened to the lacklustre new Minister of Education, I wondered how that Minister would fare if the new 90-day rule applied to Government Ministers. That member, Anne Tolley, is the same new Minister of Education who was replayed on television last night telling teachers in the election campaign that the 90-day trial period does not apply to schools. We were told in the House yesterday that—what was it we were told, I ask Mr Cosgrove—yes, it does apply to schools with under 20 employees. That is about 800 schools, and virtually every early childhood education centre in the country.

Mrs Tolley, the new Minister of Education, has, I venture to say, already very little credibility in the job—just like the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill. I have to say that when I looked at the legislation I wondered what it was for. It was supposed to be the great crusade for literacy. The bill acknowledges that the testing regimes—the assessment regimes—that will be used in New Zealand schools are already happening. The member may not know what NAGs are, but most of the rest of us, especially those of us who have been teachers, know they are National Administration Guidelines. Point (ii)(b) of National Administration Guideline 1, which all schools are required to follow, states that schools must give priority to student achievement in literacy and numeracy. National Administration Guidelines 1 and 2 state that schools must develop a programme of teaching literacy and numeracy in their schools and must set up assessment processes, and that those processes must be explained and shown to students, parents, and the community. The schools are required to do those things, and they are checked every 3 years when the Education Review Office visits the schools.

What is the purpose of the bill? Is it a sort of fig leaf to cover up National’s election slogans that talked about the failure of New Zealand schools? Actually, as I have said many times recently in the House, New Zealand schools are extraordinarily successful. Indeed, our students figure among the most successful in the world. I kept thinking about what the purpose of the bill was. I read it a second time, and it became clear that this is actually an insidious and very dangerous bill. It is a Trojan Horse for right-wing policies in education.

First of all, it removes the ability for the Ministry of Education to use regulation to set up national standards. If the Minister publishes them in the Gazette, of course, they cannot go to Parliament’s Regulations Review Committee. They cannot be examined to see how valid they are. This bill is about getting national standards by a dictatorial approach to education. It is about the standards not being scrutinised. Actually, of course, that is the process we are engaged in now. This bill is being rammed through. There is no ability for any of the stakeholder groups in education—the School Trustees Association, the New Zealand Educational Institute, the Post Primary Teachers Association, the Principals Federation, or the parents and the students themselves—to have an input into the bill, because it is being rammed through in urgency.

Secondly—and this is why the bill is very dangerous—it introduces the idea of national standards. I think that every member of this House who is interested in education will know that where national standards have been imposed—in places like the UK, for example, or recently in the United States under the Bush regime’s “No Child Left Behind” policy—they have been an absolute and utter failure. I know that some of my colleagues will be talking more this evening and tomorrow about the experiences of other countries and other education systems where national standards have been imposed. Of course, teachers then teach to the test. They do not look at lifting students’ literacy and numeracy. Mrs Tolley has already totally discredited herself in her meetings with school principals. A principal rang me today to say that in his experience as a principal, she must be the most inexperienced, the most unsuitable person to be appointed as the Minister of Education. I would like to talk about what is happening in our schools. Is Mrs Tolley knowledgable at all about the programmes that are going on in schools? asTTle was mentioned.

💬 Hon Dr Michael Cullen: Plays cricket!

That is true; she probably thinks it is a cricketer. There is the reading recovery programme, in which New Zealand has been a world leader. There is Project Probe and there are the literacy and numeracy progressions, which are part of a developing pilot programme going on in every New Zealand school. Those are successful programmes. Indeed, as I said before, the bill itself acknowledges them. So why is the Government implementing these national standards?

I remind the House again that the bill is about a different agenda in education. It is about saying that we will have competition between schools. One of the hallmarks of New Zealand education has been the collaborative and collegial approach both within our schools and between schools. One of the programmes that I, as Minister of Education, was very proud of was the Extending High Standards in Schools programme, whereby secondary and primary schools collaborated to share best practice. They were not competing, but cooperating together to get the best learning outcomes for their students. We were also doing fantastic work in networking for specific areas such as information and communications technology. That was building on a long tradition in New Zealand education of schools working together. Between 1990 and 1999 the National Government introduced bulk funding. Schools became extraordinarily competitive. I know there are some members of this House who were proponents of bulk funding, but I have to say that the vast bulk of the education sector was very opposed to it.

Our school system—a world-class, cutting-edge education system—is about collaboration, innovation, and looking for ways in which we can lift students’ learning outcomes. This bill does nothing to achieve those goals. In fact, it is anti those goals. The bill is about competition, league tables, and comparing schools. We already know that the greatest teaching challenges for New Zealand education are in our low-decile schools, with lower socio-economic groups, and with Māori and Pacific students. The success of those students is the future of our country. Some 21 percent of young New Zealanders have Māori heritage. It is in their interests, and our country’s interest, to lift those students’ learning to the best of their potential.

What will this bill do? It will create league tables comparing schools. It will compound the perception of winner schools and loser schools. Low-decile schools will have the worst outcomes because of this bill. High-decile schools will be the most successful. The Government has already indicated to the House that it will be “flexible” about enrolment zones. We know that is code for weakening them further. We saw what happened when zoning was removed; we saw the growth of perceived winner schools, and we saw the decline of the neighbourhood school, which was perceived as not successful. We do not want that to happen again.

I do not have a lot of time left in this part of my contribution, so I would like to just touch on the truancy issue. Truancy is an issue that mostly affects students who opt to truant. We want to get those students engaged. A very, very small number of parents actively collaborate in making their children stay away from school. The parents of most truants are, in fact, desperate to get their kids back into school. In principle, I am not opposed to an increase in penalties for parents who actively collaborate with and assist their children to truant. What I am concerned about is that good parents will be punished for the behaviour of their bad kids. So Labour will be introducing at least one amendment, which clarifies that this legislation applies only to parents who actively collaborate to ensure that their children truant. We do not want good parents punished for the behaviour of their bad kids. Everyone in this House who is a parent knows that parents cannot always be responsible for what our children do. We want the best for them, but we cannot always be responsible for what they do. We do not want good parents being punished.

So I say to the House that this legislation will not receive the support of the Labour Party, because we think it will do nothing to assist literacy and numeracy outcomes in our schools. In fact, it will be a barrier to that ambition.

I listened with some interest to Mr Chris Carter’s speech, and I was thinking that I could have written it—it was so predictable. I suspect that for the Labour members who will follow, I could do exactly the same sort of thing. That will be the tragedy of this debate.

I observe that Mr Carter did not indicate to the House whether the Labour Party will be supporting the bill or voting against it. If Labour members are going to vote against it, let me say what they are going to vote against. No child growing up in New Zealand at the moment who does not learn to read, to write, and to do maths has a place in the social and economic structure of a modern country. No child who is going to school and who is not being taught to read, to write, and to do maths, and no child who, because of his or her particular learning styles that do not fit in with established ideologies and methodologies, does not learn to read, to write, and to do maths has a future in a country like New Zealand. That is what this bill, the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill, is all about. Finally, at long last, a Government is making an effort to deal to a problem that has undermined the New Zealand schooling system for far too long. We know, and the Opposition knows, that too many of our children are failing at school.

You know, one of the things that the National Certificate of Educational Achievement finally told us is that the percentage of our children who are not reaching minimum standards is far too high. The Opposition members who are going to take calls later need to be very, very careful that they do not advance the argument that really says “Let’s continue to deny a fifth of our children the chance to learn. Let’s continue to deny them the expectation that they can and will learn.” It is absolutely beyond me how any member elected to this Parliament would want anything but to make every effort to ensure that more of our children learn. It is simple. It is not about ideology. It is not about methodology. It is not about the old arguments that relate to decile rating, family background, ethnic background, or all that sort of stuff. It is not about all the old reasons that have been advanced to justify why some children are not learning. It is about a standard and an expectation that many more of our children than currently reach that standard can reach it and should reach it.

It would be very wise for the members opposite to remember one thing: our national qualification system, which I guarantee they all support—and when in Government they defended it and worked hard to develop and improve it—is a standards-based system. This bill is bringing the notion of an education system based on standards as to what children need to know and be able to do down into the primary sector, so that there is a natural continuum in the way that children are learning how they have to learn and what they have to learn, and so that we can be sure they are reaching those standards.

💬 Hon Chris Carter: That’s happened already.

I do not want to hear from the Opposition a whole pile of stuff about what is happening in America, or what is happening in Britain. I do not want to hear badly quoted research. I know a lot of those researchers; I have spoken on platforms with some of them. The Opposition members should be very, very careful about what they claim is happening in the United Kingdom and the United States, in particular.

I repeat that the most important thing about this legislation is that, for the first time, it will establish an expectation of what we expect and need our children to do. It is a statement of faith and confidence in the next generation of New Zealanders.

I am speaking in opposition to this legislation, and I am doing that not because I think that the Minister has evil intents but because I think she is confused and probably does not understand what she is doing. She certainly has not—

💬 Hon Bill English: So patronising.

Well, she certainly has not read the National Administration Guidelines. I will read some of them to her, because clearly her literacy skills are not at the point of reading them well herself: “Each Board, through the principal and staff, is required to: (i) … (b) giving priority to student achievement in literacy and numeracy, especially in years 1-4 … (ii) though a range of assessment practices, gather information that is sufficiently comprehensive to enable the progress and achievement of students to be evaluated; giving priority first to: (a) student achievement in literacy and numeracy,”. It is a requirement: “(iii) on the basis of good quality assessment information, [to] identify students and groups of students; (a) who are not achieving; (b) who are at the risk of not achieving;”. National Administration Guideline 2 states that it is a requirement to: “(iii) report to students and their parents on the achievement of individual students,”.

The point I am making is that there is already a requirement to do this, and the Education Review Office is getting better at making sure that schools are meeting that requirement. This bill is unnecessary.

If we move to a standards system, then it is likely that the progressive achievement test will be the one selected. In my view that would not be a good thing. It is probably the test that is most widely used. It is a test run by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, but it is now generally regarded as being a bit old-fashioned and not up with the play or up with the modern world. We have instead had for 8 years now, I think, a development at Auckland University. The asTTle system under Professor John Hattie is one that is internationally regarded and used widely through New Zealand. It is working very, very well at the moment.

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: You had better explain it to them.

I do not want to go into the detail on the asTTle system other than to say that it is mainly computer-based, and that it does not give just a raw score but indicates where a particular student’s strengths are and where the student’s weaknesses are across a range of topics. As well as that, it can work across a class and show the strengths and weaknesses of a particular teacher and, therefore, the need for professional development in that classroom in a way that the progressive achievement test being promoted by the National Government has no chance of doing at all. The progressive achievement test gives a raw score and it is essentially useless. What will happen is that we will have a lot more time focused on assessment, which means less time for teaching and learning. What do kids go to school for? They go to school to learn; they do not go to school to be assessed.

I will comment on the UK system. I know quite a lot about it; I looked at it when I was in Opposition before I was the Minister of Education. I spent a couple of our summers getting quite cold looking at the British political and education system. The point I got to was that the British have what is effectively a decile-based system of requirements for schools to meet particular levels of literacy and numeracy. If the schools do not meet them, they are punished over a period of years, and if they get it wrong substantially, then they are disestablished.

For example, a school that is given a requirement that 85 percent of its students are to be assessed at a particular level or higher focuses on the group of students between about 70 percent and 90 percent to make sure that this group gets the school over its 85 percent, because that is seen as being successful for the school. What happens if a pupil is in the bottom 10 percent? That pupil is essentially ignored. What happens if a pupil is in the top 70 percent? For a large period of the year, that pupil is essentially ignored. What happens is that there is a lot of focus on that assessment but it is on only a very narrow range of kids rather than on kids from across the board.

I will tell members a little about Wainuiōmata and what has happened there, in my electorate and in the town where I live, over the last 4 or 5 years since we have had change there. We have moved in schools that are all either decile 3 or decile 4 towards literacy and numeracy results that are above the national average in New Zealand—sitting up around the results of a decile 6 school, on average—as a result of intensive work and some very good assessment using the asTTle system. The schools have done it voluntarily and they share the information from school to school.

One of the reasons the system works brilliantly in Wainuiōmata is that schools share information vertically, with the intermediate school and the secondary school, and they share it with each other, with schools next door, in a cooperative way rather than in the competitive way that will inevitably result from the national testing and the league tables that will flow from this. I can tell the Minister that if schools are required to keep this information, then it will be available under the Official Information Act, and league tables will be appearing in newspapers all over the place.

I also acknowledge Hekia Parata for the work that her family has done up on the East Coast in this area. Again, enormous progress has been made in groups of schools there where there has been a special focus on teaching and learning, and, incidentally, on assessment. It has been led by the teaching, and the assessment is incidental to it.

💬 Hon Member: Are you supporting it?

No, I am not supporting the bill, at all. What I am saying is that it gives undue focus and it gives one system, and there are quite a few systems in New Zealand that work very well. There is already a requirement to use one of them; it is in the national assessment guidelines. The Minister should read her own guidelines and then she will understand.

I will go back to the Māori and Pacific Island students in Wainuiōmata and tell the members of the House that throughout the valley this group of kids quite often, on average, progresses at twice the rate of the national average for that age group. Quite often the average gets 2 years instead of 1 year, and that is very special and it is something I am very proud of. But the reason it happens is that people work in a cooperative, collaborative way and do not have things imposed on them.

I will do a little mea culpa here. A couple of years before I became the Minister of Education I contemplated policy of this type. I contemplated it, I spoke about it, I had an enormous amount of dialogue about it around the country, and, at the point of becoming the Minister of Education, I was at the point where I knew that it would not be effective. That is why the previous Labour Government put enormous resources into teaching and learning and into the development of the asTTle system.

I tell the Minister that the asTTle system is not ready to be introduced, even in 2010, as a compulsory national testing system. It is not there, it is not ready, and it will not work for that. The only choice the Minister will have, if she is really to have national standards, will be to have national testing. I think all of us understand that—I think all of us other than the Minister understand that. If we are to have national standards, then there can be only one system in New Zealand, and that will be the progressive achievement test system. That will mean that we are working our way back to a system that was seen over a period of time as being very, very good, then good, and then actually pretty average when compared with the rest of the world, and it is now seen as being somewhat behind the times. Part of the problem with this approach is that we can have someone who is waving a flag for standards, but she is actually causing those standards to regress as a result of the work that she has done.

The last point I would make is that if I were the Minister of Education, I would love to have the powers in this bill. There is excessive ministerial power in this bill, in my view. Not having to properly gazette, and not having to put things into regulation and have them subject to review or proper scrutiny, is very bad, and no Minister, including myself, should have that power.

This bill proposes to test children more and to fine their parents more if they miss class. Changes to testing, in particular, have been made on the basis that this testing will give us more information. This would be a good thing if it were information that is lacking, but that is not the case; we actually have a great deal of information about the children who are not succeeding in our education system. We know that many of them—

💬 Allan Peachey: What are we doing about it?

Testing them, I say to Mr Peachey, will not alleviate their poverty, will it? Testing them will not insulate their homes so that they no longer get asthma, I say to Mr Peachey. We know that many of these children are living in poverty, and we know that they are more likely to be Māori than Pākehā. Whomever we might hope is looking after them is sometimes not there to take care of them in the way we would like, and there is often a good reason for that. It is not a case of the parents just being neglectful; the parents are working several minimum wage jobs in order to pay market rents and to buy groceries to feed their families.

These are parents who might well wish that they could be there when their kids get home from school but it is simply impossible for them to be in two places at one time. And, of course, if the rent is not paid, or the power gets cut, then they will have failed to provide the safe and secure shelter that parents all desire for their children. [Interruption] People on low wages, I say to Ms Tolley and Mr Peachey, have to make decisions that people on high wages, like the members, do not have to make.

People who are very rich can easily afford to have a parent stay at home, either full time or part time, to provide the framework around school-age children, to make the healthy lunches, and to supervise the homework, and often—and it might be the case for some in this House—they can employ someone to do that very work. Some really rich people do that—and that is fine. Good for them! But not everyone has that choice, and people generally make the best decisions that they can with the resources they have available.

So what has National done to help make it easier for those families who are living in this kind of hardship—those whose children are living in the poverty that is actually the cause of the long tail of underachievement?

💬 Hon Member: What have the Greens done?

Well, National just voted to make them pay more tax, which I am sure will be very helpful to those families and those children. National voted to make them pay more tax so that it could give more tax cuts to the very rich. National has also consistently voted against raising the minimum wage, even as prices increase and even as families face increasing hardship.

💬 Moana Mackey: What about the 90-day bill?

The 90-day bill is another example. National members consistently voted against Working for Families, and they resiled from that position only because they thought there were votes in it. Now they have come to this House and proposed that the answer to dealing with underachievement is to test kids more to find out which of these children are doing so badly, and to fine their parents—take more money out of their pockets—when they fail to get their kids to attend enough classes. It is out of touch. It is insane.

We know that kids with health problems sometimes do not do well in school. That is obvious. Often they will miss a lot of classes. Sometimes they cannot hear well enough to learn, because they have something like glue ear, or they might have asthma, which keeps them at home and away from school. Sometimes they are malnourished, on a combination of caffeine and sugary junk that is often bought from the schools themselves.

We know that poor health is a factor in underachievement, and we know what the solutions are. It is not rocket science, but it takes money. We have too many cold, damp houses, which impact on the health of our population. Whether people choose not to live in a cold, damp house or to insulate the houses they have generally depends on how much money they have. The Green Party fought long and hard to get a billion-dollar fund, the Green Homes Fund, through the negotiations on the emissions trading scheme, and that would have paid to pretty much ensure that every home in this country—every low-income home—was warm, dry, and healthy.

The benefits are absolutely clear. For every dollar spent on insulating cold houses, there is close to a $2 benefit in energy and health savings, which means less time off work, less time off school, and a better quality of life and health for the children for whom these are serious issues. Keeping kids healthy enough to get to school and to learn at school is critical to giving every single New Zealand child a fair chance at education and success. But, of course, National axed the fund. So National has made sure that homes will stay cold and damp, and that, as a result, children will continue to suffer from glue ear, asthma, and eczema. National’s choice is to keep these children in poverty.

National has vigorously opposed all moves to get junk food out of school tuck shops, despite knowing that what children eat impacts on their ability to learn. National does not care about children’s nutrition and the impacts of nutrition on kids’ learning. It does not care about teachers having to deal with children who are so hyped on school junk food they cannot concentrate and keep getting into trouble.

Then, of course, there are the teachers. We need more of them—of that we can be absolutely sure. We need to value them much more highly than we do. Lowering student-teacher ratios means teachers can spend more time with children who need extra time and support. More teachers also means that those who need specialist attention, for whatever reason, will get the needs-based support they are entitled to. But Treasury, in its briefing to the incoming Minister, has advised the Government to “Shift spending in compulsory education from investment with low returns (such as lower student-teacher ratios) to high returns (such as approved accountability for student achievement and development of teaching practice).” I am pretty sure I just read that Treasury said that improving student-teacher ratios has low returns.

I presume Treasury must mean short-term economic returns, because I guess giving every child enough one-on-one teacher time takes a while to pay off. It is hard to measure. It might, in some cases, even reduce the crime rate, or it might, in some other cases, enable a child to excel in what he or she is good at, leading to scientific breakthroughs that save millions of lives. That has happened in this country in the past. So I call on the Minister of Education to reject the advice of Treasury about the low return of lower student-teacher ratios. Teachers are not a low-quality investment. They are the lifeblood of our education system, and our kids need more of their time, not less.

This bill will tell us that some kids are not doing so well. We will find out that we have failing children, failing teachers, failing schools, and failing communities. How helpful is that? What the next response from the Government might be is one of my concerns. Of course, it leads to a league table of failures—a league table of the “bestest and worstest” primary schools—a long list of all the schools and communities that will fail this National test of wealth and privilege, because that is what it is.

What next after that? If we look at the international examples—and we will talk about those more in the coming debate—we see that we get vouchers, so that those poor, sad, rich families can move their unhappy, poor, sad, rich children from those underprivileged, underfunded schools, leaving those poorer families and those poorer communities to continue with underfunded, poorly resourced schools. What might come after that? If we look at the international examples, we find that private investors will go in and buy up those underfunded, degraded schools for a song, so that National can continue its policy of overfunding private schools with desperately needed public education money.

It is very interesting to see that these educational testing standards will not apply to private schools but only to State schools, even though private schools get lots and lots of public money—nearly double the money the Labour Government ever put in. National will increase it. So despite the fact that there will be public money investment, they will not have to suffer the same kinds of educational tests and standards as State schools will. Make no mistake: National’s agenda is to privatise schools. That is alive and well, and this bill is a first step towards that agenda.

We will spend a lot of money finding out that underfunding schools and underfunding communities creates a long tail of poverty that causes underachievement. We already know that. Everybody in South Auckland already knows that. We have a lack of action, a lack of vision, a complete, dismal failure by this National Government to put the resources into the schools and communities where it is needed. Instead, National will privatise and put money into private schools.

I rise to speak to the first reading of the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill. Anybody who listened to the contribution from the Green member would be about ready to leave the country, I would think, because it sounds like there is nothing positive at all about this bill. In fact, what we have with this change of Government, a National-ACT Government with support from the Māori Party and United Future, is the start of a new era. With that comes not more talk about failing children, failing teachers, and failing systems, but an opportunity to turn things round for our children in this country and to give them the opportunities they have not had in the last long 9 years under a Labour-led Government.

We have the opportunity to do something positive in education and provide opportunities for those children from lower socio-economic homes and for those children who are not doing well in the current system—and there is very good reason for that. We heard talk from the Green member about damp houses, the minimum wage, nutrition, the 90-day bill—I think for a moment there she forgot she was actually meant to be talking about education. Solutions do not revolve around more of the same failing system that has let down far too many of our children in New Zealand.

The purpose of the bill, which is worth looking specifically at, is “to raise standards of achievement and attendance in the compulsory education sector.”, and that is a laudable aim. I congratulate the National Government on that initiative. The bill sets out two major changes to our education system. The first is in relation to school enrolment and attendance. Penalties for non-attendance will be beefed up to help rectify the awful record of New Zealand’s habitual truants. Parents will become increasingly liable for the actions of the children in their care. Parents will be made aware that regular truancy will not be tolerated. That is nothing but a good thing. Our kids have no hope of learning and getting ahead if they are not even showing up for classes.

Secondly, and most important, this bill will introduce national standards in literacy and numeracy. These standards will go a long way towards addressing New Zealand’s declining educational standards, which have seen us plummet down international rankings. In the last 2 days we have seen articles in the newspaper with headlines such as “Primary kids get poor reports for maths, science”. What about this one: “Kiwi kids behind Kazakhstan”? If that is where our children are achieving, it is a jolly good thing for this country and our children that we have had a change of Government. It has not come a moment too soon.

Instead of these changes, and instead of recognising that there is a problem in our schools, what has been the response of the Labour Party? What has been its response? Mr Carter has been standing up; Mr Mallard has just been reeling out the tired old lines that we have heard for the last 9 years that have achieved—what? Our kids achieving behind children in Kazakhstan. In their 9 years of power, what was their solution? Well, here is one of them. Setting up an expensive website, Team-Up: Helping our kids learn, to extol the importance not of anything to do with learning, but of the importance of calcium in children’s learning might be good for their teeth and their bones, but I do not think it has much impact on their ability to learn. As admirable as may be a goal to have adequate calcium levels in one’s diet, it lacks a certain amount of reality and credibility. Thank goodness we have had a change of Government.

💬 Hon Anne Tolley: Say nothing of “Wassup!” badges!

That is right. Standards will help with national consistency—something that was sadly lacking under the last Labour Government—so that we have some comparisons, we know which schools are performing well, and we know which schools need some assistance because they are not reaching the levels of achievement and excellence that they should be.

But I give just a word of warning—and this is coming from a purely ACT perspective, I guess—that assessment alone is not enough. Hand in hand with this legislation must go work particularly on the curriculum. It has become burdensome and overly hefty in the lives of teachers, who have to implement all sorts of things that bear no relevance to what our education system should include. As an Associate Minister of Education under this National-led Government, I along with ACT will be advocating that we take a big picture look at education. Core amongst that is the introduction of school choice, something that ACT has long talked about and campaigned hard on during this election campaign. We should never lose sight of what our goal is. Education is the key to our long-term prosperity. We need our next generation to have the skills and creativity to thrive in the 21st century—not in the 19th century.

Times have moved on and we must move with them. Right now we are failing our kids. It is time for that to be turned round. We have great opportunities now to strive for excellence not just for kids who manage to do well no matter what, but for children who are disadvantaged in terms of their upbringing or in terms of their abilities to learn, and for children who are gifted and are currently falling through the gaps in a system that is letting down far too many of our young children. New Zealand’s future depends on a proper education system that allows everybody to achieve to their full potential. I welcome this initiative and ACT proudly supports this bill as a starting measure.

Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker, tēnā tātau e huihui mai nei i te ahiahi pō ki konei i tēnei wā.

[Greetings to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to us gathered here this evening at this time.]

I echo the Māori Party’s support for the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill. Given that I have spent my whole life in the education system and watched the mainstream schools destroy the hope of many of my people for their children, it is pretty hard to listen to some of the talk that is coming back from members on the other side of the House. I tell Mr Mallard that during his watch, Māori children were not in forms 3A, 4A, 4B, and 4C but were in forms 4M, 4N, 4O, and 4P. Nothing has changed, except that there are now different names for it. One in four Māori come out of school with little or no qualifications, at all. This is real; this is life. These are my people, whom I live with.

💬 Sue Moroney: There’s been a significant change in that, and you should acknowledge that.

The member can say whatever she likes about that, but this is the reality. That is why half of the Māori boys come out of school with a lack of incentive to take hold of the world and with little qualifications, at all.

The reason for that has been exposed by Te Kōtahitanga, which shows that teachers are aiming too low for Māori children. That is why we should put the standards up there and teach the standards, and, if the children do not reach those standards, we should fix the teachers up. Quite honestly—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: No, no, that’s not what Te Kōtahitanga is.

Is that right? I tell Mr Mallard that in 1960 the Hunn report exposed a big gap between Māori and Pākehā achievement in schools. In 1970 we tried to introduce a programme called Taha Māori. That did not work, because it was not owned by the people and it was not geared towards achieving within the school system.

In the 1980s came kaupapa Māori education. Kaupapa Māori education showed a new way of teaching. It was user-friendly to Māori, because it used Māori cultural customs—daily, natural Māori customs—and it also used the Māori language. Unfortunately, successive Governments have not supported it to the extent that they should have done in terms of the training of teachers. No matter how many submissions we made to various education ministry officials, teachers were not trained in speaking Māori and in kaupapa Māori in order to carry on that kaupapa. Sufficient training was not given to parents. Half of the kura kaupapa Māori are struggling today and need support for the parents who run the boards and also for recruiting teachers who know what they are doing to work in kaupapa Māori.

In the early 2000s two major reports were produced—and I think one was produced while Mr Mallard was the Minister—one from the Ministry of Education, and one from Te Puni Kōkiri. Both reports showed that the gaps that existed in 1960 were still there in the early 2000s. We had babysat Māori in education for 40 years, and there was still no closing of the gaps. Then we had a programme called closing the gaps, and suddenly that programme disappeared.

We want to have the standards set so that Māori can be taught, like every other child, to reach those standards. If they are not achieving them, then we should ask why, and we should do something about it. That is why we support this bill. Let us not carry on hiding things. Let us not teach Māori children and ignore their names. The issue is about knowing their names, and it is about respecting the words “tangata whenua”. [Interruption] No matter how much the member yells, he could not change the negative results while he was the Minister. He should not try to get out of that; he has to know that. It is now time that we moved. We need to take hold of kaupapa Māori and give it the lift that it needs. It is time that we looked at how teachers are teaching Māori and did something about it in Te Kōtahitanga. We should front up—that is what the issue is all about.

We support the implementation of these standards. We support teachers being trained to teach them, and if they do not get it—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: The member supported second-class teachers.

We support success, and we support teaching people: recognising Māori as pupils, and not teaching down to them. The programmes showed that people were not even calling Māori students by their real names. Students were getting upset because teachers were sitting on tables, breaking Māori customs and rules. Teachers did not even know the names of students’ parents.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: And which Minister funded it more and more, because it was good?

I am trying to explain to the House why the Te Kōtahitanga programme is successful.

💬 Sue Moroney: Who started it?

That is the whole point, is it not? It is Russell Bishop’s programme, and we all support that programme. But we should listen to what it tells us. That is what I am trying to say. We should listen to it and have our teachers trained to teach up to Māori, not teach down to them. Then it will be a success.

I thank the Hon Pita Sharples for his speech. He was absolutely right. His speech made clear the problem that the Labour Party has with the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill.

I am gobsmacked that Labour is voting against this bill. I look forward to parading up and down the country over the next 3 years and telling people that the Hon Phil Goff is opposed to education standards, that he believes in low expectations, and that he does not care about the bottom 30 percent of kids who are not reaching those expectations or those standards.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Oh, rubbish!

Labour members cannot make up their minds. On the one hand, they are saying that this is absolutely terrible and it will ruin everything; then their next speaker gets up and says that this is already happening. It is one or the other. Will it wreck the teaching of literacy and numeracy in our schools? Or is it, as Trevor Mallard has said, already happening? Actually, unusually, Mr Mallard is somewhere closer to the truth than Chris Carter. It is not unusual that Chris Carter is a long way from the truth.

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Be careful.

Chris Carter should have been careful. That is why he was the least credible Minister of Education that Labour has had in a long time. Trevor Mallard was much more credible. Actually, in this sector Trevor Mallard built up—picking up what Nick Smith started—a body of sensible policy about literacy and numeracy standards.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Nick Smith had no policy.

He did, actually.

The next logical step is that every child gets the benefit of expectations and standards, and of reporting to parents. About 40 percent of kids probably get it now. At a stretch, it might be 60 percent. But as we should be used to by now, it is the kids who need it the most who are not getting it. The schools that really should be doing it cannot be bothered. The only reason Labour did not follow the logic of its own policy to this point is that it did not want to upset anyone. Labour thought its relationship with the unions was more important than raising expectations for kids, for whom education is the way out of the circumstances they are in. Labour put the interest group before the children. Until Labour starts apologising to the country for that, the public will not take it seriously.

When Labour votes against this bill tonight, all that will do—in case it is not aware—is prove to so many parents why they voted against Labour and for National. It will confirm that Labour cares more about the system, a fragment of union opinion, and its mates than it does about the kids. If Labour is following the advice of Chris Carter to vote against the bill, then it is doing the wrong thing. Those young, new, progressive MPs need to know what a dead-end they are being led to. [Interruption] Well, three groups matter more than the teacher unions: the first is the teachers, and actually a lot of them voted for us this time; then there are the parents, and an overwhelming majority of them voted for us this time; and then there are the kids, and Labour thinks it can ignore the kids because kids cannot vote.

We support this bill. We believe that it is the next logical step in New Zealand’s progress with literacy and numeracy standards. We find it hard to understand that the Labour Party is so arrogant and contemptuous about anyone else who has an opinion about education that it is making the biggest single political mistake it will make in the next 12 months by voting against this bill.

Once upon a time, during the election campaign, for National education was the most important thing in the country. That is what Mr Key said. I noticed that by the time he made his Speech from the Throne, it had slipped well down the rankings—well down the rankings. By then, the economy was everything, going for growth was everything. Education had slipped well down the agenda.

The Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill is another example of how far down the agenda of the new, arrogant National Government education has slipped. It has already slipped down, because this bill is meaningless. It is a meaningless bill. It talks about national standards that actually are already in place and that schools already teach to. The standards are there already in the National Administration Guidelines—those things called NAGs. They already exist. So this bill is meaningless. But it is worse than meaningless; it is—

💬 Hon Anne Tolley: So why are you voting against it, then?

I will tell Mrs Tolley; I will tell her right now. It is not only meaningless but potentially dangerous. That Minister has already misled the education sector by telling its members they would be excluded from the 90-day probationary period bill. That is what she told them; it is on video, it has been on TV, and everyone has seen it. She told them that. I ask Mrs Tolley whether that is correct. Did she tell them? [Interruption] She is saying no. She was seen on TV saying that, but she has come down to the House and denied that she told the education sector that its members would be excluded from the 90-day probationary period bill. She voted for that bill. She voted for the 90-day probationary period bill. An amendment was put to exclude teachers from it. How did Anne Tolley vote? How did she vote on that amendment? Anne Tolley voted against the amendment to exclude teachers from the 90-day probationary period bill. So she cannot be trusted. She cannot be trusted, and the education sector already knows that.

Why, then, would the education sector trust that Minister to decide what the national standards are, without any right of redress? That is the potentially dangerous thing about this bill. This bill gives that new Minister, who has already misled the education sector once—and we are only 2 days into the new Parliament—absolute carte blanche to decide what the national standards are. This bill says that the Minister can decide them for herself and she need only gazette them. There is no select committee process, no regulations review process. That is far too much power in the hands of the Minister, who has already misled the education sector once.

I have had to defend that Minister already. The education sector has been asking me what her qualifications are to be the Minister of Education. I have had to defend her already. I have said that she probably does know something about the education sector; she may not know what a vice-chancellor is, or what one does, but she probably did go to school—she probably did; I have had to convince some of the education sector of that. That is the Minister whom the National Government is asking the country to trust to decide what the national standards are.

We know that this bill is being rushed through the House.

💬 Hon Member: No, it isn’t.

It is being rushed through the House. How much faster could it go through the House? I ask Mrs Tolley whether it is the case that this bill will go through all stages under urgency. Is that the case—yes or no? I believe that the answer is yes. That means that neither the public nor the education sector—no one—will have the opportunity to comment on what this bill does or does not do. I think that is wrong. If education is very important, and I certainly believe our children are important, then we should be taking our time over this bill. We should make sure that we get it right. My children are worth it. I do not know whether the Minister thinks that my children are worth it, but I believe they are. I believe that every parent in this country believes that our children are important enough to warrant our looking at this process properly.

Members opposite should ask for public submissions, find out what the teachers have to say about this bill, and find out what the parents think of it. Why is the National Government so frightened to hear what the country thinks about national standards? I would like to know what parents would like to see in the national standards, because I do not trust Anne Tolley to decide what our national standards are. Goodness knows what she will come up with! These are the 100 days of action, of course, so National has to look busy, and the bill has to look like it is urgent. I would much rather have a bit of democracy, and I would much rather that this new Government actually put our children first. If National members really believe that education is the key to our future, then why do we not take our time over this bill, to get it right? Why not listen to what people want and get other people’s views—not just the Minister’s—on what should be in the national standards? There is a lot of nervousness around the education sector about this Minister and what she believes and what she does not believe, so I think the sector would want to have quite a large amount of input.

If we are not careful we could go down the slippery slope on this issue. Systems called national standards have already been put in place in areas like the United Kingdom. I know that some people do not want us to talk about evidence-based research. Well, I think evidence-based research is important, because these are our children we are talking about.

💬 Allan Peachey: Oh, we’ve mentioned the word “children”!

I say to Mr Peachey that we should look at the evidence.

💬 Allan Peachey: You finally mentioned the word “children”.

Mr Peachey has finally woken up. I am sorry, Mr Peachey, but about 3 minutes ago I talked extensively about how important this issue was for our children. Our children are our most important resource, and we must get it right for them. So we must look to the evidence. I want to talk about some of the research. Dr Pita Sharples talked earlier about Te Kōtahitanga. I want to put right a few misconceptions, because I think he misrepresented somewhat what Te Kōtahitanga is about. It is a very, very good programme that was started by the Labour Government. It started in Hamilton, actually.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: It was started by Professor Russell Bishop.

It was started by Professor Russell Bishop, whom I visited the other day. He is about to publish a book. In it he talks about the evidence-based research on national testing and national standards. He points out that a large body of research identifies that systems that promote accountability and/or provide incentives at the expense of capacity building are systems that do not result in successful educational reform.

Let us think about capacity building. National has told us that its whole capacity building for literacy and numeracy amounts to $18 million. That happens to be half the amount by which National is prepared to increase the funding for private schools. That is the extent of this Government’s commitment to capacity building when it comes to literacy and numeracy. So we have to be very, very careful about this issue. All of the educationalists tell us that if we are going to go into the national standards area, we must do it very, very carefully. What is the National Government doing? It is rushing a bill through Parliament, and it is not having any process by which those national standards are set. No one else gets to have input into them; the Minister decides. I certainly do not trust that Minister and what she might come up with. She has already misled the sector once in her very early days of being a Minister.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: She should know what a vice-chancellor is, too.

That is right; she does need to understand what a vice-chancellor is.

I come to the other end of the spectrum when it comes to education. Yes, the compulsory education sector is very important, but I believe that the fundamental area where this issue starts from is early childhood education. Increasing participation in early childhood education is an area that the Minister should be looking at, and the recent Unicef report pointed us in that direction. It is not just about increased participation.

💬 Hon Anne Tolley: Who was the Government?

Well, let us talk about what the Labour Government did to increase participation in early childhood education. I thank the Minister for the question. Labour provided 20 hours’ free education—20 hours’ free early childhood education, which increased participation.

The speaker on the other side of the Chamber who has just sat down, Sue Moroney, spoke for 10 minutes, and she will be remembered only for saying that education was potentially dangerous. I would have to say that this is a general reflection on the achievements of the Labour Government over the last 9 years. It has escaped Labour’s notice that at the moment we have inherited some major problems. We have nearly a million working-age adults who do not have the literacy and numeracy to be able to partake in a first-class economy, and on that basis Labour wants to destine the coming generations into that same situation.

The parents of our children today want their children to have a brighter future, and that is why on 8 November the parents voted a John Key - led Government in, because they wanted a brighter future. They could see, when they observed the other side of the Chamber here, that Labour was devoid of vision and devoid of any aspiration. Labour dug a big hole through New Zealand, and it wanted to keep New Zealanders in it. So we want to see our sons and daughters aspire, and on that basis I think the Minister of Education, Anne Tolley, is to be commended for bringing this bill into the House. She is a wonderful Minister who has done a lot of work over the last year. She has pulled together the visions, the aspirations, and the experience that is on this side of the House.

When I hear Heather Roy, Pita Sharples, Allan Peachey, and Anne Tolley speak, I see that the combined wisdom on this side of the House is overwhelming. I am so pleased that I represent Kaikōura as a parent and a grandparent. I come from a background where my mum and dad never went to school, and on that basis I made a bit of a promise to myself that when I had children I would sit them on my knee, read to them, go to school with them, and be part of them.

One thing that has really been a privilege for me in the last 3 years has been to sit on the Education and Science Committee. I learnt there that nearly 50 percent of schools do not report adequately to the parents. One of the designs of this bill is that teachers and schools report to mums and dads in understandable language. That is incredible.

I support this bill wholeheartedly. I would like to speak for a lot longer on it, but I have been allotted only 3 minutes. I think that time is appropriate, because the wisdom that has been expressed on this side of the Chamber has been overwhelming. But I can say shame, shame, shame on the Labour Party for even considering voting against this bill, especially those two members over there who are former Ministers. Shame on the Labour Party. I support this bill and I commend it to the House.

Tēnā tātou katoa e te Whare. As I said the other day in my maiden speech, I come here after a 20-year career in education. Eight years ago I was appointed the principal of Kaitāia Intermediate School, which is a low-decile school in the far north of New Zealand with 80 percent Māori students. At the time, our assessment showed that 4 percent of our students were meeting the benchmark in writing. Over the course of the next 7 years—and I resigned at the end of last year—we were able to demonstrate that over 80 percent of our students were meeting the benchmark. As I said in my maiden speech, gains for students can happen in a very short length of time. Obviously I am really excited to be part of anything and to be able to speak to anything that is based around education and achievement, because, as I said the other day, it is my passion.

However, I am severely disappointed in a number of aspects of this bill—in particular, the lack of consultation and the inability for the sector to have input into it. If there had been an opportunity for the sector to have had input into the bill through the select committee process, we would have gained greater support from the sector, but unfortunately that is a bell that cannot be unrung.

There is a massive gap in this bill, and the biggest part I saw is that it does not focus on the fact that what makes kids learn is not systems, zones, vouchers, tests, and all those other things; it is teachers. Every student in every class in every school across the country is entitled to an excellent teacher, so there is a massive gap there. Whenever I stand to talk about education in the House, I will always be pushing the point that it is excellent teachers that make kids learn. I remember a conversation I had with the member from Tāmaki—I think it was last year or the year before—when he said that in his capacity as principal of Rangitoto College he would fly to England in order to recruit great teachers. I think it is commendable that principals would go to such lengths to recruit excellent teachers. If we are going to make a difference, at all, and raise achievement, we need excellent teachers in front of our kids.

So what does an excellent teacher look like? In my opinion there are three broad skills that an excellent teacher must have. The first skill is that they must engage in and use research-based, best-practice teaching. We have heard examples today about that. Te Kōtahitanga is one example. Another example is Professor John Hattie’s work with formative assessment. For those people who are not aware of what formative assessment is, I tell them that it is simply that teachers, first of all, need to know their subjects. They need to be able to tell their students exactly where they are achieving, and they need to be able to articulate to each child just the very next small step that child needs in order to progress. If that happens every day, then over the course of a year there will be huge gains in achievement. Excellent teachers who engage in research-based best practice will raise achievement. I think that the Government needs to focus on teachers.

The second point that I make is that—

💬 Hon Member: Standards!

A standard does not teach a child; a teacher does. This is what I was talking about with Te Kōtahitanga. That has proved that a teacher who has excellent relationships not just with the student but with the student’s whānau, will increase achievement.

The third point is that the curriculum needs to be relevant to students. There is no point having a boring curriculum, or a curriculum that is focused on just trying to meet a narrow standard, and the teacher teaching just to an assessment or a test. That narrow curriculum will not engage students; it will just turn them off. Although standards are superficially attractive, they do not teach kids. The thing that I have spoken about in relation to the education sector is that with the achievement objectives already in the curriculum, we have standards already. If members are not aware of the achievement objectives in the curriculum, I tell them that when a child enters school at year 0 or 1, that child should be working at level 1. By the time the pupil leaves—in an ideal world—in year 13, that pupil should be working at level 8. Each of those levels has a range of achievement objectives that are already spelt out for students to achieve.

The point is that there is nothing new in this bill that is not already available for teachers to use. Because there is nothing new in this bill I cannot understand or get my head around why we have to rush this through in urgency. I do not understand what will be any different for kids on 5 February 2009 when they turn up to school, because nothing will change. There is nothing new in it, whatsoever.

I have spoken about formative assessment, which is really, really important; it is the key. In fact, Professor Hattie says that dollops of feedback are what is most important, and that feedback is the factor that has the greatest effect in raising achievement. Feedback to kids is basically telling them where they are. The next step is feed-forward, where, as I have said, they tell kids the next thing they need to learn. We have to focus on the skill of a teacher—that is what is most important in terms of raising achievement. Just setting up standards and assessment for the sake of assessment will not do anything. I said there is nothing that has not been done before.

I took the liberty of getting Kaitāia Intermediate School to email me the format of the school report we have had for the last 5 years, because we talk in plain English and tell parents exactly where their kids are achieving. In the report I have here the school makes the statement that year 7 pupils should be reading at curriculum level 3 or 4. That is the standard based against the New Zealand curriculum, so the school is telling parents exactly where their child should be achieving. The second thing that is said here is: “She”—I will not use the child’s name—“is reading in curriculum level 4P”. That is telling the parents where the child is achieving against the standard where the child should be. The third thing it says is that this is above the New Zealand expectation. The parent knows that their child is achieving above what is expected of New Zealand kids. The fourth thing in this report is that the school tells the parent what the child has learnt. The fifth thing is that the report tells the parent what needs to happen next, and spells out the things that the child needs to learn next. It says that in order to improve, “this child and I”—meaning the teacher—“will concentrate on the following learning outcomes:”. This is a mid-year report, but in the end-of-year reports the sixth thing it says is that: “This is the progress the child has made in the 6 months since the last report.”

So we are telling parents what the standard is, where the child is achieving, whether the child is above or below the New Zealand expectation, what the child has learnt, what needs to happen next, and the progress made since the last report. This has been going on at Kaitāia Intermediate School for the last 5 years, so I cannot understand why all of a sudden it is a new buzz to be telling parents that they need to hear these things. It is stuff that is already happening, and that is why I cannot understand this bill. To me it is just a rehash, the same old, same old. Because it is not happening in every school, all that needs to happen is for resources to go into organisations, such as advisory services, which have experts going to schools to make sure this sort of thing happens.

Tēnā koe, tēna koutou huri noa i te Whare i tenei pō. I rise to support the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill, and I absolutely commend this bill to the House and to every member who purports to be in support of high-level education for all our students. This is outstanding legislation, because it integrates all the players involved in the learning outcomes that students experience. Yes, teachers are important; in fact, they are critical, and research supports that. But they are not the only part of the education system that needs to be involved. Parents need to have an opportunity to be involved. Parents need to understand how well their child is doing in an absolute sense, as well as relative to children who are the same age as them in their school and across the country.

The previous speaker, Kelvin Davis, has just given an outstanding example of a school that would respond extremely well to the system we are talking about. Regrettably, according to the Education Review Office report of 2007, fewer than half the schools were reporting the kinds of achievements we are looking for.

So yes, we do need a systematic approach, because we need to target which children require what kind of learning investment so they can get the support and the resources they need to achieve the best possible educational outcomes. Through this system, teachers will understand better. I am astonished at what I keep hearing from that side of the House, as if teaching and learning were the only formula to learning outcomes. Assessment is part of teaching and learning.

💬 Hon Chris Carter: It’s what you do with it.

That is exactly the question. Unless teachers understand what the learning experience of the child is by assessment, they are basically guessing at what they should do next in order to assist that student. We want to take guessing out of the game. We want to give every child in New Zealand the opportunity to be successful. Like the previous member, in my maiden speech the other day I talked about the pursuit of quality citizenship and the importance of education in that pursuit.

This bill ties together all the elements that will make it possible for students to be successful. It helps teachers to focus on what teaching and learning they should be doing; it helps parents to understand how well their child is doing; it helps schools at a school-wide level to understand where they need to be targeting their resources; and it helps the Government to understand where investments need to be made across the country in order to lift the level of achievement for all New Zealanders, rather than just talk about it. As Dr Sharples was trying to point out, fundamentally Te Kōtahitanga respects the student. It attempts to call students by their names, rather than saying “Rākaitemānia, have you got a nickname?” because they are not capable of addressing that fundamental respect to a Māori child who has a name that has come from his or her ancestors and is worthy of respect by the teacher, who we have all agreed is so critical in their learning path.

I absolutely support this. I acknowledge that the Minister is showing leadership here. Why is it in urgency? Because this side of the House believes that educational quality and success by students is an urgent matter. We are showing leadership in bringing it before the House now.