Debate on Crown Entities, Public Organisations, and State Enterprises — New Zealand Qualifications Authority

The Green Party would like to take a call on the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the issues associated with it, because we think that in education the distinctions between the roles of different agencies are sometimes very important.

We are not criticising the New Zealand Qualifications Authority this evening. We think the New Zealand Qualifications Authority has a pretty clearly defined and distinct role, but we are quite concerned that a decision has been made with the Budget, or a proposal amongst the many rumoured mergers, that there may be a merger between the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the Education Review Office. It is quite an important issue when one thinks about the relative functions of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the Education Review Office.

💬 Jo Goodhew: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I just ask for clarification. I believe we are dealing with the financial review of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, as opposed to any announcements in the Budget.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I hear what the member says. The brief is that we are looking at organisations’ performance, as recorded in 2010, and current operations. There is some leeway, although I remind the member that we are on the financial review of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.

In terms of the current operations of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority the Green Party thinks that the authority has a very distinct role: dealing with qualifications in the education sector. We believe that that role needs to be maintained and upheld.

In the past year the whole issue of qualifications has been the subject of a major political debate not only within the New Zealand Qualifications Authority but right throughout the education sector. We think it is very important that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority should continue to focus on the level of qualifications that it does best, which is right across the sector of a certain age group of young people. We think the New Zealand Qualifications Authority does a reasonable job of that, but there are current discussions about merging the New Zealand Qualifications Authority with the Education Review Office, and although that may be seen as the future, we have to look at both the current financial performance of an organisation and its capacity at present to carry out any broader functions. We will be concerned if the functions of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority do not carry on as they are currently described but become part of a broader agency that is focused purely on measuring and assessment.

I myself have written New Zealand Qualifications Authority documents. I worked in polytechnics for many years, and I understand what the New Zealand Qualifications Authority does, but I do not think it is the same thing as the kind of educational review that other agencies carry out. Its functions do not need to be expanded into areas that could potentially risk the integrity of what goes on in schools. Although we are not critiquing the authority’s financial performance, we are saying that there is a risk if we start to broaden its functions and what it could mean.

Those two agencies that have been signalled have very different functions, and we do not want to see the Education Review Office become more like the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. The functions of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority are quite clearly described. We would rather see the New Zealand Qualifications Authority continue to do its job without subsuming any other agencies. In its current practice it does not go into schools and measure in the way the Education Review Office does, which is a deep and profound whole-of-school approach. The New Zealand Qualifications Authority’s role is to look at very restricted performance in terms of certain outcomes and certain unit standards.

The authority is no longer new. It has developed through a lot of struggles, and it has become quite proficient in the way it does that, but if it should subsume the Education Review Office, we would have very deep concerns. That belongs in a wider debate. The role of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority needs to be part of that wider debate about what we are doing and what we have done in the past year on education standards in this country.

We are in the middle of a fierce political debate about the type of education we want at all levels in this country. We do not want to see a loss of the holistic and the broad in schools in exchange for the narrow. One of the struggles that those of us who started teaching early on under the New Zealand Qualifications Authority had was that there was a certain mechanistic narrowing of the curriculum. That is appropriate for certain types of learning, but it is not appropriate for the compulsory sector. We would have grave concerns if that happened and if the authority was moved into a broader role and stepped outside the narrow definition of what the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is currently achieving. I say it is a broader political debate because right across this country right now a struggle is going on about whether we narrow education or whether we broaden it.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Before dinner I was waxing lyrical about the importance of not merging the New Zealand Qualifications Authority with the Education Review Office. I was about to speak about the importance of protecting jobs in education. I suspect that I may have run out of time to expand on that theme. I acknowledge to the young people in the gallery how important education is.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The member must address through the Chair, not the gallery.

My apologies, Mr Chair. I acknowledge how important education is to young people, so we need to get it right. With the New Zealand Qualifications Authority it has improved a lot. There are reasons why the Education and Science Committee did not review the authority this year, but I reviewed it and I had a look at it.

Report noted.

New Zealand Teachers Council