Debate on Crown Entities, Public Organisations, and State Enterprises — Learning Media Ltd

From my reckoning, the Green Party has used the four calls it has been allocated in this 3-hour debate. If you are getting a call from another party that has been allocated to you by negotiation, that is fine. But at this stage your party has had four calls.

💬 Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Yes, I understand that we have been allocated calls at least from Mana and our records indicate that we are entitled to five at this stage—and Brendan Horan’s call.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Is that five—

💬 Metiria Turei: Six including Brendan Horan’s.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Well, I have four including Mana’s call, so I will look at that. At this stage if you were to take the Mana call, I would accept that, if Catherine Delahunty wishes to take the call. Before you start, we will check out whether you actually have six in total, including Mana’s call, but at this stage, I call Catherine Delahunty.

Thank you, Mr Chair. The Green Party is keen to support this organisation, Learning Media, who came before our Education and Science Committee and indicated that it was having considerable difficulty with the new environment in which the Government had placed it.

In order to place this in context, I think it is important to remember who Learning Media is. It is part of a jigsaw of support that provides us with excellent educational materials, including one of the most iconic ones, the School Journal, which is 106 years old. It was quite concerning to hear at the select committee that Learning Media is facing some considerable difficulty. Up until 12 September last year it had what is known as a preferred provider arrangement, and it was actually doing a fine job, particularly in targeting some of those who have been identified as some of our more vulnerable learners. It has been providing extremely good support to schools through what it calls “deliberate design principles”, including catering for the diversity of students in New Zealand schools, supporting Māori students to achieve success as Māori, enabling alignment between texts and student needs, building student capacity, supporting reading and writing, and many other things. It is very well known in the education sector as being a highly successful model.

So it really was unfortunate to hear that after 12 September last year Learning Media had been forced to enter into a new contested environment. Through that contested environment it is competing with a whole lot of people who do not have its overheads. This State-owned asset has proved its worth, not only through the School Journal but through many other educational materials that it has provided. It has made a particular feature of recognising that Māori students and Pacific students benefit from very specific and culturally responsive programmes.

But, no, the market must dominate. Unlike Solid Energy, it was not that it was spending millions of dollars on bonuses and it was not that it had been over-rewarding its top echelon in a random and unacceptable manner. The people at Learning Media have worked very hard to adjust to the changes that Government keeps requiring, but, unfortunately, they are actually suffering from this new competitive model. The model means that Learning Media is no longer able to guarantee that it can do what it was set up to do. So, basically, what is happening is it has been forced to produce all its work in a whole new expensive layer of business. Everything has to be directed towards pitching for contracts. So, instead of doing the job and using the expertise that it has accumulated over many years of practice as a State-owned asset, it now has to compete. It now has to direct time, energy, and resources into pitching for contracts.

Interestingly, and this is actually relevant, I was at a mayoral forum the other day in the Waikato region near my home and some of the mayors were talking about how they had discovered that constantly contracting out everything that they do is costing them more money than they are able to justify, and they are taking contracts back in-house for a range of issues. Obviously, that is not education; that is other types of issues, but the contracting culture, they had realised, does not always work.

If you want a sustained quality in education, and this applies to the Education Amendment Bill, as well, which we debated in the House this afternoon, the Government needs to commit to State-owned assets that are capable of providing that consistency. Throwing it to the wolves and asking it to be part of a contestable environment has not worked for Learning Media. It is not in huge debt, it is not collapsing, but it is finding that it is not able to focus. If it spends all its time trying to get contracts, competing with organisations with hardly any overheads and who have flavour of the month ideas but do not have a sustained commitment, then our children are going to lose out. That is what this is supposed to be about. It is about an educational provision that is going to work.

It was with great concern that we heard what we heard from Learning Media, because we think that allowing this to disintegrate in a hands-off way is going to be a disservice to children. Generations of Kiwi kids grew up reading the stories of many great authors. If we know anything about it, it is that these authors have relied on the School Journal, and the School Journal has relied on them. There has been a tradition of attracting quality because those people at Learning Media who are providing it know what they are doing, they know why they are doing it, and they know how it works. Having had conversations with some of the people at Learning Media—offline, if you like—outside the select committee, what I heard was a very deep commitment to Māori and Pacific learners. It would be a disgrace if Learning Media does not survive this. It is part of an overall belief system that contracting and competing—

Report noted.

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