Urgent Debates — Student Achievement—OECD Report

I have received a letter from Chris Hipkins seeking to debate under Standing Order 386 the release of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment 2012 data collection on the performance of school students in reading, literacy, maths, and science. The release of the results is a particular case of recent occurrence. As an OECD study, there is no ministerial responsibility for the data released, but they deal with matters involving ministerial responsibility. The results confirm a gradual decline in performance, and echo findings from earlier studies. Although that may represent an existing situation, the release of the OECD results is a significant new occurrence of considerable public interest. Educational achievement is of fundamental importance. The public need confidence in the Government’s response and its education plan focus on a number of fronts to lift educational achievement in order to give all young people a better education. I consider it important enough to warrant the immediate attention of the House by way of an urgent debate.

I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. The public do indeed deserve to have confidence in their Government’s education policies, but they cannot with this current Government. What we have seen under this current Government is that every time it has been called upon to make decisions about education, it has consistently made the wrong call.

In the National Government’s first Budget, in 2009—its first Budget—it cut the professional development funding for teacher professional development. It cut that by $35 million. In the same Budget it gave another $36 million to private schools. That says everything about this Government’s education priorities.

We should be concerned about the fall in our OECD rankings. The Minister of Education yesterday argued that this is an ongoing trend. There was a modest decline in 2009. That modest decline has turned into a freefall under this Government. Our figures have absolutely plunged. We have fallen significantly, from seventh to 13th in reading, from seventh to 18th in maths, and from 13th to 23rd in science. Those are significant drops that have occurred under this National Government, and those are issues that we should be very, very concerned about.

I have spent a lot of time going into schools over the last year and talking to teachers about what is making a difference to them and why it is that our kids in our education system are not achieving to the level that we should be able to expect. What they are saying quite clearly is that this Government is so focused on constantly measuring the problem, on constantly testing kids, that the teachers have not actually got time any more to teach the kids. The teachers want this Government to remove the red tape so that they can get on with the job they entered the teaching profession to do, which is to actually teach kids. What they are doing now is filling in forms to satisfy this National Government. That is not leading to better educational outcomes for kids.

The studies that have been coming out in the last few days and weeks have clearly shown that the Government’s education approach is absolutely failing. Let us look at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research’s report that came out last week. Only 14 percent of principals—only 14 percent of principals—and 23 percent of teachers say that national standards provide a valuable record of student learning. If national standards are the Government’s flagship education policy for lifting student achievement, and yet the people who are being forced to implement them say they do not work and they do not provide reliable information, how is it that they are supposed to lift student achievement? They simply do not. Only 7 percent of principals—7 percent of principals—and 15 percent of teachers believe that national standards are robust. They are flimsy standards that are neither national nor standard—they are neither national nor standard.

It is no wonder that this Government has got our schools and our teachers focused on the wrong things. Hekia Parata, in her answers to questions today, talked about how wonderful national standards were and how parents were so happy with the information they were getting, and yet overwhelmingly parents are complaining that the information they are getting as a result of national standards is inferior to the information they were getting before national standards were introduced. Fifty-four percent of parents did not agree that national standards were providing a valuable record of students’ learning. What was Hekia Parata’s response to that? It was to attack the survey. Rather than actually listen to what parents are saying, Hekia Parata decided to instead attack the survey, and, once again, she was totally wrong.

Sixty percent of teachers and 70 percent of principals say that national standards have created more work for little gain—more work for little gain. What that means is that more of our teachers, more of our principals, and more of the people who work in schools every day with kids are spending more time filling in forms for the Government, constantly assessing kids but not actually focusing on raising student achievement, which is exactly where they should be focused. If a child comes to school hungry, putting them on the scales every day to see whether they have gained weight simply will not work. The same principle applies with their learning. If a child cannot read at school, simply giving them the same test every day to see whether they have improved is not going to improve their ability to read. Giving them some additional support so they can actually learn to read is what the Government should be focused on, but it is not.

What it is busily devoting all of the resources in the education system towards is implementing national standards. Of course, national standards, as I said, are neither national nor standard, so now the Government is putting the money into trying to make them more consistent. Well, again, making the standards more consistent will not improve student achievement. What it will do is put a whole lot more money and a whole lot more time and energy in to a bureaucratic exercise, rather than actually focusing on lifting student achievement.

If we are going to get serious about lifting student achievement, why does the Government not look at the things that actually work? Take Reading Recovery, a programme that has established credibility and that works. The Labour Party has said we will extend Reading Recovery so kids who need that support will be able to get it. That is actually a very, very important and a very, very sensible thing to do. Reading Recovery says that if a child is falling behind in their reading, they need intensive one-on-one support—they need intensive one-on-one support. We cannot simply go to teachers and say that if students are falling behind in their classes—and they have got quite large classes—they can give all of the time they need to absolutely every student. Sometimes some of those kids do need more intensive levels of support, and that is where we should certainly be putting money. The Government is simply turning a deaf ear to those concerns from teachers, principals, parents, and everyone else who is saying they are not getting the support they need.

The Government says it needed national standards to identify where students were falling behind so it could target the resources to deal with that. The problem is we already knew where students were not achieving. When National came into office in 2008, it talked about the areas where students were not achieving already and said that it would do something about that. What it has done is spend its entire 5 years in Government measuring the problem over and over again, and it has done nothing to actually address the concerns and the issues.

What was National’s one solution? Let us go back. What was National’s one solution in last year’s Budget? Its one solution in last year’s Budget was to make class sizes bigger. Hekia Parata’s best attempt at improving the quality of teaching and learning in classrooms was to put more kids in front of every teacher—more kids in front of every teacher. That is not going to improve student learning in New Zealand. Of course, National was forced to back down because every parent in the country understood something that Hekia Parata and John Key did not—that putting more kids in a class is not going to allow the teacher more time—That is right. Well, I will get on to private and charter schools in a moment, Mrs King. It is not going to allow the teachers more time to spend with each child to focus on actually raising student achievement.

So where is the money going under this Government? Well, we have seen a significant increase in funding for private schools, and, of course, we have seen money ploughed into that ideological experiment that the National Government would have us believe was forced on it by that convicted criminal John Banks—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order!

—when he forced upon it the charter schools experiment, which every credible academic doing research has argued will not work and will not lift student achievement.

Let us go back to the OECD study. The OECD study proved very, very clearly that, in fact, when you control for socio-economic factors, private schools do not do any better than public schools do. And yet under this Government, because of its ideological predisposition, we have seen significant amounts of extra money going into the private schooling sector through private schools and through charter schools. Actually, we should be focusing on making sure every school in New Zealand is a good school. The Government has put in place Aspire Scholarships so that it can send more kids into private schools, and yet the results from that are abysmal. The kids who are attending private schools under those Aspire Scholarships are not actually achieving—they are not achieving. It is not a good use of money.

We know the things that are working. If the Government members actually took the time to get out there and visit schools, to listen to teachers and principals, to listen to parents, and to listen to the academic experts, they would actually know what is working in schools. But they do not. They are completely deaf to the feedback that educators are giving them. This is a Government that has declared a war on teachers—a war on teachers—because it believes that National knows best. It believes that the people who are in the classroom every day, teaching kids every day, do not know what is going to raise student achievement and that they have to be told by the National Government what they need to do to raise student achievement. Well, I tell you what. I would put my money on a schoolteacher or a school principal knowing what is best for the kids in their school far ahead of Hekia Parata’s knowledge of those issues. I trust the professional judgment of the people who are in our schools and who know how to raise student achievement. That is not something they will get under this National Government.

Let us look at Hekia Parata’s list of excuses for the decline in our OECD ranking, because that is what they are—they are simply excuses. First of all she talked about the fact that we have had a “significant increase in the number of teachers but under-investment in raising teacher practice;”. Well, yes, we have had under-investment in raising teacher practice, because this Government cut the funding for that in its very first Budget, in 2009. Coincidentally, that was the last time we had the Programme for International Student Assessment results out. So we are seeing now, in the next Programme for International Student Assessment study after the Government cut the funding for teacher professional development, what the impacts of those kinds of Draconian policies are.

Other excuses from Hekia Parata include that there is “a focus on compliance rather than … performance;”, and yet national standards are all about compliance. That is what this Government is focused on. It is all about compliance and—

💬 Grant Robertson: Bureaucracy gone mad.

—bureaucracy gone mad—tying schools and teachers up in red tape, and not trusting them to make judgments about what is best for students. It is about making them fill in forms to satisfy this quest of the Government to rank everything and to have league tables, rather than focusing on teaching the whole curriculum, which is where our schools should really be focused. Hekia Parata said there is “Inadequate … data on student achievement …”. That is absolute nonsense. We have always had very good data on student achievement. What we have not been good at doing as a system is matching the additional resources to where student achievement is failing. This Government has been among the worst because what it has been doing is cutting the funding to programmes that have targeted areas of underachievement.

We in the Labour Party recognise the links between inequality in our society and under-performance in the education system. That is something to which this Government turns a blind eye and a deaf ear. This is a Government that refuses to measure child poverty—refuses to even measure child poverty. And yet we acknowledge that the conditions that kids are growing up in have an impact on their readiness to learn when they get to school—something that the National Government is simply not willing to hear.

This is a wake-up call to the Government; its education policies are failing. Other countries that have experienced a similar decline in the education rankings are taking that very, very seriously. They are willing to reassess and re-examine the policies they have put in place that are not working. So why is our Government trying to continue to push along the policies that have been proven to fail? They have been proven to fail, and that is exactly what is happening with this Government. It is arrogant and out of touch. As in so many other areas, this Government is not listening to the people whom it is relying on every day in schools to get out in front of kids, to teach kids. It is not listening to them.

The first thing this Government should do is admit that it is wrong. Then it should actually go out there and say to teachers and principals: “Actually, we think that you are professionals. We actually trust your judgment. What is it that we need to do as a Government to lift student achievement?”. That is the very first thing this Government should do. But we will not get that from Hekia Parata, because Hekia Parata knows best. Instead, she will go and lecture schools about all of the things that they are doing wrong and about whether they are pronouncing their kids’ names right, but she will not actually put the effort, the energy, and the resources into areas where we know that kids are not achieving. Instead, National wants to import failed ideological experiments from overseas. It is no surprise that other countries that have adopted standardised assessment and standardised testing are either stagnating or declining in the education rankings, as well.

What we need to be doing is embracing the whole curriculum. We have one of the best curricula in the world. It is internationally recognised. It was put in place by the previous Labour Government. I will say that it was put in place by the previous Labour Government, but it was supported by the then National Opposition. National was right then; what it has done instead since it came into Government is undermine the world-leading curriculum that we have. It has undermined that consistently by saying to teachers and to schools that it does not want them teaching the whole curriculum; it wants them to focus on only a narrow range of things. That is not going to lead to a more prosperous future for our country. The OECD statistics that are out this week show that the Government’s education policies are failing.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I am delighted to be able to participate in this debate because, despite the hysterical tone being adopted by the Opposition member Chris Hipkins, New Zealand has a fundamentally sound education system. I have said since I became the Minister of Education that the system is top performing for many, but not for all. That has not happened by accident, nor will it continue without attention, and this Government is paying attention. Ever since I became the Minister, it has been paying attention. Unlike the assertion by the Opposition member that this is a wake-up call, it is not. Our alarm clock rang 5 years ago when we looked at the system we had inherited from those people who are now on the other side, and that is why we got straight into fixing this.

We knew that we had to understand exactly where every child was in our system in order to be able to target resources specifically to them, to help address their learning needs right there and then, and not wait for 3-year samples that, yes, are extremely helpful and inform our decision making. But it is a call to action. As I said in my speech to the Iwi Chairs Forum last week, to which the forum responded magnificently, this is an endeavour that all of us need to be engaged in. That means that we need to know where our kids are at in the system, what their particular learning needs are, whether we have the resources to support them, and how we can make a difference for each and every one of them.

New Zealand has slipped in the latest Programme for International Student Assessment rankings. This is serious, but it is not a surprise. We are serious about fixing this. That is why our plan is about every part of the education system.

At early childhood, about which all the research is really clear, investing early is investing for life. That is why we have—despite the Opposition ignoring the brutal facts of reality—raised investment in early childhood education by 74 percent. The reason why we have invested in this is that we trust parents as much as professionals. There are many parents who deliver great early childhood learning to their children in their own homes, as do qualified teachers in centres. We are agnostic as to which choice parents make. It is up to parents to decide how and where to send their children for early childhood education. If that is at home with their parents, we applaud that. If that is in a teacher-led centre, whether kindergarten or kōhanga reo, we applaud that.

This Government has focused on having a target of 98 percent of our earliest learners participating in early childhood education, and we are now at 95.8 percent. We will keep on focusing on what works for communities. So whether that is a Pasifika language - led playgroup or a kindergarten, we will support those earliest learners to have that opportunity.

When children enter school, we want them to develop a strong general platform in primary school. We want it understood whether or not they are able to read, write, and count at the earliest age, and we want to make a difference as soon as we understand whether that is occurring or not.

We have invested $9.7 billion in Vote Education this year alone, and we have increased that investment every year because we understand how important and how critical education is to every one of our children. It has not been acceptable to us that an average of four out of five children leave senior secondary school with National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2. When we came into Government, it was two out of five Māori and three out of five Pasifika. We are not looking at averages and, in fact, we have raised achievement ever since 2009.

💬 Sue Moroney: No, it’s going backwards.

I get that the members opposite, and one in particular, are not interested in reality or facts or evidence, but we have actually had improvements year on year. How do we know that? It is because we have invested in a data-rich environment. We understand that without data it is just another person’s opinion.

We are interested in data and in making a difference. That is why we introduced national standards. Every parent and teacher wanted to know specifically where their child was once every 3 years but also every year and every 6 months, which is what is required under this Government. But they can also find out how their child is doing in national standards at any time. We are not asking teachers, as has been asserted by the Opposition, to do more assessment. We are asking them to use their overall teacher judgment to make a decision as to how well their children are doing and what we need to do next to improve that, and to ensure that their parents understand, because parents want the best for their children and they want to be involved in helping their children to improve.

I do go out to schools. In fact, I have a very structured 40 Friday programme, because there are 40 Fridays in a school year. I am in schools every Friday somewhere around the country. I listen to what teachers have to say and I take action as a result of that.

💬 Sue Moroney: It’s no wonder they’re going backwards.

Most recently—if the member cared to listen instead of haranguing from that side of the House—it was said that professional learning was not meeting their particular needs, so I have introduced a review. We heard that teachers required more maths and science resources, so we have invested in that.

We know that kids do better if they participate early. We know that kids do better if their parents are engaged. We know that kids do better if the community in which their school is located holds high expectations of and for them. So this year, for the first time, we have published by local authority and rohe the specific achievement of kids so that those communities can join together in raising achievement for each and every one of them.

The 4,000 15-year-olds who sat the Programme for International Student Assessment last year showed that our best are still best in the world but also that our least capable students are some of the lowest in the Programme for International Student Assessment countries. Our spread between those who are doing very well and those who are not is one of the widest in the OECD, and we are focused on how we get excellence and equity for all. Unfortunately, these kids—these 4,000 kids—were not caught by national standards, but they have been caught by our Youth Guarantee initiative, by the fees-free places in tertiary institutions, by the increased number of apprenticeships, and by the vocational pathways that offer opportunities to kids in the primary sector, in the services sector, in manufacturing, in health, and, shortly, in the creative industries. They will also have greater focus on NCEA level 2, and we are working with schools, school by school, on how we raise that achievement.

We are prioritising parents by better reporting to them. We are providing better information for the wider community. We are putting more funding into the New Zealand School Trustees Association, which is the most formal and structured way in which over 16,000 people—mainly parents—volunteer every 3 years to be on the boards of our schools. We have had an 84 percent increase in its funding this year.

The biggest effect on in-school raising achievement is the quality of teaching and education leadership, and we have invested $37.5 million this year in a quality teaching agenda. The cornerstone of that is the transformation of the New Zealand Teachers Council into the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand. Its acronym is EDUCANZ, not “Edu-can’t”, so we can ensure that the professional body of teachers is fit for the 21st century. We are also introducing, from next year, initial teacher qualifications that strike a much stronger balance between education theory and great classroom practice. We have introduced excellence awards because we want to be able to highlight and spotlight to the community what excellence looks like. There are many examples of that up and down the country, where teachers are creating magic in classrooms every day with their students. We want to highlight that.

Most particularly, we want to create a more constructive public conversation around education. We want to be able to attract the best and brightest to join the profession. If all they ever hear is binary, oppositional statements about education, then why would they be attracted to doing that? So we are investing next year in education—

💬 Sue Moroney: You cut the funding for teachers in early childhood.

The member keeps parroting that we have cut the funding. How can you have a 74 percent increase in early childhood education and a 40 percent increase in schooling and say that it constitutes a cut? It just does not bear scrutiny. It is laughable, frankly. It is just absolutely ridiculous. In fact, it is an example of exactly what I have just been alluding to. We cannot get a constructive education conversation in this country. Until we grow up and start having a constructive—

💬 Hon Members: Oh!

—a constructive—education conversation, it will be very difficult to persuade young people to choose teaching as a career.

I grew up in a community where teachers were revered. I was really proud that my father was one of those teachers, and I am proud that my sisters joined the profession. I am proud of all the people I know who have committed their lives to this vocation of teaching. That is why we have invested $9.7 billion—

💬 Dr Megan Woods: Why do you denigrate them as union hacks, then?

Actually, I do not denigrate teachers, at all.

💬 Dr Megan Woods: You do.

I do not denigrate teachers, at all. Can I just—

💬 Dr Megan Woods: They shouldn’t have an opinion—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member can take a call shortly.

Yes, that would be great.

Can I just speak to the particular issue of pronouncing children’s names correctly. Can we start with the fact that mine is Hekia Parata, and can we recognise that relationships of respect established between 5-year-olds and the teacher, between 10-year-olds and the teacher, and between 15-year-olds and the teacher actually do start with pronouncing a child’s name correctly, whether it is Mary-Anne or Mereana. I do not see why that should send anyone into a frenzy. It is a basic, common courtesy.

So we are working really hard, and the reason we are doing so is that we want—

💬 Chris Hipkins: I thought it was Trish.

Yes, it is, and I am not hung up about that, because I am a comfortable bicultural New Zealander. Nō te mea he ingoa tipuna tēnā nō aku tīpuna.

[Because that is an ancestral name from my ancestors.]

Ko Patricia i heke mai i aku tīpuna nō Kōtimana. Ko taku ingoa a Hekia he ingoa tipuna nō Ngāti Porou.

[Patricia comes from my Scottish ancestors. My name Hekia is an ancestral name from Ngāti Porou, the clan or tribe of Porou.]

So, yes, I am Patricia Hekia Parata. I am proud of both sides of my heritage: Pākehā and Māori. I think many New Zealand kids are.

So we want to have an education system that makes our children competitive both internationally and globally and that also embraces those things that are uniquely New Zealand. Our kids—and these things are not measured by the Programme for International Student Assessment—are good at working in teams. Our kids are good at finding creative and innovative solutions to problem solving. Our kids are good at relationships. Our kids are good in the environment. Our kids are committed to fairness and sportsmanship. We want to have an education system that is about kids both being globally competitive and having that Kiwi, can-do attitude, which is unique to New Zealand. I am bound and determined that the New Zealand education system will deliver both of those opportunities to every one of our children.

I am proud to be the Minister of Education in the National Government, raising the vote investment every year, committed to modernising our education system, and making some people uncomfortable with change, because if we keep doing what we have always done, we will keep getting what we have always got. What we have always got has not been good enough, so we are facing forwards, informed by what has happened in the past, but really focused on what makes a difference. Funnily enough, opinion and prejudice are outweighed by evidence and research.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for giving me the opportunity, despite the haranguing of the parrots on the other side—the Opposition—to talk about all the great things we have in our education system and also how much better we need to be doing.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou i te Whare. It is very, very pleasing to be part of this urgent debate, and very interesting. I listened closely to the Minister of Education. I think that there are many parents in this country who would love to see all of us in this House working together on education. But there are some fundamental problems, and the Programme for International Student Assessment report actually highlights those problems. It talks about slippage. It talks about slippage, and it also does a very interesting analysis of why the direction the Government has taken education policy in is not going to work.

I want to quote Andreas Schleicher—[Interruption] I am sure you will, Minister. I am sure you will quote him. He is quoted as saying, when he unveiled the international student assessment results: “My organisation is very strong on choice, enabling citizens to make choices, and you would expect that systems with the greatest choice would come out better … You expect competition to raise performance of the high performers and with low performers put them out of the market. But in fact you don’t see that correlation … Competition alone is not a predictor for better outcomes. The UK is a good example—it has a highly competitive school system but it is still only an average performer.”

Others have said: “His comments could be seen as a blow for Michael Gove, England’s education secretary, who has placed great importance on the findings of Pisa and has also promoted increased school choice as a key way of raising educational standards. This has been done in England through more academies and the introduction of state-funded free schools,”—also known as charter schools—“partly inspired by the charter schools in the US.” Andreas Schleicher is quoted as saying: “Our data does not show much of a performance difference …”. So what Andreas Schleicher from the Programme for International Student Assessment is saying is that the direction that the Government is trying to take the education system in is not going to work.

That is why, as deeply as the Green Party would like to get past ideological battles in binary opposition and start focusing on the best, most innovative, most creative, and most culturally inclusive school system in the world, we have a problem in this political situation. That problem is that choice does not work in education. If you are talking about why achievement is slipping and why we have gone down in maths, science, and literacy or reading in the report’s figures, it is because a programme based upon increased choice and teaching to tests cannot deliver what the Government says it wants to deliver for all children. Therefore, the Green Party has many, many other ideas that would be more positive.

But it is really important to think about the Programme for International Student Assessment and what its report said in this round, because the report is talking about the last 3 years and it is talking about our country being in a state of failure. It is a wake-up call. It is not actually something the Government should be making light of or walking away from and saying that it is an ongoing problem that it was well aware of. I have never heard the Government admit that choice is not going to work.

The report says, and this is one of the things that I find interesting, that one of the most important things is professional development. I heard the Minister say on Morning Report that she is doing everything that the programme suggested. But actually she is not, because the cuts to science advisers and to professional development in science have been a disaster. I am sure I am not the only MP in this House who has received emails from science advisers, drama advisers, and cultural advisers saying: “We have lost jobs, but that is not the only issue for us. What is happening is that the broad curriculum, which we are only just rolling out, is being undermined and narrowed because we are not getting the professional development to allow our teachers to do the magic that they are supposed to do.” So this is a direct contradiction between what the Minister said on Morning Report, that she is fulfilling all of the programme’s suggestions, and the reality that instead of greater professional development and a broad curriculum, less choice but more focus on local quality public education will get better outcomes for all.

The report’s information is worth reading because it talks about the importance of universalism and it talks about the importance of quality teaching and attracting quality teachers. No one is going to disagree with that. But the problem we have got is that the plan that the Government is rolling out in this country at the moment will not deliver those outcomes. That plan is all about national standards, which is called teaching to test, and they are neither national nor standard.

If you read the latest research that came out last week, you will find that the New Zealand Council for Educational Research and Martin Thrupp’s study both raised red flags about what is happening with national standards. They are very concerned about the narrowing of the curriculum. That is why the Programme for International Student Assessment results have to be taken in the context of what is not working in this country. What is not working is measuring the cow, not feeding the cow. There are many ways we could say that.

But the Government is not listening to teachers, parents, and principals. Seven percent of principals in the Council for Educational Research study said that national standards could be considered to be robust. That is 93 percent who said they could not be considered as robust—93 percent of principals in the study said that they could not consider the standards to be robust. What we have, with that kind of statistic, is evidence that one cannot build a political consensus if the teaching profession, the principals, and, indeed, many parents are deeply unhappy with the strategies that the Government has brought in since 2008, which are not strategies for promoting a broad curriculum, individual learning plans, and success for all students.

I heard the Minister list all the wonderful things that the Government is doing. I have heard her talk about those in glowing terms. But, unfortunately, the slippage and particularly the socio-economic data that is in the report show that the context in which the Government is trying to promote the global education reform movement is not working for it. That is why in the student assessment study the programme has identified this country as failing on socio-economic disadvantage strategies.

The programme is saying that we are not doing enough for the vulnerable students, whether it is through providing them with food, as my colleague Hone Harawira has promoted through his bill, or whether it is through providing them with a broad curriculum with better cultural inclusion strategies, more qualified teachers, and better early childhood education instead of cutting the ratios, which is what the Government has done to the qualifications of early childhood teachers. It cannot keep putting up these contradictions. On the one hand we have heard the Minister say that early childhood education is wonderful, but on the other hand the Government is going to cut the target of having 100 percent registered teachers. That is an unbelievable contradiction. If you talk to the early childhood sector, it is deeply distressed by what has happened as a result of that strategy.

Moving on to the compulsory sector, we have the collapse of professional development and the introduction of the most unpopular policies that the Government could get through. The Government could not get class sizes through, so it continued with national standards. Teachers are regularly telling me things like that one school is writing in school reports “working towards the standard” but another school is describing it as “well below”. There is nothing consistent or standard about the way that schools are describing these measures that they are supposed to impose. Some schools are actually doing two reports. They are doing one report for national standards and they are doing another report for what the parents actually want to know about their kids.

But I want to talk briefly, in the time I have left in this urgent debate, about educational solutions. The Green Party is totally passionate about creating solutions. Tomorrow I am hosting a forum at Parliament, in the theatrette, and you are all invited. I have some of the most innovative and creative people coming to talk about the solutions that the Green Party and others have to make sure this country works better. They are going to be about facing up to equity, about stopping the teach-to-test mentality, and about introducing and supporting professional development for the broad curriculum. They are going to be about looking at schools being genuinely accessible to all children, and genuinely free. These people whom I have brought together for tomorrow are about finding solutions to the challenges that the Programme for International Student Assessment has put out.

I think it is an important duty of all politicians—but particularly of the Greens because we actually think positive solutions and a fairer future are important for all children—that we start articulating what will work. The report from the Programme for International Student Assessment and the quote from Andreas Schleicher that I just gave from show that inequality is a fundamental issue. Unlike many other countries in the study, New Zealand’s results are getting worse. We have had in the last 5 years a serious increase in inequality and socio-economic disadvantage in terms of education. The OECD is being quite brave, because it has always been a great believer in choice, but it is now admitting that choice is failing. It is brave enough to admit that we actually need different strategies.

So tomorrow we are going to be talking about some of those strategies, including things like early childhood education, in the language of the sector’s own people. I look forward to talking about this further with you. We need positive solutions. We need a fair future and a good life for all our kids. We do not need the current Government’s strategies.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Can I first of all thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing this debate to go forward, because this is something of full concern to the country. It is a matter of great urgency. However, the first comments I want to make are that, unfortunately, statements that the Minister of Education has made today and the Prime Minister made yesterday show the ignorance that they have about the current system. Both the Minister and the Prime Minister have made statements that these children were not captured by national standards and that these children were not inside that system from 2008 forward. In 2008 this cohort, which is my son’s cohort, were actually in year 7. Year 7 and year 8 are primary school children. They were inside the national standards system.

💬 Hon Anne Tolley: They were not. They were introduced in 2010.

These children were primary school children at year 7 and year 8. They were covered by the primary school New Zealand curriculum and they were captured by national standards.

At the same time as this Government came in—and I note that Minister Anne Tolley is there, because it was Minister Tolley who brought national standards in and campaigned against teachers in 2008, the most vicious campaign against the teachers of New Zealand that has ever been seen. The devaluing that that Minister and this Government did in 2008 to the morale of our teaching community has never been seen before.

These teachers today, our teachers today, are the most undervalued and the most under attack as has ever been seen in our nation’s history. It is a shame that that is the National Government, which created the world-leading New Zealand curriculum in full consultation—in full consultation—with the sector and with total agreement with all parties inside this House and with every teacher who had to implement it. That was the way under the guidance of the Hon Dr Lockwood Smith—that was the way. If that was where we needed to go as a country, that is how it should have been done. But it was not done that way. There was an arrogant solution from behind closed doors by a Government that was trying to play up for a vote in 2008.

I was sitting on the board of trustees of Warkworth Primary School in 2008. I sat on that board with some parents who wanted to bring back ranking inside our classrooms. National standards are about as close as you can get without going back to ranking of students inside classrooms. It is the ranking of schools inside league tables, and it is the pressure of competition to try to create better outcomes instead of actually deciding to invest in professional development.

I want to take up the point that the Minister has made about the pronunciation of children’s names. I absolutely agree with her. But why, then, does the Minister continue to argue against compulsory professional development? Why is it that if we proved that the Te Kotahitanga programme had maximum outcomes for Māori students, we did not make it compulsory for every teacher in this country to take that professional development? Why is it that if we need to have our teachers in our classrooms—and, interestingly enough, we are importing them from other nations. We are not saying that they have to take any professional development about our culture, about our languages, and about the way New Zealanders are and the nuances that we have with our young people. We place them in front of the classroom. Why is it that this Minister says that professional development must remain contestable? It makes no sense to New Zealand First that if you have a teaching fraternity who you say must take professional development, why you do not make it compulsory and why you do not fund it appropriately.

We also reiterate that we agree with the Minister. We knew where these children were. It is interesting that the catchphrase at the moment for this Government is “a data-rich environment”. Why is it, then, that school entry data is not captured? Why is it that school entry data—knowing where these children are when they actually come in to the school, predominantly at 5, even though the law says that they do not have to enter our schools until 6—is not being captured? Why is it, then, when we already knew that we had children requiring Reading Recovery—and let us be clear that Reading Recovery is for those children who need that little push to get over the lip of their difficulty in order to be at the same place as their peers—that we still have Reading Recovery funding based on a decile rating? A decile 8 school gets funded for half a child no matter how many children actually require Reading Recovery. If we are front-ending the spend, why are we not putting that funding for that child as soon as we know that they need assistance? We already knew that, but that is not what is happening—that is not what is happening. Children are being identified as needing that support of Reading Recovery. At Warkworth Primary School 12 children get identified, say, in a year, and the school gets funding for half a child. So what does the school have to do? It has to fund-raise to try to put in that support for those children—and these are 5-year-olds and 6-year-olds we are talking about—or it needs to take from its operations grant or it does not provide it.

If the Minister and this Government were truly invested in lifting and front-ending the spend and lifting the performance of these young people so that by the time they enter the Programme for International Student Assessment exams they have that solidity of foundation, those two questions need to be answered. Why should professional development be contestable? And why are we not providing the support for a child as soon as it is identified, and it is identified under the assessments that have not changed?

The other part to this and why it is important is that this is our international reputation. We try to sell our education system overseas. So of course it is a great concern to everybody in this House, to everybody in New Zealand, and, I would have thought, predominantly to those schools that are over there now, marketing themselves for international students to come here because we have such a great education system. This is of concern.

When the Minister talks about growing up and people having a cross-party consensus, my experience in the 2 years that I have been in this House is that, actually, it is the National Party that never shows up. It is the National Party that never enters the conversation. I have been invited over the last 2 years to education panel after education panel, and there has been no National Party representative there. I take that back. Cam Calder—and Mr Ngaro, though that was actually something about social services, not education necessarily—came to the adult and community education panel and read statements from the Government. New Zealand First would love to have an opportunity to gather together all members in this House who are concerned about education, take the politics out of the room, and bring in the Principals’ Federation, the New Zealand Educational Institute, and the Post Primary Teachers Association. They care about these children. What about the boards of trustees? There are the parents. There is your parent body that you should bring into the room.

💬 Hon Judith Collins: They’re not all parents.

But, apparently, Miss Collins, we do not provide them with compulsory professional development, either. The Minister quite incorrectly stated that they were volunteers. These people are elected officials from their communities. The parents who sit on the boards of trustees have been elected from their parental community. Only the parental community can vote for them, and that is how they gain a seat. You have to have a child inside the school to be able to vote for anybody to be on to the board of trustees.

💬 Hon Judith Collins: Not to be a trustee.

Miss Collins obviously needs to go back and study the Education Act 1989, because she is completely mistaken around her abilities. The boards of trustees are the parental voice out of those communities and they should be in the room. Too often they have been ignored not only by this Government but by the education sector itself. It is those people who should also have compulsory professional development. Some money has been placed aside, and I commend the Minister for actually placing that money with the School Trustees Association, but we still have not recognised that these are the leaders of our schools. We still do not acknowledge that it is through their work and their leadership that they represent that community and the outcomes that that community chooses for its children. We must widen the success criteria, not narrow the success criteria, so that all our children can succeed inside the current State school system. Kia ora.

I am very pleased to speak in this debate. I think I share with many members in this House the concern about the Programme for International Student Assessment results. The first thing that I want to say is that every week I visit schools, I meet parents, I meet teachers, I meet principals, and I meet people who are absolutely passionate about our education system. But I think it is really important that when we enter this debate, we actually analyse what the Programme for International Student Assessment is telling us. There are a number of very clear things coming through from this report.

The first thing that I want to address is that we have had a number of things raised by the Opposition that are just not true. The first thing that we heard from Labour was that these results were actually because National had under-invested in our education system. Well, this is not true. We are spending $9.7 billion—the highest ever investment in Vote Education—with year-on-year increases. There has been a 40 percent increase in Vote Education since 2007. We are investing 20 percent of all public expenditure in education, which is the second highest in the OECD.

The second thing that we heard from Mr Hipkins was that this was actually all our fault. Well, actually, when you look at the Programme for International Student Assessment results, the reality is that these children came through between 2003 and 2012. What we need to do in this House is actually stop the blame game and accept that this is a serious issue, that it needs proper analysis, and that it is an education system issue, and all members of the House need to band together to actually look at how we address some of these issues.

The third thing we heard was that the reason for these Programme for International Student Assessment results was actually national standards—I know that we have just heard from Tracey Martin on that—but, actually, that is factually untrue. National standards were introduced in 2010. The reality is that the children in this cohort could not benefit from the targeting of national standards—knowing where children needed to be lifted—because national standards were not properly implemented through that period. They were introduced in 2010 and children could not have been targeted in that 2003 to 2012 period.

The next thing that we heard was that this is actually somehow because of charter schools and investment in private education. Again, I think many New Zealanders listening to this debate would realise that that is ridiculous.

So now we actually get to the point where we can ask what is going on here. I think that the most important thing that we need to remember is that for the last decade there has been a group of voices in this country that has said “We need change.”, right? Then there has been a group of other voices that has said “No, we need no change.” It has been our Government and our party that have been consistent in saying that actually the only way that we can ensure that every child gets the kind, of opportunities that we want for every New Zealander is to have change. That is why we are unashamedly proud of national standards.

The biggest thing that I say to many audiences, and to many teachers, principals, and parents when I get out in the community, is: “How can we possibly help those children if we don’t know where they are and we don’t know where we can help them?”. It is so simple. The reality is that now we do know where those children are and we are putting in resources to help them.

The second thing that we have really focused on is recognising that we do need to ensure that we raise the value of the teaching profession. That is about professional development. We did announce a review this week, and that is going to be very important in terms of raising the value of the profession and raising quality teaching. The next thing that we have done is that we have been really clear that the reform of the Teachers Council is incredibly important to ensure that the teaching profession as well has greater responsibility and a greater role in terms of lifting standards.

I think there has traditionally been a problem in New Zealand in terms of truancy and school-leavers. The other thing that the Programme for International Student Assessment results show, which I think is really interesting, is that more kids are staying at school, which is great. Early leaving exemptions fell to 313 last year from a peak of more than 4,187 applications in 2005. That is a 93 percent decrease under National. That is incredibly significant because how can we possibly improve our education system and raise opportunities for young people if they are not actually at school? I think there are some quite amazing results here in terms of areas like school- leavers.

There are some other very positive things happening in terms of national standards and professional development, but all people in this House need to realise that this is serious, and the only way that we can really do service to the rest of New Zealand is by taking responsibility and making change.

There can be no surer sign that you have got a Government that is on the run from its own record in education when you have the Minister of Education and an Associate Minister of Education stand up and say that we need to take the politics out of educational achievements—this from a party that campaigned hard to get into Government in 2008 on its headline policy of national standards. Well, National, you have failed your standards in education. This is a fail grade for what National is doing to our education system.

This report is seriously concerning for New Zealand. It has shown The programme for International Assessment that there are systemic failures within our education system, which are being exacerbated by the introduction of national standards. The dramatic drop that we have seen in the international standing of our education system should be a real wake-up call to the National Government. Its approach is simply not working, and the mad spinning to try to explain this away does nothing for our children, who are being failed by a Government that is systemically chipping away at what was once a world-class education system with a world-class curriculum and world-class teachers. This is being undermined by our own Government.

National’s attacks on education have seen our overall rankings fall. Let us go back and think about those numbers again: from seventh to 18th in science, from 13th to 23rd in maths, and from seventh to 13th in reading. This is from a Government that talks the big game on innovation. We have Minister Joyce standing up time and time again and telling us that the salvation for the New Zealand economy is going to be innovation, led by world-class science. Well, here is a revelation, Government: if you want an innovation-led economy that relies heavily on the sciences, you need to have our students performing at a world-class level in science and mathematics. You do not have them sliding down the OECD rankings and thinking that we can be a country that can perform on the international stage as a global innovator. It simply does not work. The maths does not compute.

We had the Minister of Education stand up and say that her Government is one that is interested in data, and an Associate Minister who said that we need to analyse. So I will put it together again for the Minister and the Associate Minister. Here is some data for you to analyse. In 2000 New Zealand was seventh in the OECD in mathematics. After your Government made its changes, we are now 23rd in the OECD.

Let us analyse that data, Government, and see where you come to. Let us look at science, for a Government that is supposedly committed to a science and innovation-led economy. In 2000 we were seventh in the OECD. After this Government has been in power for 5 years, in 2013 we have slid down the rankings to 18th.

What we have is a Government that has systemically chipped away at science within our education system. We have a Government that thought it was a smart move to cut technology funding in the 2012 Budget. The Government had to back-pedal on it because its own voters told it that it was a dumb idea. This is not a Government that matches its rhetoric on innovation with what it is doing in our education system. This is a Government that cut $35 million out of professional development for our teachers in Budget 2009. Yet the Minister will stand up and berate us with the fact that we need our teachers to continue learning. Yes, we do, and the Minister slicing off $35 million, which saw the demise of science advisers in schools, is not the way that New Zealand can have an innovation-led future.

💬 Dr Cam Calder: That was a very—

Order! I have not called the member yet. The member must wait to be called. I call the honourable member Dr Cam Calder.

No member of this House can take pleasure in these Programme for International Student Assessment results. It is a serious concern, but the Labour Party and its union cronies can have nothing to be proud of—nothing to be proud of. Dr Megan Woods mentioned 2000. You got your statistics wrong. You got your statistics wrong—2000 was after 9 years of a National Government where our successive Ministers of Education were relentlessly criticised by the Labour Party and its union acolytes for our education policy.

💬 Dr Megan Woods: Ten seconds to denigrate teachers.

It was after 9 years of a National Government that we had these statistics: third in the world for reading, fourth in the world for maths, and seventh in the world for science, Dr Megan Woods. There was a steady decline from 2000 to 2009 where Labour did absolutely nothing, nada, null, zero. It was seduced by the education unions’ sibilant assurances and weasel words that all was right with the education sector, that nothing needed to change, and, sadly, we have heard that again from the Opposition speakers. Labour was blinkered and steadfastly ignored the growing disparity between our best students, where we were up there with the rest of the world, and our poorly performing students and the relative underachievement of our Māori and Pasifika students.

After National came into office, New Zealand’s rating in 2009, after the supervised neglect, showed seventh for reading, 13th for maths, and seventh for science. You would think that, well, that is ostensibly not bad, but let us disaggregate them as we did. Disaggregated for reading, Pākehā are second, Asians are seventh, Māori are 34th equal between Slovenia and Slovakia, and Pasifika are down there at 44th, around Mexico. We saw this information. We actually thought about it, interpreted the results, and knew that this disparity and inequity were unacceptable, as was the decline. We set about doing something about it. Sadly, the unions continued to cry that all was well, aided and abetted by their Labour Party cronies, and ferociously fought and continue to fight every single measure that this perceptive National Government has introduced to arrest the decline and turn it round.

The 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment results are a saddening vindication of what we already knew about student achievement in New Zealand and have been working to address. That is, our highest-achieving students are comparable with those in the rest of the world. However, the whole education system needs to be better geared for all students to succeed, and it is wrong and foolish to believe that just the education unions know how to do this. If they knew how to do it, why are we in the state we are in? As we have been saying for the last 5 years, our education is not performing for all, and we are relentlessly focusing on refining it and ensuring that our work raises achievement for five out of five of our students so that they can unlock that potential that lies within themselves. This was a well-signposted decline, and it is appropriate and relevant to note that the 15-year-olds tested will not have benefited from many of the innovations that we have introduced. I am, of course, talking about national standards, the progress and consistency tool, and the Positive Behaviour for Learning programme, which this Government has introduced. Of course, those tested would not have benefited from the $1.5 billion assigned to early childhood education. Successful education, of necessity, must be infinitely varied in its engagement strategies. No one size fits all.

This Government is ahead of the game, and the multiple new strands in the cable of educational pathways we have introduced will help turn round this observed inherited decline in Programme for International Student Assessment performance. Our goal of 98 percent participation in early childhood education will ensure that our young people will get the best start, and our current rate of participation of 95.8 percent is the highest ever. National standards will mean that teachers and parents can intervene early when their children, and our children, are falling behind. As I said, the progress and consistency tool, PaCT, will be a huge help, enabling teachers to deepen their understanding of the New Zealand curriculum, know how their students are progressing, and know how they might support each individual student, and, indeed, it will provide detailed reporting to parents with examples and help engage students themselves in directing their own learning.

Lifting the achievement level of National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2—the numbers achieving at that level—will be important. The transition into further education and employment for most of our young people will be helped by that. In 2012, 74 percent of our school-leavers left with NCEA level 2, the highest rate ever. Our policies are already working. Thank you.

I am astonished that the Labour Party would initiate a snap debate on this topic this afternoon. It has to amount to one of the greatest political own goals that I have seen in my 5 years in this House. The reason is very clear, but I want to restate it, particularly for the benefit of anyone who may have just tuned in to the debate in the last 20 minutes.

What we are talking about here is clearly a result of the failure of policy initiated and enacted by Labour, because not one of the children whose results we are looking at in this particular exercise is in any way caught up by the policies that the National Government has taken in order to turn things round. The reality is that the children who did well under the Programme for International Student Assessment back in 2000 had been educated under a National Government in the 1990s. Then we had 9 years of the Clark Government, during which time Labour told us: “You don’t need to assess. You do not need to monitor. You do not need to have accurate reporting. All you need to do is trust that all will be well.”

Well, I want to remind members of this House that I was a teacher, and I am very proud to say I was a teacher. I was a secondary school teacher, and I found that to be one of the most rewarding and challenging things I have ever done in my life. We all know that teachers have a hugely challenging job. It is a dynamic, very complex, very rewarding, and, at times, very frustrating profession. So I acknowledge the huge job that is done by teachers the length and breadth of this country, and I am very proud to have worked with many of them and to consider many of them my friends.

I have to say, I was not impressed by the absolute baloney and propaganda I had to sit through last Friday night in a DVD put together by the New Zealand Educational Institute, which was nothing but a slanderous attack on the current Government and our Ministers. If that was a professional thing by a group of teachers, then I have to say thank goodness that more and more of them are turning away from the New Zealand Educational Institute. But let us not for one moment negate the important job that teachers are doing, and I do acknowledge them.

So why have we got to this point? Is it a lack of investment? Well, clearly, it is not, because successive Governments have increased the investment in education and this Government, I am very proud to say, has increased Vote Education by 40 percent since 2008. We are now investing 20 percent of all public expenditure in education, which is the second-highest percentage of any Government in the OECD invest in education. So it is not a lack of investment. Could it be the lack of a coherent and effective and relevant curriculum? No, that is not true either, because we know that the New Zealand curriculum is highly regarded internationally.

So it has to be something else—and it is a range of factors. There is no question about that. We all know that many children are dragged into school or pushed into school, and many of them do not get there. Truancy is a factor. Dysfunctional backgrounds are a factor. We know that there are a whole range of socio-economic factors that go into the mix. But what we have to do is say: “We’ve got to get them there and we are not going to accept the fact that some of them are doomed to failure.” And, unfortunately, that was the philosophy of the previous Government.

We are saying that one in five not achieving anything is not good enough, and we are determined to raise the bar. I salute Anne Tolley for the huge work she did, in the face of some appalling opposition and personal abuse, to show, when she was the Minister of Education, that we were serious in our commitment to the New Zealand public that we would raise achievements in education. We are doing it, and the results are showing through. In 5 to 10 years’ time, when we are having another debate in this House on the Programme for International Student Assessment results, I guarantee that we will be looking at better results.

I want to salute the Hon Hekia Parata for carrying on. She took the baton from Anne Tolley after the last election, and she has continued to do a good job. I want to tell you how incredibly proud I am to be a colleague of Hekia Parata. I have seldom seen any Minister subjected to such appalling abuse and such misinformation as she is. Whenever she comes to Hamilton, she makes a terrific impression. I have hosted her at a public meeting. The media is not interested in covering it, but she tackles head-on all the topics the people are interested in. She answers in a very full, coherent, and reasonable way all the questions. And I have to say, what is most important is that she is absolutely passionate about education. She speaks with the passion of one who really cares about what she is doing. She loves the job and she is achieving what we need her to. I am confident that we are on the right track under our policies, and I say shame on the previous Government for getting us to this position.

I just wish to advise the House—[Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Order! Order! Relax—relax. [Interruption] Order! Order! We have members interjecting on each other and it is not permitted under Speakers’ rulings. I call the honourable member Jacinda Ardern and advise the House that this is a split call.

Can I take National’s one? I am going to go for 10 minutes, Mr Assistant Speaker. If you buzz me at 5, then I will know it is split, and if it is not, then I will sit down.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): You have got a split call with the Mana Party.

It is my pleasure to rectify some of the absolute rot that has been flying around this House, not least the last call taken by someone who purported to be a part of the education system and who claimed—

💬 Tim Macindoe: Attack me personally because you don’t want to deal with the issues.

—that there was no testing in our education system under Labour. That is an absolutely ridiculous statement.

💬 Tim Macindoe: I’ve talked about the issues and you attack me.

If he was a teacher, he would know that I have not made a personal attack. I have simply pointed out that if Mr Macindoe was a member of the education system under Labour, he would know that there was testing, and there was.

My second point is that we heard within 10 seconds of Mr Calder’s speech and within Mr Macindoe’s speech blatant attacks on the teachers of this country who have taken it upon themselves to raise their concerns about the teaching environment. That was absolutely legitimate that they did. To be vilified as union hacks in doing so is an absolute disgrace.

The point I want to come to is this: the environment that that Government has talked about has been solely isolated to the teaching environment. We on this side of the House have raised our concerns with what has happened in the last 5 years, but what that Government refuses to acknowledge is that a child does not go to school and exist in a bubble. In the last 5 years that these children and these young people have been attending and been part of our education system, there have been other things going on in their lives that affect their educational outcomes.

The OECD acknowledges that—the OECD acknowledges that. I want to refer to the section from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment report that has not been talked about yet. It talks about the impact of inequality on educational outcomes. It states this: “New Zealand and Chinese Taipei are the only two high-performing countries/economies with below-average levels of equity in education outcomes. Targeting low-performing and/or disadvantaged students is a policy option for both of these countries, as the steepness of the gradient suggests that low-performing students could rapidly improve their performance if their socio-economic status is improved.” Chinese Taipei and New Zealand virtually get their own graphic indication of the fact that young people who are growing up with economic disadvantage are also performing badly and that inequality is having an impact on the kids who are tested in this report.

If that Government wants to stand there and say that the last 5 years have not mattered, it clearly has absolutely no idea about the reality that these kids are growing up with. To assume that the economic environment of their parents and of their families has no impact on their educational outcome is to turn a blind eye to the environment that they are living in. If the Government needed any more evidence, in the equity and outcomes section of the report there is also more discussion about disparities and performance related to socio-economic status, where, again, New Zealand is isolated as one of only two schooling systems where there is a complete disconnect, given the fact that we have a well-performing economy, but children who are living in absolute disadvantage are not performing—are not performing.

This is part of the problem. There is a lot more going on in our education system, which has been talked about by Chris Hipkins, but for that Government to ignore that its 5 years of government has not had an impact on those children is an absolute disgrace, because what kind of outcomes does it lead to? Well, we know from the reports that have come out of the Ministry of Social Development that material deprivation includes lack of access to educational tools. Kids without computers in homes, kids who cannot afford to go on school trips—these are all measured and we are failing them. Kids, for instance, who do not have more than two pairs of school shoes, kids who do not have uniforms and therefore do not go to school because they cannot afford them and they are ashamed, children who do not have enough food to take to school and sometimes stay at home because of it as well—if this Government was serious about improving educational outcomes, it would support Mana’s Education (Food in Schools) Amendment Bill. It would support that bill to demonstrate that it is worried about the environment that these children are growing up in, but clearly it thinks that it is all down to the fact that teachers are part of a union and that somehow that has been the failure of our education system. That Government needs to acknowledge the environment that young people are experiencing and then, perhaps, we might see some educational improvements.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā tātou katoa e te Whare, e noho tahi ana, e kōrero tahi ana ki tēnei kaupapa whakahirahira kai mua i a tātou i tēnei rā. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora tātou katoa.

[Greetings, Mr Assistant Speaker. Greetings to us all the House, seated together and speaking together to this important matter before us today. And so I acknowledge and greet you collectively, and thank us all.]

National’s education policies have just taken a major hammering in an international assessment that has heavily downgraded New Zealand students’ achievements in maths, science, and reading, yet all the Minister of Education can do is trot out some irrelevant philosophical rubbish and tell the Opposition to stop playing the blame game. But the ugly reality—and I have not heard people mention it too often and somebody needs to say it—is that New Zealand’s education ranking has fallen from seventh to 18th in science, from 13th to 23rd in maths, and from seventh to 13th in reading, according to a report released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development last night. Yet this Government point-blank refuses to accept that the deteriorating test scores and New Zealand dropping out of the top 10 are because of its out-of-touch education policies.

The Programme for International Student Assessment—PISA—highlights the fact that National’s approach has increased inequities between schools. It notes that the gap between test scores in high-decile and low-decile schools is bigger than ever before, and ranks this country, New Zealand, firmly in the bottom third of OECD countries in terms of equity ratings. Yet despite all of the Government’s hot air about lifting the achievement of all learners and especially those in low-decile schools, it has done precisely nothing to address the fact that poverty and inequality matter hugely to learning achievement.

Instead, this Government has done everything it can to entrench and exacerbate poverty and inequality, like cutting funding to early childhood education and State schools while increasing funding to private schools and now charter schools and grinding down the already low incomes and living conditions of struggling whānau. This Government continues to refuse to acknowledge the fact that poverty and inequality matter at all, even though it has had ample evidence from experts about how important it is to address equity issues if it seriously wants to address educational underachievement. For example, we know that the Government currently helps to feed children through KidsCan and KickStart Breakfast, but we also know that 80,000 children are still going to school hungry. All of those children are our children, and they are going hungry. We know—because all of the facts tell us so—that hungry children of whatever race, colour, or creed simply do not learn well. We know too that a Government-funded food programme, as spoken of in the Programme for International Student Assessment report, in low-decile schools has been recommended as an immediate way to help address child poverty, raise educational achievement, and improve child health by a range of groups and organisations right here in New Zealand in recent years, and most recently by the Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty in its final report released in December last year.

We know too that my Feed the Kids bill—whether it is mine or David Shearer’s Education (Food in Schools) Amendment Bill—aims to provide free meals to all students in decile 1 and 2 schools, and won broad support from groups and organisations right across the country, including the Child Poverty Action Group, Every Child Counts, Unicef New Zealand, Save the Children, IHC, the Methodist and Anglican churches, Te Rōpū Wāhine Māori Toko i te Ora, the New Zealand Educational Institute, the Post Primary Teachers Association, the New Zealand Principals’ Federation, the CTU Rūnanga, the New Zealand Nurses Organisation, and the Māori Medical Practitioners Association. Yet this Government still refuses to acknowledge the importance of equity, of nutrition, and of the need for a fully Government-funded food in schools programme.

The Programme for International Student Assessment report also recommended increasing equity, increasing resources, and providing help for poor children, but this Government has chosen to put its energy into other areas like national standards, private education, and charter schools. The Programme for International Student Assessment report pointed out that disadvantaged schools struggle to attract qualified teachers and that poor kids suffer as a result.

It also pointed out the obvious fact that high-performing countries—I have not heard the bell, Mr Assistant Speaker—pay teachers well and actually choose that as a policy priority over reducing class size, and that they also put a lot of focus into ensuring that high-performing teachers actually get placed in socially disadvantaged schools. Yet what does this Government do? It continues to blame teachers and the education system. It attacks teachers unions, criticises teachers’ standards, cuts back on curriculum advisers, and even goes so far as to suggest that 6-year-old kids rate teachers, all the while paying those teachers through a broken Novopay system, the sum result of which has been to confuse, confound, and demoralise teachers in what has been widely recognised as one of the best teaching collectives in the world. Tēnā koutou. Kia ora tātou katoa.

Excuses, excuses, and more excuses. Every time we talk about education, what do we get from Labour and its close friends the unions? All we have heard for the last few years is excuses, excuses, and all the while our students have been falling behind—slowly, steadily, and surely falling behind the rest of the world. It is always someone else’s fault. It is never Labour’s fault. It is never that Government’s fault. And when we dared to suggest that we actually follow and measure a child’s progress and talk to the parents about that child’s progress, what did we get from the unions and from Labour—nothing, nothing helpful, nothing constructive. They fought it actively every step of the way. They said to us: “We don’t need to measure anything.”

I have heard principals stand up and ask “Why are we measuring kids’ progress, because, actually, if they fall behind a little bit in those first years, they will catch up when they’re ready”. I have had parents say to me that they have been told time and time again by their teachers: “Don’t worry about little Johnny if he’s not learning to read yet, because he’ll catch up when he gets a bit older.” Well, they have not caught up.

Now that the evidence is clear, Labour and the teacher unions should be hanging their heads in shame, because they have failed those kids. There are no excuses. They have to take responsibility. They sat there for 9 years as a Government and believed it when the unions told them that everything was OK. The union mantra was “We know who these kids are who are failing.” And I heard Chris Hipkins say that again this morning—“We know who these kids are who are failing.” Well, my question is always “What did you do for 9 years while you watched those kids fail?”, because this Programme for International Student Assessment result is telling us that you watched them continue to fail and you did nothing. You had huge surpluses. You could have done something and you did nothing.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: She is the guilty woman. She cut the professional development.

You were a Minister, Mr Mallard, and you were responsible—after National had been in Government.

I have a quote on my whiteboard on my office. I have kept it because to me it sums up everything that is wrong with the New Zealand Educational Institute and the New Zealand Principals’ Federation in this country. It was from a principal who was a member of both. In a letter to me he said: “The implied message from these national standards is that everyone in New Zealand has to be literate and numerate. What a sad place school will be if this type of nonsense continues.” That is from a New Zealand primary school principal, a leading principal in both the New Zealand Educational Institute and the New Zealand Principals’ Federation, who does not think it is important for kids to learn to read and write. That is why our prisons are overflowing with prisoners who cannot read and write.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Go to Kimi Ora and say that. The Minister’s talking nonsense.

This member should take a call if he wants to take part in this debate instead of casting aspersions across the House, and no one is really interested. That is why our prisons are full of prisoners who cannot read and write. They have not been able to hold down a job and they have no skills that would make them employable, and that is why we are now facing the truth about our education system— that our 15-year-olds are not the best in the world any more because, actually, when it came down to it Labour did not care. It did not care enough to stand up to the teacher unions and demand change in an education system that was failing kids.

Well, on this side of the House we do care. We have put students and their parents first, we have stood up to the unions, and we have introduced a range of changes designed to address the failure that we all knew was coming—because we did know that this day was coming. We were warned. I went off to the OECD as Minister of Education and it told me that it had warned the previous Labour Government too that the education system in New Zealand was getting complacent, that it was not based on evidential learning—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: That’s a lie—didn’t tell me that.

That is not a lie. Mr Schleicher warned the Labour Government that it had to make systemic changes and he warned me. We were putting in national standards and the OECD has continued to back the changes that this Government has made. But it is not going to happen overnight, and I said in 2010, when we introduced those standards, that it could take 5 years or more before we saw substantial change in our system. I said in 2010 that there had been no change in our reading performance since 2000—that was 9 years under a Labour Government—and no change in maths since 2003. So we should not be surprised when we see the results that we are facing here today.

Remember that national standards were introduced by the Labour Government because one in five of our kids in school was failing. In other words, the schools were failing them. The education system was failing them and the Labour Government had failed them. Education Minister after education Minister did not have the courage to stand up to the unions and make the changes they knew needed to be made. Minister Mallard knew that there needed to be changes made and the union actually backed him down. He did not go through with what he knew needed to be done.

This Government introduced the Youth Guarantee, which was designed to give free education to students up to age 18 who had dropped out of the schooling environment. They had been deserted by Labour, whose only answer was to lift the school-leaving age. Well, actually, those kids were not at school anyway. They were some of the 30,000 truants every day from our schooling system. This Government tackled those kids with some innovative programmes between secondary and tertiary institutions—things like trades academies, service academies, and tertiary education for trades education in tertiary institutions, and now we are seeing over 10,000 of those young people re-engaged in education and getting skills and training and qualifications. These are fantastic results for kids whom Labour abandoned.

Labour continues to back the unions over kids. We have heard it from Labour members today. They want no change in the system. They are promising to roll back all the changes that National has made over the last 5 years should they ever—for the unfortunate sake of the country—reach Treasury benches. So they want more of the same as through those years of the 2000s when kids were being failed by the education system. Is that really what they are promoting? Well, I welcome these Programme for International Student Assessment results because they show that National has been right all along. The education system did need a systemic change. We have been right to shake up the education system on behalf of kids and on behalf of their parents.

I am still approached by parents in airports who say “Thank goodness you guys stood up for us and made sure that we got good information about what is happening to our children early on in their school time so that we can make sure that we support them and we help them learn while they are in those all-important primary years.” So all I can say to Labour is “Just get out of the way.”, because this side of the House is absolutely determined, as the Minister of Education has said, to make sure that five out of five kids succeed in our schools. We have got a lot of work to do and we want those people out of our way.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Throughout the speech of the Hon Anne Tolley, the Hon Trevor Mallard was making a number of interjections that were clearly unparliamentary and offended Speakers’ rulings 42/2 and 3. I would ask that he be asked to withdraw them.

Can I just say to the member that if there is offence taken, it should be taken at the time, during the course of the debate, not afterwards.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I did take offence at some of the comments that were made. I was in the middle of a speech, and, of course, if you interrupt your speech to address comments that are being made across the House, they are recorded in Hansard. I did not want those recorded in Hansard, but I do take offence. It was extremely unparliamentary language and insults that were being hurled across the House.

Can I thank the honourable member and just say that this is a robust Parliament and it is a wide-ranging debate. The Minister should have taken a point of order at the time. That is the way it operates in this Parliament.

💬 Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Speaking to the point of order—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I have already ruled.

💬 Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Can I raise a new point of order?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Yes, you can raise a new one.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Separate from the issue of whether a personal insult was made, those interjections were not rare, witty, or to the point; they were actually continuous barracking to try to put the speaker off her stride, and you should have ruled—

Can I just say again—look, we have a robust Parliament here. This is open for debate. It is a very passionate issue for all the members involved, and one has to expect that in a healthy democracy.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.