Estimates Debate — Education Sector

Members, we now move to votes in the education sector—volume B.5, volume 2. The question is that Vote Education, Vote Education Review Office, and Vote Tertiary Education stand part of the schedules.

Education is a priority for the National Government because we understand that a key to growing a stronger economy is a skilled, creative, and productive workforce. A high-quality education is essential for such a workforce. That is why this Government has increased the education budget year after year. Budget 2015 will take total spending on early childhood, primary, and secondary education to a record $10.8 billion in 2015-16. Along with this increase of funding, this Government has also spent a lot of time and effort on encouraging participation, improving achievement rates, and also fostering collaboration across the education sector.

To have a world-class education what we need is not just money, time, or effort but also a vision, and here I would like to congratulate the Hon Hekia Parata. Clearly the Hon Hekia Parata has a vision and has made it her mission to realise the vision. The vision is that in New Zealand every young person in every school every day will get the best possible education so that they can be successful.

To achieve that, this Government has set a series of education targets—for instance, in 2016, 98 percent of children starting school will have participated in quality early childhood education. In 2017, 85 percent of 18-year-olds will have achieved National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2 or an equivalent qualification. We are on the right track to meeting those targets. The national early childhood education participation rate is now over 96 percent, less than 2 percent short of the 98 percent target we have set for early childhood education participation by 2016. By 2014 over 81 percent of 18-year-olds achieved at least NCEA level 2, less than 3 percent short of the 85 percent target for 2017. The targets are important because we want to see more kids starting earlier, staying longer, and leaving with better qualifications. Budget 2015 will consolidate what we have achieved with extra funding, such as an extra $74.9 million over 4 years to cover the cost of more children attending early childhood education services than ever before.

What we need to realise our vision is not just funding but also modern concepts of education. We have, therefore, challenged old assumptions and also developed new approaches, tailoring what we do to match the needs of our kids. I once followed Minister Parata to visit a school in Christchurch. It was an eye-opening experience. What I saw was a completely new setting of the classroom environment and also a new way of teaching, which was totally different from my understanding. Much of the new school environment and also the new way of teaching is based on modern technology. For instance, I did not see a blackboard or a whiteboard. What I saw was a big screen in the classroom. Modern technology means more investment in modern infrastructure for schools. Budget 2015 commits a total of $373.9 million to improving our schools’ infrastructure over the next 4 years.

I would like, finally, to say a few words about tertiary education. First of all, congratulations to the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment, the Hon Steven Joyce, on the wonderful job he has done. Budget 2015 provides a further $112.3 million to boost tertiary education and skills. Thank you.

It is great to have the opportunity to follow the Education and Science Committee chair, Dr Jian Yang, and talk about this, as he says, very, very important part of the Government’s work, which is growing the skills of young New Zealanders, in particular, for the 21st century economy. I am going to focus my comments on the tertiary education system, where the Government has been delivering very, very good results in terms of increased numbers of full-time students, increased levels of study at the higher levels, and increased numbers of graduates over the last 5 years on—

💬 Hon David Cunliffe: What planet is the Minister on? Numbers are dropping.

This Government has delivered far more while maintaining its investment in tertiary education. The member opposite is now making the point that numbers are starting to drop, which is, of course, correct. As the economy recovers there are fewer people in full-time study.

But this Government has taken the decision to invest any money saved back into the system in areas such as engineering, science, and so on, areas where we need further investment to ensure we deliver the best possible results for our students. The whole sector is working very hard on the tertiary education strategy, which runs from last year through until 2019. That has half a dozen themes. I thought I would just cover them very briefly because they are important.

The first one is delivering skills for industry. We have heard a lot of talk in this Chamber tonight about the importance of diversifying our economy, which is absolutely correct and it is exactly what this Government is doing. In order to do so, we need more people with skills in engineering, in information and communications technology, in the physical sciences, in the agricultural sciences, and so on. That is exactly what we are delivering with the increased investment in tuition subsidies in those areas. We have also done a major reorganisation of the industry training system, which has streamlined and increased the efficiency of that system and is now delivering many more tradespeople who are actually achieving qualifications rather than just being on the list that the previous Government used to have. Those people are doing particularly well.

The second priority is getting at-risk young people into a career. That is hugely important. We have a number of initiatives in that space—obviously the Youth Guarantee and trades academies. This Government has put more into this space than any others. It is another of the areas where we inherited a situation where there had been a lot of hand-wringing but not a lot of action, and now there is very, very significant action in this area.

We also have action in the Māori and Pasifika Trades Training Initiative, which is the latest initiative. It also coincides with priority three, which is boosting the achievement of Māori and Pasifika. The Māori and Pasifika Trades Training Initiative is an innovative concept that in some ways is back to the future, in that it picks up the young Māori cadetships that we had many, many years ago. It supplies whanau support. In the case of Pasifika it supplies community and Pasifika church support. That is getting a whole lot of younger people, in particular, into jobs, into industry training, and into apprenticeship training.

The fourth priority is improving adult literacy and numeracy through the intensive literacy and numeracy fundings and the workplace literacy and numeracy. We are going through a process at the moment of assessing how those are going. We have increased the amount in those areas. We have put a big emphasis on mainstreaming, if you like, the literacy and numeracy at the lower levels of study. That has meant many, many thousands of people have been properly assessed for literacy and numeracy training. That work is ongoing in terms of providing second-chance learners the opportunity for better skills of literacy and numeracy while they are in the workplace.

The fifth priority is strengthening research-based institutions. I understand there have been some comments about the Performance-based Research Fund tonight. That has been hugely important in investing and increasing science funding. This Government has taken that from $250 million a year up to $300 million a year. The centres of research excellence have gone from, I think, six to 10. So we are putting in some big investments—things like the Marsden Fund, which is another portfolio but, nevertheless, those are big investments. Our total science spend has gone from around $780 million a year to $1.5 billion. You will not hear that from the Opposition, but, actually, that is what is going on.

💬 Andrew Bayly: How much was that?

Seven hundred and eighty million - odd dollars; then we came up to about $1.5 billion in the 2015-16 year. So those investments are very important.

This Government and its Budget may use clever politics, but it has no plans to address our long-term challenges facing New Zealand. It promised a Budget surplus and on Budget day it did not deliver on that promise.

We believe that every New Zealander should be entitled to access quality public education of the highest standard throughout their entire lives. Quality education ensures that every Kiwi, regardless of who they are, where they come from, and whether or not they are rich or poor, can achieve their full potential to contribute to our society and our economy.

This Government claims, as we have just heard from the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment, that changes to tertiary education are providing results. It is great for people to get qualifications, and we expect to see constant changes and improvements over the years in this particular area, but what we are also seeing is universities and polytechnics being required to do so much more with much less money. National has been underfunding the tertiary education sector for far too long, and the cracks are beginning to show.

On Budget day it was announced—as we heard the chair of the Education and Science Committee address before—that there is $130 million worth of operating funding over the next 4 years for tertiary education. But when the tertiary education Minister was questioned about this when he came to the select committee, he conceded that only $7 million of this funding was actually new money. The rest of the balance was made up of reallocations, and it is not new funding at all. That is not being straight-up with New Zealanders.

New Zealand now ranks close to the bottom of the OECD on tertiary education spending per student. We are behind Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, and a few other countries. We are well below the OECD average. Under this Government the total spending on tertiary education has fallen from $3.194 billion in 2009 to $3 billion in 2015. We need further investment in tertiary education, not radical restructuring to align our universities and our polytechnics with the Government’s corporate view of the world in which it interferes with academic freedom, democracy, and independence.

Under this Government we have around 70,000 young New Zealanders who are not in employment, education, or training—or the “neet” numbers. This number is just way too high. It is not acceptable. Under this Government, 40 percent of our total unemployed are young people. Again, it is just unacceptable. This is the highest percentage of total unemployment of any youth population whatsoever in the OECD countries. I do not know about you, Mr Chairperson, but I think that this statistic is really quite shameful for a country like New Zealand. We have one of the best educational systems in the world, and yet we have 40 percent of our total unemployed being young people. This surely is something that must be addressed. This Government is focused on the 1,600 or so 16 to 17-year-olds, but I think that this focus is wrong. The focus should instead be on the 70,000 or so young people who are currently not in employment, education, or training.

The safety of our children should be paramount and it should be the main objective when the Government considers funding for school buses, not cutting costs. So buried in the details of this year’s Budget is $90 million worth of funding cuts for school transport. We remember the horror ride for Green Bay High School students one afternoon when they had a relief driver. The safety of our children when riding in school buses should definitely not be one of those things that the Government looks at in terms of cost-cutting. I do not know of any parent—not one—who would want their children to experience or to go through a similar traumatic experience like the one that these Green Bay students went through because of this Government’s cost-cutting measures.

Kia ora, Mr Chair. It was incredibly interesting earlier today at question time to see the Hon Anne Tolley stand and talk about the 50-millionth—or the 5-millionth or whatever it was—breakfast that the National Government is now taking credit for—

💬 Andrew Bayly: Nine million over 5 years.

Whatever it is, she was taking 100 percent credit for it. But I went to a breakfast meeting of principals when national standards was introduced and the Hon Anne Tolley was the Minister of Education. Decile 1 and decile 2 principals said “Minister, we cannot educate these children until they are fed and until they are clothed.”, and that Minister said: “Don’t give me your excuses—don’t give me your excuses.” Yet today the same Minister, now in a different portfolio, is now taking credit for the 5-millionth—or whatever it was—breakfast and lauding the fact that those children—[Interruption]—no, wait, Mr Smith; wait, Mr Smith—are now having better academic outcomes. It is unbelievable to see that today—unbelievable.

The other thing that was incredibly interesting just then was Mr Joyce standing up and saying: “In this Budget, in education funding in these appropriations, we have got a focus for students on 21st century education.” Not in Northland, apparently, according to Hekia Parata—not in Northland. There is no digital aspiration there. There are no lawyers, there are no accountants, there is no higher education, and there is no greater reach for these students. Hekia Parata said—today—that the schools in Northland need to be teaching those students how they can be forestry workers and fisheries operators and how to work in tourism and marine manufacturing, because they need to have an education that equips them only to go and be an employee in their local area for the low-paid wages that those areas have.

Where is the aspiration, supposedly, out of this great 21st century economic drive towards education? Not in Northland, apparently—not for these students. No, no, no, no. Apparently in Northland, apart from the fact that you can travel on roads that nobody is going to fix up, at the same time the Government is going to give you just enough education so that you can go and get a job on a fishing boat. There is nothing wrong with getting a job on a fishing boat, but where is the aspiration from this Government for Northland? Not in this Budget—not in these appropriations.

I will tell you something else that is very interesting. This Government has an underspend—and again, that member over there said: “Wait for another month to get a surplus.” Wait for another month to get a surplus—they certainly will. There is $205 million worth of underspend in education from this Government. Why? Because it is desperate to get a surplus. It is desperate to get a surplus, and it is going to short-change special needs children across this country—

💬 Paul Foster-Bell: That’s not true.

—special needs children across this country. There is a zero Budget for gifted and talented children, Mr Foster-Bell—a zero Budget for gifted and talented children who are in the spectrum of special needs, but you can get it if you have got behavioural problems. According to this Government, if you have got behavioural problems—if you are gifted but you are naughty—the Ministry of Education will give you some money. It will give you some money. But if you are gifted and need to be extended or need to have programmes like the One Day School or other programmes such as that, there is a zero Budget in here, and who removed it? Who removed the Budget spend that was there? The National Government. Who took away “well above” national standards? The National Government. So, you see, it is very interesting for National members to stand up and say that they invest in education.

Here is another thing that they invest in. They talk about the international student body, they talk about these new information and communications technology schools, and so on and so forth. I went to a private training establishment provider the other day. This Government has capped domestic hospitality and chef students at 300 only, inside that organisation, but there are 600 international students. It is a growth industry for this country and there is a skills shortage throughout the world, and yet this Government caps domestic students. This Government will not put a budget around domestic students but will allow international students en masse into this country to subsidise the education that it should be providing for New Zealanders.

There are 70,000 students who are not in education, employment, or training—“neets”—and there were 70,000 international work visas given out in the last year. There are 70,000 New Zealand students who are “neets” and 70,000 international students who got work visas in the last year from this Government. This Government does not invest in its own people, this Government does not invest in its education, and this Government has no aspiration for these young people unless you are in an urban area, and then you can get not only some sort of spend; you can get a road to it.

I am very pleased to speak. That speech from Tracey Martin was a load of rubbish. I normally rate that member very highly, but the facts are these: under our Government for the last 6 years we have successively increased the education budget—$10.8 billion in the most difficult financial times. Every single year we have increased the education budget. Secondly, when it comes to our most vulnerable students, whether that is students who have special education difficulties or whether that is those students who have had real issues in terms of numeracy and literacy, this Budget is better than ever for them.

Let us walk through it. If we look at early childhood education participation, particularly around Māori and Pacific young people, that is up. That is up by 4 to 5 percent. That is incredibly significant, and that is about the future of our country. When we actually look at the facts in terms of participation around early childhood education, we are absolutely on track for 98 percent. We have got more money going into early childhood education—I think there is $75 million in this Budget. That is about doing everything we can to make sure that all students in this country are successful.

When it comes to special education, this Budget is great in terms of special education. We have got $40 million going into ongoing resourcing scheme funding. That means that for the 500 young people who have and need that additional support, whether that is teacher-aide time, whether that is physiotherapy, or whether that is speech language therapy, we are putting the resource into them.

I want to acknowledge the Hon Hekia Parata. I think this is a great Budget in terms of what she has done. She has real vision, and she is investing in some of our most vulnerable students. The Budget also includes $24 million for additional class support. That is 1,500—that is the first phase of another group of students who need that additional help in terms of our education system. So when that member tells us that somehow we have underfunded education, well, it is a 26 percent increase in special education. Under our Government there is $500 million more for some of our most vulnerable students.

When it comes to trade academies there is more money than ever. So when that member says that we are not aspirational for Northland, that is a complete load of rubbish. What are we doing in terms of modern learning and education environments for Northland? Well, the other day I found out that we are so far ahead of schedule in terms of the roll out of Network for Learning—that is fast, uncapped data paid for by the Crown; a real passport to the future for these students—that 600,000 students are now connected. That is students in Northland. That is a Government that is aspirational for those people in Northland. That is real, actual resources going to those students in Northland. That is on the back of $700 million of investment in both ultra-fast broadband and uncapped data, ensuring that our students are equipped for the future.

When it comes to school property, over 60 percent of our schools were more than 40 years old: we had leaky buildings, we had a whole range of design issues, and we had a whole lot of relocatables. What have we done? We have invested billions of dollars in terms of upgrading these schools and major redevelopments. I can confirm in this Budget that we have got hundreds of millions of dollars as well going not only into new schools but also into ensuring that we can fix some of those really old schools. Today I announced Lepperton School in North Taranaki. We have 14 schools through our major redevelopment programme, we have got more coming, and this is on the back of hundreds of millions of dollars as well in terms of investing in growth.

So in places like Auckland, Hamilton, and Queenstown this Budget is good because we are actually building those schools and we are putting those classrooms where they need to be, and we are doing that ahead of the curve. From my perspective we are investing more than ever in both school property and modern learning environments, but we are actually doing so much for vulnerable students. So we are a Government that is not only aspirational and focused on the future for those students but absolutely focused on some of our most vulnerable students. That is crystal clear in this Budget through the increase in terms of special education funding, through the increase in early childhood participation funding, and through a range of other projects from the gateway assessment programme, which is about ensuring that 3,800 needy children get access to early childhood and schooling services, to the Year 9 Plus trial, which allocates $2.2 million to educational champions.

We are a Government that has a strong social conscience and that is also very focused on the economy. To hear from members opposite that we are not aspirational about students and that we are not investing in them is an absolute load of rubbish. This Government has successively increased the education budget every year since we have been in Government.

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Kia ora tātou katoa. It is great to take a call on education because I do not believe that there is anyone in the Education and Science Committee who is not interested and concerned about aspects of education. Often members of the public say to us: why do you not all put aside your differences and just work together? But I think, listening to the debate tonight, there are some underlying themes that make it clear why we do not always agree. One of those is the pedagogical vision of what education is for, and I think we have heard very strongly from the Government that it is aspirational, in its terms, for education and that the purpose of education is to serve the economy.

That is not the view of the Green Party. The Green Party believes that education is a whole lot more than serving the economy and that, in fact, the economy should serve its people. Education is about lifelong learning for all people, and it is not about—with due respect to the chair of the Education and Science Committee, Dr Jian Yang—getting them into education earlier for longer. It is actually about acknowledging that education needs to be of quality and that the goal of education is equity. That is a very different pedagogical goal, and that is why we have problems with the Government’s obsession with targets and assessment, which is an educational model that is reductionist and unsuccessful in other countries.

The current education estimates and the Minister at the select committee were all about targets, targets, targets. Why is that a problem? It is a problem because the early childhood education sector may be about to reach 96 percent to 98 percent participation, but when I asked the chief executive of the ministry about quality, he said: “That will come later. We are going to get participation first and then we will find a way to figure out how to improve quality.” So what in fact we have got is a huge push, including through the Work and Income system, to make parents place their children under the age of 5 into early childhood education, but quality has not yet been sorted out, people. So how comfortable do we feel about making sure that our little children are all getting this brilliant start in life, when there is no commitment to quality?

Therefore, we have got the whole spectrum in early childhood education from the absolutely inspiring and wonderful—often smaller in number, high-ratio trained teacher centres plus the kōhanga and playcentre, where they have succeeded in holding on to fantastic whānau engagement, which is increasingly hard in this economy—and then we have got the opposite, which are basically baby barns, where people who do not have a choice because they have no public transport and no resources are forced to use the baby barn down the road, the large franchise, the commercial model. So the education sector is torn between a genuine commitment to learning, because it enhances our humanity as well as our society as well as our economy, and making sure we meet targets.

This Government has pushed this right through to national standards and through to the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). So national standards—again, another one of those measurables that actually does not deal with the unmeasurable, which is children, because children all learn at different rates. We have this system with NCEA as well, where we are claiming we are going to get to the target of 80 percent achieving level 2, but again questions are being asked by academics about whether we have lowered standards in order to meet the target; what the real quality is of what is happening in our secondary schools.

So if we are concerned about public quality education, it is not enough to spout the numbers and talk the rhetoric. It is absolutely not enough. We actually have to know whether early childhood education is of quality, because the most important years that we pay lip service to are our small children. We have to know that kids are getting lunch as well as breakfast, which is where the Green Party has stood strong on feeding children properly, and not saying that if charities and the Government want to have a bit of a partnership and have breakfast, that is OK; they do not need lunch. Well, of course if we lifted wages and had a decent economy, then the parents could afford it, but right now, as was shown in the House today in our question on inequality, we have a long way to go on that, so we still need to feed our children in schools. That is why we need a decent school lunch programme.

Honestly, there are some inspiring programmes that schools are leading, but they are paying for it themselves in many instances. Sometimes teachers are paying for it, sometimes communities have stepped up, but there is no consistency and there is a real need for a decent, State-supported lunch programme that is flexible and school and community-led.

It is a pleasure to take a second brief call in this debate and to focus on education issues, where once again we see that we have a Government that is long on promises, long on rhetoric, and not delivering in the reality. Let us take members opposite at their word. I think all parents care for nothing more than the well-being of their children, and I believe members opposite are sincere in their wish to see our children succeed. The question is whether the programme that they are enacting is going to deliver on that promise.

Let us first look at the compulsory education sector and then at the tertiary sector. The Government has been known for two great changes to compulsory education: national standards and charter schools. National standards have been panned around the world. They cause people to teach to the test. They are the exact opposite of what a modern millennial economy demands, which is that you can get basic education off the internet but you need to learn to think critically. That is why teaching to the test—one-size-fits-all, absolute achievement rather than relative improvement—is a road to pedagogical nowhere. In my electorate, where 40 percent of my constituents were not born in New Zealand—and for many, many students English is not a first language—having an English-based national standards, even if it were objective, even if it were specific, even if it were moderated objectively, which it is not, would make no sense at all. The Government is taking education backwards.

The second great proposal of this Government is charter schools, and charter schools make no sense. More money is given per student by miles, but the school does not have to teach the curriculum, the teachers do not have to be licensed, they are not subject to the Official Information Act, and in many cases the contracts the Government has entered into are so brain-dead that the assets are not even secured. For example, a Whangarei charter school has $2.5 million in taxpayer funding unaccounted for. Another Auckland charter school was guaranteed funding for 160 places but maxed out at 120 with, as far as I am aware, no recovery. More and more costs are being passed to parents, and too many parents cannot afford them because of the rapidly growing inequalities in our society. If a kid is hungry he or she cannot learn. Let us feed our kids, let us give them a decent start, and let us have an education system that actually teaches what kids are going to need in this 21st century.

Then we go on to tertiary education, and here once again the Government is, sadly, not being straight with New Zealanders. From the Minister’s own lips, as recorded in the report of the Education and Science Committee, there was no $113 million “further funding” for education. By the Minister’s own admission there was only $7 million, and that is gross of an increased tax take from the Inland Revenue Department, which actually makes it negative. But even if it were $7 million, that is a massive real-terms cut to tertiary education. The tertiary system is underfunded. It has a micro-managing Minister who lacks the credibility to get the funding, and he lacks the plan to deliver it.

The institutions in this sector are a mess. This Government removed the strategy and policy function from the Tertiary Education Commission. It now says it just operationalises things. Where has the strategy function gone? It is not found in the Ministry of Education—it is focused on the compulsory sector. In reality, what there is sits in the Ministry of—wait for it—Business, Innovation and Employment. That is, as others have said, a reductionist view of education and one that is patently not working. For the individual student, pathways are not there to the jobs of the future. Why not? Because the funding cuts are biting.

The Government has put an arbitrary 7-year limit on student loans—the famous “7 EFTS” policy, which means that even 40 percent of medical students cannot get funding for their last 1 or 2 years of study. For other recognised long degrees—double degrees or doctoral courses—the loans run out before the degree is awarded. That might be fine if you are a silver spoon brigade kid, but if you are an average kid from an average family, our country and you will be the poorer.

It is a rather intimidating prospect to follow on from that very learned and literate member, one of the most distinguished alumni of not only Otago University, my old university, but also Harvard. Mr Cunliffe is a very literate man. Does he love words? Yes, he does. Does he love the sound of his voice saying those words? Absolutely. But we here tonight are talking about Vote Education in this appropriations debate. I think that this Government is doing an excellent job in improving the educational standards offered in the New Zealand public system.

Mr Cunliffe asked a couple of rhetorical questions in his contribution this evening. I will concede that he gave us the benefit of the doubt in thinking that we were motivated from a position of taking the best interests of New Zealand’s learners, children and students to heart, and that is the case, I can assure Mr Cunliffe. But he did raise the question as to whether our policies would implement the goals of achieving what we set out to achieve, and I think the added investment made in Budget 2015 in the education vote will go a long way towards providing better services and better outcomes for New Zealand learners. Take, for instance, the $244 million for new classrooms and schools—that is seven new schools, four major expansions of existing schools, and over 240 new classrooms for New Zealand schools. This will provide modern learning spaces for children in the New Zealand compulsory system.

I am particularly proud of the extra $62.9 million that my colleague Minister Nikki Kaye referred to. This is for special education: those children who have the highest needs and are the most vulnerable. This will include services such as additional teacher aide support and the provision of speech and language therapy to those children who need that little bit of extra help to be able to achieve and succeed. I am pleased to see an extra $42.3 million going into school operational grants in order to help the smooth running of our local schools.

The question that I guess we could also ask is: what do people in this system actually think of this? Well, I want to quote from a message I recently received. It is an email and, unlike the Opposition, I am not going to name the gentleman, but I can assure them that he is not Gene Simmons and he is not John Kerwin, who was also referenced by the Opposition this evening. This is a real person—a staff member at the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers Association. I do not want to quote it in full, because, well, I am a humble person—he is very complimentary. But he goes on to say: “Minister Parata has been great recently with her support for teachers, and I am really pleased to see it’s a message that others in the National caucus are taking to heart. You also showed a really good understanding of the educational success programme, which, as you know, the PPTA supports. It’s a pity that there are still people mistakenly characterising it as some form of competitive performance pay, which has meant that we’ve taken flak from some of our more usual allies.” I presume that they are referring to the Labour Party and the Greens.

So the post-primary teaching profession is in support of our programme, which implements our targets of achieving 98 percent of early childhood education enrolment; particularly around the 85 percent of 18-year-olds who we want to graduate with NCEA level 2—that is the equivalent of the old Sixth Form Certificate—and also our target of eventually getting 60 percent of all 25 to 34-year-olds accredited with an NCEA level 4 qualification. That is a post-compulsory qualification.

In the local context here in Wellington, we are going to see a new information and communications technology graduate school added to the existing high-quality tertiary institutions we have: Victoria University, Massey University, WelTec, Whitireia Community Polytechnic, and other private training establishments such as the Campbell Institute, which brings valuable export education dollars into Wellington and provides a useful experience both to those international students who come here and to the New Zealand students who are exposed to the opportunities of having colleagues who come from China, from Viet Nam, from Japan, from Europe—in fact, from all over the world. This Government is doing a lot in the education sector. There is a lot to be proud of. There is work remaining to do, and the feedback that I am getting, both in the Wellington Central electorate and around New Zealand as we visit on Education and Science Committee visits, is wholly positive about the efforts this Government is making.