Estimates Debate — Education Sector

Members, we now come to votes in the Education Sector. The question is that Vote Education, Vote Education Review Office, and Vote Tertiary Education stand part of the schedules.

Kia ora, Mr Chair. [Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Oh, sorry. I have already called. I should have called the chair. I have called Tracey Martin.

Kia ora. Minister Parata made an announcement that this Budget provided an extra $8.9 million for the Intensive Wraparound Service. This amount included $1.5 million for the specialist equipment and technology. So that means that the actual amount in this Budget—the increase for our most vulnerable students—is $7.4 million. This amount is spread over 4 years, so that works out to be $1.85 million per year. The announcement went on to say that this would correlate to an expansion of the intensive wraparound service to an extra 50 students. This would make the capped number of students able to access this total fund up to 335 throughout the whole of New Zealand. No more than 335 students with the highest and most complex behavioural and learning needs can access this funding in New Zealand.

So if the Minister’s numbers are to be believed, and an extra $1.85 million per year will support another 50 students, that works out to be an average of 37,000 students per year. But—hang on a minute—the Minister is currently out in the media telling the public of New Zealand that “the average cost of providing intensive, localised support through IWS is $27,000.” So which number is to be believed—the Budget document or the Minister’s statement—as she tries to justify her desire to close New Zealand’s only single-sex residential high-needs school for girls?

Let us take the Budget figures, to be on the safe side—this budget of $37,000 per student per year. Under this document, what does it pay for? Well, if a family is very lucky and after 2 years of trying, after 60-plus hours of paperwork, if you manage to get through the Intensive Wraparound Service (IWS) committee, which will not make its application criteria public, so as to avoid parents and schools tailoring their applications to meet their secret criteria—if you get through all that, what support does your extremely high-needs child get? Well, this amount of money pays for, one hopes, full support for your student for the 6 hours that they are at school.

In this Budget, according to the Minister’s own figures in her press release, there is an amount of just under $2 million for Salisbury School. The Minister points out that the current roll of Salisbury School is nine girls. There are in fact 10 girls at Salisbury School today. So, using the Minister’s number, this equates to $200,000 per student at their current numbers. However, the Minister neglects to tell the New Zealand public of the sinking lid she and her Government have forced on this school, these parents, and these girls. If this Minister and this Government had allowed parents to apply directly to Salisbury—rather than using the IWS committee as a roadblock to artificially lower enrolment numbers, even up to the 2015 cap of 30 students—this figure would drop to approximately $66,000 per student, not for 6 hours of teacher-aide time, but for 24-hour, 7-days-a-week, highly specialised and highly qualified teachers, social workers, and caregivers in a suitable and safe environment.

Now let us break down those figures. The Budget figures say that the cost of the IWS equates to $37,000 per annum per student. If we take this amount and divide it by 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 41 school weeks in a year, we get a spend of $30 per hour. There are teacher-aides all over the country sitting down in shock that they are getting paid $30 an hour. Let us take the amount of $66,000 per annum per student, which would be the cost if the Government removed the sinking lid on Salisbury School. If we take this amount and divide it by 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 41 school weeks of the year, we get a spend of $9.60 per hour. But let us be generous—let us do the same equation but use the highly inflated, manipulated dollar figure used by the Minister. Let us take the $200,000 per student at Salisbury. Let us divide that by 41 weeks, and then divide this by 168 hours per week, as Salisbury provides 24/7 education and care of these young women. What we get is an hourly rate of $29 per hour. So using the Budget’s numbers, Salisbury School is cheaper at delivering its specialist care than the current IWS programme. Yet the Minister continues to use those numbers to try to persuade the New Zealand public that it cannot be afforded.

I want to switch over to another little topic around the $11 billion in this Budget that this Government quite correctly says that it is spending on education. I want to make sure that taxpayers understand that $68,243,000 of this money is being paid out to integrated school proprietors for them to modernise their private assets. This funding is being recorded as being used to assist them to expand their privately owned network.

Education is a huge responsibility for any Government. In New Zealand we have almost 3,000 schools with close to 1 million students from early childhood education to primary and secondary education. We also have over 400,000 tertiary students. These people are the future of New Zealand; for that reason, we pay special attention to education.

The National-led Government has invested heavily in education since it came to Government in 2008. For example, in 2011 we spent 22 percent of all public expenditure on education—the highest percentage in the OECD in that year. In 2016-17, the appropriation for Vote Education has increased by 2.4 percent to over $11 billion. This is yet another record, and Budget 2016 uses the social investment approach to direct an extra $43.2 million for operating funding over 4 years to schools, educating about 150,000 students most at risk of educational failure. Most schools will receive a funding increase as a result of this new social investment funding approach.

I would also like to highlight the Investing in Educational Success initiative. At its heart are communities of learning, which are groups of schools and other providers that come together to raise achievement for children and young people. At the moment about 120 communities of learning have now been formed, involving about 1,000 schools teaching more than 320,000 students. These communities will receive additional funding to enable teachers and principals to share teaching and leadership expertise. Now we come to special-needs students. Budget 2016 delivers yet another $42.1 million over the next 4 years for students with high and special educational needs. Additional funding for these students has increased 29 percent since 2009.

Then we come to digital education and, just as Minister Parata has said, digital fluency is the universal language of the 21st century. To be successful and get the jobs they want, Kiwi kids will need to be confident using a broad range of digital technologies in a variety of settings. That is exactly the future. Just yesterday I visited St Joseph’s School in Queenstown, along with my colleague, local MP Todd Barclay. Firstly, we went to a year 8 classroom and we saw that every kid was using a laptop, tablet, or iPad, doing all sorts of designs like jerseys and stadiums, and they were very creative. Then we went to a year 2 classroom and, to our surprise, we also saw these little kids using laptops, iPads, and tablets and doing all sorts of digital stuff, including doing mathematics. So these kids are well-equipped for our future.

In terms of property, Budget 2016 provides $882.5 million for school properties. This is a huge investment across New Zealand to ensure communities have better facilities for students and teachers, and also the classrooms and schools needed to meet the growing population. By mid-2017 we will have invested almost $5 billion in school property since we came into Government. All this shows that we are committed to providing the best education we can in innovative, stimulating, and safe school environments.

Tertiary education—that was my background, of course. We are continuing to invest in tertiary education, particularly in science and engineering areas. The availability of highly skilled people is crucially important to meeting the aims of the Business Growth Agenda and encouraging competitive businesses to invest and grow. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Tēnā koutou e Te Wharenui. The Estimates debate is an important opportunity to talk about a portfolio that many of us in the room tonight think is critical—the most critical—so it is disturbing to see that the Budget this year put a freeze on the operations grant and opted for a funding model that is unproven and very, very hard to understand. Schools have been saying to me: “How do we know whether the targeting approach”—which sounds great, because we know that there are great needs in our schools—“will actually work when the criteria are supposed to protect the family and the child from identification but are extremely specific criteria that we are not necessarily sure are the criteria required to identify need?”.

It is quite interesting from a social analysis approach—rather than an investment approach—whether those criteria are good. I could talk at length about that, but, actually, there is a more important funding issue that I wish to talk about in terms of the Estimates. It was very, very important today because, for the first time in quite a long time, the two largest teachers’ organisations came out and soundly rejected it. They rejected this funding, which is called the global funding budget when, really, it is bulk funding—cash up a teacher. If in doubt, if you are running out of money, cash up a teacher.

It is not often that the two teachers’ organisations actually get together and reject the Government with the same voice. Sometimes they reject the Government with different voices. Sometimes they agree with the Government, or one of them does and one of them does not. But this time, when the parents realise this is about bulk funding and the risk, again, of increasing class sizes, they are going to be with the teachers’ community and many of us who are concerned about this model.

The reason there is so much disquiet, too, is that there was a funding advisory committee set up, and I was told today by people from that committee that they never saw this proposal—they never saw it. They said it did not go to their committee, and so they do not feel that this part of the funding review was run past them. There is no better way to annoy people than to have a negotiation or a consultation and then come up with a big surprise that actually leads to this kind of disquiet right across the education sector. It is not about jobs—it is not necessarily about anything like that—it is about whether children will benefit from bulk funding. That was tried before and it failed.

Will children benefit from increased class sizes through this so-called global funding budget? No, they will not, and no one is convinced. So what has happened now is that the Government, for reasons best known to itself, has picked a fight with parents and teachers—just before the election—in a way that is foolhardy and unnecessary. We need to get a long-term plan for education that works for all our children. We do not need the privatisation model that says flexibility and choice is what is going to make everything work.

The only guaranteed money the schools are going to get—absolutely guaranteed—is the money that will protect their property, their assets. They cannot trade that off—good. But is that as important as protecting the need to keep staffing at certain levels? I can just hear the speech now: “It will all be about choice. The schools can decide. It’ll be awesome.” But, actually, that is not what the schools want. They want guaranteed protection for their child-teacher ratios. They want to know they have got the funding to do this properly and not have to have a trade-off between a school nurse that they might need, or an extra couple of school support staff, or new gymnasium equipment—anything. They do not want to trade that against class size. They do not want to trade that against “cash up a teacher”. That is not what the schools want, and that is not what parents want.

I am sure we all remember what parents had to say to the National Government a few years ago when the National Government said that class size is irrelevant. Strangely enough, the people who send their kids to private schools know very well that class size is relevant, because small groups of people learn better than huge groups of people. Schools are not universities. You do not go there to hear a lecture; you go there—sorry, not you, Mr Chair—to engage, and they engage better when the class size is smaller. So this is a great way for the Budget, in this Estimates debate, to alienate the very people you would think the Government wanted to be on side with on the funding review. The funding review was initiated for a good reason, but it is not a good idea.

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

I am very pleased to take a call on the Education Sector in the Estimates debate. A Government that was truly committed to quality educational outcomes for kids would be just as focused on the quality of the education they are receiving as they would be focused on the quantity of the education they are receiving. However, that is, sadly, not the case.

Let us start with early childhood education and let us start right at the beginning, with the most vulnerable kids—the kids under 2 years of age. When the previous Labour Government was in office there was a plan to reduce the ratio of teachers to kids under 2 in early childhood education. To its credit, the National Party picked up on that and put it in their 2008 election manifesto. Would you believe that the ratio as it stands today, which is exactly as it was when the National Government took office, is 1:5? Can anybody imagine a teacher in an early childhood setting dealing with five under-2-year-olds? Imagine what would happen in an emergency with five under-2-year-olds—trying to get five under-2-year-olds out the door, say, if the fire alarm went off. It would simply be impossible.

To its credit, the National Party in 2008 promised to do something about that, and they are still waiting in early childhood education for National to deliver on that promise. What have they seen instead? They have seen funding on a per-child, per-hour basis frozen for the entire duration of the National Government’s tenure in office. What that has meant is that in real terms their funding has gone backwards. On a per-child, per-hour basis early childhood centres are getting less funding now than they were when National became the Government. What has that meant? It has meant that the cost to parents has gone up by 32 percent, and the quality of that early childhood education is undeniably being diminished as a result of the lack of funding during the tenure of this National Government.

Let us move further up the system, into the primary school system, where the National Government introduced new standards: national standards. They are neither national nor are they standard, and they have delivered no discernible lift in student achievement. There is no statistically significant lift in student achievement as a result of national standards. They have simply been a massive form-filling exercise that has distracted students and teachers from the core job of teaching and learning.

Let us go further up the system, to the secondary school system, where it is fantastic that more kids are getting their National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), and I fully—fully—support the Government’s moves to increase that, but I am also interested in the quality of the qualifications they are getting. We have seen declines in the core subject areas like English, maths, and science, and a particularly large drop in the number of students who are studying maths under the current National Government. There have been 12,000 fewer students during the tenure of the National Government enrolled in maths across years 11 through to 13. That is a significant drop.

We wonder why we are struggling to attract people in the tertiary system into the STEM subjects. It is because they are not doing them in school, and then we are not going to get more people doing them in the tertiary education system if we do not encourage them to do them in school. We have to not only focus on getting more kids achieving NCEA but also focus much, much more on what actually makes up those qualifications, because, at the moment, there are kids who are setting themselves up for disappointment once they leave school because they are not getting the prerequisite requirements to go on to do further study or an apprenticeship or to undertake employment in the areas in which they have an interest. That is simply not good enough, and we must do more about that.

We have over 64,000 people under the age of 25 in New Zealand who are doing absolutely nothing. They have finished their journey in the compulsory education system. They have not gone on to further education. They have not gone on to employment; they are simply doing nothing. That is a sign of failure. That is something that we must do something about. Yet what we hear from the National Government is that it wants to write those people off. Bill English calls them “pretty damned hopeless”. That is the attitude of this National Government. I do not think those members should call them pretty damned hopeless. I think that they should provide them opportunity. I think they should be focused on getting them into education, training, or employment, and not doing what Bill English said he is doing, which is being permissive around immigration policy and writing off the future of that 64,000-plus group who are currently sitting at home doing nothing during the tenure of this National Government.

It is my pleasure to speak for a few minutes in this Estimates appropriations debate on the Government’s tertiary education budget for 2016. Unlike Chris Hipkins, the member before me, I think we are proud to have a whole range of initiatives that support learners throughout their lifetime.

My colleague Minister Parata will talk about the primary and secondary sector, but I want to focus my comments on tertiary education because in this Budget alone we have seen an investment of $265.5 million over 4 years in tertiary education, and that is part of what we have called, in an umbrella, our Innovative New Zealand package, which is worth $761 million. I wanted to just talk about a couple of them because the member before me talked, really unfortunately, about a group of learners in New Zealand who do have challenges—we recognise that.

I think one of the fantastic initiatives of this Government is the Māori and Pasifika Trades Training Initiative. We have drawn down $9.6 million put aside for the Budget last year to provide additional places—2,500 young Māori and Pasifika learners—in the Māori and Pasifika Trades Training Initiative. So some of these learners have not done well in the compulsory sector, but unlike that member prior, we have absolutely not left them on the side of the road. We have made sure that there are educational opportunities that fit the range of learners across the spectrum in New Zealand. I think this is a particularly great initiative that is really delivering not just jobs but careers.

There was a young Māori gentleman whom I had the opportunity to meet in South Auckland a couple of months ago, and it was clear to me the difference that this Government has made to his life and his future by setting him up for a career—not just writing him off; not just saying that any job is good enough, but actually putting him into a position where he has a lifelong, rewarding career that supports him and his family. That is what I am proud of as a Minister in this Government.

Unlike the member previously, we are also looking at foundation education at levels 1 and 2 that are fees-free for eligible learners from 2017. It is $14.6 million over 4 years. So I absolutely refute the comments that the speaker before me made, because this is very directly aimed at second-chance learners to gain the very basic skills that they need to progress into higher study or to gain employment. We also look at another challenge—unfortunately, something that was left and we have inherited from the previous Government—around literacy and numeracy challenges. But, again, have we left a large group of New Zealanders unable to cope in our modern workplaces? No. We have said that we will focus on adult literacy and numeracy. In fact, New Zealand ranks fourth in the OECD now in adult literacy, which is a lift. We are continuing to fund more places for those who are in employment and who need additional assistance.

I want to speak about apprentices. In Budget 2016 there is an additional $14.4 million over 4 years to meet what we know very clearly is an increasing demand for apprentices. Up and down this country, talking to learners, talking to families, talking to employers, and talking to industry training organisations, they are clear about the fact that this is a Government that is supporting those people to learn as they earn with apprenticeship schemes in a whole range of different areas. I thought it was useful just to give you a bit of a snapshot. If we look 20 years ago, in 1992, there were only 16,000 people in industry training, and, of course, we had no industry training organisations. Fast-forward 20 years, and last year there were almost 136,000 trainees and 11 fantastic industry training organisations that support them. So we have seen significant improvements in terms of learning outcomes, which I think is really important.

We have also seen an increase under our Government in completion rates of up to 72 percent, and what we are looking at very specifically is the occupation in areas in New Zealand where there is clearly high demand. We have had a couple of examples recently. One, of course, is primary industries. One of the figures that I am sure lots of New Zealanders are not aware of is based on the industry and is really looking at its future capacity and capability needs, along with the Ministry for Primary Industries. It has projected the requirement for an extra 50,000 new roles between now and 2025. I think the real challenge, though, is that there are some who think that the majority of those 50,000 jobs are people pulling on gumboots each day and working on a farm. But, actually, no—they are requiring even higher levels of qualifications and skills, which our Government is committed to ensuring that the industry receives, whether it is environmental engineers, whether it is soil scientists, whether it is people who are ready to repair robotic milking machines, or whether it is geneticists or pasture managers. Primary industries, alone, have a significant requirement and they are working very closely with the Tertiary Education Commission to ensure that we support them in that role.

Construction—of course, I could not talk about skills opportunities if I did not talk about construction, because we know, clearly, that to grow even further we are going to need an extra 10 percent of the current people employed in construction. If we look at specific areas in Canterbury, I am really proud of how the Government responded to Canterbury to ensure that it had the construction workforce it required. One of those areas was, of course, quadrupling the number of women working in construction over a 2-year period, which I have not seen replicated anywhere in the world. That is the sort of thing that we are now looking at and saying: “Right, so if we are looking at South Auckland”—it has got a significant building programme there—“how do we make sure that young New Zealanders who live and have been educated in South Auckland are first in line for those jobs?”. That is what this Government is committed to and that is what we are doing.

So if we look at this, part of the mix is ensuring that young people have good tools to enable to connect them with where those opportunities are. We have seen the design of the vocational pathways and the Occupation Outlook app, which means you can very quickly have a look at what the career opportunities are, what the demand is, what the pay is, what the training is, and what it will cost. Recently, we have also launched MyPath, which is another tool to help young people and to support them and how they navigate—very much aligned with where the opportunities are, which I think is fantastic.

In addition to that, of course, science, technology, engineering, and maths—STEM subjects—continue to be areas that we are focused on. Whether it is more funding into Engineering—Education to Employment, which is the engineering workforce support, or whether it is in science, with funding things like the Nation of Curious Minds, it is all about making sure that we as a country are growing our own and supporting them with the skills they need in the industries that are high-growth, high-demand, and high-wages, through a whole range of different initiatives. Whether it is Callaghan Innovation’s Futureintech, Techlink, or the ICT Graduate Schools, of which we have launched three—again, it is very, very closely connected to industry. This is a Government committed to ensuring that we are delivering the young people who have the skills and attributes and capabilities that our employers have been telling us that they need, and we are investing exactly in those spaces.

I am also proud of the regional growth study and the work with the programme called Growing Regional Opportunities through Work. That is focused very much on a group of young people who are not in education, employment, or training in Kaikohe. It is a 12-month project that is very much focused on those whom perhaps the member before me, Chris Hipkins, would have been quite happy just to leave to do nothing, but we have worked really intensively over a 12-month period. And I cannot tell you how amazing it is to meet those young people, who have never, ever gone to a job interview, let alone held down their very first job and brought their very first pay packet home—and that was the pay packet that housed and fed their families.

That is the very pointy edge of what this Government is doing. We are tackling the young people who are harder to educate and employ. We are setting them up for a lifetime of opportunity and a lifetime of success. We are unwilling to leave young people behind, and, equally, we are also focused on ensuring that older New Zealanders, in terms of their training opportunities, are also ready for a changing workforce. We have seen significant growth in adult apprentices, which is probably not something that the Opposition would dare to focus on, but if you look at the over-35s, there is a 17 percent increase on the numbers last year in apprentices and a 25 percent increase on those aged 55 and above. So we are training from one end of the scale to the other.

I am pleased to take a call on this debate. I wish to focus on an issue that is really close to my heart, which is special education. At the moment I am very aware that inclusive education is something of a buzzword. I support it. The Minister of Education has held up the Ministry of Education’s Intensive Wraparound Service as the gold standard for persons with disabilities and complex needs. It would be great if every child was able to get the support they needed to participate, flourish, and learn in our education system, but we know that that is not happening.

The current cap on the Intensive Wraparound Service has been set at 335 students, and that is woefully inadequate. Too many children with complex needs are missing out on the Intensive Wraparound Service and the support that they need, and many more students are also missing out on the support that they need and on reaching their potential because special education is under-resourced and is not well suited to meeting their needs.

What we know from the number of parents who have approached us is that it is an absolute nightmare for parents to navigate the systems of accessing the funding and the support that they need for their child. That means that many children are missing out. Access to special education should not depend on a parent having to fight for their child and take up the fight on their behalf. It should not depend on parents having to fund specialist reports themselves. We know from submissions on the Education and Science Committee inquiry that the education system is failing many children with dyslexia, dyspraxia, and autism in particular.

I am someone who has personally benefited from many years of specialised support in the education system, whether that has been speech therapy or small class sizes. It breaks my heart when a parent tells me that their child is unable to get the support that they need. I had that support through most of my education, and I know what a difference that support made to me. I would not be here in Parliament today without that. I have experienced inclusion done well. I have experienced inclusion done very badly. I have also had 3 years of intensive educational support at a specialised residential school for Deaf in England.

What I can tell the Minister is this: inclusion works only if it is properly resourced and if the school environment is genuinely supportive of the child. Inclusion done poorly is traumatising for those with disabilities, which brings me to Salisbury School. I cannot understand why the Minister seems so determined to be closing that school down, because it is a school that is providing some fantastic support and service to some of the most vulnerable children in this country. It is my belief that there is clearly a role for Salisbury School to stay open and become a centre for best practice, which can then spread throughout the education system.

Salisbury School is no more expensive than other residential schools, and would be viable if it had at least 20 students, which would be easy to allow to happen. I urge the Minister to listen to the families and to former students who have attended that school and keep Salisbury School open. Stop using the Intensive Wraparound Service committee as a sort of gatekeeper acting as a sinking lid on enrolments in that school. There is no need to do so. We can learn from what is being developed at Salisbury School in the way of being a centre of excellence in education for children with highly complex needs. That is something that we need to retain and keep open.

I am delighted to stand up and participate in the education Estimates appropriation debate today. I am very proud to be a part of a Government that has seen an increase in Vote Education every year that we have been in Government. In Budget 2016 we saw a further increase of 2.5 percent, which has meant that education spending, for the first time, has exceeded $11 billion. We are most definitely putting taxpayers’ money where our mouths are.

We are ensuring that we are investing in all the pillars of a good quality education. We are investing in the quality of teachers and principals. We are investing in data and evidence to understand how well our children and young people are doing. We are investing in those who need additional learning and support, through increasing the provision for special education. We are investing in infrastructure.

The single biggest capital allocation in Budget 2016 was over $880 million into schools, classrooms, rebuilding, and redevelopments across the country. This provision provides for 480 new classrooms to meet or get ahead of growth in some of our expanding centres. It means new schools in areas across the country, responding to the needs there. It is the first time any Government has ever done a condition assessment of every school property across the country. That means that we are able to prioritise the dollars that we are able to have in Vote Education to those schools that need it most and to work our way through the portfolio.

In this regard, I would like to acknowledge my colleague the Associate Minister of Education, Nikki Kaye, for the tremendous amount of work she has done in cleaning up that portfolio and working with me and with our Government to ensure that we are building modern, light, airy, energy-efficient, warm, and safe classrooms and learning environments for our young people.

We also put into this Budget a further $436 million to meet the growing demand in early childhood education. This brings the total investment by our Government into early learning to almost double what it was when we came into Government at the end of 2008. We are very serious about giving our earliest learners the strongest start on their education journey as is possible.

There has also been quite a bit of discussion about special education during this debate. I just want to intrude a bit of fact on to the Opposition members’ penchant for providing us with numbers that do not mean very much. So let me provide the actual numbers: for special education we have provided a further $42.1 million in order that we could increase the amount for those young people in the ongoing resourcing scheme. These are the young people who have the most complex and the highest needs, and we have extended the numbers of those getting that support to 8,600.

I think it is important to have these numbers in front of us because the members have focused on only one element of our special education investment, the Intensive Wraparound Service (IWS). That has been a very effective success for parents; it involves parents. The specialists—the clinical behavioural and education specialists, not the Minister of Education—make assessments, which has been characterised as gatekeeping. But actually these are the experts who give the advice on what is needed for each of these young people who are in the IWS, and we have extended that by $8.5 million.

A member earlier today confused the provision and thought that that included the $1.5 million operating funding for specialised equipment and technology. It does not; that is in addition. And in addition to that we have also provided $15.3 million for 550,000 extra teacher-aide hours to support, we estimate, a further 1,250 young people who are participating in our inclusive approach within our classrooms.

So in special education we have seen the overall budget rise by 29 percent since we have been in Government. I know there is more need to be met, but this Government is serious about it and has been making contributions to ensure that that is reflected in the actual funding.

We are also targeting operations grants this year to the 155,000 young people who come from long-term benefit-dependent households. We are keen to see that funding—instead of a 1 percent universal grant that would have amounted to about $16 on average, whether a child needed it or not—go to targeted funds. Thank you.

It would be very unparliamentary of me to use the phrase “lies, damned lies, and statistics” when it comes to the contribution of the Minister of Education, so I will not do that, but what I will do is inject some—

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I do take offence at that, because in fact the numbers I was reading out are published in the Budget Estimates of New Zealand. They are not damned lies or statistics.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): If the member were making a point about unparliamentary language, that would have been one thing. The member really raises a matter, though, that just underlines that it is a matter for debate.

I will be very happy to inject some further statistics into this debate so that we can talk a little bit about them. They also come from the Government’s Budget, which I think is very useful, because we have seen huge cuts on a per-child, per-student basis in funding for education since this Government took office.

Let us just look at early childhood education. We will look at just 1 year. Let us look at just 1 year in early childhood education. From the year 2015-16 to the year 2016-17—that is, the current year’s Budget—the funding has fallen from $8,623 on a per-child basis to $8,555. That is just actual funding. That is actual funding. If you adjust it for inflation it is even worse, and if you go back over the time of the last National Government you will find that funding for early childhood education has gone back significantly. The current National Government seems to have forgotten that the reason we are spending more money on education is that there are more kids in the system. That is actually a good thing. It is great that there are more kids participating in early childhood education, but the funding is not keeping up with that significant increase in growth.

In primary school education—let us look at that—since 2008 the cost to parents has gone up 40 percent. In the last couple of years it has gone up at 10 times the rate of inflation. Parents are having to put more and more money into their kids’ education because the Government funding simply is not keeping up.

Let us look at the tertiary system, and Louise Upston touched on that earlier. There is $15 billion of student loan debt, up by 50 percent under this National Government. Fees have increased for those studying post-school by 41 percent during the time of this National Government. What has Government funding done? It has gone up by 3 percent, barely even covering the rate of inflation. In fact, it probably does not cover the rate of inflation during that time. And we wonder why homeownership is falling amongst an entire generation of New Zealanders—the lay-by generation of New Zealanders, who end their educational journey for a time, when they leave post-school study and go into the workforce, saddled with a huge mountain of debt.

There is a cartoon that I quite like. It has a graduate returning home to his parents with this huge sack on his back that represents the student loan debt he has got. His parents are tut-tutting in the doorway, saying: “When we started out, we started out with nothing.” This poor graduate is saying: “Trust me, I’d be quite happy to be starting out with nothing.” The reality is that graduates—and it is not just at university; it is people leaving polytechs and other forms of post-school education—are starting out their working lives with a massive financial burden as a result of the student loan scheme, and this Government is making it worse. This Government is not doing anything to address that. It cut eligibility for student loans. It has continued to increase fees. It has cut eligibility for student allowances to support people in their post-school study. It is simply not good enough.

All of the rhetoric Government members say about wanting to give people a good start in life is just that—it is rhetoric, because they are not actually willing to follow that up with actions. Louise Upston says the Government is unwilling to leave young people behind. There are 64,000 of them being left behind right now. They are under the age of 25, sitting at home doing nothing. They are being left behind, and the Minister of Finance, Bill English, simply calls them “pretty damned hopeless” rather than actually doing anything about it.

And then Louise Upston had the audacity to say that the Government does not want to leave older New Zealanders behind when it comes to education, either. Tell that to Steven Joyce, who cut all of the sorts of financial support for older New Zealanders who want to undertake some form of tertiary study. Once you get to a certain age, according to Steven Joyce, that is it. You are cut off. You do not get any form of financial support for post-school study because of Steven Joyce. I do not think that is the sort of future we should be aiming for in New Zealand. I think we should recognise that older New Zealanders who want to continue to retrain so that they can get better jobs should be able to do so. They should be financially supported to do so, and they should not be written off, as is happening under this current National Government.

Let us continue on through the education system. There are so many examples of funding cuts. Night-class funding has been cut. Funding for special education, although there have been some increases in funding—and I do want to acknowledge that, and I want to welcome the increase in funding for the ongoing resourcing scheme. But it is still not enough, because it is still not keeping up with the number of kids who are arriving at school with special needs.

It is a pleasure to rise and take this call in the education debate for Vote Education for the appropriations for 2016-17. What a worthwhile topic to be talking about as a mother: investing more than $11 billion in education to give our children a platform to build on, to gain skills, to grow, to gain confidence, to achieve the successes that they want and their hopes and dreams. I think that that is just such a worthwhile portfolio, and I am very, very proud that this Government has invested more than $11 billion in education.

I want to address some of the rhetoric that Mr Hipkins was talking about with regard to early childhood education (ECE). I have two small children, and I must say that I am very, very pleased with the early childhood education that they have received. I now have one child in the primary school sector and one child who is still going through the early childhood education system. I am very, very pleased that this Government has continued with providing the 20 free hours for early childhood education and that we have in New Zealand a 96 percent participation rate in early childhood education. In Southland that is up at 98 percent because we have a labour participation rate—[Interruption]—Ms Curran, that is higher than the national average.

So ECE provides a very, very good platform for our young children before they move on to their more full education journey. You can choose, as a parent, what registered provider you want to go to and still obtain those 20 free hours of education. You can go to a playcentre, which celebrates more free-play concepts. The children are still learning to explore. They are still learning confidence. They are still building relationships. They are building resilience, and they continue to grow. Or you can choose a more formal-type system, which I have also encouraged my children in, like day care. That is a more structured format. They have mat time. It is more like school. In both situations, they have achieved. Their results have been very pleasing, and my older child, who has gone on to primary school, has benefited from the ECE system in New Zealand. We have one of the best education systems in the world. The dream of no matter where you are from, as a New Zealander—if you can get into education and you have got the tenacity to learn and do well in your education, you can achieve whatever you set your mind to. That dream is alive and well in New Zealand, and I am very, very pleased with that.

I want to talk about the expansion of our social investment model and targeting our at-risk people. The Minister has already talked about this, and we know that there is a cohort of people—young students—and that if they are in benefit-dependent families, then they are more at risk of not achieving in their schooling career. I want to talk about an example in Invercargill. Invercargill Middle School is a finalist in the Prime Minister’s Education Excellence Awards. It has basically shoved deficit learning out the door. Katie Pennicott and the principal there, Stan Tiatia, got together and they challenged the staff to throw deficit learning out the door. What they have done is they have tailored learning programmes to their students. They decided that if they spent that time tailoring programmes for each individual, they knew that that individual would achieve, no matter what. They have turned that school around. Children have achieved, and they have been recognised for that. I want to congratulate them on those efforts.

I also want to talk about the school property investment. We often talk about the bigger centres and say that the bigger centres are growing and that they need more schools and more classrooms and more investment in infrastructure. But in Invercargill, Donovan Primary School’s roll increased by 64 percent in 11 months due to the fantastic leadership of its principal, Mr Peter Hopwood. It has received an extra classroom, which will be state of the art. It will be a warm classroom. It will be connected to fibre, and it will be very interactive in the children’s learning.

Tēnā koe, e Te Heamana. If there was a national standard for Budgets, I am afraid this Budget would fail. Actually, it would be “pretty damned hopeless”. That statement was made in my electorate—in Feilding, actually. There is a group of parents in Feilding who have had the courage to start their own school. The reason why they wanted to start their own school is that none of the schools there are providing total immersion Te Reo Māori. So that is what they wanted to do, and good on them.

It has been an absolute struggle for them, though. In this Budget there is nothing there for them. They are on to their third venue. That is just not good enough. The Minister of Education talks about providing good, safe school buildings for students. There is a group in Feilding that has nothing like that. They deserve better.

Children living in poverty—what is in this Budget for them for education? How does a child go home to a car and try to do their homework? There is nothing in this Budget for them. How do children do their homework without Wi-Fi? They do not have the ability to connect to the internet. There is more pressure on their parents. As we heard from my colleague Chris Hipkins, it is much more expensive for parents now to provide an education when living in cars. My colleague Jenny Salesa knows all about that, because a lot of them are in her electorate.

The Minister talked about the increased budget. Well, actually, it has not increased enough. This idea that you can have targeting for certain areas of education does not really work. The overall effect for most children living in poverty is that they do not get to benefit from it. That is a sad occasion.

I had the privilege of visiting a group of rangatahi in Palmerston North. The system has failed for them. They have dropped out of secondary school. They have even dropped out of alternative education. And if it was not for Te Aroha Noa Community Services, a group in Palmerston North that has given them the opportunity to have a safe place for them to learn, then they would not be in any education, like 64,000 others. They would not be in training, they would not be in employment, and they would not be in education. There is nothing in this Budget for them.

I cannot help but comment on Māori boarding schools. Māori boarding schools deserve a better deal. The contribution that Māori boarding schools have made to this country is significant. The closures that have happened, I think, are symptomatic of how the Ministry of Education has not supported these very important schools. I think about the amount of money that the Government has poured into private schools and into charter schools, and then I look at the opportunities for the likes of Turakina Māori Girls College, which was closed last year, and it is very disappointing. There is nothing in this Budget for Māori boarding schools.

I think the Māori Party members should be ashamed of themselves. They talk about sitting at the table that makes decisions that provide opportunities. Well, there has been a high cost for those opportunities, which go to only a very small number of people. If you have a look at the numbers of Māori children attending charter schools, they are very low compared with the numbers who are going to mainstream schools.

My question is: where is the benefit for those Māori kids and, actually, all kids living in poverty? All the kids who deserve better opportunities—where are the opportunities for them in this Budget? I cannot see them. Thank you.

I really do have to get up and do the Committee a service by correcting the previous two speakers.

The most recent speaker, Adrian Rurawhe, was wrong in almost every regard. In this Budget, in Vote Education, just over $11 billion has been put into schools, kura, early childhood providers, and kōhanga reo across the country. Now, let me just deal with partnership schools and kura hourua. The member asserted that very few Māori went there. In fact, all of the kura hourua are contracted to ensure that a minimum of 75 percent of their rolls are Māori and/or Pasifika, and many of them are much higher than that—much higher than that.

The member commented in his assertion that this Government had not supported Māori boarding schools. Again, the member is completely wrong. Of the six Māori boarding schools—Turakina Māori Girls College, Hato Pētera College, Hato Pāora College, St Joseph’s Māori Girls’ College, Te Aute College, and Hukarere Girls’ College—there are about 650 students in total at those boarding schools. All of the boarding schools have greater capacity than that. Turakina, in fact, had capacity for 150 students; it had 49 students. The Government invested $9 million, paying for all of the staffing and learning costs at the school and over half of the boarding allowances and scholarships. However, the Government cannot make parents or grandparents send their daughters or granddaughters to Turakina. The Government cannot magic up students. That is a choice that parents make.

I will tell the member why there is a challenge—and it is a challenge for all boarding schools, not just Māori ones. It is because there are more choices available to whānau, closer to them. There are now 282 kura, reo rūmaki, and bilingual classrooms and schools across the country that parents are choosing to send their young people to because they are closer to home and they have more options. Māori boarding schools, and boarding schools in general, have played a very fine part in New Zealand’s education his- and her-story. But they are very difficult now, and many parents are choosing—not just in Māori boarding schools but in boarding schools in general—closer to home options. So the member is quite wrong.

In terms of disengagement, since records were kept in 2000—this is the 16th year that we have had records around engagement by kids—this is the lowest rate we have ever had of suspensions, stand downs, exclusions, and the fourth one, which I cannot remember. It is now down at just 4.1 percent—at 4.1 percent. I am sorry that the Opposition is not happy that we are seeing greater engagement by our young people and more of Māori.

Yes, we do still have challenges. What are we doing about that? We have introduced Year 9 Plus, which has identified about a hundred young year 8 students going into year 9 and asked, using the Whānau Ora model, how we wrap round them to help them and their brothers and sisters be successful. We have also introduced Count Me In. I invite the members of the Opposition to use 0800 Count Me In for any 16- to 18-year-old who is on the street and not involved in education, employment, or training, and who does not have a qualification. Call 0800 Count Me In and we will get an education provider to that young person and re-engage them with education.

We are providing new infrastructure for kura across the country. So, again, the member is quite wrong. We do that using the condition assessments to prioritise. It is apparent to me that the members are not interested in facts, but I am very happy to host a meeting in my office and run through those. Today I released our available Public Achievement Information. What that shows to the Opposition is that in all facets of education, Māori education has gone up. At early learning we have higher participation. In national standards we have seen incremental growth. The previous Opposition member criticised that and said there was not enough. I agree with him, but we now know where they are and we are getting incremental growth, and we will continue to build on that.

Ngā whanaketanga—we are seeing growth there. Clearly, the member is not interested in hearing those facts, but I am happy to provide this chart with the facts of actual kids in actual schools doing better under this Government. The member says there is nothing in this Budget for them. We have targeted $43 million to those kids who come from long-term benefit-dependent households. That is on top of this Government increasing—for the first time in 43 years—the benefit to those living in hardship. We are serious about lifting educational achievement for all kids.

There are a number of issues that I would like to talk about in this Estimates debate on the Education Sector, but let me begin with charter schools. I have particular concerns about the approach to funding that this Government has around charter schools. We have an estimate at the moment that this Government has spent around about $44 million on charter schools to date, and in this year’s Budget at least $11.8 million will be invested or spent on new charter schools. This is despite the fact that this model is a failed model. This is a model where, as we have seen with Te Kura Hourua ki Whangaruru—it is a model that has failed there, so much so that it actually closed the school. The taxpayers of this country, New Zealand, have invested $5.5 million in Te Kura Hourua ki Whangaruru and it has closed down, and yet this Government is going to expand it even more in this Budget.

Charter schools, as we know, are targeted at Māori and Pacific students. So can I just address Māori and Pacific students, but in particular Pacific students in my electorate in Manukau East in South Auckland. I just heard the honourable Minister of Education talking about how this is a Government that actually assists and is really, really successful with Pacific and Māori children, and talking about real families and real students. But if I can just give a couple of examples from the families that I see in my office.

Just last week we had a family referred to us from a social worker in a school. They have six kids. They lived in a garage. This garage was leaking. The day that I visited this family—because they had no car—to authorise me to assist them so that they would get into a house, it was raining. It was a day when it was also very windy; a very cold day. Three out of six of the children were at home sick. This mother said that her kids are healthy kids apart from the fact that since they had been living in this garage in South Auckland her kids have been sick.

Honourable Minister, we deal with so many children who live in garages and so many children who live in cars, the issue of transience is an issue that we deal with in South Auckland on a daily basis. In one of the schools—the largest primary school, I am told, in South Auckland, with over 1,000 children—57 percent of its children are not there at the end of year in December because they are transient. The official definition of “transience” is: “Students that move school twice or more over the period from the 1st of March to the 1st of November.” We have other schools that have even higher transience levels than that.

What I know from the children whom I see who are transient—here is another example: a mother with two teenage boys. She has been living in her car for over 6 months, but during that time she has not enrolled her sons in a school. Why? Because she has moved so often. She has moved from Hamilton to Tauranga to the Bay of Plenty and back to Auckland. She has moved so many times. She is not able to find a private rental or, indeed, a State house. Her two sons, who are teenagers, have not been in a school that whole time. So when we hear the Government talking about how this is a wonderful Government that is doing so much for Māori and Pacific children—it is not doing enough for the thousands of Māori and Pacific children who are homeless.

We know from Otago University that there are at least—this is 2013 statistics—41,000 people who are homeless. In Counties Manukau, in my area, the Counties Manukau District Health Board tells me that there are at least 110,000 people who are living in overcrowded conditions. We know that when people live in overcrowded conditions, they do not have the space to be able to do their homework, and they are admitted in and out of hospitals a lot, and these families are transient. So, honourable Minister, there are a lot of consequences when our children are homeless.

On one of the weeks that our Labour MPs went to visit Te Puea Marae—a marae that has served over 160 families who are homeless—they were told that at least about half of the children who were there in that week were actually children who were not even enrolled in school—half of those children. So there are various—

I am really pleased to have the opportunity to speak on education in this Estimates debate. I would like to congratulate Ministers Parata and Joyce on increasing the appropriation by 2.5 percent to $11 billion. They are not just throwing money at the appropriation; they are actually targeting it. They have been bold enough to invest in data, for example, and use that data to enable them to target it at students who need it to get all of the services and the right education for each level right through to the tertiary sector.

What we have seen in the past is Governments throwing money at education and thinking they are going to get a better result. Although you may get some minor improvement, it is not an investment in the future, and we really need to do that. I would like to talk about the communities of learning (COL). We have got a fantastic one in Blenheim. I think every person will fondly remember a teacher who made a big difference for them. The whole idea of COL is to seek out those particular teachers and let their skills and their techniques be shared by others. It is not about just knowing the subject; it is about getting that idea across.

As I go around my electorate and visit the schools, it is quite obvious it is not the knowledge that the teacher has; it is how they get that across. It is an intangible thing, almost, but COL is going a long way to actually bridging that divide and getting all the teachers up to that same level. I think it is really brave. It is not the easy path to take, by any means, and you will not get immediate results, necessarily, but it is an investment in the future. I congratulate the Ministers on doing that, and I think it is fantastic.

I would also like to talk about some data—the Minister touched on it before—that has just been released. It was a bold target to have 85 percent of 18-year-olds achieve National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2 by 2017. In my electorate, 86.1 percent have done that, so we are ahead of the target. That is a fantastic result, and we have got that data now—we can all share in that. This is what education is all about. In every other sector we would measure the performances against one another—that is how you get improvement. If you do not compare and learn, how are you ever going to improve? I really congratulate you on going down this path.

I think that what we really want, instead of the old league tables about how schools are achieving by how many people achieve excellence in NCEA level 3, is to get to a point where we can see that the schools that top the league table are the ones that have students achieve at or above their potential—not some headline number about who passes NCEA level 3 with excellence. I am really looking forward to that day, and I hope that day comes soon.

I would also like to touch on the tertiary sector, and, once again, I think the Minister has made a bold step by increasing the subsidy in the STEM subjects. What we know, when we look at ourselves compared with other OECD countries, is that we do not have as many graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. If we want to keep up with our trading partners, if we want to be successful in a modern world, we need graduates in those areas. It is really important that we get the investment in the right place to ensure that that occurs. In the past, universities in particular have churned out students who have degrees that have much lower course costs because they do not have laboratories, etc., which cost a lot more money. Putting that subsidy in, or increasing it for those subjects, will make it much more attractive for those universities to encourage more students through in those subjects. We will all be the richer for that.

We also cannot forget, of course, apprenticeships. There is an extra $14.4 million to try to achieve 5,500 more apprentices by 2020. Last year, in fact, we had over 42,000 apprentices enrol to go through various trades. I think that is a really important area, particularly when we have got something like our situation at the moment, where we have got a huge construction boom going on in New Zealand. We need tradespeople—they are just as important as university graduates, if not more so—in numbers.

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate. Thank you.

Votes agreed to.

Māori, Other Populations and Cultural Sector