Education (Social Investment Funding and Abolition of Decile System) Amendment Bill

Colleagues, when this bill was before the House Jamie Strange was speaking, and he has 2 minutes 30 seconds remaining to speak.

I am sure the time will fly by. Look, it’s an honour to stand and speak in this House again, and this time on the Education (Social Investment Funding and Abolition of Decile System) Amendment Bill. I would like to acknowledge Erica Stanford for her work on this bill. I would like to acknowledge her passion for education, and we certainly both share that. Now, some people have sort of a natural sense of intelligence, and may not need as much education as others. Some people, like myself, need all the support we can get, and education is a key aspect around that. Pink Floyd said, “We don’t need no education”, but the reality is we absolutely do, and I believe, as many in this House do, that education is a key driver to lifting people out of poverty and creating opportunity.

Now, the bill talks about the decile challenges that we have in our education system, and, as I mentioned before I was interrupted a few weeks ago, there are certainly challenges in our decile system. One of the key ones is around the perception of school quality. There is a perception out there that schools on a lower decile provide a lower level of education, which is absolutely not true, as those of us who have taught in those environments understand. We have absolutely fantastic teachers across all decile systems. But there is this perception. There is a perception around house price values, which sort of links into that. So we certainly do need to look at this issue. The reality is, unfortunately, this side of the House will not be supporting this bill, because we don’t believe that this bill actually addresses the issues around the decile challenge.

Further work is being done on this issue, so the Opposition members can sleep easy at night, because I understand your passion on the other side of the House for young people who are disadvantaged. The social conscience that exists on that side of the House—I absolutely acknowledge that, and I’d like to assure the members that work is being done around this issue.

Thank you. The member’s time has expired.

Kia ora Madam Deputy Speaker. Thank you very much. It’s actually with great honour that I rise to speak on the Education (Social Investment Funding and Abolition of Decile System) Amendment Bill. Can I acknowledge the author. Can I acknowledge Erica Stanford. This is one of the areas—I mean, we’ve had the education conversation going on in the last couple of weekends—where there has been cross-party consensus that this is too important an area of Government funding, of Government spending, of Government focus that should be about political parties fighting each other.

So, first of all, I want to acknowledge Ms Stanford, and thank her for her member’s bill. I honestly believe that what she’s tried to do here is to do better by children. I truly believe that, in the same way that when I came into this Parliament the Hon Nikki Kaye—she happened to be the chair of the Education and Science Committee. We had a really strong collegial relationship around what was going to be the vision for children in this country.

New Zealand First won’t be supporting this bill, and I have expressed that. I have had a one-on-one conversation with the author of this bill, because that’s what’s important. It’s not about whether the Opposition moans and decides that the Government’s doing this, and it’s not about the Government deciding that this is happening—whatever, whatever. This is actually about the conversation between parliamentarians about what’s best for children. Ms Stanford and I have had this conversation.

The reason why I won’t support this bill is because I actually don’t think, with the work that I am doing around disability and learning support and the change to the funding system—and Ms Stanford understands that those who are moaning don’t know anything about education. But what we’re talking about is what is actually going to make a difference to children. So I have articulated to Ms Stanford the vision that I have for disability and learning support here inside New Zealand—the understanding that what we are aiming for is a funding system that recognises what each and every child needs, and we will make sure that they can be the best they can be.

We are not restricting it to academic outcomes, as the previous Government was. We are not restricting it to an investment or negative type of connotation; we are deciding that inside those education conversations we are aiming for the skies, with regard to our children. I believe that Ms Stanford and Ms Kaye, and so on and so forth, are going to come along for that cross-party ride about doing better—

💬 Hon Mark Mitchell: Oh, so you want them to support you? You want them to support you but you won’t support them.

—doing better for the children that we have in New Zealand. Now, Mr Mitchell and those other sorts of people who actually have this really narrow narrative about what success looks like, because they have been in a place of privilege—they don’t understand this conversation, but I know that Ms Stanford does. I know that she does because at the end of the day what we’re talking about is what is best for children.

I acknowledge her as a partner in this conversation, and I have extended the olive branch, so to speak, or the hand that says that I am more than happy to brief her on where I am going around disability and learning support, to make sure that the funding system changes to ensure that we’re not deciding who is a failure based on some sort of a national census; that we’re not deciding, Mr Mitchell, that those inside Warkworth Primary School, which is a decile 7 school but are of our Kiribati and Tuvaluan community—among the lowest socio-economic levels of our community—are disadvantaged by a decile system. I totally support where Ms Stanford is going here. I absolutely will work with Ms Stanford to make sure that every student, based on the needs of that student, has the funding support, has the resourcing support that they need to be the best they can be across this country.

I think, across this House, we can do better, but I cannot support Ms Stanford’s bill, and I have expressed that to her. I acknowledge her, I honour her and the work that she is trying to do, but I ask her to work with me collegially to make sure we do better for children. Kia ora, Ms Stanford. Thank you for standing up for children, but let’s work together on another way to make this happen.

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to speak to this member’s bill in Erica Stanford’s name. She’s put together a very excellent piece of legislation here. I set up a parent-based network in my area, before I was elected as a council member and as an MP, to counteract the effects of a low-decile school in my area, so I know personally the effects of a low-decile ranking and the perception that it has, right on the ground.

There’s an emerging trend in the Government’s attitude towards members’ bills, which we should all be concerned about. They’ve got a culture of disrespect towards these bills that not only undermines the system of members’ bills but actually belittles the issues that they’re trying to address. During her first speech of this debate, Erica Stanford, fantastically, gave an outline of how she tried to reach out and start a conversation with the Minister of Education about this bill, and it’s appalling. It took five weeks for the Minister to respond to her. He ignored her for five weeks, and the night before the bill was going to be debated he sent a letter that showed he was clearly too stubborn to consider it on its merits.

It seems that Cabinet must be reading from the same dubious playbook, because I had a similar experience with my member’s bill, which would have introduced a framework for women to lodge pay equity claims. I reached out to Minister Lees-Galloway and Minister Genter, and I must admit that they did send back a letter in response to me—yes, they did. It didn’t say much at all, and after reading it I was not clear whether they would support it or not. However, given I received the letter four weeks after the Government voted against it, I think I was able to fill in the gaps. Four weeks after the debate had finished, I received this nothing letter from the Minister that only left the impression that they did not care. Is this the standard that we hold our Ministers to: not confronting the issues, no constructive discussions, only hiding away from making progress for the country?

Like my bill, this bill is a substantial bill that addresses an important issue. It will have a real impact on families, on schools, and on children. It’s not waffle. It’s not a ridiculous bill that would ban music teachers and cooking teachers and dance teachers from calling themselves teachers. The Government was more than happy to support that one. This is a bill that would reprioritise education funding to those children who are most disadvantaged, lift their educational achievement, and help them get ahead in life. The Minister should have leapt at the chance to support this bill, or at the very least engage properly with Erica Stanford to outline his position on it. His Government colleagues Tracey Martin and Chlöe Swarbrick had the integrity and the dignity to do so. Not so for the Minister. What did he do? At the eleventh hour he sent a letter filled with misrepresentations and false assumptions.

We heard from the Government during the campaign that this would be a Government for the children and a Government of compassion, so it would be fair to question why that side of the House has stood up, one after the other, and argued in favour of the current decile system, which unfairly stigmatises the disadvantaged, when—let’s face it—they’re actually opposed to it. It’s so obvious. Why are they opposed to it? It’s the deliberate lack of engagement and the refusal to vote for bills that they actually support in principle. And why? It’s because they don’t want National to get the credit.

They don’t want to take advantage of the progress that’s been handed to you tonight on a member’s bill silver platter. Instead, you’re delaying, they’re delaying. They’re going back to their working groups and waiting for something that they just want to produce themselves and in their own name. The public deserve better. This side of the House will keep trying to deliver for them. I support this bill, and I’m very disappointed that the Minister does not.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to take a short call on the Education (Social Investment Funding and Abolition of Decile System) Amendment Bill. If I may, I would like to acknowledge the member Erica Stanford for a member’s bill which I think has been quite thoroughly canvassed, in particular by the Hon Tracey Martin, which has quite a depth of intention behind it. I know this in particular because, as was acknowledged by the previous speaker, Denise Lee, I did indeed meet with Erica about this.

I want to echo the sentiments made by the Associate Minister of Education, Tracey Martin, in a way that we can kind of bring together the contributions of both the Minister and Denise Lee just previously—the quite fiery and quite heartfelt contributions about the need to work in a cross-partisan way on education. I believe that we’re seeing this working quite well, and it was manifest in the education summit of the past two weekends. It is indeed, I believe, far too important for something like the future of our education system, the funding of our education system, to be something that is deeply partisan.

I don’t believe it’s actually worth overly politicising this, as the situation has been well traversed back and forward, and the Hansard will indeed note that there are strongly felt views on both sides of this House. But, fundamentally, the reason that the Greens will not be supporting this bill is because we don’t believe that it is necessary to duplicate the work that is currently already happening on the Government benches.

I’m very fortunate to be in a position, as a first-term backbench MP, working in confidence and supply, within the Greens, as the education spokesperson with, obviously, the Labour MP and Minister of Education, the Hon Chris Hipkins, and also New Zealand First MP, the Associate Minister of Education, Tracey Martin. I guarantee you that all of these things are things that come to mind when we are discussing the future of the education system.

I would also just like to note that these kinds of things are evidently really complex, and we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater entirely when there are changes of Government. The work that was done by the previous Government is absolutely being taken into account by this one. It is a very complex thing, when we’re talking about the future and the funding of our education system. I don’t think that the proper mechanism for it is by way of a member’s bill.

So, just in summation, I would just state that I am absolutely keen to continue my constructive work across the House. So too I believe that the Government has signalled that, with the invitation to the Opposition to engage in the likes of the education summit. At the very least, it’s also been signalled by my colleague the Hon Tracey Martin. So I would like to acknowledge again Erica Stanford for her work on this bill and note that the Greens will not be supporting it. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a pleasure for me to take a call on the Education (Social Investment Funding and Abolition of Decile System) Amendment Bill.

First of all, it’s really great to see so many of our new MPs having the good fortune to get their members’ bills drawn out of the ballot, but, unfortunately, it won’t be any surprise to Erica Stanford that we won’t be supporting this bill, because it’s fundamentally flawed.

The member Denise Lee previously asked why we don’t support so many of the members’ bills. I have to disagree, because we just went through a member’s bill from the National Party member Scott Simpson that we supported. So that’s absolutely not right. But we don’t support bills that are fundamentally flawed, like her bill, unfortunately, which was a bill that would have kept women in low-paid employment and that’s why we couldn’t support it. It was not a bill that was a good bill, even though it was, as she said, served on a silver platter. If you put a turd on it and rolled it in glitter, on a silver platter, nobody would still want to have a bar of it.

So basically, the previous National Government announced its intention, back in June 2017, to replace the decile system with a needs index. But what they didn’t do was they didn’t work out the details. They didn’t put the funding aside. In fact, they had no money at all put aside for this policy, despite the advice that the Opposition received at the time that it was likely to need an extra $100 million a year to implement this policy properly.

I did refresh my knowledge of this bill by reading the member Jan Tinetti’s Hansard speech again, because Jan Tinetti obviously is a subject matter expert on this material, having worked in schools ranging from decile one to 10. She made a very good point, that it really doesn’t make much of a difference to the issue—for example, removing a tag like decile 1 from Merivale School in Tauranga—because the issue is about poverty and the effects of poverty on children and on our schools.

So what I’m trying to say is that this bill really is missing the point it’s trying to make, and that’s to address stigmatisation. In fact, what it likely would end up doing is actually stigmatising children by labelling them as likely to underachieve once they meet certain criteria. The bill, as has already been mentioned, is also in complete contradiction to the Education Act, because under the current decile funding system, as per that Act, the Minister is empowered to work out the details of allocation of the grants, and with that flexibility we don’t need to amend the statute every time that we need the funding system adjusted. So that flexibility would be completely lost if we put this proposed needs index in place.

The other rather bizarre aspect of this bill is that it takes the very unorthodox step of, first of all, having to define what the decile system is, and then banning it. Surely, having to do such a step in legislation is a sign of badly drafted legislation. Another comment I would like to make is that a member’s bill, as has been mentioned by Chlöe Swarbrick previously as well, is not really the correct way to review a decile system, to see if it needs to be replaced with something different. The proposed needs index doesn’t serve as a new mechanism for targeted funding. That’s because only around 3 percent of operational funding for schools is decided by the decile rating system. It would be kind of absurd if 3 percent of the funding would be decided by legislation, and the rest, 97 percent of the funding, were to be decided by the Minister of Education and the Ministry of Education.

The Child Poverty Action Group published a statement. They said that if this bill were to pass, it could put schools serving income-poor and materially deprived communities at the risk of losing funding they desperately need, and put students at an increased risk of bias and stigma. So we’re taking heed of that statement.

All children should have access to quality education. This Government is committed to creating a high-quality, fair, and inclusive education system, to produce equitable and excellent outcomes for all New Zealanders. Deciles might be a blunt measure, and something needs to be done about them. We do agree about that. But, as we have heard previously from the Minister, that work is currently being done and this bill would actually override all that work that’s being done. So therefore I don’t support this bill. Thank you.

I rise in support of this excellent bill by the fine member from National’s “class of ‘17” Erica Stanford. This is a bill that seeks to repair the broken rungs on the ladder of opportunity. It is a bill that takes an old-fashioned decile system, created in 1995, at the same time as the oldest Nokia brick phones and says, actually, we can do a bit better than that, because we’ve got a lot better data now. We don’t need to rely on an old system that creates stigma, that’s poorly targeted, that only gets updated every five years; it is time for the iPhone X. It is time to use the best resources and technology we have to best target support at the children in our schools who need that support most.

This is a bill that acknowledges that here, in 2018, we have far better data that allows us to target the children who most need help. So we ask ourselves: what is it about this evidence-based approach that the Government members are so afraid of? We hear from them that, actually, they want to work with the other side of the House on advancing education objectives. We hear from them that they care about disadvantaged children. But what are the reasons that we’ve had for why this legislation shouldn’t progress? We were told by Tracey Martin that this is a Government aiming for the sky. Well, with all respect to that member, this is a Government that is stuck in the review mud. What we have in front of us is a bill that would allow us to make progress on this significant issue right here, right now.

Now, members opposite are very honourable, as they outline little details of the bill that could be corrected or amended, and I would recommend to members on the other side that that is what the select committee process is all about. What we should be doing is saying, “Yes, this is absolutely the right direction. It is not OK to let schools that are decile 1, 2, and 3 be labelled as poor schools any more. We shouldn’t put up with that for another six months, we shouldn’t up with that for another year, and we shouldn’t put up with that for another week. Let’s progress this legislation now to remove that stigma and to make progress for those schools. It’s not good enough to let children who are coming from the most disadvantaged circumstances—that all of the data, all of the research, tells us are at high risk of educational underachievement—not be supported properly. That’s not good enough, so we’re going to act.”

But no, no; instead, what we have is a Government with a very different approach. We have a Government with a Minister who says to the member, “Oh, yes, I’ll talk to you about your bill.”, then sends her a letter about the bill the day before its due to be read—the day before—attached to it a report written a month before by his officials that he could easily have given to the member earlier to ask to work with her. But that shows poor intent. This was not a Minister who wanted to work on this bill.

So I ask the members opposite—and I challenge them to answer these questions in their coming speeches—is this actually something that you’re prepared to do for New Zealand’s children? Are you actually prepared to change the 1995 Nokia phone funding system to something that works for disadvantage children, that harnesses our data and harnesses our technology? And, if you are prepared to do that, why would you not support this bill to select committee and progress that with haste?

What we are, effectively, doing today in this House—what the members opposite me are doing—is, effectively, putting at risk the children who most need our help. They’re, effectively, saying, “Put your needs on hold because we’ve got some petty politics over here that should take precedence.” We have got a Minister who would prefer to sit on his 22 reviews and come up with something that he can take all the credit for later, and we say that is not good enough. The time to use a social investment approach to put rungs on the ladder of opportunity is now.

It has been broadly acknowledged across this House tonight that the decile funding system has had unintended negative consequences. It’s a system that we all embraced with the good intent of helping those who needed our help most, but it is a system that is no longer fit for the times. Here we have, in Erica’s excellent bill, a system that would allocate money much more efficiently, and that is not something that anyone here tonight has argued against. Instead, what we’ve had is nit-picking about details that would be best examined by a select committee. What we have had, effectively, is a rejection of the great work that the former National Government did with the education sector in reaching out to stakeholders, sitting down, and saying, “How can we work on this system and make it better?”

What we’ve heard from members opposite is that they don’t work with the Parliament on this; they want the Minister to sit in his office by himself and come up with something that suits him. We say that’s not good enough for New Zealand’s children. You can do better.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for this opportunity to speak on the Education (Social Investment Funding and Abolition of Decile System) Amendment Bill. Can I, first of all, congratulate Erica Stanford for having her bill drawn. The member has had much more luck than I have; I’ve been in this House for a few years and I have not ever had one bill drawn, so congratulations on that.

I’d also like to acknowledge and thank the Hon Nikki Kaye, as well as Nicola Willis, who has just spoken—two of the members of the National Party who attended both of the conversations that we had over in Christchurch for two days, as well as in Auckland just last weekend. Can I say that those two conversations, where we had over 800 people in both locations, are part of what it is that we’re doing, as this coalition Government, to move forward the work that we’re trying to do in education. Yes, there are several reviews that we’re doing, but we’re also reaching out and listening to people. As well as those conversations, we’re also having online conversations with folks, where over 9,000 people have written—told us what it is that they would like to do.

Can I just also remind members of the opposite side of the House that nine years was a long enough time for them to have actually put through a decile system—if they were wanting to fix this decile system in education, they could have done it within nine years. We acknowledge that the decile system is not perfect—that is something that we do acknowledge—but we also know that there is not a level playing field in education. We know that so many of our children, when they enter primary school—when they go to school, they do not actually have the same kinds of schools. Many of them in my electorate in South Auckland—many of them miss a lot of things. Some of them don’t even have school uniforms. Some of them do not have access to stationery.

We do have low-decile schools, though, in South Auckland, and I’ll give you one example from my electorate. It’s a decile 1B school, but what that school does is it tries to level the playing field. Yes, they get extra funding because of their decile, but what the principal and the school and the teachers do is they try to level the playing field every single day. How? By providing school uniforms; by helping with school stationery; by helping to pay for some of the fees that these children don’t have.

We must be cautious, with whatever system we come up with to replace the decile system, that we’re not creating a system where there is even worse stigma than what we have already. We know that the decile system we have has stigma that is stigma for the schools. However, the system that this amendment bill is proposing would actually be needs based, but it’s proposing that it’s tagged to an individual child. So instead of actually having a system that has the stigma for a whole school, one of the flaws of this particular bill is that it would actually stigmatise individual students.

So, again, I appeal to the member Erica Stanford as she develops this bill that the system we need to go through with, in the future, needs to be a much better system. Yes, I agree that we need to develop and design the future education system for the next 20 to 30 years. We need an education system that is fair. We need one that is inclusive for all of our students. Currently, we do not have an education system that acknowledges the impact that socio-economic disadvantage has on all of our students’ outcomes. We need an education system that not only acknowledges that but addresses the fact of some of the disparities that our students face on a daily basis as something that they take into school. Our current schools right now—some of them don’t actually acknowledge that some of our students do not even have a house that they live in; that they live in a garage. That has a big effect on when they actually enter school. This new system needs to address that. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’m really pleased that my bill was drawn. I am proud of the work that the National Party have done in this area and I am proud of this bill.

The decile system is a very outdated mechanism to deliver funding to our most disadvantaged students. It’s a blunt tool. Look, to be fair, it’s probably the best thing that we could have come up with at the time with the data that we had. But we now have access to data and information that can more accurately target funding to those students in schools who are most at risk of not achieving. The decile system we have is basically pretty much based purely on household income, and we know now—we have access to information that tells us—that this is not the best indicator to tell us whether or not a child is going to achieve at school. There are many more complex factors that will determine that, and we know what they are. We know that by taking into account a wide range of indicators, that we can weight, we can determine, a child’s risk of not achieving. We know where these kids are and we know that we can target them. If we have the ability to more accurately target funding to the right kid at the right time in the right place, why would we not do it? Why would we carry on with a decile system that is flawed and that stigmatises schools—because people automatically think that low decile equals a poor school, and we know that that’s not true.

It’s widely recognised in this House that it’s a flawed system. I think, from all of the speeches tonight, we all agree that something needs to be done, and here we have a bill that gives us a better way of doing things. We can break cycles. We can see futures turned around, because, on this side of the House, this party believes in smart approaches, in doing the things that work. This bill will do just that—while protecting privacy, Jenny Salesa, if you’d read the bill—by eliminating the stigma associated with decile.

I would like to thank Chlöe Swarbrick for meeting with me about my bill, and also Tracey Martin, both of whom met with me to discuss the bill. Chlöe Swarbrick even paid for lunch—after she told me she wouldn’t be supporting the bill. That just leaves Mr Hipkins, who said—to be fair—that he would meet with me, and who is currently in the middle of summits on education to hear everyone’s views—to be “inclusive”, to have “conversations”, to use the words du jour of the Labour Party.

The summits, the inclusiveness, the conversations, the open and transparent Government, the cross-party collaboration, reaching across the political divide—all of these words and phrases sound so amazing and warm and fuzzy and inclusive. That’s what this Government would like you to believe that they’re doing, but, unfortunately, these are only words; the reality is very different.

The very first occasion Minister Hipkins has to do some of these things—to reach across the divide, to talk with someone about education, about my bill, a complex technical bill that affects every school in New Zealand and thousands of disadvantaged kids—the very first opportunity he has to discuss it, what does he do? He ignores my repeated requests to meet to discuss my bill. Silence, nothing, nada, not a peep—until the night before the first reading of the bill, he sends me a letter with a memo saying he’s not going to support the bill. And, look, I sound surprised. I sound surprised that all of this has happened, but I shouldn’t be. I shouldn’t be surprised. In fact, this reminds me of a quote from one of my favourite movies, Aladdin, where Iago says, “Why am I not surprised? I may have a heart attack and die from not surprise!”, because that’s how I’m feeling today. It’s 100 percent in line with everything the Minister has done.

Let’s take charter schools. It fits his modus operandi completely. He refuses to meet with them—sound familiar? No consultation—sound familiar? He replaces having a conversation with them with a piece of paper, a press release, announcing that they’re going to be closed—sound familiar? This kind of behaviour is exactly what I should have expected. Mr Hipkins kills policy he doesn’t like with the stroke of a pen. With my bill, it was death by letter at the eleventh hour—no reason. And when he eventually implements the equity index, he will take all the credit for all of the work—the good work—that National did. In his mind, it’s a “my way or the highway” approach, and that is very sad for the disadvantaged kids of New Zealand, who could be much better off under this bill.