Annual Review Debate — Education Sector

Thank you, Mr Chair. As the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, it’s a pleasure to initiate this debate on the education sector’s annual review. In the education sector, we reviewed Education New Zealand, Education Payroll Ltd, the Education Review Office, the Ministry of Education, Network for Learning Ltd, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, and the Tertiary Education Commission.

As we know, during the annual reviews there are broadly—if I can try to put them into three categories—three things that we want to probe into. One is the finance side, the second is the human resources side, and the third is the policy side, and that was the intention when the select committee decided to invite these entities for their annual reviews. I want to thank all these entities for appearing before the select committee and answering all the questions that were asked by various members on the select committee. To give some examples, I would like to start with Education New Zealand.

For Education New Zealand’s annual review, of course with a financial overview we wanted to get some more insight into a policy that was put in place by the Government in August 2018. We wanted to know about the policy that is about taking the employer assistance away from the post-study work visa—whether that policy had any impact in terms of attracting international students—and, second, as the policy was intended to reduce exploitation, which happens in that sector, we all agreed that, yes, those workers do get exploited and there is more and more work that needs to be done. So we wanted to know from Education New Zealand whether there had been any obvious impact that they could tell us about. What we heard from Education New Zealand was that there hadn’t been any kind of quantitative work around that, because they haven’t had enough time since the policy came into effect—as the policy came into effect in August 2018—but these are the things which will be of ongoing interest to the select committee.

On the same topic, we also talked about the reduction in the number of international students. As before the election, the parties currently now in Government campaigned on reducing international students in some courses, but there hasn’t been any policy put in place by the Government. So we wanted to know about the numbers that are reducing, in terms of the students who are coming from overseas to study here as foreign students. We were told, yes, there is a reduction, and we were told there has been about a 21 percent reduction in the number of students coming from China. We also heard that it is important that we spread our risk, because we don’t want to be relying just on the two big markets that we have at the moment—that is, India and China. So that is a big focus for Education New Zealand, and that has been a focus for some time now. We definitely want to go out to bigger markets to attract more international students to come to New Zealand to do valuable courses.

We also talked about sustainability of growth in these sectors, which I have just described, and then, if I move to the Ministry of Education, again, the questions were around all the areas that the Ministry of Education nearly is responsible for—for example, we talked about school property management and development. In that, we talked about rebuilding Christchurch schools, which is of interest, and of course the national education growth plan review of Tomorrow’s Schools. We also talked about teacher supply pressures and young people not in education, employment, or training. In these topics, there were, of course, several questions which related to these topics—like, in teacher supply pressures, we wanted to know about the current demand and how newly qualified teachers were coming along, and also about their retention issues.

We also talked about Māori and Pasifika educational attainment because that has been a big focus for the education sector. We want to make sure that Māori and Pasifika students are able to attain educational levels like other students. One thing that we found was that the Ministry of Education has not been able to achieve its goal of 70 percent for regular school attendance, which was of concern to the select committee. What we heard in the select committee was that Māori and Pasifika students had the lowest regular attendance rates, at 50 percent and 51.7 percent respectively, compared with 63 percent in the general population. We were told by the Ministry of Education that they will definitely be reassessing the situation about not achieving their goal of 70 percent of regular school attendance. So we were told that that will be their focus in the next 12 months, and we look forward to seeing some improvement in that space.

A final point I would like to touch on is fees-free tertiary education. Again, this is about the Government’s policy, and we wanted to see if Government policy since it has been implemented has been able to improve access, because one of the things that came with this policy was improving access to tertiary education and making it affordable. So the Ministry of Education told us that, yes, as students don’t have to take debts and loans, affordability has been seen to be good for students, but on the other hand we did not get full data on enrolment as there was no full-year data available at that point, but we talked about withdrawals—the number of students who take advantage of the scheme and later on withdraw from their courses. We were told that up to September 2018, 2,618 fees-free students—[Time expired]

Thank you, Mr Chair. The previous speaker, Dr Parmjeet Parmar, has just finished speaking about Māori achievement in education, and I’d like to pick up from where she’s left off. On page 203 of the annual review, it talks about “The ministry has a number of initiatives that support Māori and Pasifika students to progress and achieve in culturally responsive environments.” I’d just like to talk about what we are doing to create those culturally responsive environments.

What better cultural response is there than a young person being able to learn in their own language and hear their own language being spoken and being taught? I’d like to describe a bit about the initiative called Te Ahu o Te Reo Māori, which is an initiative that fulfils and delivers on our promise to integrate Te Reo Māori throughout the curriculum by 2025. What we’re doing is we’re supporting teachers to grow their level of competence and confidence in Te Reo Māori. We’re working to normalise Te Reo Māori in classrooms up to year 10. I think it’s really important. If we’re looking to engage children—not just Māori but children across all New Zealand schools—and trying to get them to engage in education, helping them to engage and identify their learning in Te Reo Māori is really important.

We’re developing resources to support teachers. That’s online resources, that’s person to person resources, online support groups, and other things. Te Ahu o Te Reo Māori is being rolled out in four takiwā—four regions—across the country initially. That’s in the Waikato area, the Taranaki-Whanganui area, Horowhenua-Kāpiti area, and also Te Wai Pounamu. We’re rolling it out in those areas first and foremost because we know that there’s going to be a 20 percent increase in the number of Māori students enrolled in those areas and it’s important that they are able to engage in Te Reo. We launched this initiative just some three weeks ago and we’re hoping to have 700 teachers engage in Te Ahu o Te Reo. Already, we’ve had over 400 enrol in Te Ahu o Te Reo.

Each area is free to develop Te Ahu o Te Reo as they see fit. So in Taranaki, for example, Dr Ruakere Hond is leading the charge there. They’re using the Te Ātaarangi method to help teachers, in a non-threatening way, to pick up Te Reo Māori. Dr Hond said, “it was a concerted effort to focus on language use, which was something that has never been done before.”—and that’s in a Taranaki newspaper.

The other initiative that we are launching is Te Kawa Matakura. Mai rānō—since time immemorial—the Crown has suppressed mātauranga Māori, Māori knowledge. In other words, if you go into any school in the country you’d be hard-pressed to find true mātauranga Māori being taught. That’s despite the best efforts of kura kaupapa, wharekura, kōhanga reo. They’re doing great work, but what we don’t actually really teach, and certainly don’t assess, is as mātauranga Māori. So a child can achieve NCEA, and that’s very good. That shows that they can achieve NCEA; it doesn’t actually show that they can achieve in mātauranga Māori.

I remember attending in 2004 a hui mātauranga Māori in Taupō hosted by Tūwharetoa, where one of the goals was that Māori children should be able to achieve as Māori. Now, getting NCEA shows that they’re achieving, but it doesn’t show that they’re achieving as Māori. So what we’re doing is launching Te Kawa Matakura. It’ll be established from the beginning of next year. It is being established in Tai Tokerau in the first instance, not because I’m the MP for Te Tai Tokerau, but that was just how the tohunga, the Māori educational experts who were engaged and involved in the design and development of Te Kawa Matakura and Te Ahu o Te Reo—it was their decision that it should start up there. Basically, it will allow young people to learn that deep, meaningful mātauranga Māori.

Look, I’m very pleased to speak in this review debate. Firstly, though, can I just acknowledge what is very clearly articulated in the report. No better statement, in my view, sums up the state of where this Government is at in terms of education, and it was really the Prime Minister’s statement to thousands of teachers in New Zealand that there is no more money. Well, Prime Minister, when you look at the report to this House around where there has been some more money, there’s been an increase for more education officials. What we know is that we’ve gone from 2,600 staff—that’s right—to 2,900 staff. There are several hundred more education officials under the watch of this Government, a Government that is focused more on bureaucracy and administration than on core, front-line services.

If we think about the areas that are covered in the annual review of Estimates, core areas that the Government has failed to deliver on and where they have really shown themselves as incompetent—take the issue of teacher supply. Yes, it is true that it is cyclic, and if you look at it, under our watch, when we came in in 2009, we saw a huge, acute teacher shortage. It happened again, but what we’ve seen from this Government is complacency, and you saw this in the annual review of Estimates. We saw $9.5 million—$9.5 million—in the scheme of the Ministry of Education’s own modelling, which is covered in this annual review. The annual review clearly indicates just the annual figure of the number of teachers that need to be funded on the Ministry of Education’s own modelling, which they trumpeted throughout this hearing. We need 8,000 secondary teachers in the next five years. Whether it’s through the annual review of Estimates or the announcement the Minister made the other day, National will be very firm. The facts are that when it comes to front-line education services and getting teachers in classrooms, the numbers don’t add up and the Government is not doing enough to ensure that that occurs.

The second core area is school property. Again, the Labour Party campaigned on modernising every single school building in New Zealand. Well, that wasn’t costed—about $10 billion—so what was actually delivered then? What was delivered was actually a similar amount to some previous years. There were a couple of hundred million dollars more, but if you look, compared to what’s needed in areas of growth, National had an Auckland growth plan, for instance, that looked at futureproofing a place like Auckland for the next 30 years, and the Government turn up with not only not enough money for growth but also the Government—I know, because I’ve got the schools that are talking to me about individual projects that have been delayed. Some of that is absolutely going to be talked about over the coming months: projects that we started and funded and they’re not delivered by this Government, and it’s very relevant to the review of Estimates that we’ve got.

The other area which we just heard from Kelvin Davis was around Māori and Pasifika students. Well, the facts are that when it comes to attendance, we do have a huge difference in attendance by Māori and Pasifika students. You’re looking at about 50 percent. We have tried to be constructive in Opposition. We put up a bill, for instance. I put up a bill which was around those education officers in Youth Courts. Radio silence—yes, that is you, Minister Su’a William Sio. Radio silence about how we might actually support some of our most vulnerable youth to have access to the education that they need so that they’re not in our criminal justice system.

In a number of other areas we see incompetence, and I want to give you another example. National funded the Ministry of Education via the education payroll to look at what is the underpaid issue around the Holidays Act. Not only did they get the cash to go and work out who was owed what, but we’re a year and a half later and nothing has occurred.

This, from my perspective, sums up this Government. They talk a good game. They always deliver whatever they tell you—you pretty much cut it in half, you add a group of bureaucrats, and then there’s incompetency and failure right across the portfolio, particularly in those core areas. The reality is they are not providing or funding enough teachers for the workforce needs. They are not funding the infrastructure that is required in terms of the front line. They are investing in—as Shane Reti is about to talk about—free fees for students to buy votes, rather than dealing with front-line education services. They are stuffing up teachers’ pay when it comes to the Holidays Act, and, actually, I’m getting a lot more situations through my email around Novopay. This is an incompetent Government that can’t deliver the basics in education.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m delighted to take—

💬 Greg O’Connor: A real teacher.

—a call in the appropriation debate on education, and I do, Mr O’Connor, consider it a great privilege to have been an educator for as long as I was, which was close to 30 years. However, I find it interesting, following Nikki Kaye, the previous speaker, who was talking about the lack of workforce planning of this particular Government, because it was in 2016 when I appeared before the select committee that talked about education at that time, where I begged the then Government to put in a workforce plan around teacher supply. I said that we were heading for a major shortage, and we were right at the beginning of it. It’s amazing how we have a lack of memory about that at this particular time. This Government has inherited huge issues around workforce planning, but, hey, we’re not going to let that get us down because we’re doing something about it.

It’s interesting that in the Ministry of Education review, they actually even said, when they appeared before us—and I quote them from their 2017-18 annual review—“The shortage is partly a result of unusually high roll growth that wasn’t planned for.” and a lack of clear guidelines about how many teachers needed to be trained each year from the previous Government. But we will do something, and we are doing something about it, and the previous speaker did talk about the announcements last week that will fund additional teacher-training places. That is really important, but not only that: we’re also looking at the supply of beginning teachers and are supporting them into their first jobs.

That is critically important, and the one area that I want to talk about particularly is the voluntary bonding scheme expansion. That is a critical area that is vital to getting teachers into hard-to-staff schools. Also, a number of teachers have actually come through my school, which was a decile 1 school and was eligible for the voluntary bonding scheme as it currently exists, to get that particular grant that was afforded to them. Over five years, that is a total of $17,500 per teacher. That is a significant amount of remuneration for working in those hard-to-staff schools. That is something that we are expanding, along with those additional teacher-training places.

I just want to go back to that. Under that previous Government, initial teacher education enrolments plummeted—not only dropped but plummeted—by 40 percent. That is why we must now address that and do something to actually bring that right, and that is exactly what that—

💬 Hon Nikki Kaye: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave for the member to table the workforce development strategy that’s been in train for 18 months under that Government.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Two things. It’s a really serious matter to interrupt a member. Every member has a right to be heard. If that seeking of leave was actually in order in the first place, which it isn’t—and then to interrupt someone during a speech is not correct, and I would expect the member to know that.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Moving on from there, another issue that we have heard here this afternoon was about the removal of national standards. One reason why this Government has actually taken that step is to start to remove the administrative burden and compliance that has been placed upon our teaching workforce, which has led towards the complete burnout of our teaching workforce. The first thing that we could do was to actually remove those national standards overnight. It was something really embraced by our sector—absolutely loved by our sector—

💬 Hon Tim Macindoe: Not by the parents.

—and something that I am absolutely pleased about, as an ex-principal, to actually say that that made a real difference to our teachers in the classrooms. It’s something I’m still getting thanked about, and I did hear from the other side someone saying that it wasn’t welcomed by our parents. Well, I’d have to say that that is something that I would beg to differ with, because I’ve heard parents say that they’re actually getting a clearer view of where their children are at now and a better understanding of what their children are actually learning. They’re actually having real conversations with the teachers of their children, which is something pretty exciting to be happening when you’re seeing the parents engaging so much in those classrooms.

The other, last, area that I briefly wanted to talk about—and we’ve heard it from two previous speakers there—is our fees-free announcement. The ministry said in their annual review that they consider the policy to be successful in terms of improving affordability and decreasing student debt. There is clear information showing that students are taking out less debt, which has got to be good for our economy. But what I did ask during that review was that I hoped that we would be looking at qualitative data as well, because I personally know young people that have considered university and who are attending university for the first time—first-time students in their families. I think that’s great for this country, and I think it’s particularly good for those young people that they are able to go there now because they’ve got those fees free.

Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s a pleasure to speak to the annual review of the tertiary sector and tertiary education, and the documents that I will refer to in this address include the select committee report, the select committee transcript, and briefings to the Education and Workforce Committee in 2017-18. In these documents, the substantive topics, or even section headings, include fees free, funding spending, Māori and Pasifika, revenue and expenditure, and the ITP Roadmap, so I’m just hitting the scope to what I’ll talk through here and anchoring it back to the annual review.

I want to speak primarily around the failed fees-free policy—the flagship policy from this Government—and I want to start off as we talk to revenue and expenditure by being absolutely clear about the size of the fees-free policy. It is $2.8 billion. A substantial part of that goes to the fees-free policy; the second part is you have more students and, therefore, you have more student allowances; and the third part in the books is the capital expenditure, at around $700 million.

It is a big number—$2.8 billion over four years—and so we were asking what sort of outcomes can we see from that policy, and we heard the previous speaker cherry-pick some outcomes, but wouldn’t it be good if there were new learners and if there were more learners? Wouldn’t this be a good policy if it was introduced at huge expense and we actually got new learners, and so we were asking how do you know that. Well, the ministry actually reports that in April and November each year, and in April what they reported was that under the fees-free policy there were negative 2,297 learners. Now, I was thinking how can that be? We’ve put $2.8 billion into this. Does negative mean there’s less learners now than there were before the policy?

💬 Simeon Brown: No—really?

That’s right—2,000 less learners now, under this policy, than there were before.

But maybe it was early in fees free, so let’s give it through the November report. So we waited for the November report, and what we heard was there were actually negative 2,402. It had got worse. So, nearly a year into fees free, there are, in fact, less learners now than there were one year previously. There is the outcome of a failed fees-free policy.

So remember I said that April and November are the reporting dates? Well, we’re into May now. What about the April reporting date? Well, that’s where all the Official Information Act (OIA) requests can’t find it. If it was going to be any good, I’m darned sure the Minister would have reported it, so I can’t wait for that OIA request to come back, because I’ll predict it’s even worse.

We were interested in the impact of the fees-free policy. In fact, one of the subject headings was “What is the completion rate?”, and that was one of the things we discussed for fees free. Well, tragically, the message came back to us from the Tertiary Education Commission that “We’re unable to report that because we don’t collect information on it.” Really? A $2.8 billion policy that’s clearly going down the toilet, and we don’t even report to know how bad it’s getting? A terrible situation.

So what happened? Canterbury University stepped in and said, “Well, we’ll do a study and tell you how it’s going, and what we’ll find is that, actually, only 5.8 percent of people who took up fees free said it was critical to them. Oh, by the way, those are the ones who don’t stick it out—those are the ones who don’t complete their course.” There’s the first evidence of completion rates under fees free.

But maybe there was something in this for Māori and Pasifika, and we asked that. We were wanting to increase the enrolments and the eventual graduation of Māori and Pasifika. How was fees free faring, and how was the whole portfolio faring for Māori and Pasifika? What we were astonished to learn—absolutely astonished—was that the Budget that we’re talking about budgeted $17 million for Māori and Pasifika, but only allocated $12 million—$12.8 million, actually—for an underspend of $4 million. I need to understand this: we’re wanting to advance Māori and Pasifika in the trades through tools like the Māori and Pasifika Trades Training Initiative, and we underspent $4 million. In fact, that’s the biggest underspend in Māori and Pasifika in the past three years.

That lends itself to the wider discussion of revenue and expenditure across the whole portfolio, because, tragically, the whole tertiary portfolio was underspent by $270 million last year. We have polytechs who, for whatever reason, have needed top-up funding of $100 million and we underspent $270 million in this portfolio. We kept $88 million for Vote Tertiary Education, we gave $8 million to Vote Education for NCEA, and $170 million left the Vote Tertiary Education portfolio and went into the general fund—which is where I’m guessing it went. It went to fund slushy machines, it went to fund failed KiwiBuild, and it left its purpose—it left tertiary education—and went elsewhere: $170 million. There’s a lot of polytechnics who could’ve survived and be doing very well today with that $170 million, as could the $4 million underspent in Māori and Pasifika. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to take a call in this annual review debate this afternoon.

I’d like to focus my contribution on international education. This was covered in two annual reviews: the annual review of Education New Zealand and the annual review of the Tertiary Education Commission. The international education market for New Zealand is our fourth-biggest export earner, earning approximately $5.1 billion in the 2017 year, with approximately 125,000 international students based here in New Zealand. As one of our largest export earners, it is an industry that I believe needs to be respected and needs to be given certainty in the way that we operate as a country, in the rules, the regulations, and the policies that we have to govern it.

But, unfortunately, this Government has been introducing uncertainty into the sector—uncertainty which is having an impact on our international reputation and on the number of students who are coming here. When this Government came into office, the Labour Party pledged that they would reduce international student numbers by 15,000 to 20,000 international students per year. Since then, since they were elected, no official target has been set. However, they have undertaken a number of policies which have continued to bring uncertainty into this industry and which are causing uncertainty for our sector and to our international brand.

When Education New Zealand came to the Education and Workforce Committee, we heard that competition in the international education market is growing, with English-based courses opening up in non-traditional countries like Japan and Germany. In Education New Zealand’s view, New Zealand’s competitiveness lies in its reputation. So, as we discuss this topic, my question to the Government is why the continued uncertainty, the continued change in rules, and the changing of the game plan for our international sector, because it is jobs on the line, it is people’s incomes on the line, and it is our reputation on the line which is having an impact.

So let’s get to some of those changes which this Government has made: firstly, changes to post-study work rights for international students. This has had a significant impact on our reputation as a country because when students make a choice as to where they are going to study, one of the biggest choices they make is based on: “What opportunities am I going to have to be able to work while I’m studying? What opportunities am I going to have to be able to continue to engage, to be able to pay the fees that I have to pay in terms of my international education? What employment opportunities will I be able to take up while I’m there so that I can gain new experiences and also upskill at the same time?”

This Government has decided to play with these rules. Firstly, they came out with radical plans—radical plans which were going to scale back the amount of post-study work rights—and then they softened that somewhat in the final rules which they put in place. But the impact was already had. Our reputation was damaged because they went out and made us far less competitive than other countries like Canada, like Australia—other countries which international students can easily decide to switch between.

The second change that they put in place last year was an increase in the export education levy. This was only several million dollars, but, again, it was an increase in the cost that it would be for international students to come here to international export earners such as institutes of technology and polytechnics and our universities had their fees increased for every international student which they had. But the shame in this was, actually, that the fee was increased higher for private training establishments than for other establishments. Private training establishments’ fees went up higher.

Now we’re also seeing a slow-down in the processing times for international students coming to New Zealand. This is something which is becoming increasingly worrying as the amount of days that it takes for international student visas to be processed—particularly through the Mumbai office—is becoming something which is of a huge concern to me and others on this side of the House, because, again, if an international student has to take twice as long to get their visa processed to come to New Zealand than Australia, then why wouldn’t they go somewhere else which is far more welcoming?

So we have significant concerns over the fourth-biggest export earner for New Zealand. We will continue to watch this Government as they continue to make changes, because they must be taken to task on this.

Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s a privilege to take this call in this annual review debate.

We focused on a topic on the Education and Workforce Committee, on the school property portfolio, so we had the Ministry of Education before us and we particularly wanted to hear about their response to the growth in Auckland—certainly I did, as an Auckland MP. So, many would know that the growth pressure in Auckland around the student roll is immense. In the Auckland region, over 278,000 students were enrolled in 2018. It’s an increase of 3,000 students from the year prior, and if you go back to 2010, 18,000 more students have enrolled in Auckland. So it’s a hugely important issue: school growth and overcrowding. Students and their families need assurances around the Ministry of Education’s capability and capacity to respond to pressures.

So when we were in that annual review of the Ministry of Education, they, in simple terms, said that they didn’t think funding was the issue; they thought that it was the capacity of the construction sector to respond to this growth. Well, back in my electorate of Maungakiekie, Te Papapa School and Oranga School, who have had a lot to deal with, are having huge housing growth pressure, which means that they are staring down the barrel of student growth pressure. Both those schools have had one heck of a job getting the Ministry of Education and the property team to be responsive. We’ve gone back and forth with several letters to the Minister of Education, to HLC, which is an offshoot of Housing New Zealand—both ministries not talking to each other. It’s been a really harrowing experience for these schools, who genuinely need support and care given to their families who face very uncertain times.

There are similar pressures all over Auckland. My colleague Chris Penk has talked in the House about the pressures faced for overcapacity in schools, many of them in west Auckland—

💬 Chris Penk: That’s right.

—and he’s agreeing with me to my right.

Unfortunately, what we’re hearing from schools all over Auckland and, indeed, the country is that the ministry has not been working as well with them as they should. The capacity is just not there within the property team, and so we needed to figure out what some of the causes were as we talked to them in their annual review. I even went so far as to ask them whether their staff turnover was an issue for why they do not seem to be responding to local communities and to MPs such as ourselves.

This is supposed to be the year of delivery, is it not? There are schools and there are communities all throughout Auckland who are left in a state of limbo with no action or leadership being taken on this particular topic. The ministry is clearly under pressure and the annual review that we sat through did not give me confidence that that was going to be met.

Now, if you take that in context and then look at what is happening, at the time when we reviewed them, the terms of reference were out for the Tomorrow’s Schools task force review. As we’ve gone through that particular task force review, we know that we are now looking at a supersized, on-steroids Ministry of Education centralisation, hub, property network—whatever you want to call it. So, right now we face all these pressures, but what’s the answer? A supersized, fictional, on-steroids, superhero response? Well, I’m not sure that that is going to be something that can come into reality, because as we saw in those annual reviews, the response currently isn’t there. How are we supposed to have assurance that this Government, this Minister, and this Ministry of Education property team are going to have communities’ best interests at heart? I’m struggling in my community. Chris Penk is struggling in his community. What’s the answer? It’s a shortcoming, as we see it. Thank you.

I rise to speak on the annual review documents, particularly as they relate to the Ministry of Education and the Education Review Office (ERO), and in particular as those relate to the early childhood education sector. What these reviews laid bare was that the early childhood education sector is one that is under pressure and one where the Government has some significant promises to deliver on, and it has failed to deliver on it to date—in particular, as they relate to increasing funding to allow for 100 percent qualified teachers and increasing funding to reduce group sizes and ratios. Those promises were not delivered at all in these documents.

When we dig into the detail of these documents we also see that there are going to be big expectations for the coming Budget if we’re just to keep up with where we are now. When we look at the Ministry of Education for 2017-18, the first thing we can ask is how many children actually attended early childhood education. The Ministry of Education told us they had a target that 98 percent of children would attend early childhood education. By its own admission, the ministry failed to reach that target. Only 96.9 percent of children did participate. This is a small drop, but it is significant because it is a trend that we would expect to be arrested in future years, because we are talking about children who are sometimes the hardest to reach and who may have the most to gain from early childhood education, and it would be expected that that gap would be covered in the next Budget.

We also looked at the proportion of qualified early childhood educators. Despite the rhetoric of members opposite, and the Labour Party, who in its campaign talked a lot about qualified educators, the ministry was clear with us in this annual review process that the number of early childhood educators who are qualified has not increased. It’s roughly constant at about 70 percent. We asked at the Education and Workforce Committee what was being done to address the shortage of early childhood teachers. I’ve visited dozens of early childhood centres across the country and they consistently tell me it is very difficult to find qualified early childhood teachers. We were told that there wasn’t anything underway but that the early childhood advisory committee was working on ideas. So there is another area where we would expect delivery in the upcoming Budget, because the pressure to find qualified teachers is there, and there’s currently not enough happening to arrest that.

We then looked at the Education Review Office. Of course, the Education Review Office plays a very significant role for the early childhood sector because it really is the independent arbiter of the quality of services that parents receive. When mums and dads leave their children in an early childhood centre—when they close that door and wave goodbye—what they expect is that a Government-funded, licensed centre will provide quality care, and ERO is the check on that. So it was disturbing to hear in this annual review process that the total number of staff at ERO has not increased in line with the increasing number of children in early childhood education; in fact, quite the reverse. The number of staff at the Education Review Office has dropped significantly. It’s down to 196, down from 200 the previous year, and down from 209 in 2013.

More significantly, as a proportion of that, the number of actual reviewers—that is, the people who go into the early childhood service and check whether it’s delivering high-quality services—has dropped back, too. It’s down to 132, having been 137 the year before, and having been 149 in 2013. Now, that is a degree of detail, but it’s important, because what we saw in our committee as we examined these numbers was that we have a sector that’s under pressure.

In fact, our view was backed up by the Office of the Auditor-General, who suggested—and I quote—“ERO would probably need more resources if it is to maintain current review schedules and focus more closely on struggling early learning centres. ERO admitted that while their target to return to a learning service is currently three years, they’re only making it back every 3.6 years.” What that tells us is that ERO is struggling to keep up with its obligation to review early learning centres. That matters to every mother and father in this country who expect quality for their child. We would expect that that pressure would be addressed in the upcoming Budget, along with delivering on the Government’s large promises around qualified teachers and around group and ratio sizes for early learning services. Thank you, Mr Chair.