Estimates Debate — Education

Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to take a call as the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee. Our select committee met on 22 June and 27 July to consider Vote Education, Vote Education Review Office, and Vote Tertiary Education. We heard evidence from the Minister of Education, the Ministry of Education, the Education Review Office, and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. We also received advice from the Office of the Auditor-General.

Budget 2022 is seeking $20.23 billion for these three Votes. This compares with the estimated $20.04 billion that was spent in 2021-2022. Of this funding, $16.172 billion is for Vote Education, which funds more than 2,400 schools and more than 5,000 early learning providers. Four billion dollars is for Vote Tertiary Education, which provides funding for tertiary education providers, including eight universities, three wānanga, and Te Pūkenga and its 16 subsidiary companies—former Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics. Thirty-eight million dollars is for Vote Education Review Office.

Over the past five years, we’ve seen significant increases both in education spending and in the number of public servants supporting the portfolio. Our committee has scrutinised these trends and asked about the causes of, and outcomes from, these increases. We’ve heard there are a number of causes of the increased spending, including more learners in the early childhood and tertiary sectors and overall demographic changes. We’ve also heard that the additional people hired by the Ministry of Education are front-line staff, such as educational psychologists and speech and language therapists; that the increase in staff is causing observable benefits, such as decreased wait times for the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme.

I would like to touch on three areas that the committee, in particular, paid attention to in our review, which are the introduction of the equity index, student attendance, and the reform of vocational education. Budget 2022 is seeking $292.5 million for the equity index, which will replace the school decile system in 2023. The equity index is intended to better allocate funding to schools that need additional resources based on information from Statistics New Zealand to assess the socio-economic characteristics of students and their likely achievement levels. There will be an extra $75 million in funding per year under the new system. Although most schools will receive more funding, about 10 percent of schools may qualify for less. We asked what checks and balances will be in place and heard that, allowing time to adapt, no school will receive less operational funding in 2023 due to the equity index and from 2024 any reduction in funding will be capped at 5 per cent per annum.

Our select committee completed an inquiry into school attendance in March 2022. A key recommendation in our report was a target of at least 70 percent of students attending school regularly—that is, 90 percent of the time that a school is open—by 2024; 75 percent by 2026. The Government has adopted this recommendation. Its attendance and engagement strategy is also targeting reductions in the number of students who are moderately absent, missing two or three days a fortnight, and chronically absent, missing more than three days a fortnight. Schools will lead the response to moderate levels of absence, and strategy will see schools receiving more support to do so.

The committee has devoted a lot of time to Te Pūkenga, which is central to the Government’s reform of vocational education growth. We noted concerns from the Auditor-General and heard that the Minister agreed with these concerns and believed that Te Pūkenga has more work to do. We noted that during the consultation phase of Reform of Vocational Education, the Minister made statements that Te Pūkenga’s head office should be modest and nimble and we heard that the Minister stands by those statements. We also asked how a significant deficit that Te Pūkenga was projected to run would be addressed. We heard that while the Minister considers the projected $110 million deficit for 2022 unacceptable, it was better than the projected deficits that would have occurred without the reforms. Both the Minister and, through a separate process, Te Pūkenga itself were confident the final deficit for 2022 would not be as high as $110 million.

This being my fourth call in this Estimates debate, I’d like to emphasise this point and acknowledge the new format that we considered these entities within, and, in particular, the increase in ministerial accountability. For many years, Ministers’ participation in this debate would be limited to taking one or two five-minute calls that would address Opposition members’ points infrequently. The Estimates debate has been transformed into 11 hours of parliamentary scrutiny of Ministers in a way that no Minister during previous Governments was ever subject to. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Given that we’ve only got 15 minutes left of the Minister’s time, I do hope, in the spirit of democracy, he’ll keep his answers short. I know that he’s always been really good in select committee in making his answers short and to the point and getting straight into it, so I hope that will continue today.

I want to start my questioning around the issue of literacy, because we had a question in the House today from Jan Tinetti around the teaching of literacy. I wanted to get some clarification from the Minister on what the view is going forward, because there’s quite a bit of conjecture out there in the sector about what’s going to happen with the common practice model. So I guess what I want the Minister to answer is: moving forward, will we have more of a structured literacy approach, like the Associate Minister alluded to and actually said on Q+A on Sunday, when prompted, that the evidence showed that this was the best system—actually, her quote was “I haven’t seen any evidence that shows me anything different.”, when asked about structured literacy being the best way to teach children to read.

What I want to ask the Minister about is his comments earlier in the year, where he said that some kids learn to read by looking at the pictures and interpreting the words. That suggests a very different approach, which is the three cueing system. What I want to know from the Minister is: are we going to get a hybrid approach where we have a mixture of a structured approach, like structured literacy, together with the three cueing system, which we’ve had in the past, some sort of hybrid, which the comments from the Minister and the Associate Minister suggest, or are we going to have more of a structured literacy approach and get rid of the three cueing system? So I guess the question is: are we getting rid of the three cueing system; is that his intention, or will there be a hybrid?

I’ll try and keep my answers as brief as possible. If the member wants to block up a number of questions, and then I’ll try and address them, that might actually help to save some of the time.

But in terms of literacy, my view on literacy is that the Government will get into difficult territory if it starts to dictate to teachers how they should teach. The New Zealand Curriculum sets out what we expect young people to be learning when it comes to literacy and numeracy. The exact methods that teachers use in order to teach are matters of professional judgment for the teachers. There are different methods, and different methods work better for different children. Reading recovery, for example, has been very successful for some children; we know it doesn’t work for all children. I think that those are matters that teachers should make professional judgments around.

In terms of the resources supplied to schools, though, because that does have an impact, what the member will see is that the Ministry of Education are refreshing the resources that are available—for example, the Ready to Read series has been refreshed and it includes a combination of whole-language learning and a more phonics-based approach. So I think our role centrally is to provide resources to schools. It’s teachers’ judgments as to how best to teach individual children.

Just going back to that, the Associate Minister has been talking about a common practice model. Now the Minister gets up and says “But no, we don’t want to dictate to teachers what they should do; it’s their professional judgment.” So how does a common practice model fit with that? I hope the Minister will answer that. It’s quite important for the sector.

I wanted to just switch now, I guess, to NCEA learning recognition credits. I don’t want to get into an argument about whether we should have given them or not, because I think that this side of the House disagrees with what happened; that’s beside the point. It’s now happened. I want to ask the Minister: what happens now? We’ve got a cohort of kids who’ve had three years of getting ghost credits or learning recognition credits for learning that they haven’t actually had—they haven’t achieved those credits. So the question is: what is he putting in place at Te Pūkenga? For example, it’ll be mostly those kids, I assume, who are heading into tertiary study at Te Pūkenga; less so the universities, because usually they’ve got a bit more support from their parents. But for the kids who are going into Te Pūkenga, what is the Minister putting in place? What is he advising to be put in place for those kids who’ve had three years of ghost credits, basically, and who haven’t received the learning that they need and are going into tertiary study without all of the learning that they need? That’s one question.

I’ll carry on because I know he wants me to bank everything up. The other question is around early childhood education. We note in the Budget documents that the Minister did not get the level of funding he wanted to put into pay parity for early childhood teachers. Now, the Minister will remember speaking to me at Estimates where I asked him—and at that point in time, we didn’t know that he didn’t quite get as much as he wanted, but he’s forged ahead with it anyway. At that point in time, I said that the amount of money that’s been put into pay parity is not enough for the sector so the costs are going to have to be made up somewhere else, either in quality or in increasing fees. And the Minister at that point said, “Fees may be increased but those centres are perfectly capable of absorbing it in their profits.” And when I asked him about those profits he said, “Well, anecdotally, I know get profits.”

My question now is to the Minister: knowing now that you didn’t get everything that you wanted in your Budget bid, are you expecting fees to go up to cover that because you didn’t quite get what you wanted? And, secondly, why is it that last week another survey has gone out to the sector to ask for data from them around their teaching workforce and the amount of time they’ve taught for and how much they’re remunerated? Because, surely, that information would have been relevant before the Budget bid? And does the fact that that’s happening again suggest that the data that they were relying on was faulty and not complete? And what will happen if the data that he gets back now shows that it is significantly underfunded and lots of small centres will end up either having to close or massively hike their fees or increase their class sizes? I’ll leave it at that. I think that’s three questions.

Before I call the Minister, I just want to inform the Minister that the National Party has allowed five of their minutes to be transferred over to you, Minister, in order to allow you to answer more of their questions.

I thank the generosity of the Opposition for that. If I can perhaps work back through those questions, I’ll start with pay parity in early learning. Obviously, when the Budget process has been put together, I have been asking for as much funding as I can possibly get to get to pay parity as fast as we possibly can. In every Budget round, I have not been able to get enough money to do that, but we’ve continued to make progress. So what we actually offer to the sector after each Budget is very much dependent on the quantum of funding that we get. Next Budget, I expect that there’ll be another instalment of additional funding for pay parity, and I hope we can make more progress there. It is quite a complex scenario that we’re dealing with because every early learning service has a slightly different operating model, and know that the data that central government holds on the different operating models of early learning services is patchy in places.

Some of the bigger providers have been very good at supplying data. Some of the bigger providers have actually said that the funding rates that we are offering will be sufficient for them because they can manage more of the unders and overs, as there will always be in a situation like this, across their network, whereas smaller providers, including some of the community-based providers, particularly if they employ a high proportion of experienced teachers, will find that more difficult. That is one of the reasons that we are continuing to seek more data so that we can make sure that the forecasting and the modelling is as accurate as possible. It is a difficult area. We have not yet got it 100 percent right in any of the attempts that we’ve had to head towards parity. That is, at least, in part because we’re not the employer and we don’t have the information, so we’ll continue to work with the sector to try and get it as right as possible. But we always must recognise that, ultimately, these are private businesses and they’ll make decisions about their operating models and the service that they provide to their families, based on a whole variety of different factors—Government funding being one of those factors.

There is another complicating factor in that the kindergarten and primary and secondary school teachers are shortly to be in bargaining and the settlement from that is likely to further complicate the parity picture again. We, as a Government, will be working to make sure that the parity gap doesn’t increase as a result of that. So there will be further decisions to be taken around that at the appropriate time. Of course, we can’t take those decisions until we know what the effect of collective bargaining will be, and, of course, that bargaining is nowhere near the point where we get that information.

In terms of the NCEA, I’d caution the member about using the phrase “ghost credits” and other such phrases that could undermine the credibility of the qualification that young people are leaving our secondary schools with. The learning recognition credits that the Government has used as a result of the COVID-19 disruption is a very similar formula to that used by the National Government, following the Christchurch earthquake, to recognise the disruption to learning that young people experienced in that year. As the Opposition spokesperson for the then Labour Opposition at the time, I was very careful in making sure that we were critiquing the decisions that the Government was taking, but not in a way that was going to undermine the credibility of the qualifications of those students. But I think we need to take great care there. I have been very, very mindful in making decisions about the awarding of learning recognition credits—and they are still learning recognition credits; they’re not bonus credits or anything else. They recognise learning that has taken place. We’ve been very careful to make sure that we’re preserving the credibility of the qualification.

I am confident, based on the advice that I have received, that there is a difference between learning that has not taken place and learning that has taken place but has not been able to be assessed. I think that that is an important distinction to be made.

In terms of the support that young people are getting out the other end of their NCEA, there are a variety of supports available there. There are some young people who have not had the opportunity, because of COVID-19 disruption, to demonstrate what they can do, and, therefore, attain their NCEA. We have a summer school programme that’s supported by Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu, the Correspondence School, to make sure they have an opportunity to catch up over summer. We’ve made a change so that if they go back to school for a short period of time next year in order to complete their qualifications because they didn’t get the opportunity to fully complete them this year, they’ll be able to be awarded their qualifications during the year, so they won’t have to wait for another full year before their qualifications are being awarded. So they’ll be able to do that, and, of course, they’ll be supported to do that and resourced to do that, if they want to go back to school, say, for one term, or for however long it is they require to get that support.

But in terms of the support provided by the universities, as the member has indicated, I’m confident that the universities are able to support young people, where they need it, to transition into university. In terms of Te Pūkenga—in fact, any vocational education providers—that has been one of the key factors in the development of the unified funding system. It’s been about making sure that we’re recognising the needs of learners as well as the needs of providers. So there are three components to the unified funding system, one of which is the learner component, which is very much designed to ensure that institutions are resourced to provide learners the support that they need, recognising that some learners will need more support than others.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to move now to the pilot that’s been done recently for the literacy and numeracy corequisites. The Minister knows that last year, only one-third of those students who participated in the pilot passed the numeracy and literacy corequisite.

I understand the second part of the trial was done last term. I want to know, has the Minister seen those results? Were they any better? Can he enlighten the committee? I know that they were due out this week; we have been able to find them. I was wondering if the Minister could tell us what the results have been for term 2 pilot.

The question is: what will he do moving forward, given these results are so dire? Is he looking at adjusting the level of the test down for a number of years and ratcheting it up? Or is he looking at a programme of getting those high school students up to standard for numeracy and literacy? And how will he be implementing that? That’s the first question.

The second question is around the number of unenrolled children—there’s 8,500 unenrolled children and we note that in the latest Budget round, the Attendance Services only got a yearly increase of $1.5 million, which isn’t enough to even start to look at it when you take into account inflation.

Those are the services that help to get these unenrolled kids back to school, so my question to the Minister is: what are we doing about these kids, the 8,500? I think he knows very well that number is probably a lot larger, given that schools have been asked to stop unenrolling students when they get to the 20 days so that they don’t get lost out of the system, but for all intents and purposes, they are actually unenrolled because they’re not showing up at all. What programme is being put in place to get those unenrolled kids back to school?

Thank you, Madam Chair. In terms of literacy and numeracy, it’s a topic that I could spend a lot of time talking about, so I’ll try and keep my answers as brief as possible.

One of the reasons that we introduced the concept of the literacy and numeracy corequisite was that I was of the view—and it was backed up by the review of the NCEA—that the thresholds around literacy and numeracy in NCEA were insufficient, that young people were gaining NCEA without reassurance that they had the appropriate levels of literacy and numeracy.

There was a change to the way a young person could achieve NCEA’s literacy and numeracy requirements during the tenure of the last Government. That meant that a broader range of credits were regarded as sufficient to satisfy the literacy and numeracy requirements.

I think that the overwhelming feedback we had during the review is that that pendulum had swung too far, and in fact there was insufficient focus on making sure that the very important foundational learning around literacy and numeracy was being appropriately credentialed by the NCEA. That is why we started to move towards something that was more specific.

In terms of the trialling of that, it is important that we pitch that at the right level, but it shouldn’t be, in my view, adjusted because students aren’t meeting that level. If we determine that the requirements are at a certain level in order to have basic foundation skills in literacy and numeracy and young people are not reaching them, then we need to make sure they reach them; we shouldn’t lower them simply because they are not reaching them.

💬 Erica Stanford: How are you going to do that?

And that is the fundamental job of schools. You know, we need schools to be making sure that young people leave with the skills and with the qualifications that they require to be able to thrive in the world outside of school.

I’d point out to the member, there’s a lot of politics we could trade about this. The 15-year-olds and 16-year-olds that are being assessed at the moment as potentially, you know—this was the generation that went through primary school with national standards. National standards were supposed to fix this problem; they didn’t. In fact, the problem got worse during that period of time. There’s a lot of politics we could play with it.

In reality, I don’t think the solution is a political one. I don’t think national standards are to blame for it—I don’t think they fixed it, but I don’t think they are to blame for it. I think the drivers behind our literacy and numeracy problems in New Zealand are many, varied, and complex, and those who aim to have the one magical solution to them are generally providing people with this false promise that will never be realised because there is a lot more that sits underneath that.

In terms of unenrolled students and the work of the Attendance Services, I think the Attendance Services have an important role, but what we’ve seen in recent times is that the work of the Attendance Services has moved further away from schools. So, yes, Attendance Services and increasing resources to them is important, but the extra work we’re doing to move resources closer to schools so that they can follow up on non-attendance is also important.

The Urgent Response Fund and the flow-on from that—the title we gave it just suddenly escapes me, but the continuation of the Urgent Response Fund, which provides up to $10 million a year for the Ministry of Education’s regional offices to provide direct resourcing to schools to deal with issues like attendance, will mean that they can have attendance officers in school, on their school sites, following up, and they can gain extra funding to do that. That’s one of the purposes of the fund. So it is about making sure that we get resources closer to schools to follow that up.

There are other things that we can do in terms of an across-Government basis to support the attendance challenge. Police, for example, in Auckland ran Operation Attend, where they worked with schools to follow up on non-attendance. It actually had some very positive results. Other Government agencies can play a part here as well.

Before I call Erica Stanford again, I just want to say that the Labour Party has about seven minutes or so left, but that other parties also still have minutes left to go.

This will be my last question, and it’s just the same question I already asked earlier but the Minister didn’t answer. There is going to be a common practice model for teaching literacy; that’s what the Associate Minister said. And yet, today, you, Minister, got up and said that teachers will be able to use their professional judgment: “We don’t want to dictate how they teach literacy.”

So which is it? Will there be a common practice model that dictates how teachers are to teach literacy, or will there not be? Or will it be a situation where we have a common practice model that includes lots of different varying types of approaches to literacy, like the balanced approach, the whole language approach, and structured literacy, and let teachers pick and choose which bits they want? I think this is really important if the Minister could answer that, because it doesn’t quite gel up between what he’s saying and what Jan Tinetti’s saying in terms of the common practice model. Thank you.

I don’t think there’s a contradiction between what the Minister Jan Tinetti and I are saying. You’re going to have common practice models that can include a wide range of things. That doesn’t mean that we’re dictating to teachers how they should apply their professional judgments.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a couple of quick ones, Minister. I’d just like clarification on the Government’s attitude or the support of kāhui ako and what the Government’s position is with that now. I’m aware of continued support for implementation; however, I believe the in-school positions are going. That’s the first thing.

And I just wonder if you can clarify for me what’s going on with the learning support coordinator positions currently, please, and moving forward over the next year or so, what’s happening? Thanks.

I’ll try and answer those very quickly. In terms of kāhui ako, the Government supports the idea of collaboration between schools and early learning services. So the concept of kāhui ako is something that we support. Do we think that the resources could be applied more flexibly? Yes, we do. However, having said that, most of the resourcing is tied up with commitments made under the collective agreements with the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers’ Association and the New Zealand Education Institute.

So any further change there would be the subject of bargaining, and there already has been. In the last bargaining round, there was a decision taken, as part of that, to remove some of the resources around kāhui ako in order to fund other parts of the settlement. Any further changes are, obviously, then the subject of bargaining, because pretty much all of the rest of the resourcing now is tied up with commitments under the collective agreement.

In terms of the learning support coordinator role, it remains the Government’s ambition to roll out more learning support coordinator roles, but that’s obviously subject to getting the funding through future Budgets to do that.

I want to ask—

💬 Chris Penk: Bonus round.

—the Minister—great! No, I wanted to ask the Minister about Reading Recovery. As we know at the moment, Reading Recovery is a three-tier intervention that’s based on the whole-word approach, the three-cueing system. So it’s very much that sort of system. Jan Tinetti, in her interview with Jack Tame, said that the evidence suggests that we use a more structured approach to teaching literacy, like structured literacy, and then went on to say that we should rename Reading Recovery and teach it in a way that is more of a structured literacy approach.

So the question to the Minister is: Reading Recovery is tied in with Marie Clay and her way of doing things, which is the three-cueing model. It was odd for the Associate Minister to say that, “Well, if we just get rid of it, we won’t have a three-tier intervention.” Is it your intention, Minister, to replace Reading Recovery with something that is similar—a three-tier intervention that has got a more structured literacy approach, that has a different name, that is very different than the three-cueing system, as she intimated? And if that is the case, are we going to get rid of the three-cueing system in New Zealand, like they have done around the world?

I don’t want to be dismissive, but the Government hasn’t made decisions about that at this point. Will there continue to be a more intensive level of intervention? Yes, there absolutely will be. Are we looking to make sure that we’re doing that in the most effective way possible? Yes, we are.

What does that mean—“the most effective way possible”?

In 2018, the Government had a literacy report done by Massey University, which told them everything that they needed to know. Some parts of it have been implemented; I understand that. But the evidence very clearly shows that a structured literacy approach is in big contrast to the three-cueing system. So if we’re going to be introducing structured literacy—which is what it sounded like, from what the Minister said to Jack Tame—how can it be that we then continue with a reading recovery programme, which is in direct contradiction to that, which teaches children to look at the picture and use context to work out words; those things are in direct contradiction to each other.

So the question is, with this three-tier intervention, what is going to be? The Minister must have some idea. Is it going to be based on the latest science? And if that’s the case, well, then, that would suggest what Jan Tinetti has been saying which is that the latest science—I go back to my quote that she said, “I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest anything different than a structured literacy approach.” Does that mean that we’re going to be getting rid of reading recovery as it stands today and replacing it with a three-tier intervention that is based around a more structured literacy approach?

As I indicated to the member, the Cabinet—the Government—has not made decisions on that yet. But I would say to her that I generally try and review a balance of research in these areas. I never take one single research report or one single evaluation report as a gospel.

The Reading Recovery contract is up for renewal. We know that it runs out early next year and will be very soon up for renewal. So when is the Cabinet going to make a decision on whether or not they continue with the Reading Recovery programme, given that the contract needs to be renewed?

I can’t add any more to the fact that we haven’t made decisions on that yet.

I want to go back to the learning support coordinators that we were talking about earlier. It was the Government’s promise to introduce these, and I understand that the Minister just said that it will depend on future Budget bids, so we will have to wait and see if that happens. What I want to know from the Minister is: how will they be rolled out differently to when they’ve been rolled out in the past? The reason I ask is because some very needy schools have not got access to learning support coordinators—I can see the Minister nodding. It was rolled out in a very higgledy-piggledy way. No one quite knows how it was done. Can the Minister explain to this House how it’s going to be done differently this time to make sure that those schools who have the most need for those learning support coordinators are going to get access to them?

I disagree with the phrase “higgledy-piggledy” in terms of how they were rolled out last time. They were rolled out, last time, based on the Ministry of Education’s assessment around which schools were most prepared to roll out the new learning support model. That has led to some inequity. So we will use a different approach to rolling it out if we extend the roles further in the near future, and, of course, that will be part of Budget decision-making. So decisions haven’t been taken on that.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I appreciate this is not a question on notice to the Minister, so I’ll understand if the specific nature of it means that he’s not able to answer. But in relation to the mighty electorate of Kaipara ki Mahurangi—north-west Auckland and north and a bit of the west, actually—the Minister may be aware, and, in fact, I think he and his office have engaged in correspondence, and certainly the Ministry of Education has, about the need for an additional high school in the area. It is a fast-growing population which is seeing not only, most obviously, the growth of residential housing but also early childhood education centres and primary schools, which include intermediate schools in that area.

These are all growing. New institutions, as in centres and schools, are being added and classrooms are being added to existing ones. So the obvious question is that as those children get older and inevitably need schooling of a secondary nature, what is being provided for them in the area? I understand that between—I think I am correct in saying—2023 and 2026, it’s intended to establish such a school, but I wonder if the Minister can give any updates, even if it’s merely in relation to acquiring land as opposed to subsequent steps that would be needed to achieve that for the benefit of the area. Thank you.

I want to ask the Minister whether or not he thinks that his Associate Minister was speaking out of turn—or made promises, or comments, sorry, that perhaps she shouldn’t have on the Jack Tame show Q+A on the weekend. Because she was very clear that Reading Recovery would likely be renamed, it would likely be a structured literacy approach, and it wouldn’t continue as the three cueing system, as it is. Now, the Minister has just said that the Cabinet hasn’t made a decision on that. So could he let us know whether or not the comments that Jan Tinetti made on the weekend can be relied on.

The comments that she also made were around the fact that the science and evidence that she had seen meant that there wasn’t anything else that she had seen that was anything better than structured literacy, when she was asked around this. So the question to the Minister is: why on earth, if that is the case, if that is what the evidence says, as Jan Tinetti has said—why on earth are we having a common practice model that the Minister has said today is going to include everything, whatever a teacher wants to put in there? It might be three cueing—if I look at the picture, guess from the context, have a look at the first letter of the word and try and guess it. If all of the evidence and all of the science around the science of reading points to a decoding of the word to learn to read, why is it that this Government don’t have the courage to stand up and say, “This is going to be the common practice model.”, as Jan Tinetti herself said on Q+A when pushed by Jack Tame this weekend? And isn’t it the case that the Minister is just trying to keep everyone happy at the expense of teaching our kids to read in the manner in which the science suggests is the best way to teach them to read?

I reject the member’s characterisation of what I have said and what the Minister has said. In terms of my confidence in Jan Tinetti, I have absolute confidence in her. She is a longstanding, well-respected primary school teacher and principal, and of course I trust her to make judgments and to make public statements in her areas of delegation, and this is one of them.

But I’ve also made it very clear, as the Minister of Education, that I will continue to trust the judgments of teachers. When it comes to decisions around how each individual child will best learn the content of the curriculum, then, ultimately the teacher in the classroom is the person who is best positioned to make that. We need to provide resources and support to teachers so they can do their jobs as effectively as possible. But I am not going to dictate to them—in the way the last Government tried to, with national standards—exactly how to do their jobs, because it doesn’t work.

So in terms of the question from Chris Penk around growth in his electorate, I don’t have the 39 catchment plans that are contained within the National Education Growth Plan with me. But they are probably the best place to look for guidance around where we envisage extra schools are going to be required. I will say to him that one of the most tricky things in this area is we know, in many cases, exactly where we need additional schools, but we won’t confirm that publicly until we’ve actually bought the land, because it immediately inflates the value of the available land in that area. The ministry are out in the market all of the time buying land. Sometimes people can’t visibly see the progress that they’re making until the deal is signed. There’s often good reasons for that.

Two statements, and a question, but they are sort of all questions, too. I’ve been going around my own electorate, which is mightier than Kaipara ki Mahurangi—it’s known as Tāmaki; come and visit some time. But talking to the various schools and principals, one point of feedback is certainly around growth and how to keep anticipating. That’s always a challenge, as you’ll understand, Minister—to anticipate the growth and find the funds for it. But certainly in our electorate, we’re seeing greater intensification. A number of the schools are looking to expand their classrooms, but I will say they’re also grateful for the buildings that have been done. They’re also indicating questions around how much time can teachers be given to learn elements of the new curriculum, including the likes of the New Zealand history curriculum. While they welcome that, they’re finding a little bit of a tension.

The question, though, is around—and I’m not fully up to speed on this. Several principals have talked to me about the regulations or guidelines around restraint of students and saying that this has been waited on for almost two years now. I could be wrong on the specifics of that, and that’s not to prejudice my principals and teachers, but they feel at the moment quite exposed without those guidelines, and there’s a growing frustration that these are not yet present to allow the schools to appropriately deal with their students. So I’m just wondering if the Minister has any information, obviously, to give to the committee but, in turn, that we could share to our principals around when we might anticipate these guidelines around restraint.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m happy to follow up for the member and get some further information for the member and get some further information on when the guidance around the guidelines will be updated. It has been a really contentious issue.

The guidelines were the ones developed by Hekia Parata, with the support of the then Opposition, because I think we agreed that seclusion and the use of the restraint in a lot of contexts was wrong. However, having said that, I know that there’s a sense amongst some in the profession that the pendulum has swung too far the other way, to the point where reasonable steps that they might have previously taken are now ones that they are cautious in doing so. So further guidance—and I haven’t looked at it for a wee while, so I don’t have that—was being developed by the Ministry of Education. I’m happy to follow up and get back to the member.

A point of order, Madam Chair. Can I just ask how long the Minister has got left to speak?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): He has just over four minutes left.

Four minutes—OK, thank you.

I want to go back to the literacy conversation we were having with the Minister around the common practice model. The whole point of the literacy document that was put out earlier this year, the Literacy & Communication and Maths Strategy, and then the action plan, was to put in place a common practice model. The common practice model, as it was explained, was to make sure that across the board, teachers were teaching the common practice. Now, the Minister today has continually told us that there won’t be a common practice—we will not tell teachers how to teach. In fact, we will allow teachers to use whichever model they think is best for their class and their students. If that is the case, what is the point in having a common practice model, and what is going to be in it? If everything is in the common practice model, then why have a common practice model, because that’s pretty much what we already have, which is everything is available to everyone. What was the point in spending all of the money, time, and resources on these groups to set up what is a common practice model that, in reality, will mean absolutely nothing?

My question to the Minister is: has he backed down? Has he bowed to the sector after what happened on the weekend where the Associate Minister clearly laid out what I thought were some really great, insightful comments around the use of structured literacy and made it sound like that was going to be the common practice model. We’ve been failing children—and it’s not a political thing; we’ve been failing children in reading for decades. We know from international studies, we know from the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement data, we know from our own internal data that things are going backwards at a great rate of knots, and the Literacy & Communication and Maths Strategy, when it came out—which didn’t say a lot; we were waiting for the Minister to say what it actually meant, and finally we got something from her on the weekend, which was very much in favour of structured literacy.

Now, the Minister has told us today that he’s going to be providing lots of resources, and that’s all very well and good—lots of resources for teachers so that they can pick and choose. Great, an increase in resources, but that’s a very different thing than a common practice model. What is a common practice model if it’s just a model that includes absolutely everything that a teacher can choose from? How is that going to shift the dial?

💬 Chris Penk: How is that common?

You know, it’s not common at all. Well, I suppose it’s very common, because there’s everything.

Look, I really want the Minister to be really clear: what is a common practice model going to include, because at the moment, it sounds like we were just about to get there with Jan Tinetti’s comments on the weekend, and now this feels like a massive U-turn away from what she said, away from the evidence and back to, “Well, we’ll just let everybody choose whatever they want to do.”, which is the thing that has been failing us for so many decades, because we’ve ignored the science of reading.

So please, Minister, tell us what the intention is for a common practice model, without telling us about resources, because that’s a separate thing. What is a common practice model, and what will be included in it? Will it just be one way? Will it be two ways? Will it be three ways? Will it include the three-cueing system, especially—because that’s the bone of contention that lots of other countries around the world have gotten rid of because of the evidence that it doesn’t work.

So please, Minister, you need to explain to us the difference between a common practice model and your comments around “We will not dictate to teachers how they should teach kids to read.” Those two things don’t sit together, and I just want some clarification on what a common practice model is, and what it will include.

E te Māngai, tēnā koe, tēnā koutou e te Whare. I’ll keep this as brief as possible, because I have addressed these questions to the Minister throughout the Estimates debate but I think it’s really worthwhile putting it on the record in the committee and also putting the question to him directly.

These Estimates occurred almost in parallel with our process for the People’s Inquiry into Student Wellbeing, a document that I know that the Minister now has on his desk. Within this report, there is a crunching of data that shows that students are doing it incredibly tough. Here, I’d like to read just an excerpt from a story that we got permission to share.

This is Wiremu’s story—and I quote—“I’m a full-time student and work 20 hours a week. To make ends meet I borrow money, stay with family until I can afford to leave, sacrifice certain things like hygiene products and do without food every few weeks and don’t go to the doctor or dentist. It’s not like I live in one of the most expensive cities or somewhere flash either. I sleep in an uninsulated garage with a large garage door that lets rain in. It’s only half carpeted. In the winter the walls condensate and both sides of the windows frost over. I went looking for new places to stay recently but I could not afford a single one of the places I viewed despite them being pretty run down. When COVID hit, my kura offered support. I tried to access the support and I did everything that was required of me, but they didn’t follow through.”

That, of course, is reflective of the circumstances that many students shared with us with the COVID hardship fund, which we obviously canvassed throughout this Estimates review. It also is pretty reflective of the broader experience that shows in this report that two-thirds of students regularly cannot afford the basics.

So my question to the Minister is, what are the variables necessary for the Government—or the context, politically, or otherwise—that will see him implement a universal student allowance?

Just to come back very quickly to Erica Stanford’s most recent comments, there is absolutely nothing contradictory between saying that we could have a common practice model and high-quality resources for teachers and then saying that we’re still going to trust teachers’ professional judgments about how best to teach the children in their classroom. That is what a quality education system looks like.

In terms of the questions raised by Chlöe Swarbrick, in terms of how we increase tertiary student support, it really is going to depend on the overall economic situation facing the Government and our ability to do that. As the member is well aware, for my entire working life, I have been advocating for a better deal for tertiary students, and I’ll continue to do that.

I’m not able to make any pre-commitments at this point around a universal student allowance or, in fact, any other forms of increased tertiary student support, but I will point to the Government’s record in that regard: increases in student allowances; the eligibility for things like the Cost of Living Payment; the hardship fund; first year fees-free; the targeted training and apprenticeships fund (the TTAF). There are a range of things that this Government has done that have been designed to bring down the cost of tertiary education and to better financially support tertiary students.

Turning then to the issue of student debt, we have in the Estimates on page 14 of the Education and Workforce Committee’s report, but in page 83 of the broader Estimates document for anybody following alone at home, notation of the fact that there is $1.8 billion in overdue student debt; $1.7 billion of that is owed by people now overseas. The Minister will be aware, as I addressed in the select committee hearing, that these were also questions I put to the Minister of Revenue, and I understand that there had been some work on it. As noted in the Estimates document itself, it states that the Minister said work was done on this in 2018 but had not looked into the issue in the past 18 months. So to that effect, knowing that debt accumulates interest for those students, particularly past students who are now overseas, and given that there hasn’t been much work done on it in the past 18 months, may I ask the Minister if he intends to move ahead with any work in the future or at present?

I can certainly assure the member that we are very keen to get those students who are overseas, or former students who are overseas with student loan debt, repaying their student loans. And so we will continue to work to try and improve our data in that regard, improve our contacts with those people in that regard. The IRD do a great job, I think, of leading that process. It’s not to say that it’s perfect. In terms of any future policy change around that, as I’ve indicated to the member before, it’s not something that I have been actively considering.

To the point as raised in my initial question to the Minister around the hardship faced by students, we know that this is disproportionately being felt by those who have historically been structurally marginalised. But we also know based on this data, and recent data collated by Dr Sereana Naepi from the University of Auckland, that this is concentrated particularly with postgraduate students. To that effect, I have been hearing from a number of constituents in Auckland Central, but also tertiary students across the country, who have been speaking to the diverse approaches that universities, and even faculties within universities, are taking to the issue of stipends. We are seeing there is massive discrepancy in the value being paid out to students. I’m wondering if the Minister’s done any work on this, particularly given that hardship and that barrier to access study and therefore the research that our country is powered by, or, if not, if he would encourage the Education and Workforce Committee to do more work in this space.

In answer to the first question, no, it’s not a topic that I have done a lot of work on. In answer to the second question, of course I am not going to direct select committees, but it is an area that I think is worthy of further investigation.

Members, the time for this debate has now expired.

The committee has considered the Appropriation (2022/23 Estimates) Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.