Burns Brendon: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Burns Brendon: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:651;Page:601] 
BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 The member for Kaikoura promised us no excitement during his speech and he was right. He has been right for the last 3 years. I rise to oppose the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill. I think that this bill might be called the “Tolley Bus Bill”. It is ramming through radical legislation— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I know that Labour Opposition members always revert to name-calling because that is about as good as their debate is. But I think that as a new member he should be reminded that using such references to fellow members of the House is not appropriate. 
Hon Chris Carter 
: I think it is a bit rich for that particular member to be talking about personal nasty attacks on members. He is notorious for his vicious attacks on members of this House. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I draw the member’s attention to the point that he should address members respectfully. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. This bill is being pushed through under urgency with no consultation with the sector it most affects—that is the education sector. It gives the Minister the power to set education standards for every State school in this country but when the bill comes through the dark tunnel of night the Minister says that she will go back then to consult the education sector. That will be a bit late and it is a bit rich to offer consultation after the fact. 
My colleague Chris Carter acknowledged that the education system is largely collaborative. That is the strength of the system; that is what underpins the system. But this bill is about pitting teacher against teacher and school against school. It is a slippery slope. It is if you like a deluge. The member Hekia Parata has already referred to this bill as being the national standards/local testing bill so the Government needs to get its lines clear about what this bill actually aims to achieve. 
This bill has come about because during the election campaign the National Party had to present a moderate face to the electorate in order to be successful and win the election. It dropped the policy of bulk funding which had been a National Party policy in previous elections. It made no mention of education vouchers. This bill is now the thin end of the wedge. 
Hon Members 
: Oh no! 
BRENDON BURNS 
: Yes it is. Here is how this bill will work. It introduces standardised testing. 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: It does not. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: The member opposite said that it will introduce local testing following standards. That will then I am sure lead to schools being required and forced to publish those results. That will of course then lead to funding being linked to those results. As we already know the National Government has indicated that it will weaken zoning and that will of course mean that rich schools will get richer and poor schools will get poorer. That is exactly how it works. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Oh the politics of envy! 
BRENDON BURNS 
: No it is not the politics of envy; it is the politics of reality which always ends up with the poor paying the price. That is a feature of National Governments. This policy borrows very heavily from the Bush administration’s first Act in office—the No Child Left Behind Act. What that Act did in the United States was take away from schools that were underperforming. That is not me speaking; that is from the US Department of Education. I will read from the preamble to the commentary for members opposite: “A key aim of the  
No Child Left Behind Act 
 of 2001 … is to provide additional educational options to parents of students in low-performing Title I schools specifically the opportunities to move their child to a higher-performing school or enroll their child in supplemental educational services.” The point about the educational services being provided in the United States as a result of that bill is this: I ask members to guess who is providing those supplementary educational services. Is it the State school sector? No it is not. The private sector is now providing most of those supplementary services in the United States. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: So? 
BRENDON BURNS 
: We have a State education system and that is what we need to fund rather than start to spin money out into the private sector. 
The other fact that comes through from the US Ministry of Education’s analysis is that the children who have done worse since the No Child Left Behind Act are those for whom English is a second language. In my electorate of Christchurch Central there are 35-plus schools. There are some very very good schools and they range from decile 1 to decile 10 but the predominant number of schools are in the low deciles. There is no comparison between a decile 1 school and a decile 10 school. 
David Bennett 
: You can’t say that! 
BRENDON BURNS 
: If members want to put assessments on them the comparison is that in a decile 1 school the primary importance for children might be something as simple as whether they had breakfast that day not whether they sit an assessment or a test. There are schools in my electorate that have up to 55 percent of their students coming from Pasifika Asian and other ethnic backgrounds. 
Hekia Parata 
: So what? 
BRENDON BURNS 
: So the point is that if the American experience has been that children from non - English speaking backgrounds fare the poorest under that programme then the likelihood is that it will apply here. I will come to the funding issue shortly. The point is about how a school with a 40 to 50 percent non-English speaking profile of students would feature under this bill. There is nothing in the bill about resources. There is not a mention about the funding that is actually what drives educational outcomes. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: It’s called a budget. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: That is right. It is about creating another level of bureaucracy— 
Hon Members 
: Ha ha! 
BRENDON BURNS 
: Yes it is. It is about adding another layer in there. There are plenty of tools within the current framework to assess children as my colleague Kelvin Davis so eloquently pointed out. The tools are there already in the current procedures. The Minister says that it is about resources. I think I have the figure correct when I say there is $18 million once the assessment has taken place. 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: Extra. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: It is extra! I thank the Minister very much. The current funding for the primary sector is about $3 billion and if the Minister is talking about adding $18 million to $3 billion my calculations are that that is 0.00006 percent. So much for turbocharging educational achievement! 
The second part of the bill deals with truancy— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Your numbers are wrong. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: —I would be quite prepared to take one zero off—it is about holding parents accountable. I have no problem with the concept of holding parents accountable. The problem is that I do not think that parents are the key issue in terms of truancy. The greatest numbers of truant children are in secondary schools and the numbers increase as they go through the secondary schooling system. Trying to get a 14 or 15-year-old to go to school who does not want to go to school is not going to be solved by having $4 million more for truancy officers whose allocation I worked out on the number of schools would be about $30 a week per school or about two blocks of cheese. The other issue around the truancy issue is that it is strongly predominant in decile 1 and 2 schools—and again I say that comes back to issues of poverty and resources—and is not about decile 9 or 10 schools which have six times fewer chances of truancy being a feature. 
Pita Sharples from the Maori Party supports this bill. He wants teachers to be trained to lift up Maori. I ask what on earth in this bill does anything to lift Maori teachers or teachers teaching Maori students. If Maori are underachieving now what will happen when we mirror the American and British experience and force teachers to focus on lifting those students around the middle of the expected standard and keep those teachers focused on that rather than on delivering attainment across the board? 
I also acknowledge the comments from a Christchurch truancy officer Andy Parr who has been in the job for 8 years and who was reported in this morning’s Christchurch  
Press 
 as saying that tougher fines would have no effect on the families he dealt with: “We feel that the social stigma or the embarrassment is the main deterrent … The main ones we deal with are parents who have lost control and the student is usually calling the shots.” So putting the fines up to $3000 is not likely to make one heck of a lot of difference; that is from somebody who is actually working in the field. Thank you.