Harawira Hone: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHarawira Hone: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 04 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15201. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]3.HONE HARAWIRA (Leader—Mana) to theMinister of Education: What responsibility does she accept for the New Zealand results as identified in the OECD’s PISA report released yesterday which shows New Zealand’s test scores in maths reading and science have all deteriorated under her watch and that New Zealand’s education system has failed to keep pace with the educational achievements of other countries also under her watch?Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education):Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. I am the Minister of Education and these responsibilities fall to me. These results are serious but not surprising. The Government is serious about the plan we have for fixing this. The group of 15-year-olds who were assessed last year has been in the system for about 11 years since 2001-02. Playing the blame game does not help them. These students were not caught by national standards but they will be caught by National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 and the Youth Guarantee where the Government has ambitious targets to make sure our children and young people are succeeding.Hone Harawira: What responsibility does the Minister accept for the fact that the OECD recommendation talked about equity increasing resources and targeting disadvantaged children through additional economic assistance including free meals in schools for students from poor families yet her Government has chosen to ignore all of that and focus on everything else including national standards private education charter schools cuts for science advisers attacks on the unions criticising teacher standards and then paying them through a broken system called Novopay the sum result of which has been to confuse confound and demoralise—Mr SPEAKER: Order! That question now is sufficiently long enough.Hon HEKIA PARATA: Our Government is this year investing $9.7 billion into Vote Education—the highest it has ever been. That is a 74 percent increase on early childhood education and a 40 percent increase on schooling. We have invested $37.5 million this year in raising the quality of teaching so that all across the system every child will get a better education. We are investing in a data-rich environment because we do not want to guess; we want to know specifically who and where we need to be helping and for what. So last week we announced $10.5 million into maths and science resources and we announced $31.5 million to invest into Building on Success which are the best elements of TePūtahitangaMātauranga HeKākanoStarpath and Gateway all of which have been proven to be successful for Māori and Pasifika. In terms of—Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is now a very long answer to a very long question.Dr Cam Calder: What do the Programme for International Student Assessment 2012 results tell us about the achievement of New Zealand’s young people?Hon HEKIA PARATA: The results from the Programme for International Student Assessment 2012 confirm what we know about student achievement in New Zealand. Our highest-achieving students are comparable with the best in the world. However the whole education system needs to be better geared to support all of our students to succeed. We continue to work to ensure we have a well-performing system but it is not performing for all. That is why we are focused on raising achievement for five out of five learners.Catherine Delahunty:Tēnā koe Mr Speaker.Tēnā koutou e te Whare. How is it not a failure after 5 years of her Government that New Zealand is one of the only countries in the developed world where the chances of poor kids doing well at school has actually decreased in the years that National has been in power?Hon HEKIA PARATA: What the Programme for International Student Assessment results tell us for those who have actually analysed them is that of the factors that contribute to failure there is a correlation between underachievement and low socio-economic status and it amounts to 18 percent. Eighty-two percent relates to quality of teaching and leadership relates to turning up to school every day and relates to turning up on time. We are interested in all of those factors because it is a partnership between schools and parents in the community that will affect the results we want for all New Zealanders.Catherine Delahunty: Why has equity in New Zealand education deteriorated according to the Programme for International Student Assessment since National came to power while Australia has managed to increase the chances of poorer kids doing well there in exactly the same time period?Hon HEKIA PARATA: Rather than get into comparisons between those particular systems—because actually that information is not accurate—what we have happening here is that we now have nearly 96 percent of all kids under 5 going to early childhood education. This is a significant increase and addresses equity issues.Catherine Delahunty: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Minister is giving a great background on early childhood education but the question was—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat. The question was around the difference of equity and performance in New Zealand and Australia. The Minister addressed that straight away. She was saying that she did not agree with that information.Hone Harawira: What responsibility does the Minister accept for saying that “New Zealand has a good track-record on the international stage ranking 7th in the world … in reading …” when just 4 months later under her watch we dropped to 13th in the world; or does she instead hold to her new view that it is not that we are doing so bad it is just that the Chinese are doing so much better?Hon HEKIA PARATA: If the honourable member had used the full quote from me what I actually said was that under the previous Programme for International Student Assessment results New Zealand was seventh on that ranking for reading. But disaggregated by ethnicity Māori were 34th and Pasifika were 44th. In every speech I gave I pointed that out and pointed out that the challenge to us was to get excellence in the system for everyone.