Delahunty Catherine: Urgent Debates — Educational Achievement—OECD Programme for International Student Assessment ReportText is subject to correctionDelahunty Catherine: Urgent Debates — Educational Achievement—OECD Programme for International Student Assessment Report[Sitting date: 04 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15220. Text is subject to correction.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Speaker.Tēnā koutoui te Whare. It is very very pleasing to be part of this urgent debate and very interesting. I listened closely to the Minister of Education. I think that there are many parents in this country who would love to see all of us in this House working together on education. But there are some fundamental problems and the Programme for International Student Assessment report actually highlights those problems. It talks about slippage. It talks about slippage and it also does a very interesting analysis of why the direction the Government has taken education policy in is not going to work.I want to quote AndreasSchleicher—[Interruption] I am sure you will Minister. I am sure you will quote him. He is quoted as saying when he unveiled the international student assessment results: “My organisation is very strong on choice enabling citizens to make choices and you would expect that systems with the greatest choice would come out better … You expect competition to raise performance of the high performers and with low performers put them out of the market. But in fact you don’t see that correlation … Competition alone is not a predictor for better outcomes. The UK is a good example—it has a highly competitive school system but it is still only an average performer.”Others have said: “His comments could be seen as a blow for MichaelGove England’s education secretary who has placed great importance on the findings of Pisa and has also promoted increased school choice as a key way of raising educational standards. This has been done in England through more academies and the introduction of state-funded free schools”—also known as charter schools—“partly inspired by thecharter schools in the US.” AndreasSchleicher is quoted as saying: “Our data does not show much of a performance difference …”. So what AndreasSchleicher from the Programme for International Student Assessment is saying is that the direction that the Government is trying to take the education system in is not going to work.That is why as deeply as the Green Party would like to get past ideological battles in binary opposition and start focusing on the best most innovative most creative and most culturally inclusive school system in the world we have a problem in this political situation. That problem is that choice does not work in education. If you are talking about why achievement is slipping and why we have gone down in maths science and literacy or reading in the report’s figures it is because a programme based upon increased choice and teaching to tests cannot deliver what the Government says it wants to deliver for all children. Therefore the Green Party has many many other ideas that would be more positive.But it is really important to think about the Programme for International Student Assessment and what its report said in this round because the report is talking about the last 3 years and it is talking about our country being in a state of failure. It is a wake-up call. It is not actually something the Government should be making light of or walking away from and saying that it is an ongoing problem that it was well aware of. I have never heard the Government admit that choice is not going to work.The report says and this is one of the things that I find interesting that one of the most important things is professional development. I heard the Minister say onMorning Report that she is doing everything that the programme suggested. But actually she is not because the cuts to science advisers and to professional development in science have been a disaster. I am sure I am not the only MP in this House who has received emails from science advisers drama advisers and cultural advisers saying: “We have lost jobs but that is not the only issue for us. What is happening is that the broad curriculum which we are only just rolling out is being undermined and narrowed because we are not getting the professional development to allow our teachers to do the magic that they are supposed to do.” So this is a direct contradiction between what the Minister said onMorning Report that she is fulfilling all of the programme’s suggestions and the reality that instead of greater professional development and a broad curriculum less choice but more focus on local quality public education will get better outcomes for all.The report’s information is worth reading because it talks about the importance of universalism and it talks about the importance of quality teaching and attracting quality teachers. No one is going to disagree with that. But the problem we have got is that the plan that the Government is rolling out in this country at the moment will not deliver those outcomes. That plan is all about national standards which is called teaching to test and they are neither national nor standard.If you read the latest research that came out last week you will find that the New Zealand Council for Educational Research and MartinThrupp’s study both raised red flags about what is happening with national standards. They are very concerned about the narrowing of the curriculum. That is why the Programme for International Student Assessment results have to be taken in the context of what is not working in this country. What is not working is measuring the cow not feeding the cow. There are many ways we could say that.But the Government is not listening to teachers parents and principals. Seven percent of principals in the Council for Educational Research study said that national standards could be considered to be robust. That is 93 percent who said they could not be considered as robust—93 percent of principals in the study said that they could not consider the standards to be robust. What we have with that kind of statistic isevidence that one cannot build a political consensus if the teaching profession the principals and indeed many parents are deeply unhappy with the strategies that the Government has brought in since 2008 which are not strategies for promoting a broad curriculum individual learning plans and success for all students.I heard the Minister list all the wonderful things that the Government is doing. I have heard her talk about those in glowing terms. But unfortunately the slippage and particularly the socio-economic data that is in the report show that the context in which the Government is trying to promote the global education reform movement is not working for it. That is why in the student assessment study the programme has identified this country as failing on socio-economic disadvantage strategies.The programme is saying that we are not doing enough for the vulnerable students whether it is through providing them with food as my colleague Hone Harawira has promoted through his bill or whether it is through providing them with a broad curriculum with better cultural inclusion strategies more qualified teachers and better early childhood education instead of cutting the ratios which is what the Government has done to the qualifications of early childhood teachers. It cannot keep putting up these contradictions. On the one hand we have heard the Minister say that early childhood education is wonderful but on the other hand the Government is going to cut the target of having 100 percent registered teachers. That is an unbelievable contradiction. If you talk to the early childhood sector it is deeply distressed by what has happened as a result of that strategy.Moving on to the compulsory sector we have the collapse of professional development and the introduction of the most unpopular policies that the Government could get through. The Government could not get class sizes through so it continued with national standards. Teachers are regularly telling me things like that one school is writing in school reports “working towards the standard” but another school is describing it as “well below”. There is nothing consistent or standard about the way that schools are describing these measures that they are supposed to impose. Some schools are actually doing two reports. They are doing one report for national standards and they are doing another report for what the parents actually want to know about their kids.But I want to talk briefly in the time I have left in this urgent debate about educational solutions. The Green Party is totally passionate about creating solutions. Tomorrow I am hosting a forum at Parliament in the theatrette and you are all invited. I have some of the most innovative and creative people coming to talk about the solutions that the Green Party and others have to make sure this country works better. They are going to be about facing up to equity about stopping the teach-to-test mentality and about introducing and supporting professional development for the broad curriculum. They are going to be about looking at schools being genuinely accessible to all children and genuinely free. These people whom I have brought together for tomorrow are about finding solutions to the challenges that the Programme for International Student Assessment has put out.I think it is an important duty of all politicians—but particularly of the Greens because we actually think positive solutions and a fairer future are important for all children—that we start articulating what will work. The report from the Programme for International Student Assessment and the quote from AndreasSchleicher that I just gave from show that inequality is a fundamental issue. Unlike many other countries in the study New Zealand’s results are getting worse. We have had in the last 5 years a serious increase in inequality and socio-economic disadvantage in terms of education. The OECD is being quite brave because it has always been a great believer in choice but it is now admitting that choice is failing. It is brave enough to admit that we actually need different strategies.So tomorrow we are going to be talking about some of those strategies including things like early childhood education in the language of the sector’s own people. I look forward to talking about this further with you. We need positive solutions. We need a fair future and a good life for all our kids. We do not need the current Government’s strategies.