Tolley Anne: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Tolley Anne: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Advance Copy - Subject to minor change before inclusion in Bound Volume.] 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 On reading a children’s book over the Christmas holidays I came across a fantastic quote: “It is our choices Harry that show what we truly are far more than our abilities.” It is our choices that show who we really are; this Government has made the choice to invest in education. We will not tolerate one in five children leaving school unable to read write or do maths anywhere near the level they need to succeed both as individuals and in employment as the previous Labour Government did for 9 long years. The 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment results that were released before Christmas showed that our top 5 percent of students are up with the best in the world. As a matter of fact they showed that our top 25 percent of students are up with the best in the world. But the gap between our top 5 percent and our bottom 5 percent is the worst of the top-performing countries and the gap between our top 25 percent and our bottom 25 percent is also the worst of those top-performing countries. The reading achievements of our 15-year-olds have remained unchanged for 10 years and maths achievement has remained unchanged for 6 years. 
There is no doubt that we have a very good education system but this John Key - led National Government has made the choice to ensure that it becomes a great education system. We can do that only by addressing the needs of those children who are being failed by the system and who have been failed consistently by the previous Labour Government: the one-in-five kids who do not learn to read and write and do maths the 50 percent of young Maori who leave school without even passing National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 and the 37 percent of Pasifika children who also leave without that same qualification. It is the very qualification that we know is the minimum they need out in the wider world if they want to go on to further training become an apprentice or go on to further employment. This Government under John Key has said that that is simply not good enough. We have made the choice to make changes. 
The Labour Government actually knew it needed to make some changes and I refer to comments from Labour education spokesman Trevor Mallard in 1998 who said “A national system of benchmark testing was needed so principals and teachers could significantly raise standards in schools and help New Zealand to regain its status as a world leader in education.” In 2000 that same person who was then Minister of Education said “This Government is going to make a difference. We want high standards not low standards. We want tests that occur week by week and are reported to parents regularly rather than the 4-year approaches taken by the previous Government.” That sounds familiar—it sounds familiar. So what happened? Well that Government backed down. It made the choice to kowtow to its union mates instead of toughing it out for the sake of the kids. It made the choice instead to put quite a lot of money into a programme for just a few schools. It was a very effective programme but it was so expensive there was just no way that it could ever reach enough schools to truly make a difference. 
Well this Government has made the choice to introduce national standards in reading writing and maths and to get system-wide change so that children right across New Zealand will benefit. Amongst my Christmas correspondence were a couple of comments from principals. One says “We had been working with the staff on moderation of writing for the last three years and we used that experience to provide guidance for staff in all three standards. It was still a challenge for some but we do need to move out of our comfort zone to raise the standards of teaching.”—a fabulous principal! Another one said “We have reported against the National Standards twice this year and the achievement of students in the second part of the year was exponential and amazing—almost unbelievable. These benchmarks actually focus teachers on deliberate and targeted teaching which leads to improvement.” 
As the economic crisis bit hard on our community this Government made the choice to stop funding middle-class adults to learn Moroccan cooking gardening in the wind wine tasting and the like; instead we funded places for the growing number of disengaged youth. Two thousand Youth Guarantee places last year were provided at tertiary institutions around the country and we added another 500 this year. In fact it is almost 700. These places provide school-level qualifications for young people in a tertiary setting. They include some pastoral support and we are seeing some great results. We are re-engaging young people for whom school seemed irrelevant. The Government made the choice to go out to the education sector for ideas to provide better training opportunities for those kids who work better when they are working practically with their hands making something. We call them trades academies. We promised five but we made the choice to fund eight which are opening this year and another four are lined up to open next year. They bring the resources and the expertise of schools tertiary institutions industry training and workplaces together to meet the needs of students—not of the system but of the students. 
Finally this Government made the choice to address behaviour and truancy. Students cannot learn if they are queued up for most of the day outside the principal’s office or if they are wagging downtown. The  
Positive Behaviour for Learning: action plan 
 designed and overseen by the education sector itself was originally given $45 million but in the last Budget I added another $15 million to that. It focuses on a few effective programmes that work with parents teachers and schools. There are currently 119 programmes running around the country for parents; almost 2000 parents will take part this year. We are targeting 7000 teachers with a third of them coming from the early childhood sector and almost 200 schools are currently participating in the school-wide training. 
Truancy—well this Government made the choice to face the problem. The first thing we did was reinstate the survey that the previous Labour Government had cancelled because it did not want to know—it did not want to know. What did we find? We found that 30000 kids were missing on any one day from school—30000. That is the population of my home town Gisborne. For goodness’ sake! Students cannot learn if they are not at school so this Government made the choice to double the funding to fight truancy. We are building capacity in schools to track and monitor students. We have funded a determined reduction in the number of kids who are completely disengaged from school and we are working to get them back into the system. We are trialling several initiatives around the country and evaluating their results. We are working closely with the sector and social services to build our knowledge of what actually works and we have given the district truancy services a pay rise. I think that is the first one they have had since Labour came into power 10 long years ago. We have also started to lift the quality of alternative education to get better results for students. That sector got extra money for the first time in 9 years. 
So this Government will work with the education sector unions business the community—with anybody who is interested in getting better results for kids to make our education system great. And Dumbledore whom I quoted at the beginning was right because it is our choices that show who we are who we really are and this John Key - led Government’s choice is to get better results for kids.