Foss Craig: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Foss Craig: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 14 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4336. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon CRAIG FOSS (Associate Minister of Education) 
: 
 An amount of $9.6 billion the greatest and largest amount ever spent on Vote Education in our history is a credit to Minister Parata and what she is achieving and the focus of this Government on what is so important to our country and our future. If we continue to do everything as we are doing right now as happened under the previous administration we will probably continue to get around 20 percent to 30 percent of our children failing in education. If we continue to do the same thing no doubt it is a fair bet we will continue to get the same outcome. 
We have put in $9.6 billion and the public may be interested to know that the Labour Party and other Opposition parties voted against the $9.6 billion - plus additional spending for such things as early childhood education and the 21st Century School Building Programme in the Budget. Even though those members have the rhetoric—and it is nice rhetoric—there is actually no hard and fast plan. 
This Government is committed. We have put some lines in the sand in respect of better public services. We are holding ourselves to account. We cannot change things overnight—we know that—but we are holding ourselves to account and we are focusing additional resources on those in greatest need in education. Maori and Pasifika sadly perform not very well under many educational metrics. It is a fact. We have a limited budget to allocate down to try to pull up those who are not performing as well as they could for whatever reason in our education system. I must take my hat off and Minister Parata would join me in thanking and congratulating so many in the sector who do so well to achieve a world-class education system in New Zealand which we have for most participants in it—for most of the participants in it. 
But for the tail it is not a good look at all. It was not a good look in the past it is not a good look now and it is not a good look for our future. We have a better public services target for example having 98 percent of children participate in early childhood education by 2016. We have not heard an alternative to that from Labour. Maybe Labour members are more ambitious than that. Maybe they think it should be 2015. 
If we remember last year we had protests. We heard that the world was ending if a National Government was re-elected if parents were given and trusted with the information about their children’s educational progress and outcome and if staff were trusted to share information about their children’s educational outcome so they could focus resources where needed for particular children. Remember that there were protests led by the Opposition Labour Party against such measures—against parents knowing so much more about their children’s progress at school and against the changes to early childhood education. 
In fact recently I was at an early childhood education centre that was quite active in the protests last year. It is now expanding out of sight and in hindsight said what a good job the changes were. I think the centre now has about 25 or 30 more children at its site simply because of the changes last year. 
One thing that has been mentioned is poverty. The word “poverty” has come up today and we heard it in question time. I challenge the Opposition because it is the Opposition’s poverty of expectations of so many New Zealanders that I frankly find disgusting. I know that many of them think better than that and I know that many of them are actually quite supportive of what Minister Parata is putting in place. 
I stand beside our Prime Minister and our Minister of Education Minister Parata and say that our expectations of our education system and of all New Zealanders is to ask them to do a fair bit better with the tail in particular than is being achieved right now. 
If we do not change the model if we do not change some of the measures if we do not even try to change we can almost guarantee to get the same outcomes of a large tail of good New Zealanders from whatever families they are from failing in or being failed by our education system. I thank again those who are being aspirational and ambitious in this sector who are identifying and confronting some of the issues and who are trying to put through some of the changes for a better educational outcome for the $9.6 billion of taxpayer spend. Thank you.