English Bill: Urgent Debates — National Certificate of Educational Achievement—Scholarship Examination 
English Bill: Urgent Debates — National Certificate of Educational Achievement—Scholarship Examination 
[Volume:623;Page:18469] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance 
. I ask who cheated in New Zealand Scholarship 2004? The Government cheated. The Government got a result that was politically embarrassing so retrospectively after the scholarships exams were over the Government stepped in and changed the results. I looked up the situation regarding school exams in Zimbabwe. In Zimbabwe they are having trouble with their school exams. But even in Zimbabwe the Government has not stepped in to change the results after the exam has been sat. But our Government has. What a shambles! What a disgrace! What a deep disrespect for the young people of New Zealand! Now excellence is recognised if one can embarrass the Government into recognising it. That is the standard from a Government that interferes in every aspect of New Zealand life. It has decided to become the examiners-in-chief. 
 What should our young people expect? These young people are our more academic students. They should be able to expect fair and consistent standards. They should be able to expect a duty of care from the adults who make the political decisions and run the bureaucratic process. And they should be able to expect a credible respected qualification that acknowledges the excellence for which they have striven and which they have achieved. In 2004 what did our best and brightest secondary school students get? They got cynicism and incompetence. From the Government and public agencies they got contempt for excellence and for the enormous efforts they and their teachers had made to achieve that excellence and they got the absurdity of politicians marking the exams. It never happens anywhere else but I have to say that it fits a pattern of arrogance and incompetence by the Labour Government when it comes to education. 
Some Ministers have paid the price. Trevor Mallard the man who made the political decision to proceed with the New Zealand Scholarship against advice lost his job because he thought he could persuade parents to put up with the closure of hundreds of schools. 
Pansy Wong 
: What happened? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: He had to turn tail and then the Prime Minister had to take him out of that job. Steve Maharey got sacked because a multibillion-dollar tertiary strategy went completely off the rails. Now we have an Associate Minister Mr David Benson-Pope—or as one student referred to him: “Dr Rabid Benson-Dope”. 
Hon David Benson-Pope 
: Ha ha! 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Well the students’ views actually matter. The warning signals about this started 2 weeks ago. I want to explain it to the House so that members understand the deep cynicism behind the manner in which the Government has tried to manipulate this issue. Two weeks ago on 26 January Trevor Mallard announced something quite nice: an extension of the scholarship awards. He introduced some new categories of people who could get awards of $1000 $2000 or $3000. It was a good-news announcement. I thought that it looked good but that because it came from Trevor Mallard there must be something wrong with it. 
Today I can confirm how cynical that move was. The Minister of Education had thought that around 150 students would become New Zealand Scholars—that is students who achieved three outstanding passes in scholarship. That is very difficult to do but perhaps 1 percent of students could do it. What happened? He got a piece of paper from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority telling him that only four students had achieved it. Being Trevor Mallard he did not sit on his hands; he decided to cook up a whole new scheme of awards to fill the gap. What is really cynical is that the total to be spent on the new scholarship awards is less than the amount the Government projected to spend on the old awards. So the great announcement about all this new recognition of excellence ended up saving the Government $200000 and it was made to cover up shonky scholarship results. That is what Trevor Mallard the Minister of Education says our best young people deserve from him the guardian of New Zealand’s standards of excellence in schools. It was a cut. 
Then we have Mr Benson-Pope. After all the furore we still do not have the crucial piece of information: how many students sat New Zealand Scholarship and how many passed it. We do not know. The information has not been published. It has not been released. Yesterday we saw a table that compared the number of scholarships with the number of level 3 entries. They have nothing to do with each other except that the number of level 3 entries is very large so it makes the variations look very small. I am asking the Minister to give us the results—to tell us how many students entered scholarship and how many passed. He should forget his “teenage boy” spin politics and give young New Zealanders the information they deserve to have. 
We ended up with Cabinet marking this year’s New Zealand Scholarship—Cabinet: a bunch of failed mediocre university lecturers ex-teachers and people who want revenge on those who did better at school than they did. I want to ask the Minister what criteria Cabinet applied. Let us pick out one group: art history students. Six of them won scholarships. The New Zealand Labour Cabinet decided to give out another 21. On what basis? Why does the Minister not tell us? Biology students received nine scholarships from 1000 entries. The New Zealand Labour Cabinet decided to give out another 60—six times as many as the teachers said should be awarded. 
On what criteria did the large Einstein minds in Cabinet decide the futures of our finest young academic students? There was only one criterion: embarrassment. The Minister told the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. The Minister told it to cook up a number big enough not to look embarrassing. I invite the Minister to explain today why no extra distinction certificates were awarded in classical studies or in drama and why 18 were awarded in French and 21 in art history. Look at this one! In media studies there was one scholarship and Cabinet decided to give out another 21. On what basis? The Minister will get up and say that it was on the basis of National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 3 results. 
I looked at his question and answer sheet which says that level 3 has nothing to do with scholarship. Scholarship is not even NCEA; it is a completely separate exam. But the answer to another question states that the new distinction certificates were based on the level 3 results. Which answer to which question is right? The fact is that the Minister does not know. What is worse he does not care. The Minister of Education Mr Mallard is responsible for this because he made the decision that the Government had to proceed with New Zealand Scholarship to prove that Labour stood for excellence. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: No the member made the decision in 1998. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: No I have looked at the 1998 decision. It said nothing about when scholarship would be instituted. The Minister had to demonstrate that Labour values excellence. He was told time and time again that the system was a shambles. Last year—it is in the minutes of the Secondary Principals’ and Leaders’ Forum—teachers were not entering students because they had no confidence in the exam. But the Minister went ahead anyway. 
At the receiving end are young people who have worked their hearts out to achieve what they believed was a sincere effort on the part of this country to recognise excellence—and the Minister laughs! That has been his attitude all along. This has been all about how to recover from the Government’s embarrassment and not at all about 2000 of our finest academic minds who give up their sport work on Saturday night instead of going out go to school early sweat strive and ache for it. 
 The Government let them down. It is an absolute disgrace because this has wrecked the lives of young people who had so many aspirations—aspirations to get out of a life of a low income aspirations to get into a selective university course that they will not now get into aspirations that they could walk around with their heads held high because of the recognition this nation gave to them as our best. Now we have an Associate Minister Benson-Pope who cannot tell the difference between his old responsibilities and his new ones—fish and people—and treats both with the same cynicism. I hope he is on TV every night to explain this. 
The people who find him most distasteful are the students. That is the feedback that I am getting. The Government failed them. The whole pitch for excellence from Labour has been a cynical political marketing exercise. But the parents the teachers and most of all the students will never forget the casual contempt that this Government has shown for their aspirations. Maybe there is one last chance—when Trevor Mallard can get up and say: “I was wrong. I am sorry.” He can address this issue again but the seventh-former who has just left school cannot. He or she gets one shot. The bumbling bureaucrats—the idiots—are still here to do it all again. The stupid Ministers who do not care are still here. But the students are left with broken aspirations lost credibility and a piece of paper the credibility of which was lost every day that the Government sat on its hands and did nothing. 
I tell the Government to rescue the situation. Mr Mallard should get up and say: “I am wrong. I am sorry.” Mr Benson-Pope will not do it. He has blamed everyone except the people who run the system. He is now saying that it is the job of the whole community to fix it that the teachers are not up to it and that too many students entered the exams. Everyone is to blame except those mindless bigots in the New Zealand Qualifications Authority who will not accept that there is something wrong. He is another Minister who encapsulates the spirit of his public agency. It is mindless bigotry when anyone who thinks that excellence matters and that young people’s aspirations are important to this country is thought of as some kind of reactionary idiot. 
Mr Benson-Pope will find out because the growing anger about the scholarship results will engulf level 2 and level 3 of NCEA. If he is willing to sit around the Cabinet table and adjust the results for scholarship what about level 3? What about level 2? What about all those middle students who want the literacy and numeracy credits because that will get them into university? Why can they not get their results adjusted? It is a shambles a disgrace and a dishonour to the fine young people of New Zealand.