Calder Cam: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Calder Cam: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 12 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8441. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr CAM CALDER (National) 
: 
 Look the Government realises that the Novopay issues are hugely frustrating and we wish to thank the school sector and administrators and other staff for their patience and hard work while we address the issues. The issues are complex—we have not made any secret about that—and there is no quick fix but everything is being done to resolve the issues as quickly as possible. As Steven Joyce has said if there was a button to be pushed that could fix it right away we would have pushed it. I am looking at you Mr Hipkins. I am looking at you. OK we are on watch now but you know if you want to look in your own mirror back then with Mr Mallard and yourself you put it together in the first place. 
The Government measures we put in place to address the issue of Novopay include $5 million under a remediation plan covering work on bug fixes and boosting the number of call centres and data processing staff. We have instigated a technical review to look at the stability of the system and its data and it is expected to be released in a couple of weeks after it has gone to Cabinet. A ministerial inquiry will look into all aspects of the Novopay project as it is doing now from the outset to the present day and we are in discussions with the former payroll supplier Datacom on a backup plan. 
But let us get on to something more general and that is our overall spend on education. We are investing $9.6 billion in early childhood education and schooling in 2012-13—the most ever. We are wanting to achieve our goal of getting five out of five kids achieving and we want that to happen sooner rather than later. It is all very well to say that four out of five are doing well but we are aiming for five out of five. So we are setting targets for early childhood education and at secondary school level and we have also set targets of national standards in between. So we are holding ourselves to account. 
We want to see 98 percent of all school entrants having participated in early childhood education by 2016 and 85 percent of all 18-year-olds having achieved National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 or an equivalent education qualification by 2017. We are investing $1.4 billion in early childhood education the most ever of which $47 million is targeted towards priority kids and we are trying to engage the kids in Maori and Pasifika communities and in low socio-economic areas who are currently missing out. It is all very well to talk about a 95 percent average overall nationally but we know that Maori and Pasifika participation is significantly less than that. At the moment around about 70 percent of kids are able to read and write and do maths at or above their year level but overall boys are trailing girls and Maori and Pasifika are trailing everyone. 
Having said that I want to pay credit to some outstanding teachers in Manurewa. Manurewa is a vibrant and diverse community—33 to 34 percent Maori and Pasifika 20 percent Asian. At decile 2 Redoubt North Primary School with the outstanding work that Jane Milner and her management team are doing their students are leaving school with a reading age at on average 2 years above their chronological age. That is an outstanding result. The teachers at Manurewa High School—in 2011 over 90 percent of the students in year 13 had level 2 qualifications. That is an outstanding effort. The Education Review Office report of Manurewa Intermediate School—Iain Taylor the principal talked of a principal providing dynamic inspirational professional leadership for the school staff and community. It is a high-trust Education Review Office report. The school will not be seen again until 4 to 5 years’ time. 
Principals like Judd McLauchlan and Shirley Maihi are doing an outstanding job in our schools. But what is happening nationally? This is not happening all over the country. We look at our PISA results for 2009. In reading New Zealand got seventh—seventh in the world. PISA stands for the Programme for International Students Assessment and is run by the OECD. If we disaggregate the results Pakeha are at level two—second in the world—Asians are seventh Maori are 34th equal between Slovenia and Slovakia and Pasifika are 44th just above Mexico. This is not acceptable and we are instituting strategies to improve this. We were last equal—