Mallard Trevor: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Mallard Trevor: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:659] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I sometimes do not know whether to take Mr Peachey seriously. I do not think there has been a Minister in the history of the New Zealand education system who has closed more schools who has taken out more boards of trustees that were not performing and who has intervened more in order to performance-manage principals out of their jobs when schools were failing than me. But just about every time I did that National members criticised. Time after time they went in to bat for schools like Waiwhetu School which was failing its kids. They went in to bat for schools like St Stephen’s School which was failing its kids and whose kids were being beaten up time and time again. I wonder about who has had the low expectations and who have been the people who went in to bat for failing schools not in order to reinforce them but to keep them going in their failing state. I do not believe Mr Peachey now; I used to take him pretty seriously. He was someone who had a contribution to make—not something I always agreed with—and he was generally much more reasoned than that. 
There is a history in New Zealand of Ministers of Education focusing on teaching and learning. I think it was something that grew through the 1990s and into this decade. My view is that as a result of the work of yourself Mr Speaker of Wyatt Creech of me myself and latterly of some others— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Generous! 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Well there was not as much time and they changed a bit often. The point I am making is that people from around the world come and look at our teaching and learning systems especially in the literacy area. And that is where the focus should be. The point made by the principal of Anne Tolley’s Opotiki College—that we do not make a pig fatter by measuring it—is very very important. I think it is important to measure. I think it is important to measure and I think it is an important part of the learning and feedback loop. But doing that measuring should be part of that teaching and learning loop not something that is nationally imposed. 
I ask the Minister whether this is really the most pressing issue in education at the moment in her entire portfolio. I cannot believe that this is the most pressing issue. We are debating it under urgency. Is she so arrogant to believe that no one else could possibly have a view that would improve this legislation? I just cannot believe that a Minister of Education who is meant to know about personal learning does not seem to know that she can always improve her work—all of us can. I do not believe that she cannot take the views of others and that she cannot take a bill to a select committee. It might well be that she is perfect. It might well be that this bill does exactly what she wants it to do. If that was so then that would be tremendous reinforcement for the Minister; the accolades would flow. But it is my view that that is unlikely and I say that the Minister has abused process in her very first legislation. 
The next point I will make is that the Minister is saying that she is putting $18 million of new money into this legislation. That is the equivalent of about 1.5 percent of the operations grant. I will apply the same question: is this the highest priority for spending in the education portfolio? We have heard a lot about truancy officers recently in the debate—whether we need more of them and whether they can be more effective given the tools that they have been given in this legislation or the sledgehammers baseball bats or whatever is flowing out of this. I ask the Minister whether she considered putting $2 million or $3 million out of this $18 million into helping truancy officers where it would make a tremendous difference. She says that no she did not consider it. 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: We did! 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Well I am assuming that the Minister knows that when she shakes her head that means no. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: How does she know that? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: She was responding to the question “Do you know what a vice-chancellor is?”. 
I am really really saddened because in my view $18 million can be better spent. I ask the Minister whether she has taken the sum to Cabinet whether she has an agreement for it to go into the Imprest or whether it is part of the Supplementary Estimates. She has not responded so I assume from that that she has not. It means that this Minister has again breached process; she has made an announcement she is involved in illegal spending or what I think is much much more likely she has cut another part of the education budget—she has taken money away from schools—in order to put it into her pet project. 
I will make a comment about league tables. The Minister is quoted in yesterday’s  
Dominion Post 
 as saying: “the full data obtained would be available only to the Government.”—that is data from schools as a whole. I say to the Minister that she cannot say that. Schools are subject to the Official Information Act. School by school board of trustee by board of trustee and principal by principal they are subject to the Official Information Act. Any local newspaper can apply under the Official Information Act to the schools in their region for their results and the schools must give those results to them. There are no grounds for a school not to give aggregative results. There would be grounds for them not to give individual pupil results. That could be argued; on the face of the Act schools would have to give results pupil by pupil. But I think there would be an argument under the Act for not giving individual pupil results. Certainly there is no argument for not giving results school by school. 
I ask the Minister whether she has contemplated the possibility of those results being available on a teacher by teacher basis. I want to know whether that is the secret agenda here. We have talked about a Trojan Horse but I ask the Minister whether she is prepared to give an undertaking to the House through her next National speaker that she will ensure that the next education legislation will make it clear that teacher by teacher results will not be available. No she has chosen not to give that undertaking which I think confirms what her agenda is. Maybe it is deliberate; maybe she wants the results teacher by teacher in the local newspaper. That might be a valid approach from a National point of view. It is clearly a lead in if that is the case to some sort of performance pay arrangement but it absolutely undermines the possibility of positive teaching and learning models. The work we have done under asTTle makes it absolutely clear that we can get that teacher by teacher information not in a gross form but in some very narrow areas of finely tuned information to assist teachers with their professional development. If the Minister is saying that that professional support work will then be spread into the  
Hutt News 
 the  
Kapiti Observer 
 the  
Waikato Times 
 or the  
New Zealand Herald 
 then I say that that will be a major retrograde step for education in New Zealand. I think that any sensible Minister would have sent the legislation to the select committee for the committee to look at the pitfalls. Thank you.