Tolley Anne: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Tolley Anne: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:674;Page:20406] 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 Budget 2011 was good news for the 750000 New Zealand school children and excellent news for all of those thousands of children in early childhood education. I was interested to hear the Green member say that this Government had declared war on education. Well I stand here as a Minister of Education who is part of a John Key - led Government elected at the end of 2008 and we did declare war. We declared war on poor results for kids in our schools. We said we were fed up with 10 years of standing back and watching while 20 percent of kids failed in our schools. In fact those kids were failed by our schools. So we have put an extra $4.4 billion into education since this Government was elected. We are spending this year more than any Government has ever spent—$12.2 billion—on education. It is a major plank for this Government. 
What does that money actually provide? Well it was interesting to hear the poor maths from the Opposition over there. They obviously cannot read Budget documents because we have provided a cost of living increase on top of roll growth. We had that in the estimates. I tried again and again to explain to Opposition members that they were two separate figures. Those figures did not coincide. They were not in the one. But we still have difficulty and we get it here in the House today. 
We are putting an extra $550 million into early childhood education. We have increased the spend on early childhood education by 38 percent since we became the Government. 
Hon David Carter 
: That’s an increase. 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: That is an increase. There have not been cuts to early childhood education funding. We have increased the funding. More important we have increased the number of places. We have targeted 3500 more places for Maori Pasifika and children from poorer backgrounds to get access into early childhood education. They are the ones we want to make sure get those good services. And we have said that 80 percent of teachers must be qualified in our teacher-led services. We have said that we want everyone to have 80 percent not just a few over here having 100 percent. We want everyone to have 80 percent of teachers qualified in teacher-led services. But at the same time we value our parent-led services. This Government has shown in contrast to the previous Government that we value parent-led services. 
So what else have we done to try to effect better education results for young people? There has been $51.5 million allocated in this Budget for the network upgrades. That is upgrading schools’ infrastructure so that as the broadband fibre is rolled out past their gate they are capable of connecting into that and using that modern technology which youngsters are so used to using and which we need in order to keep up with the 21st century type of learning. The $66 million that was bandied around about national standards is actually for the Youth Guarantee. Opposition members cannot even read the Budget. Whoops! 
This Budget had $7 million in it for national standards and despite what Opposition members might say 400 schools have not refused to submit their charters. In fact we are probably down to a couple of hundred out of 2000. That shows how many Labour-led schools there are that are promoting the view that they are not going to comply with the law. But the rest of them are getting on with it and doing very well. No more do we have parents getting reports saying that their child is a delight to have in the classroom. Actually it is not labelling a child if we say that the child is strong in one area but a bit more work is needed in another area and parents can help by doing some things and the school will do other things. That is what national standards are about. It is about making sure that children progress as they need to so that when they reach high school they can read and write and take part in that wonderful national curriculum. We put $7 million into the national standards to support those wonderful leaders out there in the education sector who have picked up national standards and are running with them and we want to spread that good practice. I want to make special mention of my two Associate Ministers. Before I do that I will say that alternative education languished under Labour for 9 years. For the second year running we have increased the funding for alternative education. 
Vote agreed to.