Mallard Trevor: Financial Review Debate — Procedure In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Mallard Trevor: Financial Review Debate — Procedure In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:616;Page:11884] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education) 
: 
 Members would have noted that I took some time to get to my feet because I was waiting for the Leader of the Opposition to speak. We were told that the major issue for the National Party is education that it is interested in standards and that education is a key issue. What did Dr Brash say? Did he get on his feet? There was not a word not a whisper not even a whimper from the Leader of the Opposition in this debate. Do members know why? He does not care. He does not care about education he does not care about standards and he especially does not care about literacy. One just has to read Dr Brash’s press statements to know that he does not care about literacy. 
This is a Government that does care. This Government cares deeply about literacy issues and that is why— 
Rodney Hide 
: Tell that to Hagley Community College. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: The member is talking about Hagley in a spirited way and I want to deal with that issue now. The Ministry of Education made a mistake in approving a prayer room. 
Rodney Hide 
: What about the Minister? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I have apologised to the school for the mistake the ministry made and I have apologised to the school for the comments I made when I was not aware that a ministry official had made such a silly decision. I think the issue has just about gone away now. It was wrong. 
Rodney Hide 
: The Minister got it wrong. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I got it absolutely wrong because I would not have believed that ministry officials would make a decision to approve a prayer room—as they did. 
Rodney Hide 
: They didn’t. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: The member said they did not but I have seen the letter and they approved a prayer room. They were wrong; they should not have done that. It is not the sort of thing we do in our education system which has a tradition of being secular. I think that fair points have been made around the country about not approving Christian prayer rooms Hindu prayer rooms synagogues or other arrangements. It is not appropriate it should not have happened and I regret the fact that it did. 
Let us get back to the important stuff now and that is literacy. I think it is particularly interesting that people are coming from around the world to look at asTTle. When I mentioned asTTle earlier today the Leader of the Opposition who was in the Chamber had not heard of it. He did not know what it was about. Someone who has talked about having national testing and having a school certificate for 7-year-olds—as has just been abandoned in the UK as an absolutely useless exercise—might have looked at the things within New Zealand that people from around the world are coming to look at. 
AsTTle has been developed between Auckland University and the Ministry of Education. It is a computer-based programme and it has an assessment bank. Itcurrently runs from years 4 to 6 and will run from years 7 to 10 later in the year. At each level in English literacy and numeracy there are 5000 questions. It is a computer programme that randomly selects questions to be answered by kids. It gives parents and teachers incredibly good information about how their kids sit vis-à-vis other kids in their class other kids in their school and kids from around New Zealand. 
More important it shows where teachers’ strengths are—areas where they are doing well—by looking at their whole class results and it shows areas where they are weak. It is then used for the professional development of teachers. Rather than being something that just tests the kids and leaves it there—the way a pencil and paper-type test does—asTTle then points the teacher in the direction of the next piece of work that students should do. It points the teacher to the Ministry of Education website which has thousands of units of work on it and shows the work that a kid with the strengths and weaknesses at this level should do next. Developed at this sort of level this programme is used nowhere else in the world. People are coming from around the world to look at our literacy leadership. 
We had carping comments from the ACT member earlier on. I accept that amongst the spending on promoting participation some contracts were wrong. Where there were wrong claims just about all of that money has been recovered. I hope we will get all of it back. Every single one of the contractors who made a claim that was not appropriate has been fired. Not one of them is there now. I think that is appropriate. 
I found out about those problems in 2002. It is fair to say that there was a little bit of anxiety on the part of the ministry which asked what it should do. It had a really important objective to promote participation in early childhood education and there were people employed on contracts to do that who did not look as if they were shaping up. The ministry asked if it was to be politically correct. I said: “No. If there have been rip-offs get the money back and don’t re-employ them.” I think that is vitally important because approaches like that have to have integrity. 
But is it not worth focusing on what has happened in New Zealand? I know that members opposite believe that we should not think of people as Maori or Pacific Islanders but we know that Maori and Pacific Island participation rates in early childhood education have been much lower than for the population generally. As a result that has flowed through to poorer performance in the early parts of primary school. It has flowed through to poorer literacy. It has flowed through to more truancy more failure at secondary school early leaving fewer qualifications and not as many jobs. 
We all know that early childhood education is vital and that we should be encouraging people into it. In the time I have been Minister the participation rate in early childhood education for Maori children has increased by 3 percent. I think that is good—it is real progress. Better than that since I have been Minister the participation rate in preschool for Pacific Island children has increased by 7 percent. What we are doing is targeting the areas we think are important in order to improve our education system and enable it to go forward. 
Why do we want to do that? I am not the softest most liberal wussy caring person with a Liz Gordon approach to life but I want to look at our future as New Zealanders. We have a population that is changing. I happen to think that people of my generation—the under 50-year-olds—have been targeted by Dr Brash for the superannuation cut. He will not have superannuation for us. 
I know that the only way people who went to school with me can have superannuation is if Maori and Pacific Island people who are currently in the education system and currently pre-schoolers are working. The only way they will work to their fullest potential is if they have good education and high-quality early childhood education as a part of that. 
It is worth saying right at the end that for the first time in 30 years—having been started in the previous financial year and completed in this one—we have two new State secondary schools. One is at Botany Downs and the other is at Alfriston. They are wonderful schools and all members should have a look at them. 
Report noted.