Robertson Grant: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Robertson Grant: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:636] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 If there is any confusion in this Chamber today it comes from the Minister. Nobody on this side of the Chamber has said we do not want there to be standards in education. The Minister seems to be unaware of the situation so I will help her by drawing her attention to the National Administration Guidelines which already say “Each Board through the principal and staff is required to” among other things give “priority to student achievement in literacy and numeracy especially in years 1-4;” and “through a range of assessment practises gather information that is sufficiently comprehensive to enable the progress and achievement of students to be evaluated;”. That is already in the guidelines. They say that student achievement in literacy and numeracy especially in years 1-4 is a priority. 
We have to ask ourselves again why we are debating the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill. I think the regulatory impact statement on the bill gives us some guide to that. We read in it that “The Minister of Education can set national standards through the existing provisions of the … Act … either by way of the national education guidelines or by regulations. Regulating for this power could achieve the same policy objective as legislating”. So why would we not do that by regulatory power? Why would we not have a situation where the standards could come under some scrutiny? Today and throughout this week we have seen that National members do not want their policy to come under scrutiny. They do not want to hear from parents they do not want to hear from educators and they do not want this policy to come under a proper gaze. 
We are left with the Minister being able to gazette the standards. There is no chance for anyone to look at them; that is the Minister’s prerogative and into the  
Gazette 
 they go. Members on this side of the Chamber believe that if we are to have standards in education then we should actually trust parents through boards of trustees and with their schools and their teachers using the guidelines to put the standards in place. Those members are saying they do not trust parents. That is the message we are hearing from the National members today. They are shutting parents out of this debate. Part 2 of this bill should be debated by parents and educators in a select committee process. That is important. Does National not believe that getting the views of parents on an important issue like standards in education is something we should do? It is a shame on this Committee that the National Government is ramming this bill through. 
There has been a lot of talk in recent months and years from National about the compliance costs for businesses. We often hear those members talk about cutting red tape; they say that has to be the aim. If we refer to the regulatory impact statement on this bill we see there are some interesting statements about compliance costs. I will quote from it. It states: “The Ministry of Education is unable to calculate the compliance costs of setting national standards at this time as this is dependant on its implementation.” So we do not even know what the costs for schools will be. We do not even know what the impact will be on hard-working teachers and stressed principals of putting this unnecessary extra load in place. We hear that compliance will come about by having further reporting and more assessment programmes which will put more pressure on teachers who are already stressed out and already finding it difficult to do all that work. 
This measure does not cut red tape; it increases the burden of compliance for no gain because we know from the administration guidelines that schools are already doing those things. We have heard from my colleague Kelvin Davis about the excellent work that is going on around the country in terms of standards. We are getting there and there is no need to go down this path. Why would we want to go down a path led by George W Bush with his No Child Left Behind policy? We know that policy has been a failure; we know about the inequities that have been caused by that policy. Why would we choose to follow USA down that path? More particularly why would we choose to go down that path without bringing in the educators and the people who have researched it to hear their point of view? But no this Government 1 week into office believes it can simply ram this bill through under urgency without any input from people in the sector. 
We have an education system in New Zealand that we can be proud of. It is staffed by dedicated professionals and dedicated teachers who should be talked to who should be listened to and who should be brought in to analyse this bill. The learning that our children do is defined by the teachers in the classroom—and I totally support Kelvin Davis when he says that. This bill is no crusade for literacy and numeracy in education; this bill is pure politics. It is about National members being able to say they have done something on literacy and numeracy. Well I say to the Minister that she has not done anything in this bill.