Delahunty Catherine: Budget Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Delahunty Catherine: Budget Debate 
[Sitting date: 29 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2609. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Talofa lava Mr Speaker. I would like to acknowledge Samoan Language Week. I cannot say well done. We are living in an Orwellian universe now where bad news is good news especially in education. The title of my education budget speech is “The labyrinth descends into ruin” on an education budget labyrinth that is now disintegrating by the hour like a train wreck. Who knows? Maybe by 6 o’clock tonight staff cuts will be only one teacher per school. And the working party? Who knows? Just so long as the working party is not going to be led by Catherine Isaac or Paula Rebstock because we have seen what that means.  
Enough wasting of money on national standards moderation tools for the non-national standards and enough wasting of money on the bizarre experiment of charter schools which has failed overseas. We need to think really seriously about what is going on in education and unfortunately the changes in this Budget are a maze in which many are wandering and finding strange things in dark corners. It takes a while but it comes out in the end.  
One positive area I am going to mention in the maze which has shown some light is Enviroschools Te Aho Tu Roa. It is a wonderful initiative established by the Green Party in 2002 and then cut by the National Government and now restored by the advocacy of the Maori Party to the tune of $7 million. I say good on the Maori Party because we need Enviroschools more than ever as the planet faces the worst crisis it has ever known. It is a small beam of hope in the darkness that is the maze of educational confusion from this Budget.  
But what about the grimmer and bigger picture in education? What about early childhood education? The freeze on the 20 free hours subsidy is an attack on families and whanau—nothing less. The centres and the families are contacting us and telling us in words of one syllable that people cannot afford to pay more on their fees for early childhood education. The rate of inflation makes this an effective cut to the subsidy and it is not fair. It is going to cost everyone in the long term. Early childhood is supposed to be the most important time in our children’s lives. The advisory groups on early childhood education have come up with some good ideas to improve early childhood education but the whole process is getting undermined because people simply cannot pay the fee increases built into this Budget. I ask the Government to please not do this to families just because you can; it is too important. The Government will respond by saying that extra money is going into targeting Pasifika and tangata whenua children. That would be great if it was on top of universalism because what really makes a difference is when you acknowledge that the poverty and inequity that is absolutely endemic in this country is across the board. It is not geographically or sectorally tidied up into some particular places; it is right across this country. That struggle is across many many areas and it needs to be recognised through universalism with additional targeting of funding. The Government has failed to understand that because it does not grasp the concept of universalism and also because it does not want to spend the money.  
So let us talk about another disaster in the Budget which is the compulsory sector. In schools the essence of the Government’s rhetoric has been the long tail of underachievement in addressing disadvantage. So what has the Budget done? It has delivered bad news and even today has backed down calling it good news because of the public relations disaster. I personally spent all weekend replying to emails and calls from families and from teachers saying: “What on earth are we going to do without these teachers? What is going to happen to our children?”. In primary and intermediate schools this is a disaster and the labyrinth that I referred to is collapsing further into ruin.  
The new funding formula for schools will do a number of extremely destructive things. Increasing class sizes in years 2 to 8—whose terrible idea was that to save money? I bet it was Treasury’s. I bet it was Treasury officials those experts on education persuading the Ministry of Education and the Minister that it would save the country when even in its narrow monetarist terms it will end up costing us. That is what happens when you let Treasury officials call the shots on something that they clearly do not understand at all. Primary and intermediate schools are fighting hard now to keep class sizes at around 23 because it works. We all know it works. That is why the rich send their kids to private schools. Because they have small classes. Why does the Government not just admit that? Why does it not admit that it does not think everyone deserves it? But the diversity of children and the need for one-to-one attention to engage students with learning is a core plank for every decent school unless of course you believe in rote learning or unless you think that lecturing is education for our children.  
The other day I visited a school that is fighting to keep class sizes down by bringing in extra funding from international students and the principal had just come back from overseas doing this. It was not because he wanted to but because without that money it cannot meet its target of 23 per class. I went into a classroom of 6-year-olds who are now looking at an increase in their class size. The 6-year-olds in that classroom are so diverse that there are six different reading groups amongst what is now 23 students. The teacher said to me: “Please don’t give us one more child because the diversity of need means I cannot do justice to those six different reading groups of needs within a class of 23.” That is the reality of a community where children experience dyslexia special needs and a whole range of learning needs where English is a second language. If you understand what is actually going on in the demographics of schools you would never do this to our children. You would never consider it. However what we are going to look at is a decline in quality. Small classes are quality classes unless you are a charismatic lecturer at a university—and any student can tell you that not many of them actually exist.  
Technology teachers are the front line for the axe. We might lose up to 1350. It is confusing as the Prime Minister said in the paper this morning and well he might. He is confused we are confused the Minister is confused—everyone is confused because the formula was not thought through. I want to quote from a woman who gave me permission to quote her called Sally French. She said today: “My daughter a highly qualified art teacher with a fine arts degree with distinction and postgraduate diploma and 12 years’ teaching experience finds herself redundant with 1100 others and yes this is personal for me.” This family is extremely shocked and undermined but the Government and Treasury just think these are numbers. What is technology actually teaching? It is a broad field including practical skills and the arts including te reo Maori which is an obligation under Te Tiriti. It is about hands-on learning and it is about specialist teaching. Specialist teaching as well includes remedial reading which the Government if it cared about literacy would be doing nothing to undermine. So there are many contradictions in what is happening.  
Another one is the bizarre outcome of bad planning and lack of coherence in the education section of the Budget around cutting postgraduate allowances whilst stating that teachers will now need a postgraduate qualification. How bizarre is that? On the one hand postgraduates must find a way to study for a master’s qualification with no money and on the other hand if they do not achieve this qualification they will not be able to teach. Can they not even talk to each other before they write the Budget? The maximum amount that can be borrowed now is $172.51 a week.  
However there has been good news in the Budget—good news for Wanganui Collegiate School. It has received $2.9 million over the last 3 years and a new commitment to this private school which is failing. Private sector education of course deserves the cash—apparently! So let us bail out failing private schools and cut quality public education. That is what is hidden in the rhetoric maze and people this is bad news. It is bad news for students teachers and the country but it is good news for Treasury and its little numbers and good for Wanganui Collegiate School.  
However the Green Party is inspired about education and educational leaders in Aotearoa as well as others such as Pasi Sahlberg Finland’s director of education who has shown the world that great results come from a commitment to equity leading to achievement. Does the National Government know what equity means in education? It is the reason that Finland is at the top of the Programme for International Student Assessment poll. Equity—that is what leads to good achievement for all our children and it is highly successful despite the uninformed doubts expressed by Gerry Brownlee about Finland. The tragedy is that without equity in our communities we will never achieve equity in our schools. But to undermine that by cutting teacher numbers and increasing class sizes at this time in our history and at this time in our crisis around employment is a downright disgrace. The tragedy of the failed Budget appropriation on education is that someone will have to then turn round to get teachers back into the profession and to reduce class sizes again and fix the damage—and what a waste of time and lives that is. At a time when education must be the basis for liberation for all we are now talking about narrowing privilege. We are now talking about increasing the privilege of the few and protecting the few despite the many.  
The cuts to adult community education lifelong learning and many other things need to be talked about. The maze is unfolding but I just want to say thank you very much Mr Speaker. The Budget has failed us and our children.