Parmar ParmjeetEDUCATION AMENDMENT BILLIn CommitteePart 1 Amendments to principal ActDr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you Madam Chair for this opportunity to take this call in the committee stage of the Education Amendment Bill. I would like to talk about clause 4 and clause 5 in this bill and for that I would like to speak to Supplementary Order Paper 121 which is in the name of the Hon Nikki Kaye.So if we look at clause 4 it is to give effect to the objective of the bill—that is to get rid of national standards. When I look at clause 5 again the objective of clause 5 is to give effect to the same policy objective—that is to get rid of national standards. What this Supplementary Order Paper in the name of Nikki Kaye proposes is to delete clause 4 and also to delete clause 5. I am taking this call to support that because clause 4 as it reads says it is to amend section 60A(1)(ba) to remove the requirement that the Minister publish national standards and then clause 5 amends section 61(4)(a) so that a school charter is no longer required to include the board's approach to assessing students against national standards.We know that the Labour Government has been against national standards so this legislation is to give effect to what the Minister actually announced last year—that is in December 2017—that they will be getting rid of national standards in 2018. We oppose these clauses in this part because we believe that national standards actually help students with their basic reading writing and maths skills and that national standards should be retained in our education system.When we introduced national standards there was a lot of work that was done to bring national standards in in the form that they were introduced because for any kind of subject interest for students it's necessary that they have some basic reading writing and maths skills. So national standards as a reporting mechanism for children's achievement in reading writing and maths becomes important and it becomes important because it's important for parents to see how their child is doing in school. With that I believe that the parent will want to get more involved with their school to help their child to do better because they'll understand in that big picture—that national picture—where their child actually stands when it comes to reading writing and maths.Yes I can understand the Minister—I've read some reports in the media. The Minister says that some children could be taking up some subjects like arts and other subjects. That's fine but give me a list of any professions that do not require those basic reading writing or maths skills. Everything requires some basic reading writing and maths skills so why not have a proper measure in place where we can see what students are achieving in schools and have a proper reporting mechanism for parents to see how their child sits in the whole big picture? This is not to discourage; this is actually to encourage to help the students do better so that they can understand where they are and where they need to work more to achieve better outcomes.Everybody—yes we understand—every individual has a different capability and similarly students even in one classroom have different capabilities. We are not saying that everybody has to have the same capability. Children have different abilities to learn different subjects and that's why some form of reporting that we had put in place through national standards becomes even more important. What we have seen is that the Government is really keen on getting rid of national standards but we haven't seen anything that is being put in place instead of national standards which gives that assurance that parents will get proper reporting of the progress of their child in school. We believe that this move is pushed by unions. Actually the voice of parents should be taken into consideration in this legislation. So we strongly oppose these two clauses clause 4 and clause 5 and I fully support the Supplementary Order Paper in the name of the Hon Nikki Kaye to delete clause 4 and also to delete clause 5. National standards we know—we implemented them when we came into Government. These kinds of things do take time to sink in to show us some real results. We also know that the data that is held from the reporting is not that concrete so I think the Minister of Education should instead focus on having better data so that we know where we should be targeting our resources.