Martin Tracey: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 29 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10533. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Chair. Thank you very much. I just want to pick up and further inform the public really about the New Zealand curriculum. I mentioned it in my second reading speech on the Education Amendment Bill with regard to charter schools. Mr Hipkins has actually made a comment about this already. The New Zealand public may not know that the New Zealand curriculum is completely interconnected from year 1 all the way through to year 13.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.TRACEY MARTIN: Talofa Mr Chairman. It was lovely to have the break actually because I needed to go to get a prop. As I was saying before we went to the break another thing the public may not understand is that the New Zealand curriculum is an interlinking document from year 1 through to year 13. It goes forward in stages. You grow on your knowledge all the way from year 1 right through to level 3 of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). If people are going to make the choice to place their children inside charter schools which can use whatever curriculum they like—as I mentioned in my second reading speech there is only a single page out of this world-recognised document that they need to use so if families make the choice to place their children inside a charter school profit-making facility then the families need to hope that if the children are placed in a primary charter school that charter school then has a secondary one right next door. If not there is a very good chance that those children will emerge from that profit-making charter school with its curriculum with no linkage to the rest of the New Zealand State school system—no linkage at all.Or what about the other way round? What happens if your children go along very nicely as many many many children in the country do to a State public school for their primary school years but then the family makes the choice to send the children to a charter school in their secondary years? There is a requirement under the contract for a charter school to provide qualifications up to NCEA level 2 or its equivalent. There is no definition of “equivalent” inside the bill but I am sure we can trust the contract to identify it so that the parents will be well informed—well informed—before they sign their children by choice into a school about which at this stage there are a whole lot of things they have not been told.I now want to address the fact that the funding for the schools has taken away funding from successful programmes. I want to quote from the report on Te Kotahitanga put out by Victoria University. This is a quote that I think is very important because these schools are the answer apparently for Māoridom and Pasifika. I would like to extend an invitation to Mr Simon O’Connor and anybody in his community who would like to come with me and visit Mahurangi College and those from the Kiribati community in central Auckland—more than happy to work to create relationships between two State schools to actually lift the achievement of our Kiribati citizens. But this is from the report: “Whānau reported that their children felt appreciated as Māori in school and were more positive about school than they themselves had been. Parents teachers facilitators principals and other school leaders reported improvements in student attendance participation motivation and engagement … In terms of real numbers there is an average increase in the Y11 Māori student enrolment of approximately 250% from 2005 to 2008 at Te Kotahitanga schools.”But we chose not to roll that out as a nation. Just 10 days ago the decision was made not to roll this out and actually make this training compulsory inside every mainstream school to lift the achievement of our Māori and our Pasifika students. Instead we chose as a nation to wash our hands of the Māori and Pasifika children inside our mainstream schools and to put money into private businesses. That is the decision that is being made here tonight. The fact that the Government members cannot stand and argue for this legislation speaks volumes. The only argument they have had is “Why not?”.