Maharey Steve: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Maharey Steve: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:640;Page:10413] 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 In reflecting on the estimates vote I begin at the beginning of where I think everybody has got to today. I think we have a lot of agreement about education at the present time. I listened to Brian Donnelly—whom I listen to a great deal on these issues—and I heard a bit of dispute about the issue of the number of hours that kids will spend in the classroom. I will come back to that in a second because I think there is a way of relieving that issue in the member’s mind. 
I hear a lot of reinforcement about what we are doing in education right now. I do not think anybody would say that everything is perfect in education but we are on the right road. I want to come back to that road in a little while. I listened to Katherine Rich and I heard really an endorsement around the issues of early childhood education. She might not like the way it is running at the present time—there is debate about that of course—but I do not hear any real dispute from Katherine Rich or from Paula Bennett about the need for us to have a strategy around early childhood education and for young people to be in education. 
Whether or not we see the policy working explicitly as it should right now—and we will have different views on that—I think we all agree that this country ought to commit itself to having 3 and 4-year-olds in education. That is the big step forward here. We are saying that taxpayers now want to pay for education in that preschool area because they can see it makes a big difference to one’s later educational career and then hopefully to one’s work or whatever one might do. That is agreed; I can see that as I look around the Chamber. We will argue about details I am sure until the cows come home but we agree on that. 
I listened to Mr Peachey—he is also someone whom I listen to a lot; he has standing in the educational area because of his career as a principal—and I heard him say it is great that we are talking about literacy and numeracy now. He said it is great that we are starting to get on top of the issue in terms of the way we teach literacy and numeracy. We can see some real turn-round in that for Maori and that we are seeing some real results in terms of their achievement in this area. Mr Peachey points to the fact that we have to focus on effective teaching. This is the key to making sure we make a difference in our education system. The key is not a bureaucrat sitting in a building here in Wellington; it is what happens in that interface between the learner and the teacher that matters. I hear that point coming through from Mr Peachey. 
So I hear a lot of agreement around the Chamber. The road we have felt ourselves going down over the last 4 or 5 years I have labelled “personalising learning”. This is all about trying to have a 21st century education system that fits with the needs of young New Zealanders today which means in a nutshell that they have to be active learners and not have content driven into them which is what happened to most of us in this Chamber. That is the way education was for most of us. We sat in big classes in front of the teacher and the teacher put as much content as he or she possibly could into us each day and we had to give it back in exams. 
We know that that approach will not work in this century. We know that it will not solve the problems with literacy and numeracy. It will not motivate students. It will not make our schools the kind of schools they should be. The right approach is all about getting active participants in the learning process. That is what personalising learning is all about and that is the direction we are going in. I hope that between us we can consolidate that kind of learning whether it is in early childhood primary secondary or tertiary education because that will make us No. 1 in education. 
 Someone—I think it was Mr Donnelly—mentioned the Asian systems. Now frankly as he knows they look to us. They may have longer school days but they recognise that what they are doing in Asia at the present time is building last century’s form of education. They are building large schools. They are doing what we did last century—stuffing content into the heads of their students. They know there is a real problem with that. They need creative innovative self-motivated students to come out of there and they cannot get them from that education system. So as much as I admire a lot about what I see in Asia at the present time as big education systems are rapidly put together one would have to say that Asia is starting to look to countries like us and ask how at least parts of their systems can be made more innovative. We are on the right track. We ought to argue vigorously as we are doing about how that track should be followed. It would be awful to see it change now that we have basically figured out which way to go. 
I say to Katherine Rich that I have been following some of the statements around the National Party education policy. I notice for example that John Key is saying we have a very successful education system and that is great to hear. We hear from Katherine Rich that she does not want to change much about the education system if she ever gets the chance to be in a position to do so. 
One little thing that does worry me is hearing John Key on  
Campbell Live 
 saying: “We don’t want a monopoly on education by any particular provider.” I think one of our strengths is that we do have a public education system that is dominating the education system. I like that. I think it has worked for the Swedes and it has worked for us and I think we should stay with that but of course allow an enormous amount of innovation within that system. That is what we should be trying to do. Therefore I welcome the fact that Katherine Rich has been saying she does not agree with the notion of vouchering the system or privatising the system or breaking it up in that way. Given the performance of Mr Ryall in defeating Mr Key around the health legislation recently I am hoping that Katherine Rich will have the same success in defeating John Key around education. 
I go back to the estimates. I think they are enormously successful. If we go through them and look at the amount of money that is going into the early childhood strategy we see that it is an enormous amount and the 20 free hours policy is just part of it. We are also professionalising teachers upgrading centres and building ourselves an education sector in that pre-school area. We will get there by 2012 and these estimates make sure that we go down that road. 
People have talked about keeping students at school. I thank Mr Donnelly for pointing out that there are really good strategies in here—but not enough. We can see that do have a problem here when we compare ourselves with other countries around the world but we are now fully committed to keeping kids at school until they are 16 and getting them qualified. There are many initiatives in this Budget that will help with that. There is help for parental involvement. We know that if we can keep parents communities and whanau involved in education the kids get a better education. The Team-Up initiative and Te Mana campaign for example which we will continue to fund are having enormous success. 
We have had discussions about technology and technology teachers and once again this Budget is about trying to get more technology teachers and get the curriculum right. I am sure the House will be absolutely delighted with the new curriculum. It pumps up that technology area as it ought to do. We have looked at leadership issues particularly in the areas of trying to provide more support for principals and for aspiring principals because we need a lot of young people to come into those kinds of positions. 
Literacy and numeracy issues are being addressed in this Budget—once again with new funding—and National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) issues are being addressed. We have of course made some good changes to NCEA. I think we now have a quality assessment system and I see that people around the country are now beginning to applaud what we have and get in behind it because it is the right way to go. 
We have tried to do more for Maori. We have provided more resources for special education and there is more in the operations grant for all schools. Right across the education system we are doing more around issues to do with behaviour and we have tried to assist with that. We have tried to make sure we have more information going out to parents. We have the huge Mission-On initiative which runs across sport health and education. We have done more in the area of staffing ratios with students. We have done more for teacher supply. We have done more for information and communications technology. 
We have changed the school dates a little. To ease the member’s mind I point out we have done that because that beginning part of the year with Waitangi Day is an area of the school year that is not used efficiently and really that stop-start approach was not doing a great job. If we can get started on a day after Waitangi Day for most kids they will get on with it. Schools that want to start earlier can do so. There is flexibility there as well. We have been doing more for boys’ learning. We have been trying to make sure that the curriculum is going to come through soon. We have as I said worked on the technology area. We have got more coming through for Pasifika where we have to do a whole lot more at keeping young people at work and we have more coming through in apprenticeships. 
I turn my attention to the tertiary area. There is $89 million to strengthen the international competitiveness of our universities; $40 million for change in the sector; $21 million in operating funding and $55 million in capital funding. There is $35 million to support areas such as polytechnics and wananga $6 million for building research capability in wananga and $53 for industry training and apprenticeships. All those kinds of things are illustrated in this Budget. It is a hugely comprehensive forward-looking Budget right across from the early childhood sector to the tertiary sector. 
I see that Colin King wants to rise in a moment to talk and I know he has a lot of good things to say about education as well. But I applaud the fact that underneath our debates we have agreement on education. We will differ on the detail but I am very pleased today to be able to say that I hear around the House a broad agreement for the direction and that is great. We should settle that in get a 21st century education system not change direction invest in the things that make a real difference and argue about the details. I welcome that. I will sit down and I am sure I will hear a bit of that argument about detail now.