King Colin: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
King Colin: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:640;Page:10416] 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 It is a privilege to stand and speak to the education estimates. After listening to that sort of machine-gun round-up by the Minister I thought it was sad that he did not talk about the Correspondence School because if he goes into the estimates he will see that there has been a $1.6 million reduction in funding for it. That is hugely serious. The Correspondence School has had a $1.6 million reduction in its budget and in effect over 1000 full-time equivalent students rely on that school. They have no other choice. The Correspondence School is iconic and yet it has been treated rather shabbily by successive Ministers of Education. 
Another point that I am really concerned about and which I do not feel the Minister has come to grips with is the fact that the supervisors the people who take responsibility for ensuring that correspondence students do get their education—often the parents and the carers—are totally undervalued. They have not actually had consideration given to their contribution to students’ education since 1985. I would urge the Minister to seriously look at that issue so that we do not have to do it when we are in Government. That is one point. 
It is also very concerning when the heart and soul of the Correspondence School are the parents to see that as an incorporated society the parents association cannot be sure that it will be allowed to have a conference this year—it may not be able to have its annual general meeting. The association is completely dependent on how that money is dished out by the Correspondence School itself. That is a shocking situation. It disadvantages an enormous number of rural isolated people and other people who choose to have their children educated by correspondence be it because of their preference for special group education and so forth. I just want to put that out to the Minister. I think he has completely missed the point. I do not blame him entirely. I blame the previous Minister Mallard who— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member will use the Minister’s full name. 
COLIN KING 
: —Mr Mallard and I take that point on board. 
Moving on to the technology curriculum which is of special interest to me I think it is a shame to hear the Minister talk about it being all hunky-dory and all sorted. It is good to see that in the second cut of the draft curriculum such words as “doing” “producing” and “making” things are now being used. However I believe that we are missing an enormous golden opportunity around the technology curriculum. Very very few trades and skills in the workforce today are not highly sophisticated and do not require enormous amounts of design and solutions and the technology curriculum should be a natural fit for that sort of thing. We need to be able to find as my learned colleague Allan Peachey said inspiring teachers. I do not think that at the moment we are actually putting in front of our children in the technology curriculum teachers who can totally inspire them. I think the Government is being a bit deficient in that direction in that it has not done enough to attract and retain the right people who can add tremendous value to a balanced education. 
Education is very much like a diet: one has to have balance. Just because somebody enjoys  
Macbeth 
 that does not mean that person will not enjoy getting his or her hands into something and producing it. It is a tragedy to see that effectively the technology curriculum has been rendered down to a situation where one can draw a scone but never get to bake it or one can explain and describe how to make a cart but never actually get down to welding and bending the metal to produce one. 
But the overarching problem that confronts education—and it is sad to think we would give the impression that we have got it sorted—concerns literacy and numeracy. The message we are hearing from inside industry training organisations is that the pesple who present themselves as candidates be it as modern apprentices adult employees or whatever else do not have the skills to reach the necessary standards in literacy and numeracy. Fundamentally we have to ask ourselves whether we have really progressed very far along in that area. When we look at the amount of funding that has been directed towards that issue from the tertiary education budget we see it is growing and growing. 
When we hear about the social problems emanating out of parts of New Zealand and about the gang culture I would say there is an enormous amount of work to do. When we look at the level of truancy that is occurring at the moment and when we hear such learned experts as Stuart Middleton talk about some 20000 people who are neither in education nor in employment when they leave school we know that a tremendous amount of work needs to be done. I agree with the Minister that there is an understanding of the value of education. As far as the performance goes of the Government that is in the House at this time I believe that my colleagues have clearly dismantled any notion that it has achieved anything at all. Thank you. 
Vote agreed to.