Hipkins Chris: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Hipkins Chris: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:651;Page:584] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 This bill is nothing more than a desperate attempt by the new National Government to cover up the fact that it has no new ideas on how to address underachievement in our schools. Those members have no new ideas about how to deal with literacy and numeracy problems. They have no new ideas about how to keep kids in our classrooms. This bill will do absolutely nothing to address those issues. It is completely unnecessary and it even states that it is unnecessary in the explanatory note of the bill. 
This bill will narrowly focus the education system on teaching kids a very very narrow range of knowledge. The teachers will teach to the test rather than teaching to the curriculum. It will grow the gap between the achievement rates of students at rich schools and the students at poor schools. This bill is completely unnecessary. 
Let me read from page 4 of the explanatory note which states: “The Minister of Education can set national standards through the existing provisions of the Education Act … either by way of the national education guidelines or by regulations. Regulating for this power could achieve the same policy objective as legislating”. So we are off to a ripper of a start with our red tape reduction! Instead of creating regulations we are going to create unnecessary legislation. The ACT Party is clearly doing well on its red tape reduction. We have already seen bills rammed through the House with pathetic regulatory impact statements. 
This bill will give parents no new information. It will give parents no more information than they can already get from teachers if the teachers have the opportunity to talk to them. I draw the attention of the House to the National Education Guidelines; the ones that the Minister seems completely unaware of. Paragraph (iii) of national administration guideline No. 2 states that each board of trustees with the principal and teaching staff is required to “report to students and their parents on the achievement of individual students and to the school’s community on the achievement of students as a whole and of groups”. So why do we need this bill? 
The requirement in the national administration guidelines specifically identifies a number of areas and it specifically requires schools to report on students who are not achieving or who are at risk of not achieving so the bill is totally unnecessary. It does not increase in any way resources going to the schools or to the teachers. It does nothing to help them. There is absolutely no evidence that setting national standards and forcing primary schools to set exams which is what this bill will effectively do— 
Hon Members 
: Oh rubbish! 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: I would encourage members to read the general policy statement at the front of the bill which states: “The changes will require State schools to assess students and to report the progress of students against the national standards.”. So this bill is very little more than national testing for primary schoolkids. 
The evidence from overseas suggests that national testing does nothing to lift student achievement. In fact it has a number of detrimental impacts. It encourages teachers to teach to the test—to train pupils to pass the test rather than to gain any understanding of what they are learning. It means that kids do not develop any higher order thinking skills. And if we want to see any evidence of the impact that has we need only to look at the benches opposite us. A research review in the UK found that national testing leads pupils to regard learning in terms of passing tests rather than in terms of gaining any understanding of what they have actually learnt. 
I would draw the House’s attention to another publication from overseas—a Demos publication called “Beyond Measure: why educational assessment is failing the test”—which concluded that the assessment system measures recall of knowledge rather than the depth of understanding and that it tests only a narrow section of the curriculum. The report goes on to state: “the notion of measuring a cohort of learners as a whole is absurd. We know children mature at different rates. What we need is assessment by demand.” This bill does nothing to increase the support for teachers to do assessment by demand. It does absolutely nothing. 
What about the students? What does this bill mean for students? A survey of parents in England where a similar system is being put in place found that one in 10—one in 10—7-year-old kids was reduced to tears and lost sleep because they were worried about sitting tests. The same survey found that two-thirds of 11-year-olds showed signs of stress in preparing for the tests with 9 percent suffering from anxiety attacks. And that is what this Government wants to do! In Oldham an 11-year-old was hospitalised for stress because of those tests. How is stressing out primary schoolkids going to do anything to raise standards in our schools? 
 Another report from the UK highlighted the negative consequences of national testing on teachers including overload and stress. It found that national testing distracted from teachers’ daily classroom performance and contributed to a number of teachers leaving the profession altogether because national testing does not tell good teachers anything they do not know already. As some of my colleagues have outlined there are far better tools that could be used instead. 
I noticed that Nick Smith has been commenting on it today. He said “I openly concede that the information can be used destructively.” It was Nick Smith who said that. One way it can be used destructively is to develop school league tables. The Minister was quoted in the  
Dominion Post 
 this morning as saying that that would not happen: “Education Minister Anne Tolley denied the results could be used to compile league tables saying the full data obtained would be available only to the Government.” I do not see anything in this bill that repeals the Official Information Act. I see nothing in the bill that repeals the Official Information Act and would stop people from getting hold of the data and using it to compile exactly that. 
We know from past experience that once the data is there people will get hold of it. In fact the National Party used to advocate for that data to be released publicly to create league tables. Bill English spent months and months arguing for National Certificate of Educational Achievement league tables to be created using the same kinds of data in secondary schools. This will drive a massive wedge between the rich schools and the poor schools. It will create an incentive for the good teachers to leave the poorer schools and move to the rich schools or leave altogether. 
We know that once the Government has this information it will use it to introduce performance pay for teachers. We know that is what the Government wants to do. It wants to introduce performance pay for teachers. It will put them on 90 days’ probation and it will give teachers the shove at the first available opportunity. [ 
Interruption 
] Oh the 90-day period does not affect teachers. Anne Tolley stood up and said that the 90-day period would not affect teachers and that they will not be covered and they will not be sacked. Well I have news for Government members because the bill that they passed does exactly that. So how long will it be before we are back in this House debating performance pay for teachers? 
This bill shows that the Government has no new ideas on how to raise student achievement. In fact the teaching profession knows that and does not want it. Ninety percent of primary school principals surveyed said they did not want it. They are opposed to the National Party policy. Eighty-seven percent of primary school teachers opposed it. Seventy-five percent of high school teachers opposed it. Sixty-nine percent of school boards of trustees opposed the National Party policy. They did not want it. Who wanted it? [ 
Interruption 
] Why does the member not stand up and take the next call and tell us who wanted it? In fact those people surveyed do not want the bill rammed through under urgency either. I quote from the Auckland Secondary School Principals Association: “It’s a matter of trust … When bills are rushed and the sector is not consulted it will create a wedge and a sense of suspicion with the Government.” 
Nobody wants this bill rammed through. The New Zealand Educational Institute said that it does not want it because it believes that openness is critical to ensure that any decision on teaching and learning is educationally sound and will lead to increased student achievement. Yet despite all of the blather from members opposite we have not heard at all about how this bill will increase student achievement. We have heard nothing from them about how this will increase student achievement. The New Zealand Principals Federation said: “National testing is such an old-fashioned idea … National testing is quite simply a backward step.” This bill introduces national testing by any other name.