Tolley Anne: Address in Reply 
Tolley Anne: Address in Reply 
[Volume:652;Page:1155] 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 Making eloquent speeches from the benches on the other side of the House is what those members do best. We know that they are very good at talking and very poor at doing so I want to take this opportunity to talk about some of the real action that has taken place in education as part of the 100 days of action. 
When National came to office at the end of last year we had promised the early childhood sector that we would review the regulations the previous Government had put into place. Those regulations were going to put many early childhood centres out of business put huge compliance costs on to some businesses and put out of service a number of kohanga that were unable to meet the regulations which in general had caused a great deal of angst throughout the service. So we have done that. We are now almost ready to start on a consultation process to have another look at some of those onerous regulations and we are looking to reduce costs in the early childhood sector so that it can get on with increasing the participation of our children who are able to take part in early childhood education—in particular Maori and Pacific children who figure so poorly in the statistics when we look at who is attending and getting education prior to starting school. 
Secondly we introduced and passed through all stages in this House the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill. I was interested to hear the previous speaker say that the legislation passed before Christmas was unimportant because passing that bill is one of the most important things we can do if we are serious about lifting the achievement of our young New Zealand students. For children to be able to read and write and do maths as they leave primary school at a level somewhere near their chronological age gives those children the opportunity to go on to secondary school and get qualifications that will enable them to then live good healthy and wealthy lives contributing to our New Zealand society. So that Education (National Standards) Amendment Act is a hugely important step as we work to lift the achievement of our young New Zealanders. It will enable the Minister to set standards in literacy and numeracy that are about what we expect children to have learnt by certain stages through their schooling. It requires schools to involve parents by telling them in plain language what the strengths and weaknesses are of their children so that parents can get involved in their children’s education. 
In addition to that we increased the maximum penalties for our hard-core truants because we as a National Government want to make it clear that attending school is absolutely critical if our young people are to get a good education. We take that seriously and we want the courts and the boards of trustees to take recidivist truants seriously too. So we have increased those maximum penalties for truancy. But that is not all we have done about truancy. We are currently setting out to review the effectiveness of our district truancy services; we are consulting widely across the schooling sector and we are consulting with the truancy services themselves. I unlike the previous Minister of Education want to know how many truancy officers we have out there on the ground and how effective they are in the services they provide. 
We will also carry out the survey that the previous Minister of Education cancelled so that we can know how many students are truant from our schools at any one time. Why on earth the previous Minister did not pursue that last year so that we had up-to-date knowledge could clearly identify where the bigger problem areas were and could put some extra resources into them I have no idea. In fact I do have an idea. I do not believe that the previous Government cared about truancy. It was a nuisance to that Government and its members did not pursue getting some data at least so that they could take some action. This Government is determined to make sure that every child gets the opportunity to learn and we want to know where those extra resources that we have made available for truancy services can best be used. 
In addition we have had a look at the work of the Education Review Office. This was part of the election promise we made to refocus the Education Review Office and I have instructed the office to focus more on those schools that are struggling and to have a lighter hand on those schools that have proved themselves to be successful over a period of time and that are capable of more self-assessment themselves. Those schools that are performing successfully will be able to move on to a 4 or 5-yearly cycle with the Education Review Office. That will allow the office to focus its resources and its attention on those schools that are struggling for one reason or another. We are determined to make sure that we take action earlier in schools that are having difficulties in order to support the young people attending them. It is absolutely critical that we know which schools they are what their problems are and how we can get in and help them to get back on their feet and provide an excellent education for young New Zealanders. We have refocused the Education Review Office into a tiered system of cycling their investigations into schools starting from the top with a 4 or 5-year cycle. We will retain a section in the middle with a 3-year cycle and those schools that are having difficulties will be on a 1 to 2-year cycle from the Education Review Office. 
That is part of what we are attempting to do to give a more light-handed touch to our schools. We are talking about high trust. We have around the country boards of trustees that are elected by parents to manage schools. We think that the majority of those boards are doing a pretty good job and we want to say to them that we back them we support them and we want to have a light-handed touch rather than look over their shoulders all the time double guessing for them what they are doing in their schools. 
Part of that is about trying to reduce bureaucracy for our schools so last week I announced that we will be removing one of the National Administration Guidelines commonly referred to as NAGS—and many principals told me that they felt the Government was indeed nagging them over this guideline—the one that turned schools into food police. Boards of trustees had to measure how many times their tuck shops served sausage rolls to kids. A board of trustees had to take account of and report to the Education Review Office on the number of times a school was serving certain classified foods. The issue is not about whether junk food is good or bad; that is not the issue. The issue is whose actual responsibility it is to make that decision. Is it the responsibility of the Government? No that is Labour’s answer—the nanny State knows best. National believes that boards of trustees and schools should not be held accountable for those sorts of decisions. Parents are the ones who should be making those decisions so we have put the responsibility back on to parents. We have lifted the responsibility from schools to make those decisions but we have not lifted the responsibility from schools under National Administration Guideline 5/2 that requires them still to promote healthy food. Of course we want healthy food and drink habits promoted by our schools but we are not going to say to schools that they will be regulating what food is served in their canteens. The reality is that we know that kids eat pies whether or not they are banned at school. What happens is that they jump over the fence— 
Paul Quinn 
: They go down to the corner dairy. 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: Exactly! I talked to a dairy owner who said he had doubled the number of pie warmers in his shop. He had bought extra pie warmers because of the increased business in pies that he was doing from his local school. The regulation did not have the effect of stopping kids from eating junk food. I can tell members that principals all over the country have reacted. 
Finally in our 100 days of action which has been a whirlwind in education we have announced today the infrastructure we are bringing forward. There is $216.7 million worth of spending on education infrastructure. The Opposition tried to say that we were recycling. I ask members: where was the Labour Government’s investment in information and communications technology? Labour cancelled it; the National Government has put it in. There is $34 million in the next financial year for that. Where on earth was Labour’s $30 million for those Upper Hutt schools? Labour members could not even add up. They do not even know that “an additional” means plus. They cannot even add up that $44 million will be going into those Upper Hutt schools. As I say there has been a whirlwind of action in education in the last 100 days.