Turei Metiria: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Turei Metiria: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:651;Page:570] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 This bill proposes to test children more and to fine their parents more if they miss class. Changes to testing in particular have been made on the basis that this testing will give us more information. This would be a good thing if it were information that is lacking but that is not the case; we actually have a great deal of information about the children who are not succeeding in our education system. We know that many of them— 
Allan Peachey 
: What are we doing about it? 
METIRIA TUREI 
: Testing them I say to Mr Peachey will not alleviate their poverty will it? Testing them will not insulate their homes so that they no longer get asthma I say to Mr Peachey. We know that many of these children are living in poverty and we know that they are more likely to be Maori than Pakeha. Whomever we might hope is looking after them is sometimes not there to take care of them in the way we would like and there is often a good reason for that. It is not a case of the parents just being neglectful; the parents are working several minimum wage jobs in order to pay market rents and to buy groceries to feed their families. 
These are parents who might well wish that they could be there when their kids get home from school but it is simply impossible for them to be in two places at one time. And of course if the rent is not paid or the power gets cut then they will have failed to provide the safe and secure shelter that parents all desire for their children. [ 
Interruption 
] People on low wages I say to Ms Tolley and Mr Peachey have to make decisions that people on high wages like the members do not have to make. 
People who are very rich can easily afford to have a parent stay at home either full time or part time to provide the framework around school-age children to make the healthy lunches and to supervise the homework and often—and it might be the case for some in this House—they can employ someone to do that very work. Some really rich people do that—and that is fine. Good for them! But not everyone has that choice and people generally make the best decisions that they can with the resources they have available. 
So what has National done to help make it easier for those families who are living in this kind of hardship—those whose children are living in the poverty that is actually the cause of the long tail of underachievement? 
Hon Member 
: What have the Greens done? 
METIRIA TUREI 
: Well National just voted to make them pay more tax which I am sure will be very helpful to those families and those children. National voted to make them pay more tax so that it could give more tax cuts to the very rich. National has also consistently voted against raising the minimum wage even as prices increase and even as families face increasing hardship. 
Moana Mackey 
: What about the 90-day bill? 
METIRIA TUREI 
: The 90-day bill is another example. National members consistently voted against Working for Families and they resiled from that position only because they thought there were votes in it. Now they have come to this House and proposed that the answer to dealing with underachievement is to test kids more to find out which of these children are doing so badly and to fine their parents—take more money out of their pockets—when they fail to get their kids to attend enough classes. It is out of touch. It is insane. 
We know that kids with health problems sometimes do not do well in school. That is obvious. Often they will miss a lot of classes. Sometimes they cannot hear well enough to learn because they have something like glue ear or they might have asthma which keeps them at home and away from school. Sometimes they are malnourished on a combination of caffeine and sugary junk that is often bought from the schools themselves. 
We know that poor health is a factor in underachievement and we know what the solutions are. It is not rocket science but it takes money. We have too many cold damp houses which impact on the health of our population. Whether people choose not to live in a cold damp house or to insulate the houses they have generally depends on how much money they have. The Green Party fought long and hard to get a billion-dollar fund the Green Homes Fund through the negotiations on the emissions trading scheme and that would have paid to pretty much ensure that every home in this country—every low-income home—was warm dry and healthy. 
The benefits are absolutely clear. For every dollar spent on insulating cold houses there is close to a $2 benefit in energy and health savings which means less time off work less time off school and a better quality of life and health for the children for whom these are serious issues. Keeping kids healthy enough to get to school and to learn at school is critical to giving every single New Zealand child a fair chance at education and success. But of course National axed the fund. So National has made sure that homes will stay cold and damp and that as a result children will continue to suffer from glue ear asthma and eczema. National’s choice is to keep these children in poverty. 
National has vigorously opposed all moves to get junk food out of school tuck shops despite knowing that what children eat impacts on their ability to learn. National does not care about children’s nutrition and the impacts of nutrition on kids’ learning. It does not care about teachers having to deal with children who are so hyped on school junk food they cannot concentrate and keep getting into trouble. 
Then of course there are the teachers. We need more of them—of that we can be absolutely sure. We need to value them much more highly than we do. Lowering student-teacher ratios means teachers can spend more time with children who need extra time and support. More teachers also means that those who need specialist attention for whatever reason will get the needs-based support they are entitled to. But Treasury in its briefing to the incoming Minister has advised the Government to “Shift spending in compulsory education from investment with low returns (such as lower student-teacher ratios) to high returns (such as approved accountability for student achievement and development of teaching practice).” I am pretty sure I just read that Treasury said that improving student-teacher ratios has low returns. 
I presume Treasury must mean short-term economic returns because I guess giving every child enough one-on-one teacher time takes a while to pay off. It is hard to measure. It might in some cases even reduce the crime rate or it might in some other cases enable a child to excel in what he or she is good at leading to scientific breakthroughs that save millions of lives. That has happened in this country in the past. So I call on the Minister of Education to reject the advice of Treasury about the low return of lower student-teacher ratios. Teachers are not a low-quality investment. They are the lifeblood of our education system and our kids need more of their time not less. 
This bill will tell us that some kids are not doing so well. We will find out that we have failing children failing teachers failing schools and failing communities. How helpful is that? What the next response from the Government might be is one of my concerns. Of course it leads to a league table of failures—a league table of the “bestest and worstest” primary schools—a long list of all the schools and communities that will fail this National test of wealth and privilege because that is what it is. 
What next after that? If we look at the international examples—and we will talk about those more in the coming debate—we see that we get vouchers so that those poor sad rich families can move their unhappy poor sad rich children from those underprivileged underfunded schools leaving those poorer families and those poorer communities to continue with underfunded poorly resourced schools. What might come after that? If we look at the international examples we find that private investors will go in and buy up those underfunded degraded schools for a song so that National can continue its policy of overfunding private schools with desperately needed public education money. 
It is very interesting to see that these educational testing standards will not apply to private schools but only to State schools even though private schools get lots and lots of public money—nearly double the money the Labour Government ever put in. National will increase it. So despite the fact that there will be public money investment they will not have to suffer the same kinds of educational tests and standards as State schools will. Make no mistake: National’s agenda is to privatise schools. That is alive and well and this bill is a first step towards that agenda. 
We will spend a lot of money finding out that underfunding schools and underfunding communities creates a long tail of poverty that causes underachievement. We already know that. Everybody in South Auckland already knows that. We have a lack of action a lack of vision a complete dismal failure by this National Government to put the resources into the schools and communities where it is needed. Instead National will privatise and put money into private schools.