Cunliffe David: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5180. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn):It is a pleasure to take a second brief call in this debate and to focus on education issues where once again we see that we have a Government that is long on promises long on rhetoric and not delivering in the reality. Let us take members opposite at their word. I think all parents care for nothing more than the well-being of their children and I believe members opposite are sincere in their wish to see our children succeed. The question is whether the programme that they are enacting is going to deliver on that promise.Let us first look at the compulsory education sector and then at the tertiary sector. The Government has been known for two great changes to compulsory education: national standards and charter schools. National standards have been panned around the world. They cause people to teach to the test. They are the exact opposite of what a modern millennial economy demands which is that you can get basic education off the internet but you need to learn to think critically. That is why teaching to the test—one-size-fits-all absolute achievement rather than relative improvement—is a road to pedagogical nowhere. In my electorate where 40 percent of my constituents were not born in New Zealand—and for many many students English is not a first language—having an English-based national standards even if it were objective even if it were specific even if it were moderated objectively which it is not would make no sense at all. The Government is taking education backwards.The second great proposal of this Government is charter schools and charter schools make no sense. More money is given per student by miles but the school does not have to teach the curriculum the teachers do not have to be licensed they are not subject to the Official Information Act and in many cases the contracts the Government has entered into are so brain-dead that the assets are not even secured. For example a Whangarei charter school has $2.5 million in taxpayer funding unaccounted for. Another Auckland charter school was guaranteed funding for 160 places but maxed out at 120 with as far as I am aware no recovery. More and more costs are being passed to parents and too many parents cannot afford them because of the rapidly growing inequalities in our society. If a kid is hungry he or she cannot learn. Let us feed our kids let us give them a decent start and let us have an education system that actually teaches what kids are going to need in this 21st century.Then we go on to tertiary education and here once again the Government is sadly not being straight with New Zealanders. From the Minister’s own lips as recorded in the report of the Education and Science Committee there was no $113 million “further funding” for education. By the Minister’s own admission there was only $7 million and that is gross of an increased tax take from the Inland Revenue Department which actually makes it negative. But even if it were $7 million that is a massive real-terms cut to tertiary education. The tertiary system is underfunded. It has a micro-managing Minister who lacks the credibility to get the funding and he lacks the plan to deliver it.The institutions in this sector are a mess. This Government removed the strategy and policy function from the Tertiary Education Commission. It now says it just operationalises things. Where has the strategy function gone? It is not found in the Ministry of Education—it is focused on the compulsory sector. In reality what there is sits in the Ministry of—wait for it—Business Innovation and Employment. That is as others have said a reductionist view of education and one that is patently not working. For the individual student pathways are not there to the jobs of the future. Why not? Because the funding cuts are biting.The Government has put an arbitrary 7-year limit on student loans—the famous “7 EFTS” policy which means that even 40 percent of medical students cannot get funding for their last 1 or 2 years of study. For other recognised long degrees—double degrees or doctoral courses—the loans run out before the degree is awarded. That might be fine if you are a silver spoon brigade kid but if you are an average kid from an average family our country and you will be the poorer.