Woods Megan: Urgent Debates — Educational Achievement—OECD Programme for International Student Assessment ReportText is subject to correctionWoods Megan: Urgent Debates — Educational Achievement—OECD Programme for International Student Assessment Report[Sitting date: 04 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15226. Text is subject to correction.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): There can be no surer sign that you have got a Government that is on the run from its own record in education when you have the Minister of Education and an Associate Minister of Education stand up and say that we need to take the politics out of educational achievements—this from a party that campaigned hard to get into Government in 2008 on its headline policy of national standards. Well National you have failed your standards in education. This is a fail grade for what National is doing to our education system.This report is seriously concerning for New Zealand. It has shown The programme for International Assessment that there are systemic failures within our education system which are being exacerbated by the introduction of national standards. The dramatic drop that we have seen in the international standing of our education system should be a real wake-up call to the National Government. Its approach is simply not working and the mad spinning to try to explain this away does nothing for our children who are being failed by a Government that is systemically chipping away at what was once a world-class education system with a world-class curriculum and world-class teachers. This is being undermined by our own Government.National’s attacks on education have seen our overall rankings fall. Let us go back and think about those numbers again: from seventh to 18th in science from 13th to 23rdin maths and from seventh to 13th in reading. This is from a Government that talks the big game on innovation. We have Minister Joyce standing up time and time again and telling us that the salvation for the New Zealand economy is going to be innovation led by world-class science. Well here is a revelation Government: if you want an innovation-led economy that relies heavily on the sciences you need to have our students performing at a world-class level in science and mathematics. You do not have them sliding down the OECD rankings and thinking that we can be a country that can perform on the international stage as a global innovator. It simply does not work. The maths does not compute.We had the Minister of Education stand up and say that her Government is one that is interested in data and an Associate Minister who said that we need to analyse. So I will put it together again for the Minister and the Associate Minister. Here is some data for you to analyse. In 2000 New Zealand was seventh in the OECD in mathematics. After your Government made its changes we are now 23rd in the OECD.Let us analyse that data Government and see where you come to. Let us look at science for a Government that is supposedly committed to a science and innovation-led economy. In 2000 we were seventh in the OECD. After this Government has been in power for 5 years in 2013 we have slid down the rankings to 18th.What we have is a Government that has systemically chipped away at science within our education system. We have a Government that thought it was a smart move to cut technology funding in the 2012 Budget. The Government had to back-pedal on it because its own voters told it that it was a dumb idea. This is not a Government that matches its rhetoric on innovation with what it is doing in our education system. This is a Government that cut $35 million out of professional development for our teachers in Budget 2009. Yet the Minister will stand up and berate us with the fact that we need our teachers to continue learning. Yes we do and the Minister slicing off $35 million which saw the demise of science advisers in schools is not the way that New Zealand can have an innovation-led future.Dr Cam Calder: That was a very—