Martin Tracey: Urgent Debates — Educational Achievement—OECD Programme for International Student Assessment ReportText is subject to correctionMartin Tracey: Urgent Debates — Educational Achievement—OECD Programme for International Student Assessment Report[Sitting date: 04 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15223. Text is subject to correction.]TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Speaker. Can I first of all thank you Mr Speaker for allowing this debate to go forward because this is something of full concern to the country. It is a matter of great urgency. However the first comments I want to make are that unfortunately statements that the Minister of Education has made today and the Prime Minister made yesterday show the ignorance that they have about the current system. Both the Minister and the Prime Minister have made statements that these children were not captured by national standards and that these children were not inside that system from 2008 forward. In 2008 this cohort which is my son’s cohort were actually in year 7. Year 7 and year 8 are primary school children. They were inside the national standards system.Hon Anne Tolley: They were not. They were introduced in 2010.TRACEY MARTIN: These children were primary school children at year 7 and year 8. They were covered by the primary school New Zealand curriculum and they were captured by national standards.At the same time as this Government came in—and I note that Minister Anne Tolley is there because it was Minister Tolley who brought national standards in and campaigned against teachers in 2008 the most vicious campaign against the teachers of New Zealand that has ever been seen. The devaluing that that Minister and this Government did in 2008 to the morale of our teaching community has never been seen before.These teachers today our teachers today are the most undervalued and the most under attack as has ever been seen in our nation’s history. It is a shame that that is the National Government which created the world-leading New Zealand curriculum in full consultation—in full consultation—with the sector and with total agreement with all parties inside this House and with every teacher who had to implement it. That was the way under the guidance of the Hon Dr Lockwood Smith—that was the way. If that was where we needed to go as a country that is how it should have been done. But it was not done that way. There was an arrogant solution from behind closed doors by a Government that was trying to play up for a vote in 2008.I was sitting on the board of trustees of Warkworth Primary School in 2008. I sat on that board with some parents who wanted to bring back ranking inside our classrooms. National standards are about as close as you can get without going back to ranking of students inside classrooms. It is the ranking of schools inside league tables and it is the pressure of competition to try to create better outcomes instead of actually deciding to invest in professional development.I want to take up the point that the Minister has made about the pronunciation of children’s names. I absolutely agree with her. But why then does the Minister continue to argue against compulsory professional development? Why is it that if we proved that the TeKotahitanga programme had maximum outcomes forMāori students we did not make it compulsory for every teacher in this country to take that professional development? Why is it that if we need to have our teachers in our classrooms—and interestingly enough we are importing them from other nations. We are not saying that they have to take any professional development about our culture about our languages and about the way New Zealanders are and the nuances that we have with our young people. We place them in front of the classroom. Why is it that this Minister says that professional development must remain contestable? It makes no sense to New ZealandFirst that if you have a teaching fraternity who you say must take professional development why you do not make it compulsory and why you do not fund it appropriately.We also reiterate that we agree with the Minister. We knew where these children were. It is interesting that the catchphrase at the moment for this Government is “a data-rich environment”. Why is it then that school entry data is not captured? Why is it that school entry data—knowing where these children are when they actually come in to the school predominantly at 5 even though the law says that they do not have to enter our schools until 6—is not being captured? Why is it then when we already knew that we had children requiring Reading Recovery—and let us be clear that Reading Recovery is for those children who need that little push to get over the lip of their difficulty in order to be at the same place as their peers—that we still have Reading Recovery funding based on a decile rating? A decile 8 school gets funded for half a child no matter how many children actually require Reading Recovery. If we are front-ending the spend why are we not putting that funding for that child as soon as we know that they need assistance? We already knew that but that is not what is happening—that is not what is happening. Children are being identified as needing that support of Reading Recovery. At Warkworth Primary School 12 children get identified say in a year and the school gets funding for half a child. So what does the school have to do? It has to fund-raise to try to put in that support for those children—and these are 5-year-olds and 6-year-olds we are talking about—or it needs to take from its operations grant or it does not provide it.If the Minister and this Government were truly invested in lifting and front-ending the spend and lifting the performance of these young people so that by the time they enter the Programme for International Student Assessment exams they have that solidity of foundation those two questions need to be answered. Why should professional development be contestable? And why are we not providing the support for a child as soon as it is identified and it is identified under the assessments that have not changed?The other part to this and why it is important is that this is our international reputation. We try to sell our education system overseas. So of course it is a great concern to everybody in this House to everybody in New Zealand and I would have thought predominantly to those schools that are over there now marketing themselves for international students to come here because we have such a great education system. This is of concern.When the Minister talks about growing up and people having a cross-party consensus my experience in the 2 years that I have been in this House is that actually it is the National Party that never shows up. It is the National Party that never enters the conversation. I have been invited over the last 2 years to education panel after education panel and there has been no National Party representative there. I take that back. Cam Calder—and Mr Ngaro though that was actually something about social services not education necessarily—came to the adult and community education panel and read statements from the Government. New Zealand First would love to have an opportunity to gather together all members in this House who are concerned about education take the politics out of the room and bring in the Principals’ Federation the New Zealand Educational Institute and the Post Primary Teachers Association. They care about these children. What about the boards of trustees? There are the parents. There is your parent body that you should bring into the room.Hon Judith Collins: They’re not all parents.TRACEY MARTIN: But apparently Miss Collins we do not provide them with compulsory professional development either. The Minister quite incorrectly stated that they were volunteers. These people are elected officials from their communities. Theparents who sit on the boards of trustees have been elected from their parental community. Only the parental community can vote for them and that is how they gain a seat. You have to have a child inside the school to be able to vote for anybody to be on to the board of trustees.Hon Judith Collins: Not to be a trustee.TRACEY MARTIN: Miss Collins obviously needs to go back and study the Education Act 1989 because she is completely mistaken around her abilities. The boards of trustees are the parental voice out of those communities and they should be in the room. Too often they have been ignored not only by this Government but by the education sector itself. It is those people who should also have compulsory professional development. Some money has been placed aside and I commend the Minister for actually placing that money with the School Trustees Association but we still have not recognised that these are the leaders of our schools. We still do not acknowledge that it is through their work and their leadership that they represent that community and the outcomes that that community chooses for its children. We must widen the success criteria not narrow the success criteria so that all our children can succeed inside the current State school system. Kia ora.