Mackey Moana: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Mackey Moana: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:632] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I am happy to take a call on Part 2 and to follow my colleague Sue Moroney in reiterating that members on this side of the Chamber are concerned at the lack of process in this bill. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Will you repeal it? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I say to Dr Smith that there is a bill before the House that would normally be referred to a select committee except it is being rammed through under urgency on a Saturday so that the Government can look as if it is doing something. The reason we oppose this bill is that all it does is write a blank cheque for the Minister of Education to do whatever she wants with no redress to the sector no ability for anyone to have his or her say and no ability for anyone to do anything about it if the Minister gets it wrong. The Minister says that she will go out for consultation and that is great but why does she not send this bill to a select committee which is the natural form of consultation built into this democratic process? I am sceptical about the fact that the Minister says she will consult. By doing it this way it means she can pick and choose whom she consults. It means that those who disagree with her may not be asked to have any input into this process. So I ask the Minister to support the Hon Chris Carter’s amendment—which at least says that this would be done under regulation—so the bill can go to the Regulations Review Committee if people do have concerns about it. 
The Minister says that this is not national testing. She has been quite at pains to let people know that. Of course that is where this policy started. We have to ask why everyone in the sector thinks this will include national testing if the Minister says that it will not and says that it is just about national standards. It is because anyone who knows anything in the sector—and we can read the enormous amount of commentary on the bill within the sector—knows there is no point in having national standards if we do not test to them. Standards mean nothing if we do not actually compare students with them. This bill started as national standardised testing when it was policy in the campaign. But there was such an uproar from the sector including from those who normally support the National Party that the policy got watered down and watered down. I was at election meetings with Mrs Tolley where she basically said it was not national testing; it was just standards. People would say that we do have those now so why are we replicating what we already have in relation to a Government that said it wants to reduce compliance for schools?  
I can tell members why we are doing it. It is so that the Minister and the Government can save face. They started off promising national standardised testing but they backed down hugely under enormous pressure from the sector which said that all the research showed that it did not work. The principal of Opotiki College in the Minister’s own electorate pointed that out as did a Programme for International Student Assessment test: the USA which has gone down this path is ranked 42nd; New Zealand which has not gone down this path is ranked in the top five. All the research shows that the policy does not work. But the Minister did not want to say they should just dump the policy and find something that worked so she watered it down and watered it down. It is now going to force schools to do something they are already doing—to replicate the work they are already doing—while she goes around telling them she will reduce compliance. I say to members of this Committee that no party should be voting for a bill when it does not know what the bill will do and when there is no redress for the public the sector or for any member of this House to be able to change it if it is wrong. This bill will simply be gazetted and then that is it. If it is wrong it will be tough luck. The Minister says she will consult but I do not believe that. 
I want to respond to something I heard last night from Te Ururoa Flavell who talked about the very good select committee inquiry and I was a member of that committee on that inquiry. I point out to the Maori Party that no one came along and said they wanted national standardised testing. In fact they came along and said exactly the opposite. That inquiry was a very good inquiry but if we read the report on that inquiry we remember—as I am sure the member does because he was on the select committee just as I was—that everyone who came along talked about the very good testing that is already going on in our schools. They talked about the fact that the asTTle test is giving schools a chance to measure students in a way that is relevant. Not every student comes into our education system on the same level. To set an arbitrary standard and say that this is what children have to achieve whilst ignoring where those children were when they came into the school system will do nothing. In fact the child who came into the school system doing very well who achieved at that national standard might have gone backwards. That child might have actually been above the national standard when he or she came in but went backwards and then met the standard yet the Minister will say that is fantastic because the school is reaching the national standard. Another child who came in far far below the national standard and who then fell just short of it might have done an incredible job with incredible teachers to get to that point but they will be told that they have failed. That is what national standards do. Those schools that pick up students who are in the latter category will find it harder to get teachers. 
The Minister also said there would be no league tables. Is she going to tell me that every local MP who gets more resources because that school does badly under national testing will not go out and trumpet that?