Calder Cam: Urgent Debates — Student Achievement—OECD ReportText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCalder Cam: Urgent Debates — Student Achievement—OECD Report[Sitting date: 04 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15227. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr CAM CALDER (National): No member of this House can take pleasure in these Programme for International Student Assessment results. It is a serious concern but the Labour Party and its union cronies can have nothing to be proud of—nothing to be proud of. Dr Megan Woods mentioned 2000. You got your statistics wrong. You got your statistics wrong—2000 was after 9 years of a National Government where our successive Ministers of Education were relentlessly criticised by the Labour Party and its union acolytes for our education policy.Dr Megan Woods: Ten seconds to denigrate teachers.Dr CAM CALDER: It was after 9 years of a National Government that we had these statistics: third in the world for reading fourth in the world for maths and seventh in the world for science Dr Megan Woods. There was a steady decline from 2000 to 2009 where Labour did absolutely nothing nada null zero. It was seduced by the education unions’ sibilant assurances and weasel words that all was right with the education sector that nothing needed to change and sadly we have heard that again from the Opposition speakers. Labour was blinkered and steadfastly ignored the growing disparity between our best students where we were up there with the rest of the world and our poorly performing students and the relative underachievement of our Māori and Pasifika students.After National came into office New Zealand’s rating in 2009 after the supervised neglect showed seventh for reading 13th for maths and seventh for science. You would think that well that is ostensibly not bad but let us disaggregate them as we did. Disaggregated for readingPākehā are second Asians are seventh Māori are 34th equal between Slovenia and Slovakia and Pasifika are down there at 44th around Mexico. We saw this information. We actually thought about it interpreted the results and knew that this disparity and inequity were unacceptable as was the decline. We set about doing something about it. Sadly the unions continued to cry that all was well aided and abetted by their Labour Party cronies and ferociously fought and continue to fight every single measure that this perceptive National Government has introduced to arrest the decline and turn it round.The 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment results are a saddening vindication of what we already knew about student achievement in New Zealand and have been working to address. That is our highest-achieving students are comparable with those in the rest of the world. However the whole education system needs to be better geared for all students to succeed and it is wrong and foolish to believe that just the education unions know how to do this. If they knew how to do it why are we in the state we are in? As we have been saying for the last 5 years our education is not performing for all and we are relentlessly focusing on refining it and ensuring that our work raises achievement for five out of five of our students so that they can unlock that potential that lies within themselves. This was a well-signposted decline and it is appropriate and relevant to note that the 15-year-olds tested will not have benefited from many of the innovations that we have introduced. I am of course talking about national standards the progress and consistency tool and the Positive Behaviour for Learning programme which this Government has introduced. Of course those tested would not have benefited from the $1.5 billion assigned to early childhood education. Successful education of necessity must be infinitely varied in its engagement strategies. No one size fits all.This Government is ahead of the game and the multiple new strands in the cable of educational pathways we have introduced will help turn round this observed inherited decline in Programme for International Student Assessment performance. Our goal of 98 percent participation in early childhood education will ensure that our young people will get the best start and our current rate of participation of 95.8 percent is the highest ever. National standards will mean that teachers and parents can intervene early when their children and our children are falling behind. As I said the progress and consistency toolPaCT will be a huge help enabling teachers to deepen their understanding of the New Zealand curriculum know how their students are progressing and know how they might support each individual student and indeed it will provide detailed reporting to parents with examples and help engage students themselves in directing their own learning.Lifting the achievement level of National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2—the numbers achieving at that level—will be important. The transition into further education and employment for most of our young people will be helped by that. In 2012 74 percent of our school-leavers left with NCEA level 2 the highest rate ever. Our policies are already working. Thank you.