Delahunty Catherine: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Delahunty Catherine: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:670;Page:16619] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 He mihi nui ki a koutou katoa. Today I will talk about education; something the Prime Minister mentioned several times in his opening speech yesterday. He probably did not want to talk about education as his Government has such a woeful track record but he had to because in a country with nearly 25 percent of young people unemployed and high rates of illiteracy and poverty we cannot ignore education. What did the Prime Minister talk about? He talked about cuts to early childhood education he talked about the shambolic national standards policy and he talked about opening up our schools to corporate management in the form of public-private partnerships. This Government’s education policies are failing our young people. 
Let us start with early childhood education. All the evidence shows that nothing could be more important than investing in early childhood education. Overseas evidence shows that for every $1 we spend on early childhood health and education we save up to $3 immediately and up to $17 by the time the child enters adulthood in reduced health justice and other spending. We do not get that kind of cost-benefit ratio from any roads of national significance; in fact we get negative returns. But the Government is not interested in making a meaningful investment in our children’s future. This Government has cut funding to early childhood centres with the most qualified teachers actively discouraging the goal of having all our children taught by qualified teachers in the early years and we would never get away with that in schools—never. Those members can bandy around the $1.4 billion figure for funding all they like but the reality is that parents are already pulling their kids out of early childhood centres because John Key’s Government’s cuts mean they can no longer afford the fees. I know this because centres are emailing and calling me every day. This Government’s cuts to early childhood education are failing our children they are failing our families and we will all pay the price in the long term. Early childhood education cuts do not heal. 
I will also talk about national standards. John Key is still clinging to this flawed policy despite all the evidence against it. Never mind the international experts who say that national standards do not produce the best educational outcomes for our children. Never mind the 38000 parents who signed a petition expressing concern about the impact of national standards on their children. Never mind the more than 200 schools that have refused to implement the standards because they are concerned about the rushed way they have been developed and rolled out. Never mind the New Zealand principals who have formed a campaign against national standards because of their concerns about what they will do to schools and kids. Never mind the voices of children and young people and what they want out of education. 
It is too easy for politicians and even parents and teachers to forget that those most affected—young people—have strong opinions and valuable ideas about what they need from a real education. I have always valued the opinion of students as much as that of parents and teachers. That is why I started a high school students’ union when I was 15 years old. Even now I cannot forget the boredom and frustration of being a high school student in some of my classes and I was a relatively privileged Pakeha girl whose family ate Western literature for breakfast. The education system was designed for people like me but many thousands of young people going through it are not like me and their voices are important. 
That is why when I came into Parliament in 2008 I set out to find out what young people need from a real education. I called this the real education project. Over the course of 2 years I have visited 17 schools and learning centres around the country and have spoken with young people directly. I asked the same questions at every meeting: what young people love about school what they hate about school what they need to know and what a real education would be like. I launched the findings of this project last week in my report  
What is a Real Education? 
. Strangely nobody raised the issues of National Certificate of Educational Achievement versus the University of Cambridge International Examinations or national standards. Nobody saw assessment as being the central issue for their learning. All the young people from all kinds of cultural backgrounds no matter how alienated from school wanted to learn and wanted literacy. They were crystal clear about what the barriers were to their learning and they knew what they needed from teachers to help them progress. 
The young people I spoke with stressed the importance of the three Rs but they were not reading on its own or writing or arithmetic. They talked about respect relationships and relevance. They wanted their opinions and their culture to be respected. They wanted good relationships with teachers and other students. They wanted an education that is relevant to them in terms of both content and methods of learning. Recognition of their culture language and identity were particularly important to Maori and Pasifika students. Also the fourth R that many of them brought up was resources. I will never forget students at a public school asking me whether it was true that some schools had swimming pools. There are vast disparities in the levels of resources available to students at different schools. These kids were amazed to hear about a private school I had visited in Auckland that had a heated swimming pool so that students in new wetsuits could learn kayaking on warm water. 
The idea of a free education was very important to the young people I spoke to. They were not preoccupied with our aspirational jargon and measuring methods. They were preoccupied with what it feels like to have someone teach them respectfully and with passion and they identified some great teachers in their lives. However I will never forget the boy who said to me: “How can I learn if the teacher hates me?”. We might well ask John Key how our kids can learn if the Government does not value them—and a few Aspire Scholarships to private schools will do nothing to change that. 
But it is not our kids the Government values; it is big business and it is narrow ideology. Instead of listening to the views of young people John Key’s Government is preoccupied with a privatisation agenda or to use the new euphemism a mixed-ownership model which can be applied to schools. The Ministry of Education did a cost-benefit analysis of public-private partnerships in education that showed it would cost up to $6 million to set up the public-private partnership model and would save just $800000 over 30 years which is hardly a great investment. The business case has been found wanting yet we can expect the tenders for the first public-private partnerships in our schools to start in the next few months because this Government values free-market ideology over all else. The Green Party has consistently opposed any moves towards public-private partnerships in our schools and for that matter in other key areas—unlike the Labour Party—and we will continue to do that. The international evidence and the Government’s own business case show that public-private partnerships have no place in our schools. Of course this could all be moot if we sign up to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and find that we have to allow overseas contractors access to all kinds of public contracts or risk being sued. 
These education policies are failing our young people. Combined with the signalled attacks on welfare the failure to make the minimum wage a living wage and the move to restrict university access they will widen the gap between those who have the most and those who need the most. But what did we expect from a National Government? We should not be surprised by these policies but we should not pretend as John Key does that he has the underclass in mind. Let us be honest and just admit that increasing inequality is seen by this Government as the natural order. Much could be done in the area of education to close these gaps. I think particularly of students with what they call special needs children with disabilities fighting for inclusion. I think of the children whom I met on my discussions around the country talking about bullying homophobia and racism and calling for a respectful environment—an environment where they felt that it was safe to call for a real education. They are not obsessed with employment but they want practical skills for a real world taught in a respectful manner. 
We could start with a Te Tiriti - based analysis of our education system because there are issues to resolve there and then we should also commit to universality of access for everyone. From early childhood through to high school and university universality is better at targeting the vulnerable than particular niche policies that sound nice in the media but do nothing for the overall vulnerability of more and more poor families in need. But in fact if we were to do that we would have to admit something very fundamental—that it would have to matter more to spend that money in education than to build roadways of national significance and it would have to matter more than tax cuts for our mates. Kia ora koutou.