Smith Nick: Urgent Debates — National Certificate of Educational Achievement—Scholarship Examination 
Smith Nick: Urgent Debates — National Certificate of Educational Achievement—Scholarship Examination 
[Volume:623;Page:18483] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 One of the most basic responsibilities of the Minister of Education and his or her agencies is to provide a fair and consistent examination system. With this monumental botch-up that we are debating today thousands of New Zealand secondary students have been robbed of their one chance to achieve scholarship at secondary education level because of the arrogance and incompetence of this Government. 
Let us just look at how bad the situation is. The Government budgeted on 150 students achieving the New Zealand Scholarship—National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 4. How many students achieved that level? Four of them achieved it. One could be 10 percent out or even get away with being 20 percent out but in this instance the Government has it 97 percent wrong. 
Let us look at the individual subjects. A subject like biology is crucial to New Zealand. I notice that David Carter National’s agriculture spokesperson knows how important it is that we have young people coming along and achieving scholarship level in biology. One thousand students sat the exam and just nine—less than 1 percent—passed. Yet in English 250 students out of 900 passed. In media studies just one student in the whole country was able to achieve the standard. In a subject like accountancy over 60 percent passed. 
Has any Government member been able to provide an explanation as to how we have ended up with such a monumental mess? Let me tell members what the school principals in my area have said about it. The principal of Waimea College—a good very standard school—said: “It is Mickey Mouse to the point of being ridiculous”. He said further: “To use the teenage language it sucks.” Another very capable principal Charles Newton is absolutely furious and said that the situation is a debacle. Even more important what about the students? I have not heard one word today from Government members about the most important people in this—the students. Quite simply the qualification was approved in a botched-up hash afterwards and as one student at Nayland College said about the issue that has left students with a dodgy qualification. 
 So students are saying the qualification is a dodgy and responsible principals are saying it is Mickey Mouse. But what did the Associate Minister David Benson-Pope say? He said that nothing went wrong and that he thinks there has been a lot of scaremongering. He said that “most people are really pleased with the system we have got.” Is it not extraordinary that we have an Associate Minister of Education who has his head in the sand while the future of New Zealand’s best and brightest students is being undermined? Then we listened to his contribution to the debate in the House on the pivotal issue of the well-being of our brightest students. He was given 15 minutes in response and how long did he speak for? Six minutes! That is all he thought the brightest students of New Zealand were worth—just 6 minutes. Even worse he did not mention the word “scholarship” once even though this debate is about New Zealand Scholarship. As well he did not once mention the students of New Zealand—such was his disgraceful contribution. 
Hon Bill English 
: You’re joking! He never mentioned the students once? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: He did not mention the students once. He did say that NCEA was liberating. I wonder how liberating it was for one of the students in my electorate Kinley Salmon who is a year 13 student. Everybody expected him to be able to achieve at scholarship level but he was told he had missed out. He missed his one chance because of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the Government’s mess in that area. 
The Minister said we should be excited about the results from NCEA. Excited? Should we be excited about a disgrace about the most incompetent management of our examination system in the whole of the last 50-plus years? There is nothing exciting about it; it is simply a disgrace. He gave us a lecture about the flaws of School Certificate. He said that School Certificate was awful because it failed 50 percent of students. What about his replacement system? In the NCEA biology scholarship exam 99.3 percent of students failed. That sounds like a big improvement to me! But what worries me even more is the way forward that has been indicated. 
A moment ago the Minister of Education Trevor Mallard made a contribution. He had 10 minutes to explain himself but he spoke for just 3 minutes. Is that what Trevor Mallard the Minister of Education the Minister responsible for the development of the scholarship exam— 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: The architect. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
:—the architect of the scholarship exam—thinks the brightest 2000 students are worth? The Minister of Education says that this problem is one that has to be solved by the whole community. What sort of wallies do we have on the Government benches when we have a Minister of Education saying about a fundamental problem with the administration of our scholarship exam that it is not his problem and that the community can sort it out for goodness’ sake? Simply that is not good enough and if that is the best he can do he should throw in the towel and resign this very day. 
Hon Bill English 
: What does he say went wrong? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: He said that nothing went wrong. I also want to draw the attention of the House to the fact that it is bad enough that the Government got it wrong but even worse that it went ahead with it after having been advised it was wrong. Bill English tabled in the House the minutes of a meeting of the Secondary Principals’ and Leaders’ Forum from 25 August last year. There was time at that point to do something about it to fix it to make a difference. But those minutes show that despite the presence of the chief executive of the Ministry of Education and the head of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and despite sensible principals from around New Zealand saying that the scholarship exam was in deep trouble the Minister was still pronouncing publicly that it was all OK and that they were just scaremongering. 
I say to the Minister that if he can go out and accuse people who have raised concerns about the NCEA scholarship of scaremongering then it has now become an awful mess. Thousands of students have been robbed of being properly recognised as the best and brightest New Zealand students. He should do no less than resign. In my 15 years in this House I have not known of any education debacle of this size to impact so negatively on so many students. The Minister must take responsibility. He must front up to those hundreds of students who last year put their heart and soul into their studies and their faith in the Government to be able to administer an exam. But the Government has botched it up and taken away their one opportunity of a lifetime to achieve a New Zealand Scholarship. The Government has failed our young people something dreadful! 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.