Delahunty Catherine: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Delahunty Catherine: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:653;Page:2448] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Chairperson. Tena koutou katoa. This is my first opportunity to reflect on the Ministry of Education and the Education and Science Committee’s reporting experience. As a very new member of a select committee I have been fascinated by the ritual of accountability that we call financial reviews. Very well-dressed and understandably defensive officials present us with glossy reports. In between the outcomes and outputs—blah-blah-blah—there are issues of the wise use of resources but I am not sure whether we get close to that conversation. 
What really matters to the Green Party are the questions behind the financial reviews. Such questions are to the Minister and they ask who benefits and what is changing. It is nearly 20 years since Tomorrow’s Schools was foisted on to an unsuspecting public under the guise of greater parental involvement and soon it will be time to acknowledge that this particular emperor is damn near naked. 
We now have a system where half the class in any given State high school goes to Paris for its school trip while the other half is lucky if it gets to go to McDonald’s. As Professor John O’Neill of Massey University recently said in his speech to the Quality Public Education Coalition: “Agreeing to use money”—which he is referring to in terms of monetarist values—“in schooling as we have done since 1989 destroys the idea of education as a public good where benefits are owned and shared equally by everyone. Introducing money creates the idea of education as principally a private good the aim of which is to create personal wealth through the buying and selling of educational commodities or services. This is commerce not education.” 
I know that some people in the House think that everything is commerce and that the creeping privatisation of the education system is a logical manifestation of the sacred concept of choice. The strange thing is that poor whanau and families do not get choices because they cannot afford them. To quote Professor O’Neill does the Minister accept “that children of rich families are deserving of a better education than those of poor families”? The marginalised young need more than a trip to McDonald’s; they need an equitable education system that values them instead of obsessively measuring them. They also need healthy basics in schooling starting with food. The Green Party was appalled to discover the Minister did not seek any advice or gather any evidence from either the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Education before she ditched the school food and beverage guidelines. 
Teachers as reflective practitioners already know who needs help; they just do not have the time and resources to give it. The whole special-needs funding formula debacle is a case study in inequity as is the resourcing of early childhood education. 
Professor John Hattie is right in saying that the quality of relationships is the key to learning. Those who simplify his work and say that smaller classes are not needed probably have not experienced the difference between 30 wired 13-year-olds bouncing off the walls and 18 students with whom it might be possible to create a cooperative learning environment. Size does count in education at least. That is why the private schools put class size in all of their brochures. We do not need to change class size everywhere but we need to put State resources where the need is greatest. 
We might also like to start preparing our children for a different economy based on the reality of a finite world and a profound need for cooperation and non-violence. We need to teach them that we are fundamentally connected to the earth and what that relationship means. There is a whole economy to rebuild based on those principles. 
Last week I asked some young people who had been expelled or who had walked out of school what they needed and it sure was not a $3000 fine to their whanau. They said they needed no racism from teachers or from each other safety and respect and practical and relevant learning. If we want them to respond to us then we in this Parliament have to model these values. That is what I want to talk to the Minister about—not just the numbers. From the helicopter it is difficult for her to see the damage to the public school system but she will eventually have to come back down to earth. My fear is that when she does she will just bail out the private schools and ignore the real education funding issues. Kia ora tatou.