English Bill: Education Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
English Bill: Education Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:631;Page:2884] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 The most revealing comment that Minister Maharey has made in public since he became the Minister of Education came when he told the  
New Zealand Herald  
that 
people like myself and others were trying to “wreck our social democratic school system”. I can tell the Minister he will live to regret that comment because the school system is not a social democratic one. It does not belong to the kind of washed-out socialism that he represents; it belongs to the parents the children and the citizens of New Zealand first. Then there are the teachers the teachers unions and of course Labour which is the one group that acts as though it owns the system. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Some things in the Education Amendment Bill are useful and the member for Otaki—who almost was not re-elected—would do well to take note of this: this bill brings in the world’s most advanced education voucher. I am impressed by that and I want to give my compliments to the previous Minister of Education Trevor Mallard for whom I must say I had some respect. Nowhere in the world has anyone tried what New Zealand is trying out in early childhood education as permitted by this legislation which is an entitlement for a child that is adjusted by the hour according to the qualification of the adults present. That is the world’s most sophisticated voucher. So when Labour members get up and rant against things like choice diversity and voucher systems they need to know—as I am sure the member for Rotorua did not know—that they are introducing a voucher now. We support the bill for that reason. 
I do not believe what the Minister said about diversity. He said this legislation would foster diversity. I hope the amendments that were moved successfully by Mr Donnelly will work—I doubt it but I hope they do work. No one is less in favour and more against diversity than this Labour Government. The Maori Party has figured that out. Its members know that when the highly prescriptive regulations of this legislation are put in place they will have the effect of making kindergarten look like kohanga reo Montessori day care and creches. The regulations will be very prescriptive and everyone will have to do exactly what the Secretary for Education says right down to the level of detail and that will be a force against diversity. 
I understand it is the Minister’s intention that every early childhood centre in New Zealand will have to re-register over the next 3 or 4 years. That policy is absolutely crazy and it is typical of what Steve Maharey calls progressive because that word is laced right through his education policy. There is an enormous waste of resources in the name of a vague concept that no one quite understands and it completely misses the point. That is what will happen in the early childhood sector. 
The Minister failed to mention the most interesting debate that occurred during the Committee stage around national standards. I would like the Minister to answer this simple question: how many New Zealand children at the end of year 8—that is the end of standard 6 or form 2—are literate and numerate enough to succeed in secondary school? I have asked that question through parliamentary questions. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: What’s the answer? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The answer is that no one knows. People do not know how many and worse they do not know which ones succeed. What is even worse than that is that they do not care. The Labour Party voted against national standards which are a pretty straightforward idea. Almost every developed country in the world has national standards; in fact some of them have much more complex systems in behind those standards. I do not support that. But I do support having some clear standards because then teachers in schools can measure the progress of children against them. 
Education standards exist. They are out there and are being used every day. But the Government decided to oppose them and so did New Zealand First. They decided to vote against standards. Do members know why? It is for the same reason that Steve Maharey always gives: because the New Zealand Educational Institute the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) and the Labour Party think education standards are not a good idea. That is the reason and it shows a couple of aspects of this Government’s attitude to education. One is simply a lack of rigour. We can have all the feel-good professional development we like and we can have everyone co-constructing with each other but the problem is that there are still 20 or 30 percent—I believe 40 percent—of children who are not getting the benefits of a clear understanding of what they know and an educational process to teach them what they need to know next in order to progress. That is because there is a lack of rigour. 
Some of our children will remain because Steve Maharey wants them to victims of the badly led the ill-informed and the disorganised. Because those people cannot be bothered to show up for professional development training they are not required to make sure there are standards in a school. They are not required to see whether children are progressing against standards and they are not required to report on that. The Minister gets particularly finicky about the idea that there be some transparency some official transparency about learning in New Zealand. So there are no national standards and he blocks information like that available from SchoolSmart in order to make sure parents cannot see it. That is simply because his political supporters do not want that to happen. 
So it is no surprise when the same lack of rigor and transparency is transferred into the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). That Minister came into the House the other day and gave everyone the impression by saying so that independent assessment experts had looked at whether the NCEA was fair to students to see whether students had as much chance of succeeding this year as last year. And that did not actually happen ever. It did not ever happen. We have now found out from what the Minister said today that his statements that the NCEA is fair to students are based on one conversation that happened in a meeting about something completely different in which one person who is an acknowledged expert might have said that the NCEA was better this year than last year. That is what that Minister and that Government are serving up to our teenagers—that the NCEA is fair because—[ 
Interruption 
] The Minister said that John Hattie said it is fine and John Hattie did not say it is fine. John Hattie has repeated to me tonight that he has never done an analysis of the NCEA and has never taken that opinion. The Minister has consistently misled the House and misrepresented Professor John Hattie in trying to prove a political point. 
We have now found out that the assessment experts in New Zealand are the PPTA the New Zealand Educational Institute and the School Trustees Association. Those are the people who apparently are making the definitive professional statements about the fairness of the exams that my children are sitting. What a lot of rubbish and what a lot of nonsense that is! 
That is why this hopeless Minister who will make the same mess of schools that he has made of tertiary education turned down the opportunity to make this legislation a lot better than it is. There has been no bigger policy disaster in the last 20 years than tertiary education was under this Minister. Billions and billions of dollars of extra money has been spent in return for no value to the nation at all and everyone agrees that is the case including Steve Maharey—including him. That is why Helen Clark sacked him from the tertiary education portfolio and that is why there will be no more education legislation during this term of Parliament. At least Trevor Mallard as Minister of Education had some competence and respect. The new Minister has none and the way he has behaved and the opportunities he has missed in passing this bill through the House have shown exactly that lack.