Douglas Roger: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Douglas Roger: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:674;Page:20404] 
Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS (ACT) 
: 
 My question this afternoon to the Minister of Education is when we are actually going to start tackling the causes of our educational problems that we have in this country and not the symptoms. The fact is that schools fail the bottom 20 percent of pupils. The fact also is that 40 percent of Maori leave school without basic qualifications. The fact also is that we currently spend 50 percent more educating a secondary schoolchild than we did in 2000 yet over the same period more Maori failed National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 3 than they did previously. The result of our educational failure is that New Zealand faces a crisis. The fact is that we have 330000 New Zealanders on one form of benefit or another—unemployment sickness or domestic purposes. The one fundamental characteristic of those 330000 people who are on a benefit is that they failed or to put it better the education system failed them. So 90 percent of people who end up unemployed or on low wages have that one uniting factor. 
Yet that does not need to be the case. We have some exceptional schools in New Zealand where young people achieve but there are many others where young people do not succeed. I could take members to a large number of them. There are four or five characteristics of those schools that achieve. The first characteristic of schools that achieve and the most fundamental is that they have an outstanding principal. If we want New Zealand schools to achieve then that is where we need to start. If we have to have more immigration to achieve it we should. The reason that those schools achieve is that that principal will demand and get the best out of the teachers. But more particularly it is an expectation. There is an expectation that the children will achieve—and they do. Another characteristic of those schools is that when the kids fall behind the school brings them up to date. I recently visited a Maori total immersion school in Ruatoria which has 132 pupils and the expectation of that school was that every child who went through that school would go on to tertiary education—and they do. I tell members they were the smartest-looking kids I have seen around. I started looking at my shirt and wondered whether it came anywhere as close as those ones. We see there are schools where these children can achieve. 
A study was done in an Australian school but it applies here in New Zealand; it is the same sort of thing. In that school 87 percent of its pupils came from homes of beneficiaries solo mothers and the like. It was so bad that the equivalent of the education department put in a new headmaster and basically said it would leave it to him. In 5 years that principal took that school from scoring 20 percent below the average in Australia to scoring 20 percent above. The point there was that that principal ensured that he got the most out of the teachers and there was an overall expectation that the children at that school would succeed. They went from 20 percent below the average level of scoring which they do in Australia to 20 percent above. That school was well ahead of many private schools and the fundamental reason was about expectation and about ensuring that when a child actually fell behind they were brought up to date. 
We know what to do and it is a disgrace that we allow in this country a situation where 20 percent of young people come out of our school bound for the scrap heap. Over 20 percent of youth are unemployed. Then probably another 20 percent barely make it and are likely to work on the minimum wage. We can do something about that because we know what to do. It starts by having an exceptional principal and that is where we have to go. When I visited schools recently what were the requests that principals made to me? The first was that they would like to train their own teachers. They would like to be able to employ and train their own teachers on the job and then send them off for the theoretical work they might require. I think this country simply cannot afford to continue with a situation where 20 percent of kids come out of school unable to read or do simple maths. We know that these kids can learn and it is a tragedy that we do not do something about it. There is clear evidence of a number of New Zealand decile 1 and 2 schools in which the kids are achieving yet at others they are not. It seems to me that we know what to do; let us get on with the job and do it.