English Bill: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members 
English Bill: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members 
[Volume:629;Page:1285] 
12.  
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
 to the  
Minister of Education 
: What proportion of parents are able to choose the school their child attends? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister for Economic Development) 
 on behalf of the 
 Minister of Education 
: Generally all but 22 percent of schools currently have enrolment schemes that protect the rights of parents to have children attend their local school if that is the parents’ choice. This policy was introduced by National in 1998 after the disastrous results of its decision to abandon zoning in 1991. 
Hon Bill English 
: If as the member says generally all parents have a choice about where their child goes to school why is it then Labour Government policy to keep secret from parents information about schools that is contained on the SchoolSmart website? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Because this Government believes in undertakings made when data is collected being kept. 
Moana Mackey 
: What reports has he seen on alternatives to the current system where students have a right to attend their local school? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I have seen an approach that would introduce a competitive market between schools reintroduce bulk funding and set up schools for privatisation. These policies are advocated by someone who says he does not care who owns our schools—the absent Dr Brash. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Would the member please apologise and withdraw that remark. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I apologise and withdraw. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: Can the Minister confirm that when the then Minister of Education Lockwood Smith abolished school zoning in the early 1990s the areas that were most negatively affected were blue-ribbon areas such as Epsom and that the hue and cry from such areas became so strident that National with the support of ACT and Mauri Pacific reintroduced geographic zoning in November 1998? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Yes I can confirm that all of that is correct. I can also confirm that as a result of the policy 47 percent of Maori parents who tried to enrol their children at schools with limited entry were unable to compared with 10 percent of Pakeha. When principals selected we got some results that were not random. 
Hon Bill English 
: Which of the following data collected by the ministry and available on the SchoolSmart website does the Government believe is too dangerous for parents to see and that they should be protected from seeing: ancillary staff hours expenditure on property and depreciation predicted roll compared with actual roll roll-change comparison by similar schools or suspensions per 1000 students? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: All that material is available. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: Can the Minister confirm that when under his administration balloting of school students was introduced principals such as John Morris warned the Government that parents would indulge in large-scale cheating in certain areas and will he put in place some policies that might assist some of those schools in overcoming such practices of some parents? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I know that the former Minister of Education worked very closely with John Morris in order to work through some of those issues. They worked in a collaborative way and made a lot of progress. I note that currently there are 10 requests to the ministry from people who have been declined enrolment at Auckland Grammar who claim to live in the zone. So far three of those cases have been resolved. There has been a direction to the school to enrol them. The other seven cases are being worked on. 
Hon Bill English 
: If as the Minister says all the information available on the SchoolSmart website is publicly available why has he stated publicly now several times that this information is too dangerous for parents to see and that he will not allow parents to have access to it even though school principals and the ministry use it all the time to compare schools? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: What the Minister answering for the Minister said in the House today was that the three pieces of information that the member asked for were all publicly available. 
Hon Bill English 
: Is the Minister now telling us that parents must be protected from actually being able to use information that is publicly available because as he realises the SchoolSmart website produces that information in a way that means it can be compared from school to school? Does the Minister believe that the information is OK if it is publicly available but is dangerous if it can be used? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Not at all. 
Hon Bill English 
: Does the Minister understand how ridiculous it sounds when he says that information that is publicly available must be kept secret from parents in case they start using it to compare schools? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I can understand how ridiculous the member sounds. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: If the Minister would just like to rephrase that answer. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I can understand how silly the question sounds in the House. 
Hon Bill English 
: Can the Minister explain to members of the House—a number of whom are parents of schoolchildren—why this information on the SchoolSmart website should be kept secret from them and what it is about parents that renders them so dangerous and stupid that they should not be allowed to see the information? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I would not consider most of the parents in this House stupid.