Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm pleased to rise to take a call on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3). I say pleased—I really mean disappointed.What a wasted opportunity. If you read the New Zealand Herald today you will see we have a crisis in mathematics in this country. A great piece by I think Audrey Tan who lays out in detail the situation that we're in with failing rates of achievement.I just want the people who are watching this debate out there today to know that while there are some noble recommendations in this bill we are facing a crisis of achievement in this country. A third of our 15-year-olds were able to pass a basic literacy and numeracy achievement. What's worse is only 2 percent of decile 1 kids could pass that same rate. The bill we have before us today does nothing to address any of those concerns; the things that Kiwi parents up and down the country are worried about—is my child at curriculum? Are they progressing through the curriculum? Are they going to be able to pass an NCEA basic literary and numeracy test when they turn 15 in order to gain their NCEA accreditation? What we get in this bill is a lot of little tweaks and some of them as I say are quite noble. But I guess the question is: should we be discussing whether or not we include members on boards of trustees according to their gender sexuality and sex when we have such a crisis in achievement levels?Let me just again for the public out there—how bad things are: less than half of our kids who go to high school are at curriculum for math for writing and for science. Only 20 percent of our kids are at curriculum for science. The bill we have in front of us today talks about including genders sexualities and sexes on the school board. I want to get to that in a minute because I think there are some big problems with that. But I think the main point that I want to get across is: what a wasted opportunity.For everybody out there watching the Minister of Education is more concerned with what's in this bill which I'll go through in a minute than she is around our declining achievement rates. It was stated in this House just last week that no improvement in achievement has been made in six years of this Government. So we are no better off after six years of a Labour Government in our achievement of our children. I've laid out how bad that is especially if you are underprivileged in this country. In this country it matters how much you earn depending on what academic outcome you get. It shouldn't be like that; it should be that education is the great equaliser and no matter your background your circumstances you turn up to school and you get the same opportunity as everybody else. But it is not true in this country and you can see that through the fact that only 2 percent of our decile 1 kids could pass that basic test.Yet here we are with a bill basically—you know like I say some noble things. Look it's very important that we make sure that people who apply to be on a board haven't been convicted of some serious crimes. Speakers before me have gone through the bill and I'm not going to go through it in detail. But I would just like to pick up the point around the appointments to the school board after the initial process has gone through where people vote.We are potentially going to change the law to make boards take into account the character gender ethnic and social diversity of the school—again a noble cause. But I guess the point that is even made in the departmental disclosure statement (DDS) is: how do you practically do that? If you want to ensure that you have people of differing sexualities or differing genders on the board especially when it comes to their sexual preference I guess the question is: how do you know that? What process would you go through to find that out? When your child enrols at school will you be required to let the school know which sexual preference you identify with so that then when they need to appoint someone to the board they could go and ask you because they require someone to better reflect the character of the school in terms of character gender ethnic and social diversity of the school? That is problematic. The DDS says it's problematic because firstly how do you ask for that information because that's kind of weird and awkward and then how do you hold that information? And there are privacy concerns that the DDS brings up around potentially the holding of that information.But I guess the broader point is that the most important thing about a board is that the people on that board have governance experience that they have property experience that they have legal or HR experience that they potentially have some mental health experience—Hon Kelvin Davis: They-know-their-Māori-communities experience.ERICA STANFORD: Yup exactly. Great point from Mr Kelvin Davis. But actually going into detail about people's sexual preferences in order to then put them on the board seems to be problematic for the reasons that I've mentioned.Again look potentially a noble reason behind it and the Minister can speak to that but I want to come back to the point: what a missed opportunity we have debating this bill when we've got kids who cannot read and write at 15; where half of our kids are not at curriculum by the time they reach the end of intermediate. We know that even by year 4 the rates of achievement are dropping off—when we should be talking about making sure that we've got a curriculum that lays out year by year the core curriculum knowledge; that it doesn't matter which school you go to in the country you will get access to that same knowledge. It doesn't matter where you go to in the country that you should be assessed for your progression along the curriculum.We know that the Education Review Office have been saying for a decade that half of skills are not having effective use of assessment or collecting assessment data. Why should it be the case that if you go to one school that you get assessed as to your progress parents know how their kids are doing; you go to another school that's not being done? It's all about consistency and this bill doesn't address any of that. This bill as I've mentioned we're talking about boards of trustees and one of the other issues that I want to mention a particular issue about this bill is this again noble—and I understand why they're doing it—the Government want to create an equity index for early childhood services and part of this bill is being able to access the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) data in order to do that. Again no problem with that but questions for the Minister that we will be asking at select committee and through this process is: exactly how will this equity index work for early childhood education (ECE) especially?If we take a look at the process we went through with the Equity Index with schools it was fraught. I asked for a briefing from the Minister—remember at the time that Minister was Christopher Hipkins—and in the media recently he said that education shouldn't be a political football" and "we're all open to all of these briefings and working together." Well I asked for a briefing on the Equity Index last year from Chris Hipkins and guess what!Maureen Pugh: What?ERICA STANFORD: I didn't get one. The answer: "No. Sorry we're not going to work cross-party" even though he comes out last week and says "Oh it's all about cross-party; let's not have a political football." Well I asked for a briefing on the Equity Index—didn't get one. I'm concerned that there will be similar problems when we introduce an equity index for ECE and that there will be ECEs that currently get a level of funding for the level of depravation of the area that they're in and that funding may drop away because that's what happened with schools.There were a lot of schools that lost out on their funding they did no better off when they expected that they would and they didn't understand the process. Many schools I went to talk to said "We thought we would get more money. We either ended up getting no more or we lost out." I'm really worried in this bill around the Equity Index for early childhood that we'll be in a similar position where there are early childhood centres in deprived areas that will miss out.I guess the other question is: how will that equity index be decided? You may have more children in your centre who are identified as not going on to achieve NCEA later in life which is what the IDI data predicts. You might have 10 children but they only come to the centre a couple of hours a week each so overall the total amount of hours they do is not high. Whereas you might have three children that are at your centre 40 hours a week each. So I guess then the question to ask is—this is very different than the school system where children are required to be there six hours a day whereas in ECE the hours that are attended are very different.And so the question will be: how will they use the IDI data? Will they use it in the same way that they've used it to predict outcomes for school children? And then how will they apply that to centres? Will it be based on hours of children attending or numbers of children attending? I am worried that we'll be in a similar situation where centres will believe that they're entitled to a lot of funding because they have children who are desperately in need and who are there a lot of hours per week but may end up losing funding. So those are some questions that we'll have.Hon Kelvin Davis: Can you clarify if you're criticising the Equity Index that you guys set up?Hon Jan Tinetti: Yeah that National set up.ERICA STANFORD: The Minister should have listened more carefully. The Equity Index has been great but there have been some teething problems: (a) that I haven't been able to ask the Minister about because he refused a briefing and (b) many schools have brought up that they thought that they were going to get funding and then they didn't. There are some issues around that that I think we need to avoid for ECE to make sure that all of those centres in deprived areas either get to retain their level of funding or get more funding. So with that we will be opposing the bill."