Carter Chris: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Carter Chris: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:644] 
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Labour—Te Atatu) 
: 
 When I first looked at the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill I got it wrong. I thought it was actually a nothing. I thought it was just a sham a fig leaf an answer to election slogans that said National was going to have a crusade on literacy that it had five planks on which to build a new strong economy that would lift New Zealand up in the OECD league and that education was one of them—a crusade on literacy and numeracy was going to be one of the tools that did it. I looked at the bill as tabled by the Minister of Education Mrs Tolley and I thought “what a joke”. It contained nothing but things that were already happening and required to happen in our schools. We already have standards for literacy and numeracy—national standards. They are required to be there under the National Education Guidelines. We have talked about that for hours and hours today and yesterday. Of course National Party members have not listened; neither has Mrs Tolley but then one would expect no less. I thought “what’s the purpose of this bill this nothing bill this fig leaf this sham?” Actually the more I read it the more alarmed I became. It is not a sham or a fig leaf; it is an insidious Trojan horse—in the words of my new colleague Iain Lees-Galloway from Palmerston North. He called it a Trojan horse and I thought it was a very good analogy because the bill introduces for the first time the concept into New Zealand schools that primary school-age children will sit exams and those exams will be compared with exams of other children within their school and other schools. 
We know that that right-wing agenda as articulated by Heather Roy when she was in the Chamber late last night and talked about choice competition in education and a vision of education is very different from that of the Labour Party and the Labour Government that has just spent 9 years administering—I would say very successfully—our education system. Labour members talked about the $5.5 billion extra we put into education. We talked about 20 free hours we talked about $3.4 billion for new school buildings and 6000 extra teachers above roll growth. We talked about wonderful little initiatives such as laptops for teachers and sabbaticals for principals. We talked about programmes for aspiring principals’ and for first-time principals—all the structures that one puts in to make a real difference to teaching and learning. 
What does this bill do? It does not mention anything about resourcing of course. We heard Mrs Tolley talking about $18 million. I have to tell Mrs Tolley that it costs $10 million to get a 1 percent lift in the operations grant for all 2600 schools in New Zealand so the Minister’s $18 million will not give even a 2 percent lift in the operations grant. We gave this year a 5 percent lift in the operations grant. I have to say that it was greeted with howls of outrage by the education sector that said it was not enough. Of course we would have liked to give more; indeed of course we had already put in $5.5 billion extra into education. I have to tell Mrs Tolley that if she thinks $18 million is going to make even a ripple in the pond of education or is going to make even the slightest impact on literacy and numeracy outcomes she must be kidding. I tell the Minister that what will happen of course is that she will spend most of that money on bureaucrats and consultants. The Minister actually does not like educational experts employed by the Ministry of Education so she will probably consult on this with somebody who will charge her most of that $18 million or at least the company will to set up the so-called standards which are the literacy and numeracy progressions that all New Zealand schools are currently trialling. 
We should think about what the title of this bill should be. We could perhaps call it the “Great Leap Backwards Education Bill” because it is going back to those discredited right-wing agendas of the early 1990s when we had people like Nick Smith Lockwood Smith and others who were education Ministers and when we had bulk funding neglect of school infrastructure and a shift of resourcing to private education. Or we could call it of course the “Roger Douglas has Returned to Parliament Bill”. That would be a rather good title for it would it not? Seeing Roger sitting over there I thought a ghost from the past had come back; a horrible nightmare an agenda that New Zealanders thought was well past had suddenly reappeared like the ghost in  
Macbeth 
. Of course he brings with him not just himself but that agenda of privatisation—that somehow the market works best which is a policy that is totally discredited. That policy has not worked in a whole range of areas but I will talk about education. 
Chile went down the path of Roger Douglas and his mates in education. That country thought it would introduce choice into its education system. It would give parents the choice to choose where to send their children. What it did was provide an absolute bonanza for individuals setting up private schools. Chilean education which was considered one of the best in Latin America completely collapsed. Hekia Parata’s sister Apryll Parata came with me on an education delegation to Santiago in Chile earlier this year. We had a seminar on the New Zealand education experience and Chilean teachers educators and the Minister of Education were all there because they said New Zealand had got it right. Our learning outcomes for our students as evidenced in the Programme for International Student Assessment scores and the fantastic educational programmes that were operating in our country were the envy of Chilean educators because they said that they had stuffed their education system. Something like 70 percent of Chilean students were now in private schools—these were businesses. The State sector was wrecked by under-investment teachers were on strike and students were getting really low-quality education. Tertiary providers were saying that Chilean students coming into education were of declining quality in their literacy and numeracy and in their ability to study in higher education. All of this was the result of choice and competition. It completely gutted Chile’s education system. 
We have not gone down that path but this bill starts us on that journey. It states—and it all so sounds so innocent in fact so attractive—“national standards in literacy and numeracy.” Labour members have said already endless times today and yesterday that we have already got those so what is this about? I will tell members what the legislation is about. It is about setting up league tables between primary schools. It is about saying that the children in that decile 1 school over there are sitting right at the bottom of a comparison in the greater area. In my own electorate of Te Atatu each of those primary schools—21 of them—will be ranked against each other and the parents will want to compare how children do at Tirimoana Primary School Edmonton Primary School Flanshaw Road School or Peninsula Primary School. They are going to say: “We can drive across the electorate in 12 minutes.” It is the most compact electorate in the country it is just a concentration of working-class suburbs. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Small but perfectly formed! 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: Parents can easily access all the primary schools in my electorate very quickly so they are going to choose to send their child to what they perceive is the highest-scoring school. The National - ACT - Maori Party coalition has already said it is going to give more parental choice and weaken the legislation that Labour put in around enrolment zones which will all change. We are back to the Roger Douglas days again. 
How are we going to make a real change in literacy and numeracy? We are not going to do that with the “Roger Douglas has Returned to Parliament Bill” or the “Great Leap Backwards Education Bill” or with Anne Tolley’s vision of education. We have to invest in early childhood education. We have to ensure that is done; in areas such as Judith Collins’ electorate where I was recently visiting schools in my role as Minister of Education only 23 percent of new entrants were receiving early childhood education. The Labour-led Government invested over $1 billion extra in early childhood education from the 20 free hours to the huge building grant and capacity process that we set in place to get more kids into early childhood education because that is where we start—right at the beginning. Before the children get to primary school we have them learning to read and already socialised to a school environment or learning environment. That is the only way we can make a difference. We are also going to make a difference only when we focus on areas of low-decile schools where there are real challenges in literacy and numeracy. 
We are not going to make a difference in those kids by slogans. We are not going to make a difference in them by saying their primary school sits right at the bottom of the league. Mrs Tolley claimed that an Education Review Office report stated that 56 percent of schools were not doing literacy and numeracy assessments. They were breaking the National Administration Guidelines if they were not doing those assessments. I personally think the report—which I have read—said that they were not doing it as adequately as they could. How is the national standard going to make a difference to that? Only resourcing and effective teaching will make a difference to that.