King Colin: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
King Colin: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:653;Page:2450] 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 When we compare the previous Minister of Education with the current one we see that today the National Government can be very confident that we have more character and get up and go in our Minister of Education the Hon Anne Tolley in the sense that she is going to make a difference. We are very pleased to see that. 
Let us have a look at the failed 9 years of the Labour Government when looking at the 2007-08 financial review of education. Education is recognised as the very foundation on which we build the opportunity and inspiration of a generation. When we look at the outcomes from that failed Government we see that one in five of our children is totally inadequate when it comes to being able to cope read write and do maths. What an absolute failure! The Hon Anne Tolley talks about parental involvement in education and being able to get a school report that is understandable so that parents can be engaged in education. But we hear the previous Minister of Education the Hon Chris Carter saying that teachers are fearful. I think we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel and we will see education growing and going onward and upward. 
Let us consider just for a few moments some of the debacles that occurred under Labour. Labour destroyed the technology teachers curriculum. The Correspondence School has been wrecked; it is no longer the iconic school that it used to be. What is happening to the agricultural curriculum in our secondary schools today? It has been totally wrecked and has been undermined. 
When it comes to truancy again Labour attempted to sweep it under the table to ignore it all together. It is very very disappointing to see that. We are now at a stage where we can do some improvements and look forward to some real achievement. Labour’s attempts were quite knee-jerk at the very end. When there were far too many early exemptions what did the Minister do? He just shut them down immediately without any consideration of what could happen. From that point of view a perverse effect was created. 
It was very exciting to go to schools in South Auckland like the decile 1 Southern Cross Campus which needed the opportunity to have hands-on learning. What did we see occurring under the previous Labour Government? That Government totally ignored the needs of the people in South Auckland. It was very very obvious to those people who had stood back and heard the rhetoric and the nonsense from the previous Government that that particular school was crying out for help. When we looked for its technology provision we found that it did not exist. It was an absolute failure. That is an indictment on the Labour Party member who represented that electorate. 
When we look through the education cycle over the last 9 years and particularly at the period of the financial review we see that Labour was strong on rhetoric. It was a very command-and-control environment. National has brought inspiration and opportunity to the table. It is about engaging in learning in a multitude of ways in a partnership between teachers parents and children so that we get some go-forward. 
One thing that really did disturb the Education and Science Committee during the financial review was the ongoing consideration of yet lack of substance around teacher training. We found that teachers were coming out from their teacher-training institutions and going into schools without even being able to operate assessment tools such as asTTle. That kind of assessment is very very important. If a teacher cannot clearly tell parents where their children are sitting in the education system we are failing that generation of children. 
It was a breath of fresh air when the Hon Anne Tolley announced that those schools that are performing very very well will have relief from the Education Review Office reports. I think that is a wonderful breath of fresh air. It allows the attention to be focused on those schools that need to be uplifted and inspired. I think that certainly is the way to go.