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:656] 
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Labour—Te Atatu) 
: 
 The Labour Party is opposed to this Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill for two reasons. First of all we are opposed to it because of its process. Standardised testing—and indeed truancy itself—is an intensely controversial subject. The issue of testing in primary schools has been canvassed in the election campaign. It was very controversial then; it is very controversial now. We believe that the public—parents teachers educational experts the Schools Trustees Association and the wider community—should have the right to participate in this debate. The bill is being rammed through under urgency; the public especially the education sector has had no chance to have an input. 
The rather hapless new Minister of Education Mrs Tolley has begun her time as Minister of Education. She and the other Government members like with any new Government—it won the election; it has the right to govern—now have a period in which there is a sense of the community saying how they will be and wishing them well. I am sure they have had this as they have moved around in the last couple of weeks. There is a sense of the community saying: “What does it mean?” and “Let us give them a chance.” and in Mrs Tolley’s first week in her job she has squandered a great opportunity. She has said to the community and the education sector that they can have no input and that they have no value in this controversial area. 
People in the community have also seen this particular new Minister break her word. I was present when she said that the 90-day rule would not apply to support staff and my colleague Steve Chadwick was present in Rotorua when Mrs Tolley said it would not apply to teachers. In fact the whole country got to see it on television the other night on a YouTube video. Mrs Tolley said that the 90-day rule which the Government has just brought in and which means that employees in small enterprises can be sacked for no reason would not apply to teachers. It does. 
I see the Minister is shaking her head. Well on Tuesday the Minister will have the opportunity to tell me and the House whether she said the thing seen by every New Zealander watching Television One. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: She told me I was making it up when I asked. 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: Oh did she? Well we will see. She is shaking her head. She has said twice today—and I think yesterday—that she did not say it. Well she will have the chance to say that in question time on Tuesday and if she gainsays on record that she did not say it then we will have a very interesting situation. We will look forward to developing that. 
I am saying in the context of the bill that the new Minister of Education had the chance to capitalise on goodwill—goodwill that has already been squandered on appearing to tell an untruth around the 90-day rule and also on treating the education sector and the community with contempt by saying that these very controversial matters about standardised testing for primary school age students is not something that people should have input about. So the process of this bill is something that we utterly reject. 
What about the content of this bill? We have talked about how this bill initially appears to be a nothing bill. Of course the National Educational Guidelines already say that primary and middle schools must assess data on literacy and numeracy they must report that to parents they must have ongoing improvements in that area and they must have a robust process about assessing the tools that they use. They have a wonderful battery of tools which we have heard about many times in the last few hours: asTTle PROBE the progressive achievement test and the literacy and numeracy progressions that are being trialled in all primary schools at the moment. Those are the tools that we have. They are national standards if you like in literacy and numeracy. 
This bill is really about—and this is the subtle Trojan Horse content that my new colleague Iain Lees-Galloway from Palmerston North talked about—introducing the concept of competition and league tables between primary schools and compounding the differences between schools. It does nothing to really address the question of literacy and numeracy. I also think that it implies a connection between teacher quality and test results. Performance pay has long been a right-wing ambition. I again come back to Heather Roy’s speech in the House where she talked about choice and competition in education and about reshaping New Zealand education. I think this ties in well with that Chilean model I talked about before where those sorts of policies have had such disastrous results. It is about introducing the concept of making teachers accountable for the exam results of their students—not for their learning but for their exam results. 
Looking over to the other side of the House I see that we have some new National MPs from diverse communities—for example the Korean and Sikh communities. This reminds me that in our country where one New Zealander in four was born outside New Zealand 22 percent of young New Zealanders come from homes where English is a second language. They may be fluent in English but the operating language in that home is not English. How will this 22 percent of our young Kiwis compare in a one-off literacy snapshot taken in primary schools? 
In addition Mrs Tolley never answered—she answered very little in the Committee stage—the question about who will be tested. What about special needs pupils? What about children with mild as well as serious learning barriers—children with attention deficit disorder or dyslexia for example? Will these children be part of the testing regime that will take place in primary schools? This issue has been enormously controversial in the UK. There all students in the school have been required to sit the test. Even in schools with high numbers of special needs students—whether it is behavioural or physical disability that has impacted on their ability to learn—these students will be part of any comparative data again compounding the inequities and stupid foolishness of league tables. 
Education is something that the Labour Party feels very passionate about. When our party was established in 1916 over 102 years ago—Labour is the oldest political party in New Zealand—the people who set it up were trade unionists and workers. Many of them were recent migrants from the UK where the class barrier had been a total obstacle to their children fulfilling their potential. They saw education as the key to climbing the ladder of opportunity. Indeed when the first Labour Government was set up in the 1930s and we had the historic partnership between Clarence Beeby and Peter Fraser education was the key for that first Government to try to realise the potential of young New Zealanders. That first Labour Government introduced free secondary education because it saw education as a tool. 
I am touching on this historic material because I am trying to say to this House and to anybody who is listening to the House today that education for Labour politicians is something we are passionate about. We are passionate about it because we believe in having a quality public education system. 
We heard from Metiria Turei earlier today—and it was new information for me—that King’s College in Auckland the school that Mr Key’s son attends I believe will be receiving $1.2 million under the promise made by the new National Government to double the amount of funding for private schools. We have already heard in this House that there will be no extra money for education in the coming Budget. It will be very interesting to see how Mrs Tolley deals with that with the education sector. 
I was Minister of Education in a Government that doubled education spending and I was constantly lambasted from the sector and in this House by the Opposition about not giving enough. We can never give enough money to education. But we are hearing already that private education will receive an endowment—a doubling from $40 million to $80 million. We have heard of some extravagant promises being made to schools in places like Upper Hutt. For example Heretaunga College in Chris Hipkins’ electorate was promised $30 million. Either these promises will be broken or the money will be sucked out of the State education system. 
It is in the State education system where the real challenges in literacy and numeracy are found. They are found in our low-decile schools they are found in the lack of participation in early childhood education and it is there that we are going to make the real difference in literacy and numeracy outcomes. 
We are opposed to this bill because we think that the issues it touches on are incredibly controversial and should have public participation. We are worried about the hidden agenda. I will finish by saying that there is a word that comes to me from Roman history—pyrrhic. This is a pyrrhic victory. Yes National will win today but it will lose so much that it will be damaged in the conflict in 2011 to see who will be the Government. We will keep this Government accountable in education.