Mahuta Nanaia: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mahuta Nanaia: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members 
[Sitting date: 14 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4308. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
9. 
Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato) 
 to the  
Minister of Education 
: Does she agree with the Prime Minister that National Standards data is currently “very ropey”? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development) 
on behalf of the Minister of Education: I can confirm she agrees with the Prime Minister that as this is the first year of reporting national standards data it provides a baseline from which improvements can be made. That is why the Minister announced last week a plan to do so. She has herself described the data as variable. This is because of the way schools have reported it not because it is invalid. For example some schools have presented it as graphs some have sent in percentages or text some have presented year-level information and others have aggregated by school. The Government is implementing a plan to ensure that national standards data is more useful and meaningful for parents including the implementation of a consistent reporting format by school and by year level. 
Hon Nanaia Mahuta 
: Is she confident that by publicly releasing inaccurate data in September under her Public Achievement Information initiative parents will gain an accurate impression of how well their children’s learning is progressing how effective a school’s teaching practice is or how well a school is performing; if not is that ka pai? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: It is not correct to say the data is inaccurate. The data is variable in its presentation but it is still valid. It will show parents how their child’s school is achieving and progressing against the national standards in reading writing and maths. That will keep parents up to date on how their children are doing—which children are falling behind—and help the Government target resources to where they are needed the most. 
Hon Nanaia Mahuta 
: Can the Minister explain to the House the difference between variable data and inaccurate data in relation to the way in which national standards are reported? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: Well I thought that I did do that in the answer to the first question the primary question. It is because the variability is in the way the data is reported not because it is not valid in itself. For example some schools have presented it as graphs others have sent it in as percentages or text some have presented year-level information while others have aggregated by school level. That is the variability in the presentation of the data. 
Hon Nanaia Mahuta 
: Is she aware that a recent Education Review Office report found one-fifth of schools were not fully implementing national standards and how does she propose to standardise reporting by schools to ensure parents receive robust and accurate information about their children’s learning in a school and what investment will be made in the moderation and overall teacher judgment element of that process? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: A number of those things are ongoing. I think it is important to note that we have not said that the national standards performance would be perfect straight away. The National Certificate of Educational Achievement was in fact the same if members recall. It took 10 years to develop the high level of consistency and reporting that we now have. Similarly the development of the curriculum—the world-leading curriculum—took time to develop. For national standards we are implementing a plan over the next few years to improve the quality of the data along with a consistent reporting format and that will be in place over the next couple of years.