Robertson Grant: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Robertson Grant: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:664;Page:12341] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 It is an odd feeling for me to stand in this House and say that I support something that Sir Roger Douglas said. He rated the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) at two or three out of 100. 
Louise Upston 
: Out of five it was. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: No it was out of a hundred. Louise Upston is trying to rewrite history on the other side of the House. That is what she wants but Sir Roger Douglas said it was two or three out of 100. As have other speakers from the Labour Party the Green Party and the Maori Party he recognised that this bill lacks ambition. Once upon a time the National Party said it was ambitious for New Zealand but this bill does very very little to be ambitious for New Zealand. It does very little to say: “Education is important. We think it is one of the most important things to unlocking the future potential of New Zealand.” Instead once again National comes to this House with a technical bill that does very little. 
Louise Upston was complaining earlier on about bureaucracy but that is the main achievement in this bill. It is creating a bit more bureaucracy with the secondary-tertiary partnership. That is the achievement of this bill. This bill does not give us a vision for the future of education. The education policy of this Government is hopelessly bogged down in national standards. It is hopelessly bogged down in a policy that principals in Auckland saw as flawed as not given a proper process and as something that parents were not able to contribute to— 
Louise Upston 
: Talked to a parent lately? Talk to a parent; they think it’s great. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: I have talked to plenty of parents I say to Louise Upston all around my electorate. They are concerned that the National Government has become so focused on national standards and so focused on meeting this election promise that it made that it has lost the plot when it comes to quality education. It has lost the plot when it comes to making sure that schools are creating an environment that young people can thrive in. 
I am sorry to say that this Minister of Education Anne Tolley has lost the plot on national standards. Today we discovered that the Parliamentary Library put out a good information paper on national standards. But Mrs Tolley did not like it so it is being pulled. It is being pulled from— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: What? What? 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: That is right. It has been taken down from the Parliamentary Library website because Mrs Tolley did not like it. That is censorship. That is what that is and I believe it to be unacceptable behaviour from a Minister. It shows just how bogged down this Government is when it comes to education. It is totally bogged down and national standards are a flawed policy that it cannot implement properly. 
What we are left with from this Government is a largely technical bill. As we have already said Labour will support it being sent to the Education and Science Committee. We have some misgivings about several areas and Mr Mallard and Kelvin Davis have outlined those but we recognise the importance of putting this to the select committee so that we can sort it out. 
In principle the secondary-tertiary interface is fine. It is important that we support people to find their way through those later years of secondary education when the environment they are in may not be appropriate for them. Obviously when Labour was in Government it had the Schools Plus policy. That policy was designed to work on the issues that are being raised in this bill. It was designed to ensure we were managing peoples’ transition through secondary school into training and on into work and ensuring they had the support to do that. It is all very well to have a well-organised situation for those people but in the end if the money is not there if the funding is not there and if the real support for those programmes is not there then it will not work. 
Unfortunately that is what we are seeing from the National Government. We have seen funding cut for literacy and numeracy programmes. Gateway funding has been frozen; it is stagnant and as a result with the cost increases that are being faced there it is effectively a cut. There will be fewer places available for people who are in that programme. Youth Training funding has been cut by over $3 million this year. We on this side of the House have considerable doubts about whether the Youth Guarantee scheme is really working and whether it is actually getting students into training. The jury is certainly still out on that. The $2.5 million Skill Enhancement programme has been stopped. That was a programme that provided a pathway for Maori and Pasifika students to gain qualifications at level 3. Grants of $2.8 million for at-risk youth have been cut. It is all very well to set up as this bill does a process for managing the secondary-tertiary interface but if there is no funding for those programmes and if those programmes are not being supported properly then what is the point? There is no point in that. 
I pick up the comment that Kelvin Davis made earlier that we need to continue to focus on the quality of schools. We cannot just assume that if someone is not succeeding at school we can create a programme and away that person will go. We need to make sure that schools are being supported to deal with students who are difficult or who are struggling and yes from time to time they will need to move into those kinds of programmes. We want to see that schools are being supported to provide that quality environment and ensure that students succeed. Obviously we can see some of the value of the secondary-tertiary interface. My colleague Mr Mallard suggested that perhaps it is just unnecessary bureaucracy and he asked whether there really needs to be this arrangement. Could it not be done through policy changes? That is something the select committee will be able to look at. In general and in principle we support the notion of supporting people through these kinds of programmes but we would like to make sure that the National Government understands the importance of having secondary schools delivering quality programmes of ensuring that the programmes meet the needs of students and of moving students into those programmes only when that is necessary and perhaps is not being done. 
A couple of the other elements that people have raised here concern the question of the limited attendance centres. As Mr Mallard said that question is one that needs to be clarified when the bill goes to the select committee. We have had an assurance from the Minister today that the concerns Mr Mallard has raised were not intended and that is good but we will need to make sure that the wording of the bill picks that up. I share the concerns of Catherine Delahunty on the particular point about the direction the legislation is showing—the direction away from the quality agenda in early childhood education. Mr Harawira was quite critical before of Mr Mallard as an education Minister but I want to say one thing in this House and put it on the record: there has not been a Minister of Education in New Zealand for a very long time who has paid as much attention to early childhood education as Trevor Mallard has. He made sure that early childhood education was respected was professionalised and had resources put towards it. New Zealand will be far the better in the future for the work of Mr Mallard in early childhood education unless we go further down the path that Mrs Tolley wants to go down of taking away from the quality agenda. Although that particular provision probably is OK with that clarification we are seeing more and more in early childhood education that the National Government does not see it as an important part an important first step in quality education. Rather it sees it as some form of child-minding. That is not a direction we should be going in; we should be continuing on the path that Mr Mallard went down with early childhood education. 
A number of other speakers have referred to the question of enrolment schemes and the proposed additional criteria there. I have concerns about that. It is a difficult area for a lot of parents. People obviously want their children to go to good-quality schools. We all want that and we all want them to be able to go to good-quality local schools. The focus should always be to make sure that excellent schools are available for everybody but the additional enrolment priorities that have been put into the legislation start to skew the playing field. Adding the children of former students is the fourth priority and making the children of board employees eligible is the fifth priority. That is starting to push us into some sort of sense of entitlement which may be based on something incredibly historical if people have not lived in an area for a long time. It also as Mr Mallard says opens up the potential for loopholes in terms of the children of boards of trustees members if those people are appointed to boards for very short periods of time. I do not think that that clause is designed to undermine enrolment schemes but it certainly does not help them and it certainly does not go in a direction that I think is positive. 
Just briefly in the time remaining to me I will refer—and I know that my colleague David Shearer will refer more to this—to the changes in relation to international students and private training establishments being able to recoup some more money. I have two concerns there. Again the first is a directional concern. Steven Joyce came to the Education and Science Committee to talk about Vote Tertiary Education last week. During that appearance he started to talk about trying to rebalance funding to go more in the direction of private training establishments. I think our priority has to be our public education system. Private training establishments have a role in our tertiary education system but I think we have to prioritise public institutions. I am concerned again about a general direction— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Why? 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Because public institutions are available for everyone I tell Mr Williamson. That is why and we have invested in those public institutions over generations to make them good. Private tertiary establishments have a role but they do not need to be prioritised. That is what we are perhaps seeing in the direction of this bill. 
Overall I think this bill has some technical changes that Labour can support but we have concerns about it. However it is simply not ambitious for New Zealand as National would like us to believe that its legislation is. It does not take education anywhere and it continues Mrs Tolley’s unfortunate path of being bogged down in national standards instead of being focused on quality education for all New Zealanders.