Robertson Grant: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Robertson Grant: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:668] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I rise to oppose the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill. What a shameful week for this Government. What a shameful beginning to the forty-ninth Parliament. 
First National came for the low paid with a tax package designed to line the pockets of its mates while those on low incomes pay more or get little or nothing. Next National came for our savings—taking to KiwiSaver with the scalpel shattering the dreams of everyday Kiwis. Then National came for the scientists; it came for the innovators and inventors. We waved goodbye to research and development tax credits and to the jobs of the future. So much for a bright future—it does not involve research and development. Then National came for the workers. It came for the newest workers the most vulnerable workers and it said: “We are going to take away your rights.” This is an assault on the fairness ethic of every New Zealander. A worker can be fired without justification and with no redress. That is the ultimate attack on the rights of a worker and the right for workers to be able to have redress when they are unfairly treated. Then National came for the teachers as well. It did so by including our hard-working professional teachers in the 90-day bill. 
With this bill National came for the parents the students and the teachers. It attacked them by saying: “We do not trust you to put in place the standards that are already there and what’s more we do not want to hear from you. We don’t want to hear from the teachers we don’t want to hear from the parents and we don’t want to hear from the students.” It is an outrage for National to have come to this House in this first week and make all of those attacks on vulnerable and low-paid people on our savings and on our research and development and then push all that legislation through under urgency without any input from anybody across this country. 
Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: As I said what a shameful week for this Government. Under urgency it is ramming through legislation that takes away the rights of workers money from the low paid and money from research and development. Now we have this bill that says to teachers parents and children: “We don’t trust you. We don’t want to hear what you think about standards.” 
It is a bill that achieves nothing. It is designed to make the National Government look good. It is a bill to make sure that National can say that its bumper sticker slogans actually meant something. It is a bill that shows that National does not trust parents or teachers. It is a bill that piles on the red tape—so much for cutting compliance costs! The bill has no logic unless of course it is the logic of going somewhere else—the Trojan Horse logic. 
Not one of these shameful bills has been open to public scrutiny. Parents teachers workers the low paid and savers have all been shut out by the National Government. I am not sure that National members know just how much damage this approach is doing to them. My office is taking calls from people who are appalled at the lack of due process from the National Government. On this side of the House we respect the result of the election. We are disappointed of course—we are reflective even—but we respect the result. On the Government benches though respect went out the door on the first day of the new Parliament. Those members have no respect for the people of New Zealand and no respect for the experts in the field of education. They are just ramming the bill through and making sure the voices are not heard. 
Well we on the Opposition benches have ensured that the voices have been heard. I draw the Minister of Education’s attention to the words of the principal of Opotiki College—a college in her electorate. The principal said: “NZ schools already regularly assess student progress to inform further strategies. There is no need to have a centrally imposed and driven programme which has the intention … of comparing students in one school with another. This [policy] is a populist strategy for which there is no credible research to support it.” I say to Mrs Tolley that those are the words of the principal of Opotiki College. They are the words that the National Government did not want to hear. It did not want to have a select committee process whereby people could come in and say what they thought of this bill. 
This is unnecessary legislation. We have heard from my colleague Kelvin Davis about the excellent work that has been done around assessing and reporting. We know that the National Administration Guidelines already require boards of trustees and schools to ensure that they give priority to student achievement in literacy and numeracy and that they assess and gather information that is comprehensive enough to be able to enable the progress and achievement of students to be evaluated. The guidelines go on to say that schools have to report to students and their parents on the achievement of individual students. The guidelines are already there so we ask ourselves why we are putting forward this bill. It is quite clear that we are doing so for purely political reasons. 
Setting national standards could be done by regulation; there is no need for a bill. But what is the problem with a regulation? The problem with a regulation is that it is subject to some scrutiny and we know that the National Government does not want there to be any scrutiny. It did not want a select committee process so it would not want any scrutiny of these standards. If the national standards were put in place by regulation they would become part of the parliamentary process and we cannot have that because then people would have a say. We would have education experts telling us about the experiences they have had and about experiences overseas where this kind of approach has failed. This bill gives the Minister the power to gazette the standards—no questions no scrutiny. 
The explanatory note of the bill tells us that this legislation is actually about sending a signal. It is not about students and it is not about children; it is about the National Government sending a signal. It is a signal that National is playing politics because we know that national standards will lead to national testing. That is the experience internationally and that is what will happen here. Mr Peachey favours national testing. He talked about it in his third reading speech. That is where this is going—to national testing. He wrote a book about it. That is what he wants to see happen. I think we will find that in about a year’s time the Minister—who will probably be Allan Peachey I would say—will come back to the House and say that parents need some certainty and that they need to know that their school is achieving these standards. And he is going to come back and say that we need national testing because that is the only way that this can work. 
We know from experience overseas that that means we will begin to see teachers teaching to the test. Teaching to the test means a narrow education and a focus not on the so-called tail or the high achievers but on those who can make the marginal difference in the middle to the test results for that school. Even before there is national testing this Government is on the path to league tables. That is what this Government is after. Mr Peachey loves league tables and that is what he wants to see here. Mrs Tolley told us that the information will be available only to the Government. What Mrs Tolley does not seem to know but is going to find out about thanks to this side of the House is something called the Official Information Act. This Act means that that information will be available and will be published. Then we will see league tables in the papers followed by—and it happens internationally—flight from schools with bad test results to those with good test results and the ghettoising of schools. That is the path that this bill is going to take us down. That is what this Government has planned. 
This is an unnecessary politically driven bill. The teaching and assessment of our children is vital. The previous Labour Government focused on teaching and learning because that is what we need to be doing instead of focusing on this system. If we were ever to look at introducing national standards then legislation we put forward would have gone to a select committee. This Government has failed to do that. 
The other part of this bill is about truancy. As I have already said in earlier readings of this bill truancy is a serious issue. It is one that all parties in this House I am sure are committed to addressing. But we are not going to address it simply by imposing punitive measures such as those proposed in this bill. We heard from Te Ururoa Flavell that at the moment truancy is disproportionately a Maori and Pasifika problem. This punitive bill is not going to help that. It will also punish good parents who are not necessarily wilfully involved in this problem. Increasing fines is a pointless way of going about this. The National Government had the opportunity to vote for the Hon Chris Carter’s amendment in order to ensure that good parents are not captured by this law but it failed to do that. This punitive bill on truancy is not the way to ensure that we keep students in school. We actually need to focus on making school environments places where all students want to be where all students can learn and learn in their own way. 
This bill is about putting students in a box and saying that one size fits all. It is bad legislation and it is bad legislation that is being rammed through under urgency. This Government has been in office for a week. It is arrogant it is already losing touch with the people and we look forward to holding it to account.