Peachey Allan: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Peachey Allan: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:632;Page:4156] 
ALLAN PEACHEY (National—Tamaki) 
: 
 There would not be a member of this Parliament who would not agree with the proposition that the greatest gift a community can give to its children is an outstanding education—not just in some of the years that a child is at school but every day of every week of every year. I think we understand that in New Zealand for over 95 percent of our children that means an education provided by the State. In some areas of the country it is 100 percent. The State therefore has a special responsibility—a responsibility that is not being met in this Budget. Too many of our parents and too many of our children do not have sufficient choice as to where they go to school and there is nothing in the Budget that enhances that choice. Too often children are in communities where parents are voting with their feet. Too often increasingly those parents have nowhere to go but to sell up and shift to a community where the school is responsive to the needs and expectations of that community or fork out for private school fees. 
There is nothing in this Budget that addresses that issue. Indeed it must trouble every New Zealander to know that the inclination of the Government and of its bureaucracies and the teacher unions that support it all too often is to be prepared to support those schools in which parents have lost confidence. It is time we addressed that balance. It is time we recognised the critical importance of the early years at school. For year after year we have paid lip-service to that yet we are still talking about the number of children who are not learning to read write or do mathematics. We seem to stubbornly refuse to get to grips with the basic problem. 
The problem as I see it is that there is a group of children who through no fault of their own will learn only if the methodologies by which they are taught are compatible with their learning styles. Yet too often we find such children stranded in a school that will not acknowledge that that wants to treat all children the same—one size fits all—and just make the best of it instead of our being prepared to begin to get to grips with some of these very serious issues that are of concern to parents out there. 
Those members of the Government who confine themselves to listening to the teacher unions that keep them in office are not getting that message. Schooling is not just about teaching. Of course teaching is important—and we pay lip-service to that all the time. I want to acknowledge the outstanding work being done by thousands and thousands of teachers quietly in their classrooms every day but that must not obscure the fact that for some children—too many children—the quality of teaching and the values and standards in schools that they need are not being provided sufficiently well by the State. There is nothing in this Budget that recognises that teaching has changed that teaching more than ever is a knowledge profession. More than ever teachers have to be good at what they are teaching. We should never lose sight of that. That is especially important in the critical areas of literacy mathematics and science. In addition they have to be good at teaching. Too often we are prepared to separate those two issues out and get into debates about the relative merits of one as opposed to the other instead of recognising that today what teachers require is the ability to teach and to know what they are teaching.