English Bill: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
English Bill: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Volume:623;Page:18659] 
3.  
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
 to the  
Minister of Education 
: Did he make the decision that the New Zealand Scholarship award would be implemented in 2004 in the form it finally took; if so what form did that decision take? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education) 
: 
 The decision that that scholarship would be standards based and that there would be no intersubject scaling was a Cabinet decision. It was made by that member and his colleagues in 1998. As the member is aware I deferred the implementation by 1 year soon after coming into Government. 
Hon Bill English 
: Can the Minister confirm that he announced a change in policy when he issued a press release on 26 January 2005 and that that press release included a statement: “As this is the first time the new Scholarship system has been run there is particular interest in the pattern of results and achievement of students.”; how much did he know about the scholarship results when he issued that press release? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I knew that there were eight who had three outstanding scholarships when the expectation we had taken to Cabinet and had published was that there should have been 50. I thought it was unfair that as a result of the scholarship exam being harder than we thought it was going to be four people got outstanding passes and other kids who had done really well missed out on the money that had been allocated. I therefore moved with Cabinet permission to a Cabinet decision in order to get that money allocated to kids. If Opposition members think that kids who did really well at really hard exams should not get the money they should stand up and say so now. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: Can the Minister explain why the Associate Minister told the House yesterday that the level 4 National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) qualification was created as a standards-based assessment system by the October 1998 Cabinet paper when the paper does not do anything like that at all and what were the contents of the subsequent Cabinet papers on scholarship that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority chief executive officer referred to today at the select committee? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: The subsequent papers went to the question of reward and I think probably timing rather than to the substance of the qualification. The decision in 1998 stated as part of the paper in paragraph 29: “There will be no intersubject scaling of the external assessment. This has been a source of dissatisfaction because of the distortions that have occurred between raw and final marks.” I have been advised that as recently as 2003 we had science subjects where no one passed before scaling. 
Deborah Coddington 
: How does he feel about his decision to implement scholarship in light of Nobel Prize - winner Alan MacDiarmid’s comment last weekend that: “NCEA scholarship is a disaster for New Zealand science.” adding: “It’s done a great disservice to the country because New Zealand needs for its national security in the future to encourage science education and this is going to put kids off”; or does the Minister know better than a Nobel laureate? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Professor MacDiarmid and I have had some pretty intense discussions not on this subject but on the subject of Waiwhetu School. He is an expert in an area of science. He admits I am sure that he is not an educational expert. 
Hon Bill English 
: Is it not true that when the Minister issued his press release on 26 January he knew about all the problems with scholarship results because he was emailed the results on 14 January he advised the Prime Minister about problems on 15 or 16 January he was emailed again on 17 January and on 18 January his most senior officials started meetings on the issue yet he issued a press release on 26 January that made no reference to the variability in results which the Cabinet later decided was so bad it had to step in; and why did he cover that up? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: At no stage did I cover it up. I want to make it clear that on the evening of the Cabinet meeting that made the decisions as to the extension I was briefed and I received a piece of paper. The next day I discovered for the first time that unlike NCEA levels 1 2 and 3 the scholarship standards had not been subject to intersubject moderation. That was something I discovered then. That of course was a result of that member’s decision. 
Hon Bill English 
: How can the Minister possibly expect the House or the public to believe that over a period of 2 weeks between 14 January and 26 January he had no knowledge of pass rates in scholarship when the analysis is as simple as one table with four columns on one page; and how can he expect us to believe that Cabinet made a decision to extend scholarship without paying attention to that analysis of the scholarship results which can be done in 5 minutes? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Because it is the truth. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: What did the Minister take from the NCEA results from 2002 and 2003 which showed that 5000 maths students were graded “excellent” in level 2 in 2002 but that that dropped drastically to 70—down from 5000—in level 3 in 2003 when the cohort had not changed; and why did he and his colleagues ignore that varying and disturbing statistic? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Off the top of my head I do not have the results for 2002 and 2003 and the analysis of those results that was done at the time. If the member puts a question on that in writing I am quite willing to answer it. 
Hon Bill English 
: If the Minister only knew about the number of students who had passed scholarship then why did he know enough detail to be able to make this statement in his press release of 26 January: “Provisional results indicate that some students did exceptionally well in Scholarship but didn’t necessarily sit three subjects.” when finding that out would have required detailed knowledge of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority’s analysis because it is nowhere available in the public arena? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Very very simply it is because eight people had passed three subjects with “outstanding” when we expected 50 to do so. 
Hon Bill English 
: But you don’t know which ones. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: No I do not. I now know which schools they were from; I still do not know the subjects those eight people passed. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: I seek leave to table a paper by Warwick Elley  
Facts and Fallacies about Standards-based Assessment 
 which includes the statistics the Rt Hon Winston Peters just talked about. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.