Carter Chris: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Carter Chris: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:628] 
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Labour—Te Atatu) 
: 
 We have been debating this education bill for about 2½ hours and I think there is a consensus in the Committee that literacy and numeracy standards for students in our schools are things we all desire but the question that the Labour Party asks is this: how does this bill do anything about lifting literacy and numeracy standards in schools? 
We heard the new Minister of Education saying that somehow national standards would make a difference. Well we have explained more than once about the national administration guidelines that govern all schools. I personally think the Minister has never heard of them and knows nothing about them. I want to tell her as many members of the House have already done that schools are required under those guidelines to do exactly what she says the national standards will do. So we ask ourselves—as the public and certainly all members on this side of the Chamber are asking—what the point of this bill is. If these things are already happening why are we doing it? Labour members have explained already why we think the Minister is doing this. We think the Minister is doing this so that she can create competition between schools. 
League tables will be an inevitable result if this legislation becomes law. It is about introducing for the first time ever the concept that primary schools would be able to compare their results with other primary schools and that individuals would be able to compare their results with those of other individuals. It is not that a 5-year-old should know this or a 7-year-old should know that—that is already required in schools. It is already happening in schools. We have the benchmarks; we have the progressions. We have asTTle tests whereby the individual achievement of pupils is recorded and is available to parents and it is required by the national administration guidelines in schools to be available to parents. The Education Review Office checks it every 3 years. So what is the point? The point is a right-wing agenda in education. 
The scariest speech I have heard in this whole debate was that of the Associate Minister of Education Heather Roy who started to talk about what I think is behind this legislation. She talked about choice. She talked about competition. She talked about reshaping New Zealand education. That is a truly scary prospect. 
Let us remind ourselves of what happened when we came into Government in 1999. We inherited an education system that was absolutely demoralised. Not only was it full of decaying buildings through the neglect of the property programme but schools were set up in competition with each other and bulk funding had divided the profession and demoralised education. We had a crumbling education system. The Labour Government doubled the funding. We put in $5.5 billion extra. We put $3.4 billion into school property and we put all sorts of amazing programmes into schools to lift literacy and numeracy. We employed 6000 teachers above what was required by roll growth. 
Those are the practical things that one has to do to lift numeracy and literacy in schools. It is not about slogans; it is actually about an ideology of making sure that public education is just that—available to all the public—and that the neighbourhood school is a quality school that any parent would be pleased to send their child to. As many of our members from provincial and rural areas know the school is the centre of a provincial community and it should be a quality learning place where quality teaching and learning takes place and where literacy and numeracy levels are lifting for all students. 
New Zealand education after 9 years of Labour is world class. It is cutting edge. During the time that I was the Minister of Education—and during the time of my two predecessors Trevor Mallard and Steve Maharey in that portfolio—international visitor after international visitor came to New Zealand to look at our education system. They asked why New Zealand 15-year-olds score best in the English-speaking world in literacy and numeracy. How is it that New Zealand education has been cutting edge with everything from Marie Clay and the reading recovery programme to Professor Hattie with his asTTle programme at Auckland University rolling out into our schools? 
International educationalists ask why New Zealand schools are so good. I will tell members why they are good. It is because we have poured resources into our schools in the last 9 years; we have had a culture in New Zealand of collaboration in our schools a culture of innovation; and we have a curriculum developed under a Labour Government that is flexible enough to cater for individual creativity among teachers and educators and to allow for local flavours within those core competencies. We have an education system that is cutting edge. It is an education system that I as Minister was incredibly proud of. I was incredibly proud of what New Zealand teachers were doing in our schools. 
Yes we do have a tail in education. I have been the first to admit that. When we were in Government we were the first to admit it. Indeed that is why we rolled out the decile rating system. That is why we poured money into those low-decile schools. That is where the challenge is for lifting literacy and numeracy. That is where we have to make the difference to pick up the tail. We have to lift up that 14 percent of young New Zealanders who are leaving school with no qualifications and those large groups of students in low-decile schools who are not reading at their chronological age not only for their own potential but for the potential of our country. 
Maori and Pasifika students figure highly in underachievers in New Zealand education. The global picture is that New Zealand education is first-class—world class. Within that global picture there is a specific problem: how do we lift up those underachievers—the tail—for their sake and for all our sakes? We can do that only through resourcing. Slogans will not work. National standards or league tables for primary schools will not work. Making children in primary schools focus on a one-off test will not work. 
What are the dangers of a one-off test? Well those of us who are teachers—I was a teacher for many years; and on the National side I can see Hekia Parata and Mr Peachey who have both been teachers—know that a test is a one-off event. A child may be sick or may have had something happen at home or he or she could be freaked out by the pressure and tension of the test. It is a snapshot of that moment on that day for that child. It is not cumulative and it does not show the progress of a child over a period of time. 
We have moved in secondary schools from that one-off School Certificate and university entrance approach—an exam—to the National Certificate of Educational Achievement which is a cumulative assessment process. That is a modern effective system. Indeed young people are coming out of the system with a true picture of their quality. If we go to national standards for primary schools we will fall back into that old problem of the snapshot for kids. 
A number of my colleagues have talked about the experiences of other countries that have done that. We will no doubt hear some more in the next couple of hours. In the United States there is the No Child Left Behind policy. What it has actually done is leave the education system behind. The American education system performs worst in the English-speaking world and it has got worse under the right-wing Bush regime. Teachers’ salaries became dependent on the result of the tests. Schools’ funding became dependent on the result of the tests. 
What was the effect in the United States of the sort of choice that Heather Roy was talking about yesterday—the ACT right-wing agenda where schools are in competition with each other? Well teachers started cheating in the test. That is well-proved now by educational researchers. The tests themselves became the criteria for teachers keeping their jobs. Low-decile schools in inner-city ghettos and the poorer suburbs of American cities were closing down or were completely restricted in their resourcing. That was the effect of the No Child Left Behind policy. 
In the UK the schools of Manchester are ranked 1 to 560. When parents looked at the rankings who was going to send their child to the 560th school on the list? Everyone wanted their child to go to the schools ranked No. 1 No. 2 or whatever but of course they could not afford to do that because they did not live in the right suburbs. That was the effect of national standards. That was the effect of having league tables between schools. 
Mrs Tolley said that this information will not be available to the public; it will be available only to the Government. Has she not heard of the Official Information Act? Does she think that schools will not with glee publish the results of their tests as they do already? With the tests that they sit—the Australasian maths test and the Cambridge International Examinations—schools love showing what success they have. Who would not? Every teacher and principal is proud of what happens at their school. The effect of that though will be to create and compound differences between low and high-deciles schools; between perceived winner and loser schools. We have had a double whammy for education: the 90-day rule which has made teachers in small schools vulnerable and now league tables for primary schools.