Prasad Rajen: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Prasad Rajen: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:651;Page:587] 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to speak in the second reading of the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill. The bill sets out to do two things: it allows the Minister of Education to set national standards for literacy and numeracy and it requires I notice State schools to assess and report students’ performance against those standards. It also requires that fines be imposed on those who refuse to enrol their children at school; there is an extra matter relating to that as well. So the overall purpose of the bill is to raise standards of achievement and attendance in the compulsory education sector. 
During the election campaign the public was promised a crusade for literacy and numeracy. Those are strong sentiments and that is a strong image to project—that there will be a crusade. I will talk a bit more about it in a minute but first I want to say that a crusade is a vigorous concerted action to promote or eliminate something. It is vigorous it is concerted and it is considered making it more widely acceptable. In this case the crusade is to eliminate poor achievement in schools and to eliminate truancy. If this bill is the crusade then it fails on a number of grounds and I shall touch on those in my comments. 
For the bill to have a good chance to succeed a good chance of being a crusade the problem should have been carefully analysed. For a crusade to be well developed advice should be taken from those with the best information. One should have gone about getting advice from a wide range of sources. And the crusade should include quite a detailed comprehensive plan which should be laid out so that one can see it quite easily. Each aspect of the plan of attack of a crusade should be clearly identified and again put before us. It should have been designed with some care then systematically implemented. The crusade that the electorate was promised to eliminate something as important as poor achievement and truancy still has some way to go. I think that if this bill is the crusade then it has faltered. It is not likely to achieve the high goals that we have been promised or the high goals that are identified in this bill. 
It is also important to understand the assumption on which this particular crusade is based and I have tried to understand it. I think it goes something like this. There are students in our schools who do not achieve in numeracy and literacy. Well there is enough research to show that; we cannot argue with it. They do not achieve because—and this is the second part of the logic of this particular bill—we do not have numeracy and literacy standards. Well OK that is the logic being followed. The third stage is to set those standards assess every child against those standards and report the results to parents and—voila—our children’s achievement will improve. 
With the greatest of respect and with all the honesty I can muster I have to ask: is that it? Is that the crusade? Is that what will get us there? Is that what the electorate was promised? Is this bill strong enough to do it? I shall develop my arguments around that in a minute but if this bill is all that it takes then I wonder whether we have understood the very basics of how to construct a question analyse it and consider the other factors I have identified. I have to ask whether this bill is the best we can come up with. One can honestly ask whether it is poorly designed policy given that the very people who will be required to implement it—and this is a serious test of a policy—do not agree with it. If they do not agree with it then as members opposite will know—because they have run organisations and done pretty demanding things—all kinds of impediments will be put in the way to confound it. 
Let us look then at the major assumption that schools do not teach to achieve particular standards at the moment. The explanatory note of the bill is quite helpful. It tells us that in— 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: It’s not an assumption. There’s an Education Review Office report that says it. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: Well I am going to quote it. If the Minister listens she will hear the argument in a minute. In 2007 14 percent of students left school without achieving the numeracy and literacy credits they needed to attain level 1 of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement. That gives us some idea of the percentage of school students we are talking about. It may be a little more than that—I think National’s figures in the election campaign were 20 percent. It also means that the system we currently have that the Government wants to change is working well for 80 percent of school-leavers. If the system is good for the overwhelming majority of students why is such radical surgery needed at this stage? 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: They’re not assumptions. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: The Minister will soon follow the argument; it is a carefully constructed one. 
As any business person knows one must first identify the problem then look at all the alternative solutions select the best one—the Minister will soon get it—implement it and review it. I have serious doubts that that actually happened in this case. I have identified what such a process would reveal. Instead the Government is ramming through under urgency a set of proposals that at least in the view of quite of few people is not likely to achieve the very things the Minister wants to achieve and might even make matters worse. It might be that the small amount of dollars that is being put aside is gobbled up in just implementing these very proposals. There are plenty of examples of that in social policy in public policy and certainly in education policy. 
The Minister might like to listen to this. I spoke to several teachers today and this is what they told me. These are honest brokers; they are the people who will implement the Minister’s particular programmes. They said they were already reporting to parents and those reports are based on concrete evidence from the classroom from the records they keep and from early numeracy and literacy testing. They are doing what they are required to. The teachers I spoke to today told me— 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: The Education Review Office says they are not all doing that. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: Well maybe that is what needs to be fixed. I tell the Minister that one does not use a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. One understands what the problem is looks at the options and picks the best one. I know that that is difficult for the Minister but there is science behind it and if she uses the science she will be a better Minister and she will make better decisions. It is not difficult. There are people around to help her to do it. 
The teachers tell us that testing will impose further burdens on them. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Oh! 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: Maybe the member opposite should speak to some teachers. Maybe some members opposite have; maybe they have spoken to the teachers who teach their children. They should talk to them about what happens. The teachers tell me that they are interested in producing effective children rather than supporting a system that actually prevents them from doing the very things they want to do. The teachers also told me today that this type of testing can set children up for failure. 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: This isn’t national testing. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: The Minister should at least listen to what the teachers are saying. She has not consulted them; I am sorry but she has not. If she really believes that she should send the bill to a select committee and at least let us contest it. 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: Read the bill. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: I have read the bill. 
The Minister will want to know about the next point I want to make. If this idea is the best thing around then why is so much research against it and why are so many people who know more about this subject than I and the Minister do not happy? Ninety percent of primary school principals surveyed opposed National’s policy 90 percent of high school principals surveyed opposed this policy 87 percent of primary school teachers surveyed opposed this particular policy— 
Hon Member 
: Who did the survey? 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: The Minister might like to look at the survey and the methodology—not at who carried it out. That is quite important. 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: But look at the question they asked. What about our policy? 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: The Minister knows that the New Zealand Council for Educational Research is a reputable organisation with good methods. If the Minister would like to question them she should make a statement about that. Thank you.