Education Amendment Bill no 2

Thursday 18 November 2010

Rahui Katene, MP for Te Tai Tonga

There is a very interesting assessment of the current state of our education system in the PPTA submission to the Education and Science select committee about this Bill.

A comment was made by the ex-Deputy Minister of Ontario, Professor Ben Levin, that when we look at New Zealand education policy, we see “lots of good projects, no strategy”.

They are words which could well have summed up this Bill.

Indeed, it’s a pretty good idea to refund course fees for international students who leave their courses before they are completed – but what the bigger strategic direction around international education; or around student fees?

Another great idea is to stipulate specific requirements that would enable managers of private schools to be assessed as ‘fit and proper’ for the responsibilities of managing a school.

But again, what’s the strategy emerging from private schooling?

In Budget 2009 an extra ten million was announced to supposedly make private schools more affordable; $2.6 million of this going into Aspire Scholarships to provide assistance to low income families to attend private schooling.

But how do we know whether it has made a difference? Was it such a nice gift for the Independent Schools? How many Maori families have benefitted from this gift? How effective has it been in overcoming the long tail of underachievement and system failure that is consistently reported in the education sector?

Then there’s the issue of the removal of Early childhood education regulatory requirements for limited attendance centres. These are the centres that are set up to provide shortterm care in places like gyms, or shopping malls.

Again, it seems a good idea that there should be a different set of standards in place for such short-term centres – the last thing we would want to do is make the compliance costs so burdensome that parents are stung by excessive fees for what is essentially an hour or two of supervision.

We are not expecting such centres to provide comprehensive and developmentally appropriate learning opportunities – but on the otherhand we do not expect them to compromise on the health and safety of our precious children.

And so we take on board the concerns of Te Tari Puna Ora o Aotearoa / NZ Childcare Association that safety and wellbeing must not be compromised for short term gain.

Finally,we come to the project proposed to open up secondary tertiary programmes. We were interested to see this was a project which received support from as wide across as the Human Rights Commission and the Post Primary Teachers Association.

The Commission talked about the experience of Manukau institute of Technology and the opportunity they have sought to enable a tertiary high school to operate there should be supported in other centres.

PPTA did suggest however that the legislation would do well to learn from the successful models of secondary tertiary partnerships which have been trialled and positively evaluated, which support students into work or further training.

They talked about the fact that in most areas ITOs, Polytechnics and some private providers have successfully build partnerships that enable students to pursue alternative pathways towards work and further eduction while still at secondary school.

Mr Speaker, the Maori Party is willing to support this Bill to enable opportunities for enhancing education in a way which will result in positive outcomes.

But we do return to the question of the proper strategy to really make the difference. In essence, the ideas in this legislation are just tinkering around the edges leaving the enormity of the problems confronting the education sector untouched.

This Bill won’t make the difference that is desperately needed. While that doesn’t mean we should vote this Bill down, it does mean we will continue to be vigilant in asking the Minister what she is doing in regards to general schooling in making the gains that we expect to see for Maori children.

We have Pita working in the area of kaupapa Maori education – announcing a national review of Maori language education; helping to keep a focus on quality and excellence in kaupapa Maori schooling.

But the reality is that less than five percent of our kids are in kura kaupapa education, leaving the great bulk of Maori children in the general stream system.

In the 2005 Annual report on Maori education it showed that Maori students in year 11, who attended schools where teaching was in te reo Maori for between 51 to 100% of the time, had a higher rate of attaining NCEA qualifications than Maori in other schools.

So we’ve known that fact for some five years, and yet it still seems we are doing very little – other than Te Kotahitanga – to make the difference we need for Maori children to succeed in general schooling.

Mr Speaker, these are the strategic questions we would have expected this Bill to cover.

It doesn’t –and I guess we have to admit it was never set up to – but that doesn’t mean to say the bigger questions shouldn’t be asked.

Tena tatou katoa.

ENDS

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