Q+A Education debate with National’s Nikki Kaye and Labour’s Chris Hipkins
National’s Nikki Kaye says her party doesn’t support teachers’ pay rates based on performance.
“No, we don’t support performance pay,” Ms Kaye told Corin Dann on TVNZ 1’s Q+A programme this morning.
“The only thing I’d say is I’ve had a lot of feedback from teachers across the country. They quite like ACT’s policy in
terms of paying teachers more, but we don’t support performance pay,” she said.
However, Labour’s Chris Hipkins said his party will scrap National Standards.
“We want parents to have better information about how their kids are doing. National Standards are not national; they’re
not standard; they don’t measure progress,” said Mr Hipkins.
“And they’ve been found by the Ministry of Education’s own research to be a very bad measure of how well students are
progressing,” he said.
Q + A
Episode 25
CHRIS HIPKINS and NIKKI KAYE
Interviewed by CORIN DANN
CORINWe start this morning with education, a topic, of course that concerns many New Zealanders, from students and parents,
to employers as well. Let’s start by introducing the two people who want to run our education system for the next three
years – Nikki Kaye, from the National Party. Welcome to you this morning. And Chris Hipkins, from Labour. Welcome to you
both. I wonder if we can get right to the nitty-gritty, and we’ll start with National Standards this morning. Nikki
Kaye, your party has announced that you would actually enhance national standardised testing and want to report via
people’s phones. Is that right?
NIKKIYes, that’s exactly right. So what we want to do is ensure that every parent in the country has access to better
information about how their children are doing, and we want it to be online. At the moment, one of the criticisms of
National Standards is that parents haven’t been able to see the progression of children, but also that granular detail
of what’s happening.
CORINHow are you going to get overstressed, overworked teachers to have the time to be importing data on to the Internet?
NIKKIWell, one thing we’ve announced is a $45 million investment to support the ICT infrastructure. We know with the PaCT
tool now, which currently measures progression that some teachers are actually, in the long-term, finding less workload.
So part of it is helping to automation.
CORINChris Hipkins, your party wants to do away with National Standards. Why?
CHRISWell, because we want parents to have better information about how their kids are doing. National Standards are not
national; they’re not standard; they don’t measure progress, and they’ve been found by the Ministry of Education’s own
research to be a very bad measure of how well students are progressing. The Ministry of Education did research on this
and found that four out of 10 National Standards results are not measuring the child’s progress accurately.
CORINBut parents do find them very useful, don’t they? Because they identify very clearly when somebody is not meeting a
standard, and therefore there is a problem. That is useful, isn’t it?
CHRIS Well, no, because they’re not measuring progress. So for example, if a child starts school well below standard
but makes enormous progress, they could still be below standard. On the other hand, if a child starts school already
meeting the standard, they could make no progress, and they’re deemed to be successful. Actually, the child who’s making
a lot of progress but not quite hitting the standard is the one who’s learning more.
NIKKIBut, Corin, the whole point of National Standards Plus that we’ve announced is to ensure that we are able to measure
progress. The issue with the Labour Party is that they’re saying they’re going to scrap National Standards and they’re
not saying what they’re going to replace it with. I think that’s wrong for parents. They should know. They’ve had nine
years to work it out. They should know the detail.
CHRISI can give it to you right now. The New Zealand Curriculum has levels of progression in it already. What we’ve said is
that we want schools reporting against the curriculum – the whole curriculum – not just literacy and numeracy. Because
parents want to know how they’re doing in Science, in the Arts and in many other things as well. We want schools
reporting in plain language against the progression levels of the curriculum. Let’s be fair to schools here. The
curriculum was introduced in 2007. It had the levels of progression in it. It was identified that parents needed to have
this information. National Standards were introduced two years later before they were implemented.
CORINWhat does that mean to parents? With National Standards, whatever its faults are or otherwise, it’s a very clear
message. What are they going to get that tells them whether their child is doing as well as they should?
CHRISThey’ll get much better information on how their child is doing because it will report the progress that the child’s
made through the year. Yet National Standards’ reporting, as mandate by the government for the last nine years, only
tells parents whether a child meets the standard or doesn’t. It doesn’t tell them how much progress they’ve made in
getting towards—
NIKKIThe reality is that we both support progression. We both support the learning progression frameworks. The reality is
that we’ve put up a proposal that actually has a trusted framework that will ensure that every parent gets access to
good information online.
CHRIS But it’s not trusted. It’s not trusted, because all of the research has said that those standards are shonky, they’re
faulty, and the research says that they’re inconsistent; schools are applying the inconsistently and the data they
parents are getting is not worth it.
NIKKIYou tell that to the children. We have 44% of children in New Zealand – Maori children – leaving our schools not with
the relevant qualifications. By introducing National Standards, by a huge investment in literacy and numeracy, we now
have 74% young Maori leaving our schools, being able read, write, and do maths.
CHRIS National Standards have nothing to do with that. By National Standards, numeracy has gone down, by National
Standards’ won measures. It’s flat-lined.
NIKKIYou and I both know that this is an issue of the pathways. We know that if we have more children in early childhood
education, we have a better measurement in terms of primary school, we invest in terms of issues, accelerating
mathematics, accelerating literacy, we then have more support around teachers at secondary school. We can see lifts in
achievement, and that’s what we are unashamedly focused on.
CORINNikki Kaye, if National Standards are working, why are we doing so badly in maths?
NIKKIWell, one of the issues, and that’s why we’ve announced a $126 million maths package, as part of our government’s
policy, is because we can see that in years four to eight, young people are slipping, and that is an issue, I think, of
a couple of things. One is we need to up the skill of some of our mathematics teachers. That’s why what our policy is
doing is ensuring that those mathematics teachers can do papers at university; and also pouring in remedial work for
those schools.
CORINYou sure it’s not the way we’re teaching maths?
NIKKIWell, some of it is. Some of it is the way that we’re teaching maths. And if you look at our policy, we’re going to able
to help with that. But I think the point that I’d make to Chris is that if you’re not clear what you’re going to replace
National Standards with, you won’t know where these children are and you won’t know how to help them. And that’s bad for
some of our most vulnerable children.
CHRISI just was. I just said that we are going to require schools to report in plain language against the progression in the
curriculum. The curriculum’s a great document, Nikki. I’d encourage you to have a read of it, because it actually spells
out very clearly the levels of progression that a child is expected to make at all levels and across all subject areas
in the curriculum.
CORINOkay, I want to come back to the issue of maths. How will Labour address the issue where we’re failing in maths?
CHRISFirstly, we’re going to start with initial teacher education. We’re getting to people out of initial teacher education
whose numeracy skills simply aren’t up to scratch. And if they don’t have the numeracy skills they need to teach it,
then they’re going to struggle. So Nikki’s absolutely right – putting more money into professional development for
teachers around numeracy and around maths is very important.
CORINAnd what about the very huge issue in this country about whether we’re teaching it correctly?
CHRISLook, I think that we have got it right. The research would suggest that we’ve got it right. Yes, there are some
researchers who would take a different view. I’ve canvassed the various strands of research, and I would think that the
methodology is less of an issue than the teacher’s ability to teach that. We have got a numeracy problem.
CORINNikki Kaye, you also want to put a big focus on digital learning, at a young age. Are you worried that that’s perhaps
again going to put too much screen time in front of children?
NIKKILook, we’ve already announced that within our policy, we’re doing a whole lot of work chief science advisors to make
sure that there’s a good amount of time and a bad amount of time online. However, what we do know is that 50% of the
jobs that exist, in the next 20 years may not exist. So we are unashamedly spending $40 million to upskill teachers, to
ensure that young people are taught not only how to use technology but also to be the creators--
CORINDo you have a figure of how much is too much screen time? Well, look, there is a figure that chief science advisors have
put out in terms of recreational screen time. So they’ve said more than a few hours after school is bad.
CORINWhat, two hours?
NIKKIThat’s what they’ve said in terms of screen time guidelines. But there is a lot of work going on in terms of in school.
And I think that point that I’d make is that some of this, the computational thinking that is in the new curriculum that
we are consulting on, is not necessarily about screen time; it’s about teaching the theory of technology.
CORINI’m going to ask Chris too. Do you have a personal view on whether children are getting too much screen time? This
is a massive issue for parents.
NIKKIYes. I do think in some cases they are, and I definitely get that feedback from schools and parents, and that will be
what we’ll need to navigate through. But that is not an excuse.
CORINSure. Sure. I just want to know – and you think two hours after school, any more than that is too much?
NIKKIThat’s the guidelines that we’ve put out with the Ministry of Health.
CORINChris Hipkins, what do you think of this issue? Because it is something that worries a lot of parents.
CHRISI think it’s important that we draw the distinction between learning digital technology and learning with digital
technology. Because they’re not necessarily the same thing.
CORINHow much is too much screen time?
CHRISI’m not going to put a particular time limit on it, but I think that good teachers who will be teaching kids digital
technology, including without using the devices. So there is a difference. Some of the skills the kids are learning in
schools, they are learnings that apply to digital technology but you don’t need digital technology to learn it. I
actually think the current government have got it about right.
CORINI was going to ask. So there is broad agreement here that the idea of bringing in coding early – those sorts of things –
are a good idea in your view? You would continue with that?
CHRISWell, it’s not just coding. And I think that, again, the current government have got the curriculum about right on
digital technology. It’s not just about a narrow range of skills or a particular application; it’s actually about a
broad range of skills that are compatible with the digital era. And I think the digital technology curriculum, from the
feedback we’ve had so far, is about right.
CORINI’m going to touch on the issue of teacher’s pay and that sort of thing in the second half of this debate. But before we
go to the break, I wanted to just ask – do you have a view on homework and whether children should be doing homework at
home – in primary school?
NIKKIOh, absolutely. I think it’s totally, though, up to the school and parents. I mean, for each child, there’ll be a
different--
CORINNo, but I want to know what you think. Because people are trying to assess you as an education minister of the future.
Do you think primary school children should do homework?
NIKKIAbsolutely. But I think, again, it will be up to parents and schools to decide how much that is for a particular child. The reality is that young people are already online, doing a range of
self-directed learning themselves. So it depends what you actually terms as homework. Because I think many young people,
they have huge opportunities that they’ve never had before, and we can see them enhancing their learning at home.
CORINChris Hipkins, what do you think about this? Because there is a debate that some people say that for primary school
children, it’s pointless doing homework.
CHRISWell, research would suggest that the countries that have less homework actually are doing better than us in the
international studies, but it is a matter for the schools and for the parents to determine, though.
CORINWhat do you think, personally?
CHRISPersonally, I would be happy with my child going to school and not getting homework, because when they get home, I’d
rather that they were out playing with other kids and learning those other things that are really important, like
inter-social skills and the ability to interact with other kids. I think that’s also a really important part of the
learning process.
NIKKIWe both agree on that. I think it’s going to be a balance. We want young people to be able to be learning to have good
relationships. We want them to be out playing sport; we want them to be doing culture; but I also think, look, for some
young people, they love science, and they want to be online. They want to be learning things, and they want to be
talking to their parents about how they might do better, so I think that’s a good thing.
CHRISYeah. We have to be reasonable about what we can expect of teachers. One of the challenges of the online environment is
that teachers are now having to respond to kids around the clock, because will be at home sending them messages, and
we’ve actually got to think about what the implications of that is.
CORINNikki Kaye, if I could ask you, will National Standards and the data collected from that ever be used for, in a future
National government, for teachers’ pay rates for performance pay?
NIKKINo, we don’t support performance pay. No, we don’t support.
CORINSo that means ACT’s David Seymour’s policy of 20,000 extra, the ability basically to bulk-fund a school so they could
pay a teacher $120,000, you’re saying you wouldn’t do it?
NIKKIWe don’t support performance pay. The only thing I’d say is I’ve had a lot of feedback from teachers across the country.
The quite like ACT’s policy in terms of paying teachers more, but we don’t support performance pay.
CORINSo that’s a non-negotiable, if you have to go into some sort of negotiation?
NIKKI Well, I don’t know if I’ll be at the table, to be fair. It might be slightly above my pay scale, but that’s not
something we’ve supported.
CORINChris Hipkins, do you see, though, that there’ll be some teachers that will like that idea because they feel that they
can’t get ahead and get a wage that can live in Auckland, for example?
CHRISI don’t think there’s a politician in the country that’s going to say that they don’t think that teachers should be paid
more. Of course we all think that teachers should be paid more. I think ACT’s policy is completely nuts. And the
National Party opposed charter schools until the ACT Party made them do it, and they could well have performance pay on
the table if they’re beholden to ACT after the coming elections.
CORINSo here’s the thing – so you would pay teachers more?
CHRISOf course we will.
CORINAnd it will be across the board, whether they’re good or bad?
CHRISWell, look, these things are subject to negotiation, of course. They’ve got to come with a claim and we’ve got to
negotiate.
CORINBut you would be paying potentially bad teachers more as well, wouldn’t you?
CHRISWell, what’s a bad teacher? Because actually, bad teachers shouldn’t be in the system. So we should be paying all
teachers better, because any bad teachers shouldn’t be teaching.
CORINWell, I think that’s a good point. And I want to put that to Nikki Kaye. Do you think you can actually measure what a
bad teacher or a good teacher is?
NIKKIWell, look, when I talk to principals, what they say is, in part through having National Standards, they’re able to see
where maybe teachers do need additional support in terms of professional development. And many teachers would say that.
That’s why we’ve increased professional development by about $65 million; we’re putting in another $24 million as part
of the digital technologies package. But we’ve got to do other things. We’ve got to improve our initial teacher
education. That’s why the Education Council are consulting on a range of proposals. We’ve got to continue to lift that
quality, and I think we’ve got a pretty clear plan to do that.
CHRISInitial teacher education has been in need of improvement for a long time. We’ve been talking about this. For five years
that I’ve been the Education Spokesperson, and the current government have only just got round to thinking about it. And
in the meantime, five more years of teachers have finished their initial teacher education. This is a big problem. It’s
something that’s been needed to be addressed for a long, long time.
CORINSo how much money would go towards teachers’ salary?
CHRISWell, it’s not a question of that; it’s the question of how do we improve the quality of teaching overall; where do we
identify the areas that there’s pressure? So I think that there is pressure at the top of the salary scale for teachers
who’ve been in the workforce for a period of time and have hit the top of the scale and haven’t got anywhere to go.
CORINPresumably, the teacher unions are going to be looking to a Labour government to significantly boost the pay of
teachers, aren’t they? And you’re going to need to deliver on that if you’re in government.
CHRISWell, I think if you look over history, they’ve done pretty poorly under the current National government. They’ve had
very minimal pay increases. They did very well under the last Labour government. I would imagine that we will do what we
can, but we have to work within the financial constraints.
CORINHow much is this going to cost?
CHRISWell, there’s no claim on the table yet, and I don’t think the collective agreement expires until the end of next year,
anyway.
NIKKIWell, Corin, here’s the reality – Labour have announced, I think, $19 billion spending; we’ve announced $6bn. They
haven’t got any more money left in the kitty. So Chris needs to be clear where that money is coming from. Since we’ve
been in government, we’ve not only increased teachers’ salaries, I think, by about 17%, but we’ve also put in these
roles from communities of learning, whereby we pay some teachers $8000 to $16,000 more to be able to teach across
schools.
CORINAnd how’s that going in Auckland? Because you’ve got such a teacher shortage, I wonder whether any school could afford
to give away one of their teachers for a couple of days a week, because they’re absolutely stretched.
NIKKIWell, we’ve got about 1400 roles. So we are definitely performing in terms of that programme. But I think you’re
absolutely right – there are some teacher-shortage issues – and that’s why we’ve announced about $20 million of
investment, voluntary bonding in Auckland, which will see some teachers about $10,000 better off. We’ve announced
relocation grants for expat Kiwis…
CORINBut none of it’s working, is it? You admitted this week on Breakfast that there was a short-term shortage. And you also
acknowledged that somehow this was missed, that longer term, you shouldn’t be getting these.
NIKKIWhat I’ve said is this isn’t a new issue. In 2007, 2008, you’ve got 100,000 teachers. The vacancies are actually about
between 2% and 4%. That is not unusual for--
CORINBut if your government’s going to allow net migration to grow out to 70,000-plus a year and leave it there for three or
four years, then surely your government has a responsibility to plan for that.
NIKKI Well, look, I think we do have a responsibility to plan for that.
CORINBut you didn’t.
NIKKI I think the issue is when you’re dealing 100,000 teachers, it can be difficult to manage exactly where they’re going to
go. However, I want us to do better, and that’s why I’ve got the ministry doing a long-term plan for the next 10 to 15
years. We’re looking at the ageing teaching workforce. Looking at those subject areas.
CORINI need to get Chris to respond to this. The teacher shortage – do you think you could’ve done any better? It is a
demographic-type bulge here.
CHRISAbsolutely. For the last five years, the current government have been saying, ‘There’s no problem. There’s no problem.
There’s no problem.’ And suddenly this year, they’ve decided that there is a problem, perhaps because there is an
election rolling around. Actually, this problem has been going for a period of time. They cut the funding to the teacher
recruitment programme TeachNZ, which is designed to get people into teaching. They have ignored the pleas from school
principals in Auckland who are saying, ‘Please, please, please do something to help us.’ Of course we’ve got to do more.
We’ve earmarked another $40 million for teacher supply initiatives.
CORINAnd will you allow the use of more unregistered teachers?
CHRISNo.
CORINWhy not? I mean, surely the kids need teachers, right? You’ve got to get people in front of them. What’s the problem?
CHRISBecause the fact that somebody has knowledge in a particular subject area doesn’t mean that they have the ability to
impart that knowledge to somebody else. Teaching is an art in itself. And I want to make sure that the kids are
getting the best possible teachers, and that means ones who are properly trained.
CORINIs this an ideological block here for Labour, though, that you can’t get past that?
CHRISNo, not at all. If the ideological block is that we want people in front of kids who know how to teach them, well, I
guess I’m guilty of that. I want to make sure that the teachers in the classroom know how to teach.
NIKKICorin, there is a pretty clear choice at this election. Labour do have an ideological block when it comes to education.
They want to scrap partnership schools and freeze funding to independent schools. They want to review integrated
schools. When it comes to limited authority to teach, we’ve announced a second-language policy for in-schools, and we do
accept that there needs to be language assistants alongside registered teachers. But this is about ensuring that young
people are equipped for the future, and that is the best thing for young New Zealanders, not ideological education
policies of the past.
CHRISPloughing more money into private schools is going to take that money out of the public system. Charter schools are
funded at least two times, if not up to five times, the rate of public schools. Why shouldn’t kids in public schools get
that level of resourcing?
NIKKIWell, because if we didn’t have independent schools, the figures that I’ve had is it would cost the taxpayer several
hundred million dollars more to pay for them within in the state system. But Labour’s education policies are from the
1950s. Ours are very future-focused. They’re absolutely focused for ensuring that young people--
CORINLet’s talk about that language policy. Why is the government putting resources into potentially 10 languages when we
have a second language of Te Reo, which, surely that’s where your focus should be. That is the official second language
of New Zealand. Why isn’t that being made compulsory? Or why is it, at the very least, the resource is not going in to
make sure every child in primary school has access to that?
NIKKIWell, let me be clear, Corin, we put $400 million in resources for Te Reo, and actually we’ve gone up 30,000 young
people--
CORINWe don’t have enough teachers, do we?
NIKKIWell, we are investing in programmes like Teach First NZ to ensure we have more--
CORINBut diverting the energy into allowing them to learn other languages when, surely, Te Reo has to be the priority.
NIKKIWell, Te Reo will be one of the priority languages.
CORINOne of 10.
NIKKIWell, they’re going to end up getting more resource. And there is a difference in our law. Under New Zealand law, young
people have a right to learn Te Reo. It is one of the official languages of New Zealand. And it’s going to be more
supported by this having every young person learning a language.
CORINDo we need to do more as a country to close the gaps for Maori and Pacific students? Your government has made progress
in secondary school, sure. Big progress. But there’s a clear disparity in terms of those going to university.
NIKKIYeah, look, we do need to do more, and one of the things that we’ve announced is the scrapping of the decile system. We
know that we’ve got to invest more in those children that are at risk of not achieving, and again, we’ve got a very
clear policy. We’re going to spend more in this area.
CORINWell, Labour’s got a policy to make the first year of tertiary education free. Isn’t that closing the gaps?
NIKKIWell, I would argue that we’ve got to go a lot earlier. We’ve got to ensure— And we have been putting thousands more
young people in early child education--
CORINI will get Chris Hipkins to respond to that. Do you feel there is a need to bring back that idea of closing the gaps
when it comes to education, when it comes to those sort of issues with Maori and Pacific students?
CHRISI think we’ve got to change our thinking. At the moment, at lot of thinking is still around a third of kids who got to
university. Actually, two-thirds of kids don’t go straight to university after school, and we’ve got to spend a lot more
time talking about them, making sure there are meaningful pathways, because a lot of kids are getting NCEA that lead
them nowhere. So they’re accumulating the credits to get the qualification, and then they can’t get into a tertiary
programme of study or they can’t get employment because they’ve done the wrong credits that make up the qualification.
The current government are so obsessed with a very narrow range of things around literacy and numeracy, that they’ve
actually ignored the fact that we need kids who have got a much broader range of skills than that. They’re refining an
education system for the last century, not for the current and for the future. The future is actually about those
transferrable skills. It’s about interpersonal skills. It’s about problem-solving skills. It’s about the ability to
collaborate.
NIKKIThe reality is we’re investing more than ever in trades academies. Thousands of young people are going through trades
academies. That is helping Maori and Pacifica students. We absolutely believe in that diversity. But the reality is
Labour’s tertiary policy, they are picking winners--
CHRIS The tertiary policy applies to everybody, including those going to on-job training, something the National
government hates and have completely abandoned.
Q+A, 9-10am Sundays on TVNZ 1 and one hour later on TVNZ 1 + 1.
Repeated Sunday evening at around 11:35pm. Streamed live at www.tvnz.co.nz
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