Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill

Hon CHRIS CARTER Link to this

Oh, did she? Well, we will see. She is shaking her head. She has said twice today—and, I think, yesterday—that she did not say it. Well, she will have the chance to say that in question time on Tuesday, and if she gainsays on record that she did not say it, then we will have a very interesting situation. We will look forward to developing that.

I am saying in the context of the bill that the new Minister of Education had the chance to capitalise on goodwill—goodwill that has already been squandered on appearing to tell an untruth around the 90-day rule, and also on treating the education sector and the community with contempt by saying that these very controversial matters about standardised testing for primary school age students is not something that people should have input about. So the process of this bill is something that we utterly reject.

What about the content of this bill? We have talked about how this bill initially appears to be a nothing bill. Of course, the National Educational Guidelines already say that primary and middle schools must assess data on literacy and numeracy, they must report that to parents, they must have ongoing improvements in that area, and they must have a robust process about assessing the tools that they use. They have a wonderful battery of tools, which we have heard about many times in the last few hours: asTTle, PROBE, the progressive achievement test, and the literacy and numeracy progressions that are being trialled in all primary schools at the moment. Those are the tools that we have. They are national standards, if you like, in literacy and numeracy.

This bill is really about—and this is the subtle Trojan Horse content that my new colleague Iain Lees-Galloway from Palmerston North talked about—introducing the concept of competition and league tables between primary schools, and compounding the differences between schools. It does nothing to really address the question of literacy and numeracy. I also think that it implies a connection between teacher quality and test results. Performance pay has long been a right-wing ambition. I again come back to Heather Roy’s speech in the House, where she talked about choice and competition in education and about reshaping New Zealand education. I think this ties in well with that Chilean model I talked about before, where those sorts of policies have had such disastrous results. It is about introducing the concept of making teachers accountable for the exam results of their students—not for their learning, but for their exam results.

Looking over to the other side of the House I see that we have some new National MPs from diverse communities—for example, the Korean and Sikh communities. This reminds me that in our country, where one New Zealander in four was born outside New Zealand, 22 percent of young New Zealanders come from homes where English is a second language. They may be fluent in English, but the operating language in that home is not English. How will this 22 percent of our young Kiwis compare in a one-off literacy snapshot taken in primary schools?

In addition, Mrs Tolley never answered—she answered very little in the Committee stage—the question about who will be tested. What about special needs pupils? What about children with mild as well as serious learning barriers—children with attention deficit disorder or dyslexia, for example? Will these children be part of the testing regime that will take place in primary schools? This issue has been enormously controversial in the UK. There, all students in the school have been required to sit the test. Even in schools with high numbers of special needs students—whether it is behavioural or physical disability that has impacted on their ability to learn—these students will be part of any comparative data, again compounding the inequities and stupid foolishness of league tables.

Education is something that the Labour Party feels very passionate about. When our party was established in 1916, over 102 years ago—Labour is the oldest political party in New Zealand—the people who set it up were trade unionists and workers. Many of them were recent migrants from the UK, where the class barrier had been a total obstacle to their children fulfilling their potential. They saw education as the key to climbing the ladder of opportunity. Indeed, when the first Labour Government was set up in the 1930s and we had the historic partnership between Clarence Beeby and Peter Fraser, education was the key for that first Government to try to realise the potential of young New Zealanders. That first Labour Government introduced free secondary education, because it saw education as a tool.

I am touching on this historic material because I am trying to say to this House and to anybody who is listening to the House today that education, for Labour politicians, is something we are passionate about. We are passionate about it because we believe in having a quality public education system.

We heard from Metiria Turei earlier today—and it was new information for me—that King’s College in Auckland, the school that Mr Key’s son attends, I believe, will be receiving $1.2 million under the promise made by the new National Government to double the amount of funding for private schools. We have already heard in this House that there will be no extra money for education in the coming Budget. It will be very interesting to see how Mrs Tolley deals with that with the education sector.

I was Minister of Education in a Government that doubled education spending, and I was constantly lambasted, from the sector and in this House by the Opposition, about not giving enough. We can never give enough money to education. But we are hearing already that private education will receive an endowment—a doubling, from $40 million to $80 million. We have heard of some extravagant promises being made to schools in places like Upper Hutt. For example, Heretaunga College in Chris Hipkins’ electorate was promised $30 million. Either these promises will be broken or the money will be sucked out of the State education system.

It is in the State education system where the real challenges in literacy and numeracy are found. They are found in our low-decile schools, they are found in the lack of participation in early childhood education, and it is there that we are going to make the real difference in literacy and numeracy outcomes.

We are opposed to this bill because we think that the issues it touches on are incredibly controversial and should have public participation. We are worried about the hidden agenda. I will finish by saying that there is a word that comes to me from Roman history—pyrrhic. This is a pyrrhic victory. Yes, National will win today, but it will lose so much that it will be damaged in the conflict in 2011 to see who will be the Government. We will keep this Government accountable in education.

ALLAN PEACHEY Link to this

I am coming to Mr Mallard shortly. Let me tell you that when you go into the slums and the ghettos—

ALLAN PEACHEY Link to this

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I do apologise. It is a lack of practice.

When people go into the slums in the American cities and meet the mothers of children who, as a result of the No Child Left Behind policy, have been moved to a school where children can learn, after attending a school that for two generations has failed children, those mothers say: “Mister, please don’t let them make my child go back to that school.” What is it about the socialist creed and dogma that means that members on that side of the House have argued today that a group of our children should be left stranded in schools in which they are not learning?

Ten years ago, on 26 March 1998, the Evening Post stated: “Primary school students could sit national tests regardless of which major political party is in power. … proposals by Labour education spokesman Trevor Mallard.” This is what Mr Mallard said, and can I express the hope that he will get up in a minute and explain himself: “the results would show which schools failed to teach children at the required level, and principals could tell which teachers were not up to scratch.”

This debate has been dominated by the soft bigotry of low expectations by the socialists.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD Link to this

Well, there was not as much time, and they changed a bit often. The point I am making is that people from around the world come and look at our teaching and learning systems, especially in the literacy area. And that is where the focus should be. The point made by the principal of Anne Tolley’s Ōpōtiki College—that we do not make a pig fatter by measuring it—is very, very important. I think it is important to measure. I think it is important to measure, and I think it is an important part of the learning and feedback loop. But doing that measuring should be part of that teaching and learning loop, not something that is nationally imposed.

I ask the Minister whether this is really the most pressing issue in education at the moment in her entire portfolio. I cannot believe that this is the most pressing issue. We are debating it under urgency. Is she so arrogant to believe that no one else could possibly have a view that would improve this legislation? I just cannot believe that a Minister of Education, who is meant to know about personal learning, does not seem to know that she can always improve her work—all of us can. I do not believe that she cannot take the views of others, and that she cannot take a bill to a select committee. It might well be that she is perfect. It might well be that this bill does exactly what she wants it to do. If that was so, then that would be tremendous reinforcement for the Minister; the accolades would flow. But it is my view that that is unlikely, and I say that the Minister has abused process in her very first legislation.

The next point I will make is that the Minister is saying that she is putting $18 million of new money into this legislation. That is the equivalent of about 1.5 percent of the operations grant. I will apply the same question: is this the highest priority for spending in the education portfolio? We have heard a lot about truancy officers recently in the debate—whether we need more of them, and whether they can be more effective, given the tools that they have been given in this legislation, or the sledgehammers, baseball bats, or whatever is flowing out of this. I ask the Minister whether she considered putting $2 million or $3 million out of this $18 million into helping truancy officers, where it would make a tremendous difference. She says that, no, she did not consider it.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD Link to this

Well, I am assuming that the Minister knows that when she shakes her head, that means no.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD Link to this

She was responding to the question: do you know what a vice-chancellor is?

I am really, really saddened, because in my view $18 million can be better spent. I ask the Minister whether she has taken the sum to Cabinet, whether she has an agreement for it to go into the Imprest, or whether it is part of the Supplementary Estimates. She has not responded, so I assume from that that she has not. It means that this Minister has again breached process; she has made an announcement, she is involved in illegal spending, or, what I think is much, much more likely, she has cut another part of the education budget—she has taken money away from schools—in order to put it into her pet project.

I will make a comment about league tables. The Minister is quoted in yesterday’s Dominion Post as saying: “the full data obtained would be available only to the Government.”—that is, data from schools as a whole. I say to the Minister that she cannot say that. Schools are subject to the Official Information Act. School by school, board of trustee by board of trustee, and principal by principal, they are subject to the Official Information Act. Any local newspaper can apply under the Official Information Act to the schools in their region for their results, and the schools must give those results to them. There are no grounds for a school not to give aggregative results. There would be grounds for them not to give individual pupil results. That could be argued; on the face of the Act schools would have to give results pupil by pupil. But I think there would be an argument under the Act for not giving individual pupil results. Certainly, there is no argument for not giving results school by school.

I ask the Minister whether she has contemplated the possibility of those results being available on a teacher by teacher basis. I want to know whether that is the secret agenda here. We have talked about a Trojan Horse, but I ask the Minister whether she is prepared to give an undertaking to the House, through her next National speaker, that she will ensure that the next education legislation will make it clear that teacher by teacher results will not be available. No, she has chosen not to give that undertaking, which I think confirms what her agenda is. Maybe it is deliberate; maybe she wants the results, teacher by teacher, in the local newspaper. That might be a valid approach from a National point of view. It is clearly a lead in, if that is the case, to some sort of performance pay arrangement, but it absolutely undermines the possibility of positive teaching and learning models. The work we have done under asTTle makes it absolutely clear that we can get that teacher by teacher information, not in a gross form but in some very narrow areas of finely tuned information to assist teachers with their professional development. If the Minister is saying that that professional support work will then be spread into the Hutt News, the Kapiti Observer, the Waikato Times, or the New Zealand Herald, then I say that that will be a major retrograde step for education in New Zealand. I think that any sensible Minister would have sent the legislation to the select committee for the committee to look at the pitfalls. Thank you.

METIRIA TUREI Link to this

There was not a single piece of evidence from National to say that it had succeeded. Allan Peachey simply argued that it is all socialism, which is not the most intelligent argument I have ever heard when talking about real evidence and real research. I am sorry, I say to Mr Peachey, but it was an appalling piece of speech-making on his part.

The policy has failed overseas, and the research proves it. How has it failed? Teachers are teaching to the test, and not to the skills, opportunities, and developmental potential of the children themselves. Expectations for black children and poor children have lowered.

METIRIA TUREI Link to this

Again, we hear that rhetoric from Allan Peachey that proves those members simply will not accept the facts, but are just working on ideology. Improving schools were still branded as failures and were punished as a result. Those polices punished those schools and prevented them from being able to improve any further. Students were kept from being able to sit tests or were held back from advancing through the normal year’s progression because they were considered to be unable or unlikely to pass the test, and schools did not want those kinds of marks on their record. Black children, poor children, and disabled children fell behind in achievement in the 8 years that the policy has been in place in the US. As a result, the drop-out rate for black children, poor children, or disabled children in the US increased by 17 percent in just 2 years.

That policy failed to close the gaps or increase achievement. It increased the market ideology in the education system, forcing poor ethnic communities out of education. That is what the National Party’s policy clearly does. It clearly keeps these kids out of education. Why? Who knows? It is completely irrational and it is not understandable. I do not think there is anything in here except this blind ideology towards a market approach to education, despite the fact that it is demonstrably a failure.

I want to address some of the concerns of the Māori Party. I found Anne Tolley’s sycophantic condescension towards Māori absolutely appalling in this debate. The National Party’s refusal to support the Māori Party’s motion to split the bill so its members could oppose the truancy fines whilst supporting educational standards is an obvious example of National’s absolute disregard for real Māori interests. There has been a historical degradation of Māori education, not just for decades but for over a century. Not a single Government has ever been able to deal properly with the differences between Māori and Pākehā in terms of educational achievement. Every policy so far has failed because the Māori tikanga policy has not been at the heart of Māori education policy.

I can see why the Māori Party might be attracted to this policy, but it has demonstrably failed ethnic communities everywhere else in the world. There is nothing to show that it will not fail our own whānau. I make a personal plea to the Māori Party to ask them please to not support this bill. Do not support increasing fines for our whānau from $1,000 to $3,000. Do not support policy that is demonstrably failing ethnic communities and poor communities everywhere in the world, when we know that it is our whānau who are the ethnic communities and the poor communities in our own country. This policy promise made by Anne Tolley and those members on that side of the Chamber is an empty, failed promise. Again, this policy will deliver nothing for our Māori whānau, just as similar policies of previous Governments have always failed to deliver for us. This bill will do enormous damage to our public education system. It is the first step in the marketisation of education. I urge all parties, and particularly the Māori Party, to please not support this bill

Hon HEATHER ROY Link to this

They are not. I tell Ms Mackey that a lot of information is withheld from parents at the moment. Parents should have the right to have access to all assessment information, and that is what will be required under this legislation. Many schools already test students, but they are not required to do so, and at the moment they do not have to tell parents the results of the tests.

Hon HEATHER ROY Link to this

Mr Mallard has been out of education for far too long if he thinks that that is the case. Under the law change, schools must provide parents with all the assessment information collected about their child, and must also pass on the aggregate information data, and that is right and proper.

This bill is a good first step. That is what ACT sees it as. It is a good first step to improving education across the board for all children in New Zealand. But it must be followed, in my view, by further work. In particular, there is a lot of work to do on the curriculum, and that must follow hand in hand with this work, and with the best vehicles to realise those expectations that I talked about—the expectation of excellence, the expectation of good-quality access, and the expectation of equality. All children, regardless of family income and regardless of where they live, should be able to access quality education. School choice is important in that equation, and the ACT Party, in negotiating our support agreement with National, talked a lot about school choice. We are looking forward to the establishment of the inter-party working group. We are looking forward to working with the National Government to lift and boost the level of education across the board.

ACT supports this bill. I will finish with this comment; I said it in the first reading speech that I gave yesterday. It is important that we have high-level goals and be mindful of why we want to boost education standards in the first place. Education is the key to our long-term prosperity as a country. We need our next generation to have the skills and the creativity needed to thrive in the 21st century, not to look back to the 19th century. There is a lot of work to be done, but this is a very important first step. The ACT Party supports the National Government in this very important initiative.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY Link to this

Yes; process. Even though this bill has been shunted through under urgency, I have come to understand that the process has its benefits.

When we first sat down and looked at this bill we thought it was nothing. We thought it was flimflam; we thought it was a space-filler. We thought that the Government was so desperate to look like it was doing something that it had put down something quite innocuous that it could rush through, and it would look like it had its action plan. It would look like its priority action plan was under way. Mr Twyford called it a hologram. It looked like it was something, but there was nothing there. But Mr Twyford called it something else, as well. He called it a Trojan Horse, and that is what it is. As the onion has been peeled away, layer by layer, as this bill is progressed quickly through Parliament, we have come to realise that this bill is something more. It is not just flimflam; it actually has a secret, hidden agenda.

This bill does two things. Firstly, it lays down the foundation for a complete change in the way we look at the education system in this country. It lays down the foundation for league tables. It lays down the foundation for greater privatisation—the ACT Party is looking forward to it. It lays down the foundation for widening the gap between poor schools and rich schools. It lays down the foundation for stigmatising the children of low-decile schools. It lays down the foundation to publish teacher by teacher results and to make those available. It is blazing a trail for a major restructure in the way our education system works in this country.

The bill does something else. The second thing it does is demonise good parents. It is sending a message. We have heard a lot from the Government about sending a message. Personally, when I want to send a message, I might send a text, I might send an email, or, if I am feeling a bit nostalgic, I might nip down to New Zealand Post and send a message that way. But now I have found out that there is a new way. If I want to send a message I will go and see Simon Power or Anne Tolley, or I might go and see Heather Roy, and I will get them to write a piece of legislation for me.

This bill is sending a message all right; it is sending a message to New Zealand that there is an underclass of bad parents out there who need to be fined and whom we need to go after with prosecutions. The message is that they are bad parents who have no interest in their children’s education and that they need to be told off. They need to be told off for their bad behaviour. Let us think about what is really going on in families with truant children.

Let us look into the future and think about what the situation might be. Let us think about a solo mum with three kids. Let us suppose that all the kids are now at school. She might have one at intermediate school and a couple at primary school. They are all at school now, so it is no more domestic purposes benefit for her now, is it. She has to get off the domestic purposes benefit, and she has to get work. She could not get work that fitted around school hours, but she had to take something because her domestic purposes benefit was on the line; she would be in trouble if she did not take what was on offer. She manages to get the little one to primary school, but the kid who is at intermediate school has to go alone because mum has to get herself to work.

She then finds out that, through no fault of her own, her eldest child is truanting. The school calls her up. It wants to see her doing something about it; otherwise, she will be in line for a fine. What does she do? She has managed to get that new job, and she has been given a “take it or leave it” offer of a 90-day probation period. She is sitting there at work. What does she do? Does she leap up and sort out what is happening with her child, and face being sacked on the spot, or does she stay there and risk a fine, and, more important, does she risk her child not achieving at school because that child is truant, a situation that has come about because she is under so much pressure at work? Will that be the situation we see as a result of the raft of legislation we are seeing pushed through this place?

A family in such a situation might be a working family that, as a result of the tax bill we have seen, will have their taxes go up. This working family might have two parents who are both working, and who are under the same pressure, so they have no time for their family and no time to pay attention to what is going on in their family.

I know that the National Party is not too keen on research. We saw that with the taxation bill as well, but National has told us, I do not know how many times, to be very careful when we start citing research. So I went in search of something that National members may think has some substance. I found a report to the US Department of Justice—hardly what one would call a soft, left-wing organisation. The report talks a lot about the role of prosecution and the role of fines, in amongst a discussion of a raft of other initiatives to do with truancy. It talks about four correlates of truancy: family factors, school factors, economic influences, and student variables.

The first one, family factors—which is actually the only one that I think could possibly be what the Government is trying to deal with in respect of this legislation—includes a lack of guidance or parental supervision, domestic violence, poverty, drug or alcohol abuse in the home, lack of awareness of attendance laws, and differing attitudes towards education. How on earth will putting the paddy wagon at the bottom of the cliff deal with these issues? If the Government were serious about truancy, it would not have this bill going through under urgency, and it would not make this measure its first priority. It might be something the Government put in the mix, but it would be looking at domestic violence and poverty, trying to deal with drug and alcohol abuse, trying to deal with a lack of understanding of attendance laws, and trying to deal with differing attitudes towards education.

This bill is the most Draconian option the Government has. Why has it gone with the most Draconian option? It is because it wants New Zealand to believe that there is an underclass of bad parents out there. It wants us to be able to point the finger and say: “It’s your fault, parents, that your children are not getting to school.”

Let us consider some of the school factors. These include school climate issues, such as school size; attitudes of teachers, other students, and administrators; and inflexibility in meeting the diverse cultural and learning styles of the students. Inflexibility in meeting the diverse cultures and learning styles of the students—what could be more inflexible than bringing in national standards? What could be more inflexible than that? If we were really serious about dealing with truancy, then we would be looking at that. But, no, we are going in the opposite direction. It is back to the future; we are in reverse—full on.

Economic influences mentioned in the report include employed students, single-parent homes, high mobility rates, parents who hold multiple jobs, and the lack of affordable transportation and childcare. The Green Party member talked a lot about the minimum wage and investing in communities. In fact, I have canvassed educators in Palmerston North, and I will tell members what one of them said. I asked him what he would do about truancy, and he said he would do what the Labour Party would do. I said: “Say that again?”, and he repeated that he would do what the Labour Party would do. I asked him what he meant, and he said he meant investing in families. He talked about early intervention and not putting the paddy wagon at the bottom of the cliff. He talked about putting the fence at the top of the cliff and getting on with the job of dealing with the problem—not trying to find someone to blame for the problem.

Student variables include drug and alcohol abuse, lack of understanding of attendance laws, lack of social confidence, mental health difficulties, and poor physical health. These are the things we should be talking about if we are talking about truancy. It is not about fining parents or trying to demonise someone, and it is not about trying to go out there and say “Parents of New Zealand, you are doing a bad job, and the nanny National Government is coming to get you.”

GRANT ROBERTSON Link to this

As I said, what a shameful week for this Government. Under urgency, it is ramming through legislation that takes away the rights of workers, money from the low paid, and money from research and development. Now we have this bill that says to teachers, parents, and children: “We don’t trust you. We don’t want to hear what you think about standards.”

It is a bill that achieves nothing. It is designed to make the National Government look good. It is a bill to make sure that National can say that its bumper sticker slogans actually meant something. It is a bill that shows that National does not trust parents or teachers. It is a bill that piles on the red tape—so much for cutting compliance costs! The bill has no logic, unless, of course, it is the logic of going somewhere else—the Trojan Horse logic.

Not one of these shameful bills has been open to public scrutiny. Parents, teachers, workers, the low paid, and savers have all been shut out by the National Government. I am not sure that National members know just how much damage this approach is doing to them. My office is taking calls from people who are appalled at the lack of due process from the National Government. On this side of the House we respect the result of the election. We are disappointed, of course—we are reflective, even—but we respect the result. On the Government benches, though, respect went out the door on the first day of the new Parliament. Those members have no respect for the people of New Zealand and no respect for the experts in the field of education. They are just ramming the bill through and making sure the voices are not heard.

Well, we on the Opposition benches have ensured that the voices have been heard. I draw the Minister of Education’s attention to the words of the principal of Ōpōtiki College—a college in her electorate. The principal said: “NZ schools already regularly assess student progress to inform further strategies. There is no need to have a centrally imposed and driven programme which has the intention … of comparing students in one school with another. This [policy] is a populist strategy for which there is no credible research to support it.” I say to Mrs Tolley that those are the words of the principal of Ōpōtiki College. They are the words that the National Government did not want to hear. It did not want to have a select committee process whereby people could come in and say what they thought of this bill.

This is unnecessary legislation. We have heard from my colleague Kelvin Davis about the excellent work that has been done around assessing and reporting. We know that the National Administration Guidelines already require boards of trustees and schools to ensure that they give priority to student achievement in literacy and numeracy, and that they assess and gather information that is comprehensive enough to be able to enable the progress and achievement of students to be evaluated. The guidelines go on to say that schools have to report to students and their parents on the achievement of individual students. The guidelines are already there, so we ask ourselves why we are putting forward this bill. It is quite clear that we are doing so for purely political reasons.

Setting national standards could be done by regulation; there is no need for a bill. But what is the problem with a regulation? The problem with a regulation is that it is subject to some scrutiny, and we know that the National Government does not want there to be any scrutiny. It did not want a select committee process, so it would not want any scrutiny of these standards. If the national standards were put in place by regulation, they would become part of the parliamentary process, and we cannot have that, because then people would have a say. We would have education experts telling us about the experiences they have had and about experiences overseas where this kind of approach has failed. This bill gives the Minister the power to gazette the standards—no questions, no scrutiny.

The explanatory note of the bill tells us that this legislation is actually about sending a signal. It is not about students and it is not about children; it is about the National Government sending a signal. It is a signal that National is playing politics, because we know that national standards will lead to national testing. That is the experience internationally, and that is what will happen here. Mr Peachey favours national testing. He talked about it in his third reading speech. That is where this is going—to national testing. He wrote a book about it. That is what he wants to see happen. I think we will find that in about a year’s time the Minister—who will probably be Allan Peachey, I would say—will come back to the House and say that parents need some certainty and that they need to know that their school is achieving these standards. And he is going to come back and say that we need national testing, because that is the only way that this can work.

We know from experience overseas that that means we will begin to see teachers teaching to the test. Teaching to the test means a narrow education and a focus not on the so-called tail or the high achievers but on those who can make the marginal difference in the middle to the test results for that school. Even before there is national testing, this Government is on the path to league tables. That is what this Government is after. Mr Peachey loves league tables, and that is what he wants to see here. Mrs Tolley told us that the information will be available only to the Government. What Mrs Tolley does not seem to know but is going to find out about, thanks to this side of the House, is something called the Official Information Act. This Act means that that information will be available and will be published. Then we will see league tables in the papers, followed by—and it happens internationally—flight from schools with bad test results to those with good test results, and the ghettoising of schools. That is the path that this bill is going to take us down. That is what this Government has planned.

This is an unnecessary, politically driven bill. The teaching and assessment of our children is vital. The previous Labour Government focused on teaching and learning, because that is what we need to be doing instead of focusing on this system. If we were ever to look at introducing national standards, then legislation we put forward would have gone to a select committee. This Government has failed to do that.

The other part of this bill is about truancy. As I have already said in earlier readings of this bill, truancy is a serious issue. It is one that all parties in this House, I am sure, are committed to addressing. But we are not going to address it simply by imposing punitive measures such as those proposed in this bill. We heard from Te Ururoa Flavell that at the moment truancy is disproportionately a Māori and Pasifika problem. This punitive bill is not going to help that. It will also punish good parents who are not necessarily wilfully involved in this problem. Increasing fines is a pointless way of going about this. The National Government had the opportunity to vote for the Hon Chris Carter’s amendment in order to ensure that good parents are not captured by this law, but it failed to do that. This punitive bill on truancy is not the way to ensure that we keep students in school. We actually need to focus on making school environments places where all students want to be, where all students can learn and learn in their own way.

This bill is about putting students in a box and saying that one size fits all. It is bad legislation, and it is bad legislation that is being rammed through under urgency. This Government has been in office for a week. It is arrogant, it is already losing touch with the people, and we look forward to holding it to account.