Hon Bill English National Party Education Spokesman

4 August 2005

Labour has no credibility in education

National Party Education spokesman Bill English says the Minister of Education, Trevor Mallard, has to go because he has treated 200,000 secondary school students as guinea pigs in an experiment that has gone wrong.

He is commenting on the release today of a second damning State Services Commission report into the education sector.

Mr English says the report confirms that the critics of NCEA were right and Labour was very wrong.

"The report shows that Labour's implementation of the NCEA has been dominated by a culture of arrogance and complacency. This approach has seen every critic of the system branded as an 'idiot' and every problem swept under the carpet.

"Parents and teachers now know they were right to worry about the unpredictability of their kids' results. But just a few months ago, Labour ministers described these concerns as 'nonsensical'.

"This report shows that Trevor Mallard has overseen a leaderless, chaotic, spiralling bureaucracy which ignored even the most obvious of problems. It is so damning of Mr Mallard's stewardship that he no longer has the credibility to fix the serious problems with the NCEA.

"The education sector needs a new broom and new leadership. Now we have two State Services Commission reports on education that have discredited Labour beyond repair," says Mr English.

ENDS

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