Hon Bill English
National Party Education Spokesman

19 October 2006

Govt hides literacy and numeracy results

Labour’s attitude towards the release of information pertaining to the effectiveness of $70 million literacy and numeracy projects is a “flagrant abuse of the democratic process”, says National’s Education spokesman, Bill English.

He has released a copy of a letter from Education Minister Steve Maharey, written in response to a request made by National under the Official Information Act for information around the evaluation of the Government’s literacy and numeracy projects.

Mr Maharey says he will release the information for a fee of almost $7,000.

“The Minister is attempting to prevent the Opposition from doing its job and holding the Government to account,” says Mr English.

“The public, who fund the $70 million projects through their taxes, have every right to know if they are delivering for our children.

“We are in trouble when almost a third of our young people leave secondary school without even the basic NCEA level 1 qualification. If parents are to have any faith in the system they need to see that the Government is working to fix it, but Labour is denying them that.

“Either the Minister is desperate to hide aspects of these evaluations or this is another Labour Party fundraising effort,” says Mr English.

ENDS

Attached: Letter from Hon Steve Maharey – 2 pages
See... http://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/0610/LettMaharey.pdf

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