Hon Nikki Kaye
Associate Minister of Education

5 July 2014 Media Statement

Labour playing catch up on 21st century schools

Associate Education Minister Nikki Kaye says Labour has clearly not done its homework in the education area and is promoting "new ideas" that have already been put in place by National.

“Most of what Labour has announced today is already being delivered by the Government through its 21st century schools programme. We have a massive build plan underway to modernise school facilities, upgrade school broadband networks and partner with communities to provide digital hubs through those networks. Our Ultrafast broadband and rural broadband initiatives are delivering fibre broadband with uncapped data to nearly every school in New Zealand.

"Labour's announcements today prove they have no idea what is already going on."

Labour want to put money into professional learning development for ICT over the next few years. National has already invested $35 million in Professional Learning and Development, specifically targeted at learning with digital technologies.

Labour want to build an unspecified number of new schools and classrooms by 2030. Under the National government, hundreds of millions of dollars has been spent building new classrooms and upgrading older schools with the help of the Future Investment Fund, which Labour opposes. National has opened 12 newschools in the past three years in areas of growth.

And Labour wants to enable students to access the internet at home. Last year, National announced a change in policy to enable schools to extend their school internet to the surrounding area so students and families can access the internet from home.

Ms Kaye said the device subsidy programme also did not appear to have been thought through.
“There is an amazing lack of detail. Are they really going to make the subsidy available to every one of the 580,000 children in years 4 to 13? How do they plan to deal with rapid changes in technology? Is the plan limited to one device throughout the period of the student's time in school? If not, how many devices? How are they planning to deal with the interest costs? All these questions must be answered.

“Labour has simply not done their homework. It really does make you wonder what they have been doing over the past six years.

“Our Future Focussed Learning report, sets out the direction the National government is going.

“Labour really needs to research what's happening and catch up,” Ms Kaye says.

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