Clark: speech to NZEI meeting, Wellington, 21/9/99
Thank you for the invitation to
address your conference today.
I want to take this
opportunity to thank NZEI for your willingness to keep
Labour informed about issues in education, and for the
expertise you have made available to us in our policy
development.
During these long years in opposition your
advice has been invaluable.
I look forward to taking what
I believe is a relationship of trust and respect into
government later this year.
Despite there being no
announced date for the election, the country is, in reality,
in the middle of an election campaign.
The billboards are
going up, the policies are being released, the leaflets are
going out.
Our billboards proclaim that "The future is
with Labour" – and it is.
That is consistent with NZEI's
election year campaign theme: "Time to win for Education".
It is indeed.
Throughout the nineties there has been an
enormous amount of destructive change in social
policy.
Education has been bedevilled by that – as have
health, social welfare, and many other areas.
The driving
force for change in social policy in the nineties has not
been what is good for public services like health and
education, but, rather, how to fit them into an ideological
straitjacket to satisfy market purists.
In education
there has been an underlying agenda of having the state
retreat from its provider role to a residual function as a
funder; of moving to see each school operating as an
independent business; and of seeing teachers as employees of
those individual businesses and not as part of a national
career structure.
Bulk funding has been a key part of
that agenda. Were all schools to be moved to bulk funding,
then the state would be on course to move to the next phase
of exiting from its responsibilities for the provision of
schooling.
Bulk funding saw kindergartens removed from
the state sector. The precedent is clear.
Under universal
bulk funding, teachers with the best will in the world would
have difficulty maintaining a national salary and career
structure – as schools struck out on their own to offer
staff enterprise deals.
As we are all well aware, in the
present government there is great hostility to collectivism.
Bulk funding would be a critical step in breaking that down
for teachers.
Already pressures have been applied at the
level of principals where the payment of the supplementary
grant is being made only to boards of trustees where the
principals are on individual contracts.
It is clear to me
that this is a flagrant breach of International Labour
Organisation conventions.
We all know that if government
education policy continues on its present course we won't
have a public education system worthy of the name.
The
so-called regulatory review being undertaken by the Ministry
of Education looks like the final nails in the coffin are
being prepared by National.
The word is that the
government no longer wants to own schools; that all schools,
private and public, would be funded on the same basis; and
that teachers would not be employed by the state but by
individual school businesses.
This nonsense has to stop.
Our schools are not businesses. They are public educational
services, run and operated in the public interest to meet a
wide range of educational and other public interest
objectives.
That is why I have given my word to your
national executive, that one of Labour's first steps in
government will be to stop the Ministry's regulatory
review.
It is leading education down a path which Labour
has no desire whatsoever to tread.
We have an entirely
different vision for education.
Labour has always had an
absolute belief in the power of education to transform
societies and individuals.
We see education as an
intrinsic good. We know well of its contribution to economic
growth and prosperity. But we know too of education's
enormous importance in enabling people to know about and
participate in our society and to know about and care about
our world.
We know of the contribution education makes to
making our society more interesting, more informed, and more
tolerant.
We believe in the power of education for all
these reasons.
We also represent a political movement
which fought for access to quality education as a basic
right for all New Zealanders.
Most adults here today grew
up in a New Zealand where the local community school was the
automatic choice for our education. There was little sense
that one was disadvantaged by going to one school rather
than another.
But these days education is caught up in
the widening gaps which have developed between New
Zealanders.
- rich and poor
- Maori and Pakeha
-
Pacific Island people and Pakeha
As the market philosophy
has spread over into social policy, so winner and loser
schools have developed. Alas in the end it is the children
who are the losers in the loser schools – as quality
education cannot be offered to them.
Last week a new
study revealed that the number of students from poor schools
going to university had dropped by 23 per cent, while the
number going from schools in affluent areas had risen by 25
per cent.
There are probably two main reasons for that.
One is that children remaining in schools in poor
communities are economically and socially disadvantaged. The
costs of university education are simply unthinkable for
their families.
The other is the tendency for flight out
of schools in poor neighbourhoods by children whose parents
have aspirations for them, depriving those schools of the
full range of abilities they could have within the student
body.
There is a groundswell in New Zealand today in
support of closing the gaps which have developed between us.
That was the message the Hikoi brought to Wellington last
year.
And it is a message Labour has heeded in developing
its education policy – and indeed in developing all its
policies.
We see education as a powerful vehicle for
uplifting all communities.
A good education policy
contains both a strong vision for education and practical
plans for achieving that vision.
Two months ago, we
released such a policy. It is detailed, it is pragmatic, and
it is educationally sound.
The policy addresses three
priority areas:
• Improving the quality of the education
our children receive
• Closing the gaps between schools
and in achievement rates between different sections of our
population.
• Upgrading our school facilities, including
buildings and technology.
Under the heading of quality, a
number of initiatives will be taken.
We will review the
shape and quality of teacher education
Within a
relatively short time the number of teacher education
providers has mushroomed from the original six colleges to
21.
The quality of teacher training is far from even.
Many schools won't even consider recruiting graduates from
certain courses. Yet students enrol in those courses in good
faith and at considerable cost. They must be able to have
confidence that their training is of an acceptable standard.
It is the responsibility of the state and its agencies to
see that it is.
The development of an Education
Council
We see this developing from the Teacher
Registration Board as a body providing professional
leadership and establishing and enforcing professional
standards and a general code of ethics for teachers. It will
have the final say in the recognition of teacher education
courses.
A strong commitment to professional development
for teachers
The proposals in the government's 1997
teacher education green paper for bulk funding the resource
presently available through the teachers' colleges for
in-service advisory and training services will be abandoned.
We want strong in-service advisory and training services to
remain where they are – as centres of excellence and
expertise to be drawn on by all schools.
Bulk funding the
money for that in dribs and drabs would be unlikely to meet
the needs of any school.
Universal registration.
We
strongly support universal registration for all teaching
staff. The Education Council will be empowered to set
criteria for the maintenance of registration which will
include evidence that professional development has been
undertaken.
The quality of teaching also relates to
staffing ratios and to funding. We don’t believe that the
present staffing formula serves low decile and rural schools
well – nor schools with teaching principals. There will be a
staffing working party set up to address these specific
issues. It will be required to report within 12
months.
On base funding, there will be an annual
inflation adjustment of operation grants so that they retain
their real value.
National testing of student achievement
forms no part of Labour’s policy. But we will be asking
schools to ensure that they have clear systems of reporting
to parents on student progress on literacy and numeracy at
least twice a year. The work done by the National Education
Monitoring Project already provides valuable baseline
information on education standards.
The Role of the
Education Review Office.
Labour strongly supports a
strong education inspection, review, and audit
function.
It is fair to say, however, that we believe
ERO’s mandate is rather narrow and that the outcome of its
adverse reports can be destructive, not constructive.
Our
aim is to see clear benchmarks set for school standards. We
believe that the Ministry and ERO must work closely together
to see that all schools are brought up to those
standards.
We have drawn no conclusions as to whether ERO
should be drawn back into the Ministry of Education -
contrary to inaccurate reporting.
That is a matter to be
examined further.
What we do want is not only the poor
practices in schools identified, but something done about
them.
Too often schools with poor reports are left to
drift, with falling rolls, good teachers leaving, and
diminishing prospects all round.
Addressing these issues
of quality and standards quickly in schools is the key to
restoring the community’s confidence in general in local
schools – and that is a matter to which we give the highest
priority.
It is crucial to closing the gaps which have
developed between schools and between communities and
achievement levels in them.
Bulk Funding
Another gap
which has developed is between bulk funded schools and those
who have chosen not to accept bulk funding.
Without
question this has been one of the most divisive issues in
education – setting trustees against principals and staff –
or trustees and principals against staff – and setting
school against school.
Bulk funding will not continue
under Labour – but the money set aside for it will be
reallocated to all schools on a fair basis to be used at
schools’ discretion for staffing, or equipment, or whatever
need is identified.
Early Childhood Education
Our
policy on early childhood education is being finalised in
the coming week. You can expect from Labour a strong
commitment to the sector, as we appreciate fully the
overwhelming importance of the education and support
children receive in the first years of life.
You can also
put a ring around this: Labour will legislate to bring
kindergartens back into the state sector. We take pride in
kindergartens establishing a high level of education in the
sector and in their maintaining a workforce of fully trained
and educated teachers.
Labour will also be extending the
requirements for teacher registration to the entire early
childhood sector.
NZEI has long called for a long-term
strategic plan for early childhood education. Labour looks
forward to working with you to develop that plan within our
first year.
Special Education
On special education, we
have puzzled over how the government policy initiative,
Special Education 2000, purported to make more money
available, but resulted in as many families as ever, if not
more, feeling aggrieved about the service available to their
child.
NZEI's latest report on the workings of the new
system is constructive.
We believe that a significant
problem with the new system has been the misdirection of the
Special Education Grant. Because it is allocated to all
schools on a per-pupil basis, regardless of the number of
children with special needs, it disadvantages "magnet"
schools which attract a disproportionately high number of
such students.
We will ensure that the Special Education
Grant is targeted towards magnet schools.
We will
also:
• reassess the boundary between high and moderate
special needs
• investigate using cluster arrangements
for the allocation of what is presently the Special
Education Grant
• review the funding for established
special education units to ensure that where their long term
enrolment patterns have been positive, their viability will
be ensured.
• reinstate a visiting teacher service
•
establish a working party to investigate ways to address the
needs of gifted children.
Maori education
Our policy
commits Labour in government to develop a long-term action
plan for Maori education.
In our first year in
government, we will:
• fund Maori educators to liaise
with Maori throughout the country about the future of Maori
education, including a potential role for a Maori Education
Authority, so that Maori are able to provide ideas and
solutions which will benefit Maori in education
• host a
Hui Taumata – "Matauranga 2000" – to bring together Maori
educators and community leaders to share the ideas gathered
from talking with Maori people and to develop and plan for
long-term progress in Maori education.
There is also a
raft of initiatives in the policy for encouraging more Maori
to enter teaching, become competent in te reo Maori, and
address workload pressures on Maori teachers.
There is a
major commitment to increasing the availability of Maori
language resources.
Pacific peoples' education in New
Zealand also requires new initiatives and strategies as
Pacific children too are relatively disadvantaged. Work on a
national strategy will be ongoing, and we will continue
support for scholarships to attract Pacific people into
teaching.
A long-standing issue in education has been the
lack of recognition, training, and career structure for
support staff.
We are committed to recognising the work
of the staff and consulting with NZEI on the development of
appropriate pay scales, conditions, and career structures.
We are as concerned as NZEI at the potential of the
so-called community wage scheme to displace people who have
had paid employment as support staff.
I also want to
reiterate Labour's commitment to the repeal of the
Employment Contracts Act and its replacement with
legislation which is fair to employees. The new law will
give unions legal recognition and promote collective
bargaining and bargaining in good faith.
Conclusion
An
enormous amount of thought has gone into our education
policy to make it practical in meeting the needs of schools
and students – while also meeting our overriding objectives
of closing the gaps which have developed between schools,
communities, and children and ensuring that throughout the
state and integrated school system there is a high standard
of education.
We do have great faith in our public
education system. The purpose of our policy is to back our
schools and our teachers in doing the very best they can for
students.
Investing in education is the most important
investment any government can make in the future of the
country.
We will only maintain first world living
standards by having our economy and our society driven by
knowledge, skill, and technology.
That process starts in
the community with quality education for our children.
Nothing is more important.
Education is a front line
issue this election. The choice is clear between the current
path of privatisation, deregulation and competition, and a
fresh start on rebuilding a public education system where
co-operation and a commitment to community schooling are the
basic values. I know that many teachers will want to join
with Labour in making that fresh start. It is indeed time to
win for education.