Education policy Q&A: Brian Donnelly

Brian Donnelly wants the NCEA fine-tuned. Picture / Paul Estcourt

The Herald invited politicians to answer questions at a range of policy forums - yesterday the focus was on transport. Today we examine education.

Below are edited highlights of the 45-minute question and answer session with NZ First spokesman Brian Donnelly.

Would you make changes to NCEA?

We would retain it. It needs some serious fine-tuning and that can be done. Trevor Mallard is correct in saying that we're actually assessing more now than we were in the previous system. We've probably got the most overly externally assessed system in the world and I think we can move away from that.

Should we teach values in schools?

We've always had a policy of putting in character education or values education in schools. But remember this, values are largely driven by the hidden curriculum - the way that we do things within a school.

For example, if you go into the health lesson and say, eating lots of lollies is bad, and then your tuck shop is filled with lollies, the hidden message there is lollies are okay. That will certainly be more powerful than the message you're trying to give in the classroom.

So with values. For example, if you've got teachers who are constantly intolerant towards the kids and one of your values is tolerance, well sorry, that won't work.

What about school zoning?

We would like to ensure that parents have as much choice as possible, but there are practical realities that have to be confronted.

What people don't understand is that school zoning was reintroduced not by Labour, but by National with the support of Act in 1998. It was because the complete open slather that existed had turned into a shambles, so something had to be done.

If there was overcrowding schools would have to set in place geographical zoning in consultation with other schools in such a way that no child could not have access to a reasonably convenient school.

Should some rural schools that are getting pretty small be closed?

Yes, they should. But New Zealand First believes rural schools should be satellites where possible, so that you get economies of scale by essentially having them as part of another school.

The legislation allows for it right now. Ashburton Primary School has a school that's 15km out of town. It operates with 45 kids as a rural school. The teachers are part of the Ashburton School but they operate out there with a PTA as if they were unique unto themselves. I've spoken to the parents out there and they see it's the best of both worlds.

I think that Trevor Mallard actually just bit off more than he could chew. He started to go into larger areas and try to shut down larger schools, rather than what was really rational.

I mean most of the things he did up in Northland were sensible, because it was small schools that needed some rationalisation. But when he had a second cut at Invercargill, that was stupid.

Are too many people going to university?

I think there are. There is a real problem because university has got that status to it and in the working class which I came from, upward mobility is through education.

Our leaders must start articulating that there is equivalent value in a range of different activities. We believe that we need to establish a category of universities of technology.

There has been an increased complexity of knowledge required in what we knew as the traditional trades. Radiographers, for example. In 1990 we used to give them a certificate, two-year training, press a button to take an X-ray and hunky-dory.

Now they're doing MRI, ultrasound, radiotherapy - you need a degree in physics to be able to do it. In fact, masters degrees are going with it, and yet they're doing them out of institutions that don't have that status and give the parity of esteem to the qualification.

You have a very generous tertiary policy with the universal student allowance. Is it viable economically?

If it was viable under Bill Birch as Finance Minister, then it sure as hell is viable with the surpluses that exist at the moment. That was going to come in, in the Coalition Government. The first charge was to be in 1998 and it was put off because of the Asian crisis.

It would have been in place in the 1999 Budget and the Coalition fell down. From our point of view it is unfinished business.

We still believe that students should pay a proportion of their costs and we believe there has to be a loan system available to ensure that there is accessibility to all. But the main driver of student debt is the borrowing for living allowance.

It also creates an injustice when people with two parents on low incomes get nothing and yet the child of a farmer with assets can actually gets full living allowances.

So would it be set at a level similar to the dole?

At the moment it would be set at the limit of the living allowance, which is less than the dole. I guess in the long run, yes, in terms of the principle we'd like to get it to the dole. We're not pledging that immediately.

Should teachers be paid according to how well they do with performance-related pay?

I think it's impossible to ask anybody to make the judgment. They should be paid on the task that they undertake. For example, you might have a teacher who does a good job of teaching the class, but leaves at 5 o'clock.

There are other teachers in a school - they take sports teams, they're into the opera, they do the shows, they do a whole pile of additional duties - and we need to have mechanisms to be able to say to those people, here's some additional funding for all those additional tasks that you're undertaking.

But in terms of saying, you're a better teacher than him, I'm going to give you $5000 more, it's just a stupid idea. It would just create division within schools ...