MEDIA RELEASE: Hon. Hekia Parata, Minister of Education

MEDIA RELEASE: NEW POLICIES (embargoed until 5pm, Monday, pretty please)

Hon. Hekia Parata, Minister of Education

As the education sector in New Zealand heads into a brave new world, Education Minster Hekia Parata is to announce some additional education policies that, “will enhance learning outcomes for New Zealand learners as they learn things in a learning environment filled with other learners.”

Ms. Parata will make the announcement at the opening of the official National Standards Museum in the foyer of the Education Ministry headquarters in Thorndon. The museum was developed by Parata in response to a number of focus groups who had reported back to her they had been unable to use the Education Counts webpage to effectively rate their child’s school against other nearby schools.

“It’s an exciting time for New Zealand principals, teachers and learners and the parents of learners,” says Ms Parata, “because now everyone can come here to Wellington and look on this wall where we have conveniently ranked all schools based on their National Standards performance.”

“It is not a league table,” she adds, “it’s more of a ranked spreadsheet.”

Ms. Parata says she will use her speech at the official opening to announce a few changes that will make the education sector run more smoothly for New Zealand learners as they learn new learning.

1. All New Zealand schools with any cracks will be closed. Ms. Parata says these are an obvious earthquake risk and need to be dealt with as early as possible. Of course, communities will be consulted before any of these proposed changes are implemented. That consultation period ended last week.
2. Long jump pits are to be banned at all 3 Christchurch schools that are to remain open. Ms. Parata says Ministry officials have reported back to her saying it is much too difficult to tell the difference between soft, raked long jump sand and hard, compacted liquefaction.
3. All future interviews of the minister are to be conducted John Hartevelt from Fairfax. Ms. Parata says he appears to be the only New Zealand journalist capable of ignoring understanding the importance of rigorous statistical analysis when dealing with huge sets of data.

ENDS