Former Education Minister Nikki Kaye worked with former Education Minister Steve Maharey and current minister Chris Hipkins to draw up the bill. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Former Education Minister Nikki Kaye worked with former Education Minister Steve Maharey and current minister Chris Hipkins to draw up the bill. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Parliament's education select committee has done a disservice to generations of kids all over New Zealand by ditching Nikki Kaye's bill that would have guaranteed language learning in primary and intermediate schools.
Its decision to kill the bill is a classic case of what Voltaire called the perfect being theenemy of the good.
The bill may not have been perfect but instead of improving its flaws, and finding a compromise, the majority on the committee decided to ditch it altogether.
The bill required schools to teach at least one language from a list of at least 10 gazetted by the Minister of Education and it guaranteed funding for it.
Te reo Māori and sign language would be among the 10 languages but schools' boards would decide which language a school would consider a priority.
The bill also required the minister to develop a national languages strategy.
The education committee, which has a Labour majority, has ditched the bill, saying te reo Māori and sign language are the languages that should be prioritised. It recommended that a language strategy be developed.
A languages strategy "could help to provide a useful framework for both existing and new programmes".
In other words, waffle over action and more years of waiting for a Government to finally do something on languages instead of writing another report.
The committee has taken the path of least resistance and not had the courage of its convictions.
School boards are already required to make all reasonable steps to provide instruction in te reo Māori. Photo / Peter de Graaf
The most obvious thing it should have done was to change the bill, to take te reo out of the group of 10 priority languages and say only schools that gave instruction in te reo Māori would be funded for an additional priority language.
It did not necessarily need to use the word compulsory, which both Labour and National have an aversion to.
But it would be clear that the only way for schools to get funding for second-language instruction would be if they were already conducting tuition in the country's first language. Both are long overdue.
The outrageous behaviour of a ratepayers' meeting in Tauranga recently at which the audience booed a woman for speaking six words in Māori only serves to reinforce the need for such a bill.
Education Minister Chris Hipkins. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Languages help both the brain and understanding of cultures. It is a safe bet that intolerant audience did not have the advantage of language learning growing up.
The current law says schools must take reasonable steps to enable children to learn te re Māori and tikanga Māori (customs). There is no excuse for any school not to be offering te reo Māori already, but an amended bill would have provided a strong incentive for those that are not.
An amended bill could have satisfied the views of the majority of members concerned about giving te reo Māori primacy, and supported the intention of the bill to expand language choice in schools, which took years for Nikki Kaye to develop with bipartisan support.
And it would have preserved the right of local communities to decide which additional language was right for its school.
National needs to compromise as well as Labour. As well-intentioned as the bill was, there is a legitimate objection to lumping te reo Māori, the first language of New Zealand, in with Spanish, Mandarin, French, Urdu, Punjabi, Samoan and other second languages.
In her first-reading speech, Nikki Kaye paid tribute to former Labour Minister of Education Steve Maharey for his work on the bill, and to current minister Chris Hipkins.
It is a shame Hipkins lacks either the time or motivation to rescue the bill instead of letting it sink at its second reading - likely to be in a few weeks.
The Royal Society published a paper in 2013 pointing out New Zealand's woeful lack of proficiency in languages.
The best chance to address that in a generation has been tossed out by a select committee that simply did not try hard enough.
