✨ Government Policy Statement
3346 NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE No. 125
Many of the foundations have been laid. They include conservative and predictable fiscal management. This means maintaining operating surpluses sufficient over the economic cycle to fund contributions into the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and to keep gross debt at manageable levels.
This needs to be accompanied by sensible monetary policy which aims for price stability while being sufficiently flexible in its operation to accommodate the maximum sustainable rate of economic growth. A new Governor of the Reserve Bank is in the process of being appointed. This appointment will be accompanied by the negotiation of a new Policy Targets Agreement. It is my government’s intention that this will express clearly its intended monetary policy position which will more explicitly move New Zealand closer to the practice of the Reserve Bank of Australia.
This will assist in providing a framework within which higher sustainable growth can occur. But achieving that higher growth will require careful attention and energetic promotion of the key elements of economic transformation: human capital development, investment, innovation, export promotion and business and regional development.
Increasing the quality and quantity of our human capital is the highest priority.
In this respect my government will be building on the foundations laid in the last two and a half years. Already the median performance of our children in maths, science and reading ranks in the top handful of developed countries.
But we have a much larger tail than many other such countries. Lifting our overall performance in economic terms means ensuring that we rank higher internationally in total functional literacy rates.
Significant resources have been invested to meet this challenge with the Numeracy Development Project expanded to another 17,000 primary teachers, new literacy and numeracy assessment tools developed for students in Years 5 to 7, and the number of Resource Teachers of literacy doubled.
Further progress will be made by improving staff: child ratios in early childhood education, undertaking further policy work on rolling out the early childhood strategic plan, expanding such proven programmes as the early Numeracy Project and the Early Childhood Primary Links project, and extending the use of numeracy and literacy assessment tools to Years 8, 9 and 10.
Equally, more attention needs to be paid to stretching the capabilities of our most gifted children. An Advisory Committee on Gifted Education will be established to advise on areas related to gifted and talented education. A professional development programme on gifted and talented education will be made accessible to all schools over a three year period.
Such professional development programmes are central to improving the quality of our teaching. In its previous term, my government established the New Zealand Teachers’ Council as an important catalyst for focussing on professional standards. This will be encouraged to enhance the quality of initial teacher education and ongoing professional development.
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Online Sources for this page:
VUW Te Waharoa —
NZ Gazette 2002, No 125
Gazette.govt.nz —
NZ Gazette 2002, No 125
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Government Policy and Economic Strategy
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🏛️ Governance & Central AdministrationFiscal Management, Economic Growth, Education, Human Capital, Innovation