Education Agents Cocktail Function, Wuhan, China

Monday 14 June 2004

Good evening education agents and school principals. It is a reminder to me of how life can change, that such a school pupil as I was is now greeting school principals on behalf of Christchurch!

I will honour the several hours’ workshop you have just had on Christchurch education, by keeping my remarks fairly short.

I have been asked to thank you for your support and also to add to the information on Christchurch you have been given.

Sometimes the best way to move forward is to first move back. I thought I would use this time today to move back and share with you some of what I said at a major education conference in Christchurch last year. I believe it is hugely relevant to your meeting here today. I told the conference that no issue facing us is as crucial to our future as education.

I said that Christchurch has a unique role to play. New Zealand tourism is promoting itself as "100 per cent pure" overseas. Christchurch needs to promote itself as "100 per cent smart". I said, in response to questions about how New Zealand could return to the top of the OCED nations, that there was only one reliable answer. By education.

Christchurch is an outward-facing city, with strong international ties of friendship and trade, and we are ideally suited to this role. Christchurch is already New Zealand’s undisputed centre of the new high-tech knowledge economy. We have about 30 per cent more high-tech activity than Auckland, our largest city. Part of the reason we lead in this sector is because of access to skilled workers and education facilities for development.

We have a mixture of schools, tertiary institutions and private education institutions to provide versatility and standards. We also have the priceless advantage of a tradition of social cohesion.

I also said in my speech at last year’s conference that our culture had much to learn from new Asian Kiwi families and their positive example of cherishing their children and their children's education. Christchurch needs to be prepared as a city to learn this lesson fully.

I said that I want Christchurch to take the leading role in advancing the quality of our education standards so we can become known, rightfully, as a city that provides world-class education.

I also explained that in the last two years I have been working with other Christchurch leaders on a plan we are calling "Prosperous Christchurch".

The idea has been to build a plan that enables us to enjoy and expand our prosperity as a city. To realise that prosperity is more than just the contents of your bank account. But, at the same time to acknowledge the best way to grow our prosperity is to make Christchurch rich, on the material, natural and social levels.

This project has made us very aware that none of our plans will succeed without educational excellence for all as a key to positive growth. A central part of this goal is ensuring the trust and support of people such as yourselves.

One of the rarely noted results of increased student numbers from other lands being educated in Christchurch has been to make many people take a fresh look at our education system and realise how good it is. It has, in other words, been a two-way process, for foreign students and also for the people of Christchurch.

The people of Wuhan and Christchurch have learnt much from this growing trade in knowledge between our two cities. Some of you have learnt how much easier it is to work with a city like Christchurch, with five tertiary institutions, educating 26,000 students. Wuhan alone has 35 tertiary institutions, dealing with 300,000 students. That's just slightly less than our city’s entire population.

What that means for your students is that they are coming to a city of a size and scale that provides a sense of stability and safety. They are also coming to a city where education is important for everyone, residents and visitors alike.

Christchurch as a city is moving into a period of economic, and social maturity. We are beginning to think like world citizens. Nearly one fifith of our population was born overseas. This has led to a growing maturity in regard to diversity. We now celebrate international events like the Chinese New Year. We have an international student centre. We have a wide range of public festivals and events. We are, in other words, an open city. We also actively support groups like Education Christchurch & Canterbury.

Our central Government is now actively supporting the growth and maturing of foreign student projects. They plan to have permanent education counsellors in Beijing. They will be providing scholarships for top international post-graduate and under-graduate students. They will be providing study abroad programmes for New Zealand teachers and students. That's in the future.

I would like to end with a goal I shared with the Christchurch educator's conference last year. I said then that I dream of the day when people travel from all around the world to learn from this educational gem which shines in the South Pacific.