Education Amendment Bill

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education) Link to this

I move, That the Education Amendment Bill be now read a second time. This bill will improve the quality and effectiveness of education legislation. It proposes two broad areas of policy change. The first area of change is in current police vetting arrangements, which will improve students’ safety and reduce compliance costs for schools and early childhood education services. The second change introduces information matching to provide a better system for ensuring that only registered teachers are employed by schools. The bill also makes a range of other amendments to improve efficiency in the schooling system and improve education law. Since the first reading of the bill, the Education and Science Committee has recommended a number of amendments to strengthen the bill by clarifying some of the policy decisions. I thank members of the Education and Science Committee for their careful consideration of this bill. I also acknowledge the contributions of those who provided submissions.

I will now go through the key elements of the changes to the bill recommended by the committee. They relate to police vetting and school governance. I am particularly pleased that the committee adopted the changes I proposed, to make police vetting of household members mandatory when children enrolled in a home-based service are being cared for in a home other than their own. This change will apply to household members who are 17 years of age or older. I proposed this further amendment following feedback during the recent consultation as part of the review of early childhood regulations. Nearly 60 percent of the home-based services consulted and over 90 percent of other individuals and groups consulted said that any household member in a home-based care environment should be subject to a police vet. Parents also said that police vets should be mandatory for all members of the household where the care is being provided. Educators working for home-based education and care services are currently required to be police vetted. Vetting household members will maintain consistency and minimum standards across licensed home-based services. I clarify that household members in licensed home-based services are not the same as parent and community volunteers in schools and early childhood education centres, including playcentres and kindergartens. Volunteers are not covered by the law and are not required to be police vetted.

The bill has been amended to make it clear that the requirement to renew police vets every 3 years applies only if the person concerned is still employed or engaged at the school or early childhood education service. A further exception has been included to cover situations where a person’s employment circumstances have changed. For example, a cleaner who now works during the evening and not during school opening hours will not require a repeat vet. Schools and early childhood education services will now have a 4-week period to implement the changes to police vetting, instead of 8 weeks as originally proposed. The committee has recommended changing the requirement to obtain a police vet in that time to one of applying for the vet. That change avoids placing an obligation on the school board or the early childhood service provider, which would rely on police to meet it. The shorter time frame balances out allowing enough time for the application to be made and giving effect to the policy that the police vet must be sought promptly. Overall, the policy changes to police vetting in the bill will maintain students’ safety, reduce compliance costs, and streamline administration for schools.

The bill removes the New Zealand Teachers Council as the conduit for police vetting of all non-teaching staff and contractors. This saves schools, early childhood education services, and the Teachers Council both time and money. The changes in this bill will minimise the risk that some non-teaching staff and contractors may have unsupervised access to children before being police vetted. Needless police vetting will be minimised by requiring only those contractors to be police vetted who have, or are likely to have, unsupervised access to children.

The committee has recommended an amendment that takes the notion of a combined establishment board that was in the bill as it was introduced to its natural conclusion. That will give the Minister of Education the ability to stagger the opening of new schools governed by the combined board. The establishment phase for a new school ends at the time of the first school trustee elections after the school has opened for instruction. There are likely to be situations where one of a group of new schools will be ready to open before the others. This change reflects the policy intent of combined establishment boards, and the flexibility it provides will be a useful tool for managing potential future growth.

I remind the House of the other changes proposed in the bill. I understand that the submissions that commented on these areas supported the changes. After police vetting, the second area of broad policy change to improve efficiency is information matching. The bill provides for information matching between the Ministry of Education’s payroll database and the New Zealand Teachers Council’s register of teachers to identify those who are teaching in schools without registration. It is most likely that those identified will simply have failed to renew their practising certificate, and they will be given the opportunity to rectify the situation. For others, however, the information-matching programme will pick up whether they meet current teaching or safety standards, thus ensuring that our students are safe and receiving a quality education. The bill also makes a number of other minor amendments to improve the efficiency of the school system or to enhance the effective governance of schools. Once again, I thank the members of the Education and Science Committee for their work. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) Link to this

Labour is supporting the Education Amendment Bill, and that is a change in our position from the first reading of the bill. We think that it has been improved in the Education and Science Committee, and it has gone from being a 55:45 decision one way to a 60:40 decision the other way. So we will debate this bill through the House. Unless there are any further amendments from the Minister of Education with which we disagree, we will support the bill as we progress.

We agree with the changes, especially the improvements to the vetting procedure, that came to the committee on the question of home-based care and on the very real danger of people who are not responsible for children but are living in homes where home-based care is occurring. It is a gap in the legislation and a gap that I am happy to acknowledge, as a former Minister of Education who was involved in a lot of the development of this legislation back in the early 2000s.

There is always a very fine balance when it comes to working out what limits we are prepared to go to in order to protect children. We want to make sure that, as far as is possible, everything reasonable is done, but no one wants to get tied up so much in a bureaucracy that schools cannot get on with doing what they want to do and that people cannot be involved with their children in schools as parent helpers and in similar types of arrangements. We always want people to be involved, if they can. I think that the test we have got to in this legislation relating to people having charge of children and to people not being alone with children without being vetted is about right. I think that the world has changed a lot, certainly in the 30-odd years or a bit longer than that now, since I was in a classroom—

COLIN KING (National—Kaikōura) Link to this

It is a pleasure to take a call during the second reading of the Education Amendment Bill. Education is hugely important for the Government, to the extent that we realise that it is the vehicle by which people realise their potential. Therefore, it is very, very important that we have a robust and reliable system. So I congratulate the Minister of Education on bringing this bill before the House and ensuring that the education system is enhanced. That is what this bill does.

Members of the Education and Science Committee were surprised at how many parts of the bill needed to be tidied up. As time permits, I would like to deal with one or two of those parts, because I am sure that my fellow members on the Government benches will also deal with other parts of it.

Of significance are the changes to the police-vetting requirements. It is quite important to get that balance right so that education is conducted in a healthy and safe environment. The process needed to be robust enough so that vetting all non-teaching staff is completed before an individual has unsupervised access to children. Formerly, that practice was conducted via the Teachers Council, and it was quite a bureaucratic process. It was deemed within the compulsory school section and in early childhood education that that responsibility should sit with the board of trustees or those with responsibility. I think that will certainly be enthusiastically embraced by schools. There will be an amount of time required so that it can be done in a robust and professional manner. It will save somewhere between $375,000 and $400,000. Those moves are being tested and are tried and true; they are practised in the United States, Canada, England, and Australia. The measures will provide an effective safeguard for children to learn in a safe environment.

I want to talk for just a few moments on some of the smaller but very relevant aspects of this bill that improve the Education Act. I will talk about the gap that exists presently within the student loan system that needs to be plugged. Under the current Act it is not illegal to knowingly provide false information. That loophole is closed off by this bill. To make a false declaration will be an offence. On that basis, the bill tidies those matters up.

Without labouring the point too much, I say that this Government sees the importance of a world-class education. This matter of matching information between the Teachers Council, schools, and the Ministry of Education has been languishing as long as I have been on the Education and Science Committee. It is good that Minister Tolley has brought this bill to the House, so that we can start to tidy up those matters and start to get some real professionalism in managing education in this country.

This bill will help to ensure that we have better systems of police vetting, better systems of information matching, less bureaucracy, more teaching, and more flexibility given to boards of trustees. One situation that came up, which is quite ludicrous when one thinks about it, was of a school that was being closed or had chosen to close but had to have an election at a given period of time. It was a very interesting situation.

I believe that this bill will make a significant difference, as every other bill does that goes into the Education and Science Committee. I take this opportunity to acknowledge the fine leadership of the chairman, Allan Peachey, and also the wisdom of a former Minister of Education, Trevor Mallard, who articulated some of the sentiments and some of the realism. However, this Government sees that this bill will set us up to better implement national standards in literacy and numeracy. This bill will help us focus on teaching. It will help the boards of trustees and principals to implement the assessments in conjunction with national standards. It is sad that we had 9 years of failure by Labour and that it continues in a state of denial in terms of becoming obstructive and encouraging poor teaching practice. It is my pleasure to commend this bill to the House.

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) Link to this

I will start off where my colleague Trevor Mallard finished by saying that I do not think the Education Amendment Bill will do anything to raise achievement. What we are looking at here are things that are outside the classroom, such as police vetting of contractors and the registration of teachers. When we talk about education, we need to talk about what raises achievement, and we need to focus on the end of the spectrum that concerns the interaction between the teacher and the student. If we are to make a difference in terms of raising achievement, if we are to make a difference to education in New Zealand, we need to be talking about the interaction between teachers and children, because that is the point where learning occurs.

I support the amendment relating to the police-vetting system. When I was a principal, if I needed a staff member vetted, I would send off an application form to the Teachers Council, which would send it to the police. This amendment takes out the middle person, so that the vetting form goes straight to the police and back to the school. That is a sensible idea. It does not in any way change the workload of the people in the school, because the vetting form still needs to be filled out, folded, put in a stamped envelope, and posted off. I was lucky enough to have an administration officer who did that work for me. Not all schools have that; it often comes down to the principal having to do that sort of menial work, for want of a better description. This amendment will not actually decrease the workload of people in schools, but it does streamline the system, and I have no problems with that.

I do have problems, though, with people working inside schools not being police vetted, even if they are working outside normal school hours. Most people say those hours are 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and teachers do not disagree with that entirely. In respect of contractors such as cleaners not being police vetted, I have told the House about the experience I had up north where 100 upstanding members of the community were identified as mentors by a social worker. That social worker was going to get those 100 people to mentor 100 kids. As an afterthought, she thought she had better get those people police-vetted to see whether they had a criminal record. She was expecting maybe three, four, or half a dozen people to have criminal records, but she found that 78 of those 100 possible mentors actually had criminal records for violence. Those 78 people out of 100 could be cleaners in schools, or could apply for cleaning jobs in schools. We do not know whether people have criminal records just by looking at them. I think we really need to be careful that we ensure the safety of kids by making sure that anybody who works at a school is vetted by the police.

I agree with Trevor Mallard about the removal of the part of the bill that states that bodies corporate can take over the role of commissioners or limited statutory managers. I think that if a commissioner or a limited statutory manager comes in, we need to have someone with whom the buck stops. It would be very difficult to say that the buck stops with a group of people, who may change over time; they may be voted off, move on, go into retirement, or whatever. There is a lack of stability in terms of the people who are commissioners or limited statutory managers. So I think it is a good move that that part of the bill was taken out.

I was a bit concerned, though, that the parts of Labour’s Education Amendment Bill (No 3) that made really good sense have not been included in this bill. In particular, I refer to the part that required principals to ensure that their schools provided advice and guidance on career choices and pathways. I think that is a really important aspect of schooling, and it needs to be offered to students from an early age. Kids should at least be made to think about what they are going to do in life. That will influence their subject choice as they go through the schooling system. It is really easy for that to occur in schools, in that it is easy for teachers to include in any subject or study they are doing—for example, a beach study—a bit of discussion or talk about career options that relate to the study. In respect of the beach, they could talk about being a commercial fisherman, a Department of Conservation worker, a tourism operator—because there are many opportunities for careers in tourism to do with the beach—or a fisheries officer. There is a lot that could be done, and I think it was silly not to expressly state that in the bill, because kids need to have all the options from a very early age. It is very simple for teachers to include that sort of information in any study that they are doing.

It was also explicit in Labour’s Education Amendment Bill (No 3) that the performance of principals be managed and monitored by their board of trustees. That measure should also be part of this bill. I think it is really important that principals are held to account by their boards of trustees. After all, the boards of trustees represent their community. It should also be made explicit that teachers’ performance should be monitored and goals should be set. Not including those provisions undermines the Government’s aim of having the highest possible standards in education.

Another part that has not been included in this amendment bill is the provision ensuring the enrolment at school of all persons entitled to be enrolled. It makes a mockery of the issue of truancy if 30,000 students are truant every day, but it is not explicit in legislation that the principal is to ensure that they are enrolled. Supposedly, an army of kids do not turn up to school each day, but if it is not explicit that the school has to enrol all persons entitled to be enrolled, that makes a nonsense of the issue of truancy. We have to make sure that all kids are at school if they are meant to be at school.

Actively managing and reporting on a school’s performance and the aims and objectives set out in the school charter is something else that has not been included. Labour’s Education Amendment Bill (No 3) included that provision, but it is not explicit in this bill. The school charter is an agreement between the school, the community, and the Government as to the school’s aims and objectives. It is really important that those aims and objectives are reported to the community in an open manner so that the community can hold the school to account. It is quite interesting that a number of people live under the misconception that schools are not actually held to account, but they are held to account every day by their community. Teachers are held to account by principals and by boards of trustees. It should be kept that way, and that should be explicit in this bill.

Clause 15 of the Education Amendment Bill amends section 35A. It provides that private schools are treated the same as other schools. I go back to what I was saying last night: it would be really cool if State schools were treated the same as private schools in that State schools could choose whether to implement national standards. With that, thank you.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) Link to this

Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Green Party has taken an interest in the Education Amendment Bill and will be voting against it. We have no major problems with the parts of the bill that many people have discussed here in the House today. In particular, we have no problem with the issues around the police vetting of home educators and home-care workers, or with the issues around information matching for the Teachers Council. We do not take issue with those issues, and we feel that they were well improved by the work of the Education and Science Committee. We are consistent supporters of legislation that rationalises things in a common-sense manner, particularly around the issue of vetting tradespeople in relation to their work inside school communities. I would agree with those speakers who said this was a delicate matter and it is difficult to strike the right balance. But it is important these issues are addressed, and this bill goes some way towards addressing them. The same applies to the issues of the registration and fair management of teachers.

But we have some concerns about what have been called minor changes in the bill and what other people feel were non-issues. Perhaps our role in this Parliament, like that of the Māori Party, may sometimes be to raise issues that other people consider to be non-issues, because we have a broader vision that requires us to look at the underlying ideological issues, at what is missed out on in the so-called minor changes, and at what is not being addressed in the so-called technical bills that are sometimes put through this House with a great deal of rhetoric about their ordinariness. We do not feel at all comfortable about the increasing trend that is signalled in this bill around the change of governance of schools by their boards of trustees. And we do not feel comfortable about an increasing trend towards public-private partnerships and corporate control over the governance and management of the public school system. We do not celebrate the future possibility of having a wonderfully flexible “Pepsi-Cola High School”, or any other future manifestation of the privatisation of the public system or of school funding and management.

We are well aware that some of the clauses relating to the combining of boards or to the appointment of a corporate body with an accountable individual manager, which is what we were debating in the select committee, would seem to be inoffensive. The parties, apart from the Greens, were debating the issue of requiring there to be an accountable person; that is what they were debating. But our challenge was around the concept of corporate management. We had a very lively debate on the meaning of those clauses in the select committee, and the Green Party remains unconvinced by the claims of other parties that schools already have this kind of management and everything is fine. We are concerned about any further privatisation in that environment, and we may have to stand firm and alone in our rejection of this bill.

The regulatory impact statement claims that this bill is just a technical tidy-up. However, it is interesting to see who attended the select committee. We had submissions from the former member of this House Liz Gordon, from the Quality Public Education Coalition. She made submissions opposing the combining of boards of trustees and also on the issue of appointing a body corporate whether or not there is an individual who is made accountable for it. That organisation had concerns about that. Although we may stand alone in this House, we are not alone in the community; educators are also stating their concerns about these underlying issues.

We agree with some of the points made by the previous speakers for Labour about Labour’s original amendment and how it added clarity regarding the responsibilities of members of boards of trustees around issues such as enrolment. It is regrettable that those things are not in this bill—although that is not the primary reason why we are opposing it. Like the Quality Public Education Coalition, we believe that it is important to look at boards of trustees in relation to their communities, and we are also concerned that these corporate bodies, whether they are accountable to an individual or not, are not required to have a strong and proven educational background. Although I am sure some of them do have that, they are not required to, but presumably they are required to be efficient business managers. That is not actually what they should be; a school is not a business.

There are two issues that we would pursue around the combining of boards and the management of schools. We think that the Tomorrow’s Schools policy needs to go through a review process, but not in terms of the underlying issues that are in this bill. Tomorrow’s Schools was introduced, supposedly, to give communities more control. Tomorrow’s Schools, in retrospect, can also be seen to have been a clever way to impose costs and burdens on boards of trustees, parents, and teachers under the guise of greater community direction. Of course, that works well for wealthy school boards, with accountants, lawyers, and financial managers volunteering from the parent pool. But it imposes huge burdens and stresses on impoverished communities, some communities in rural areas, and communities where the English language—let alone English bureaucracy and fund-raising skills—are not dominant paradigms. I am speaking from experience here as a member of a school board of trustees. If we are to talk about combining school boards, although it sounds very logical to pool skills, we also, as Liz Gordon pointed out at the select committee, need to think about the integrity of the community and the access of local people to relationships—even though, as I am saying, Tomorrow’s Schools is not perfect. But just because Tomorrow’s Schools does need to be reviewed, that does not mean we should bring in combined school boards and corporate managers. We do not believe in that, and we would like to see Tomorrow’s Schools become much more about the participation of parents and communities without the unfair imposition of ideas like bulk funding and an increase in the social inequities that the current system has already started to open up.

Although there were not a large number of submissions on this bill, there was an underlying concern from some of the submitters about communities being able to exercise real control if boards of trustees were combined, and there was concern about the resources that less wealthy communities have at their disposal. So, like us, some of the submitters were concerned about the body corporate model. I do not feel that the issue was resolved by the negotiations at the select committee about having an individual who is to be made accountable, because individuals can bring with them the ideology of their communities or of their corporate bodies, and that is where we are expressing strong concern. The public funding of schools and a commitment to schools being more than businesses are fundamental, and that needs to be expressed in all the legislation relating to education that comes before this House. The commitment to schools being more than businesses and standing for education for its own sake remains an absolutely central part of the Green Party’s policy towards the education system.

So despite the technical matters that we do support, we stand to oppose this bill on that basis. We stand to support the people who have made submissions to the select committee asking us, alone in this House, to stand up for public education at all times and to recognise at all times that the corporatisation of education will not benefit our nation or our children. Kia ora.

RAHUI KATENE (Māori Party—Te Tai Tonga) Link to this

The issues affecting the educational horizons of our young people are of the utmost priority to the Māori Party, so when the Education Amendment Bill appeared on the Order Paper today I was pleased that I would have an avenue to talk about the pressing educational issues impacting on the good people of Te Tai Tonga. If ever there was a need for educational amendments, they would be around the availability of Māori medium immersion education and bilingual educational options and their accessibility to the whānau of Te Wai Pounamu. In Marlborough recently we saw the closure of bilingual units at Whitney Street School and at Bohally Intermediate. In reflecting on their loss, former bilingual unit teacher Nan Kahu Chadwick noted that the unit had been able to teach the students “who they are, where they come from, and give them a sense of belonging”. It seems to me that this could have come directly from Ka Hikitia—Managing for Success, the Māori education strategy, which is meant to be about transforming the way the education system performs for and with Māori.

Of course, it is not just the closure of bilingual units that concerns us; it is the transition for those who have been forced to leave such units and start again. The catastrophic way in which former students of Aorangi School in Christchurch have been treated stands out in my mind. In today’s Press the principal of Burnside Primary School, Matt Bateman, describes the “stress on us all” from not having classroom space for a bilingual unit nor enough time for the transition. Former Aorangi pupils have been receiving bilingual lessons in the school hall for nearly a term. I listened carefully to the Minister of Education during question time today when responding to the questions of my colleague Te Ururoa Flavell. The Minister was asked directly about the level of commitment from the Government to fulfil the requirements of the new curriculum that all students will have the opportunity to acquire knowledge of te reo Māori me ōna tikanga. Is being shunted into the school hall the evidence of that commitment? This Education Amendment Bill has avoided the ideal opportunity to address the issues impacting on bilingual provision in the South Island.

While on the topic of Christchurch I will mention the crisis situation occurring in Aranui where the school has been providing breakfast for 110 children every day, but has been forced to end that because it has run out of donations of food. The trouble is that the essential problem that created the need for the breakfast club in the first place remains. Food poverty—the fact that children turn up without breakfast, hungry and unable to concentrate—is a key determinant impacting on educational opportunities for our young students.

These are just some of the key issues occurring in my electorate, and, no doubt, in many electorates around Aotearoa. If the truth be known, they are the persistent problems that make it hard for kids to be at school, hard for teachers to teach, and hard for schools to succeed. The issues around information matching and whether the fee for police vetting should be $10 or $15 simply do not measure up here. Notwithstanding these concerns, the Māori Party will support this bill today, because we see it as, effectively, a tidy-up bill that addresses a host of issues raised in the last few years. The provisions around information matching are relatively straightforward. We are told that the Ministry of Education is aware that there are unregistered teachers by the simple process of deduction: there are more teachers on the payroll than there are registered and authorised. So clearly it is simple for an information-matching programme be set up between the Teachers Council register and the Ministry of Education payroll database. We support the intention of the bill to have only registered teachers teaching, and, of course, we also support that provision to ensure that our children are at all times safe and protected from harm. This is where the police vetting issues come in. We always believe that it is of paramount importance that we do what we can to invest in the well-being and quality education of all students, whether by the provision of bilingual units or by helping out at breakfast time. This bill will improve the requirement around police vetting of non-teaching staff.

One of the things that this bill does is change the threshold for police vetting of contractors and their employees to just those who may be likely to have unsupervised access to children during opening hours. The goal in mind is to put in place procedures by which the police vet only those non-teaching staff for whom it is necessary to do so. I know that this change is one that the New Zealand School Trustees Association particularly welcomed, in that it now means that parents and whānau acting as parent helpers on school premises will not be affected by the police vetting clause.

While we are talking about school trustees I want to raise the concerns that we share with the Green Party around the new powers to appoint corporates as statutory managers or commissioners of schools. Many of our kura tell us that one of the awesome things about the Tomorrow’s Schools policy is the chance to have a shot at running their own school themselves. It is about supporting schools to determine their own solutions. It is about empowering whānau. It is about Whānau Ora. The fear that we have with putting the decision in the hand of the Minister is that the chances are that the schools that are picked will be the ones where the board comprises members who may be from communities that lack the specialist capacities inherent in the accountancy or legal fraternity. Chances are that these communities will be low-income and high-deprivation, and probably many of the people in these communities will be Māori and Pasifika. The introduction of a body corporate or corporate management model for schools may result in our communities losing their unique ownership of their kura. We are concerned that in the process of the school going into the transition of coming under management by a commissioner, or a limited statutory manager, communities will feel alienated and dislocated from schools—and we could never support that. I would hate to see “McDonald’s Aranui School” anywhere in the country.

This is only the second reading of this bill so there is, we hope, every chance of changes being made to encourage and enhance community confidence in boards of trustees. While we are at it, perhaps the Minister could also look at addressing the issues around the implementation of Te Kōtahitanga throughout Te Wai Pounamu. We will support this bill at the second reading, and we look forward to some of the unresolved issues being addressed.

LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) Link to this

It is clear that education is a major priority for this Government. We want to lift achievement in our schools, as well as build opportunities for all of our young people. I am pleased to support the Education Amendment Bill in its second reading.

I will focus on the bill, unlike some of the previous speakers who talked about what Labour would like to have had if it were still in Government. I say to those members: “Sorry guys; you’re not.” I will talk about what is actually in this bill and the work that has been undertaken, so let us take the focus back to that.

It is great to have a bill that Labour is supporting, as well as the Māori Party. There was a good process in the Education and Science Committee, and changes have been made to the bill since the first reading to bring it to where it is now. My thanks go to my fellow members of the Education and Science Committee. A smaller number of submitters and officials were working on the bill on our behalf.

I think it is worth taking people back to what this bill is about. It amends the Education Act 1989. The bill has two focuses. The first is the information matching between the New Zealand Teachers Council and the Ministry of Education to identify those teachers in schools without registration. The second is to reduce the compliance costs of police vetting.

I will talk for a moment about the police-vetting side of the bill. Obviously, anything that we can do to reduce unnecessary compliance costs in schools is vital. We want to make sure that every dollar that goes into education is focused on lifting student achievement, and where we can make improvements and efficiencies in other areas, we will. Schools and early childhood centres will have to request a police-vetting check at least 2 weeks before non-teaching staff start work instead of before the staff start at the school. That is to make sure that the school avoids any delays that could occur with the police. The police-vetting checks will not have to be renewed for staff who are no longer employed by the school or early childhood education centre, or if the person’s circumstances have changed.

Another important part of the bill is that household members of home-based early childhood centres or services, aged 17 or older, will need to have a police-vetting check. This will bring consistency to the vetting process and ensure that minimum standards are in place across the sector. Home-based early childhood services are growing; I for one had my own children in home-based care. So it is really important that police vetting is undertaken for those who are older than 17 who are in the household, to make sure that the children in those services are safe. Schools and early childhood services will need to apply for a police vetting within 4 weeks of the bill coming into force, to ensure that they avoid being held up by any delays with the police.

In terms of school governance, unfortunately some rather misleading statements have been made in the second reading debate about the intention of some of the improvements to school governance. A single person can be appointed as a limited statutory manager or commissioner on behalf of a body corporate. An example of a body corporate is a board of trustees. So, no, we are not talking about McDonald’s; we are talking about a group such as a board of trustees. That change was made in relation to concerns that a body corporate could impair accountability. There was quite a robust discussion about this in the select committee process. I guess that is exactly what select committees are for—to debate the issues that the submitters raise, and to come to some agreement across the committee.

Those changes mean that the Minister of Education will be able to split one or more schools from a combined establishment board. That provision could be used in a situation where an establishment board is used, for example, to set up two schools and one is ready to open before the other. The new school board could be set up from the establishment board while the latter still exists.

The second focus of the bill was, of course, the information-matching programme, which we have heard quite a bit on already. I will not focus on that too much, other than to say that it is vital that the information from the Teachers Council and the Ministry of Education is matched as closely as possible so that we do not have a situation where teachers who do not have registration are still in front of our students.

This is important legislation. This is a National bill, not the one that Labour would like to have had. But it is good to see that we agree on what we are putting forward, so I am appreciative of the Labour Opposition for its support for this bill.

This Government wants to ensure that our education is world class, that our system of education is the best that it can be, and that in our New Zealand schools we have the best teachers, the best students, and the best schools. The changes in this bill relating to the National Certificate of Educational Achievement and Education Review Office reviews for private schools, and some of those other smaller changes, recognise that. Those changes also have an emphasis on helping those who are struggling.

A struggle that we are all aware of is making sure that we have a better outcome than the one in five of our children who are failing in school. The National Government is committed to ensuring that our children are taught by registered teachers, and that schools do not have to deal with unnecessary bureaucracy but can focus on lifting students’ achievement. I am delighted to support this bill.

DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) Link to this

It is my pleasure to support the Education Amendment Bill in its second reading. It is always curious to me when other parties in the House say that they support excellence in education; it is almost as if it is a novel thing to do. All of us here in Parliament support excellence in education.

I am not so sure that this particular bill will enhance educational standards dramatically. In some ways, what is not in the bill is perhaps more important than what is in the bill. This bill really tightens up the scrutiny around who can be close to our children and who can be around our children. I think it will give parents—like me, for example—added confidence that our kids will be in school and will be safe, and that the people who will be around them, even though they will not necessarily come into contact with our children in the course of their formal teaching duties, will at least have been vetted. For that reason this bill is important, and it is worthwhile supporting. It will also, as many other speakers have said, tighten up the registration of teachers. When there are more teachers on the salary roll than there are registered teachers, one realises that a number of teachers out there are in fact not registered, and I think it is important to take that into account.

Much has been made of the fact that this bill is really a modification of Labour’s bill, the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) of September 2008, and that is the reason for the degree of cooperation across the House to make sure that this bill is in a form that both sides can be happy with.

I mentioned when I began that I think one of the issues about this bill is not so much what is in it as what has been dropped out of it. I will raise two particular issues. The first, which Kelvin Davis mentioned as well, is the issue of career guidance, and obligating schools to have that service in place for students. There is probably no more important time, certainly in the last generation, for that sort of service to be offered to students. It is not in the bill; it was dropped from Labour’s 2008 bill. I want to speak on it because we have a 7.3 percent unemployment rate, and one in five young people are out of work, so right now one of the most important things is that we have an education system that caters for children and that caters for students, to ensure that they are able to match their qualifications with the market place.

A number of other elements were not put in the bill. One, which I thought would have been supported, as it went some way to promote and encourage a better education system—a system, as I said before, that all parties seem to want to support—was to promote a school environment that supported the highest standards of educational achievement for all students by actively managing and monitoring the performance of the principal. That provision did not make it into this bill, nor did a provision to ensure that the performance of the school’s other staff was actively managed and monitored. I thought the Government would have liked to include in the bill those issues about quality and standards, particularly as it believes that its national standards, as we have heard time and time again every day in the House, are supposed to deliver the excellence that everybody wants.

I have a question; I will just touch on this topic. My children went to British schools that had national standards, and my children were tested in maths, English, and science. It is interesting that they were tested in science, because it seems to have dropped off the table here. In an era when growing science, research and development, and innovation is probably the most important thing we can do in order to lift our prosperity, we have dropped science as one of the critical issues this Government believes that we should be testing. But the broader point is that all my kids did under the British school curriculum was get tested on English, maths, and science. At the end of that year they knew how to pass tests, but they did not really have a much better understanding of what they were doing more broadly in the education system. The following year that was borne out, because the standards in many other areas—like history, geography, and many other areas that reinforced the very skills they needed to learn—were dropped.

What is interesting for me about national standards—and I taught for a short period of time—is that as a teacher—

HEKIA PARATA (National) Link to this

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Huri noa tō tātou Whare i tēnei ahiahi, tēnā tātou katoa. I am pleased to stand and take a short call on the second reading of the Education Amendment Bill. I think this bill is being somewhat underestimated by Opposition members, notwithstanding their statement that they are supporting it. The bill reflects a couple of key tenets of this National Government: first, the importance and the criticality of education, not only to the students themselves, to their school, and to their community but also to the long-term sustainability of New Zealand; and, secondly, our very keen interest in the reduction of compliance costs. This bill delivers on both those concerns and interests of this National Government.

There are a number of important elements in this bill. Yes, I think a previous speaker said that this was kind of a tidy-up bill, and those kinds of bills are very important every now and again. The speakers this afternoon have talked about the two main emphases within this bill, on police vetting and information matching, so I will rehearse to members the list of other elements where this bill cleans up and helps with the reduction of compliance costs, which this Government is concerned about. Then I will return to the criticality of education and to how the amendments in this bill contribute to raising the quality of education, which we are united in this House in being committed to.

The bill also contains a number of other changes. I am mindful that this is the second reading, or I might treat the House to a far more high-flying speech, but given that we have been reminded thus far—

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour) Link to this

I take this opportunity to speak for a short time on the Education Amendment Bill. I was not on the Education and Science Committee, but I acknowledge the wisdom of that select committee. Reading through the notes, I see that clearly some changes were made that improved the bill, and I acknowledge the efforts of all members present at the select committee.

Labour supports the bill. It is effectively an evolution of Labour’s Education Amendment Bill (No 3), but with some omissions; I will speak to those omissions shortly. I am sure it is a huge blow for some members on the other side of the House. Mr Joyce in particular would have been hugely disappointed that the wisdom of the select committee removed the ability for corporates to step in when there are problems with a school. I guess it endorsed what is current Government policy around individual responsibility. The select committee, in its collective wisdom, decided that, should there be problems at a school, an individual should be responsible rather than some corporate stepping in and taking over. Of course, I know that his long-term agenda, and that of the National Government, is to corporatise schools and all their property. Thankfully, the select committee stepped in.

Labour supports the bill for another good, sound reason. I have just been reading an article called “Animal welfare: whose responsibility is it?”. I then ask about children’s welfare—whose responsibility is it? It is the Government’s. It is our collective responsibility. Whether it is animal welfare, law and order, or biosecurity, we should always support legislation in this House that provides good guidance. In recent times we have seen—I am ensuring that I reference back to the bill, as I always will—that penalties have been increased across the board with the belief that it will improve behaviour. If the Government had taken a consistent approach with this legislation, it would have doubled the penalties for anyone who inappropriately interfered with a child or did not ensure that high standards of education were carried out at a school, thus ensuring that we get the best outcome. That is dumb. That is what the Government did in the areas of biosecurity, animal welfare, and law and order.

Quite rightfully, this bill, because it is an evolution of Labour’s own bill, puts in place some preventive measures. These measures provide the ability to deal with the sad reality that we have in this country, which is that not everyone who wants to be part of our education system is actually there for the welfare and the benefit of the children. Some people—and we have seen them—need to be checked before they get into the education system. This bill makes some improvements in that area. The schools can go directly to the police—and I am sure that that process will not be abused; we hope it will not be—for the right reasons: to ensure that the people coming into their schools are not potentially harmful or will not carry out any harmful acts against the children. It is a sad reality but we need to be aware of it.

I was also pleased to hear the National Government members spouting on about the wonderful benefits of teacher registration. I remember that same party objecting to registration of people in the early childhood sector. Those members absolutely objected and said there was no value whatsoever in it. This bill upholds the value of registration of teachers in the education system, and that is great. I wish that the National members would reflect back on some of the idiotic things they said about the registration of early childhood teachers that we were promoting, which we knew was of value to the early childhood education system. The National members when in opposition were absolutely opposed to it. Well, they have done another U-turn. That is great, because it will benefit the children of this country.

I will not talk for too long, but I will say that the bill is not as good as it could have been. It removed from Labour’s Education Amendment Bill (No 3) some key provisions that the Government talks about but does not always follow through. What we had in the original bill that the Government picked up—

JO GOODHEW (National—Rangitata) Link to this

I am very pleased to rise in the second reading of the Education Amendment Bill to take a very brief call. I was happy to be on the Education and Science Committee that progressed this bill.

It disappoints me this afternoon that we have not been able to celebrate the fact that we are all on the same page in terms of how we are voting on this bill. The select committee process was quite straightforward, and we came to an agreement on the best way to progress the bill. I am disappointed at the way the debate has gone this afternoon in terms of members picking up on petty, nit-picky, extraordinary little bits that have nothing to do with the bill. For members to talk about failure of the committee to achieve what we set out to do, or certainly what the National members set out to do, is quite wrong. The committee members worked quite well together. We had robust discussion. We closed submissions back in June last year. We considered 10 submissions and heard only seven.

New Zealanders are welcoming this bill. There are important changes that improve the safety of our students in the classroom and also of those who are learning out in the community. I think New Zealanders will welcome this Education Amendment Bill. It is such a shame that sometimes politics gets in the way of our just getting on with it. I commend this bill to the House in its second reading. I think it is certainly time to move it forward.