Education Amendment Bill (No 2)

Hon JOHN CARTER (Minister of Civil Defence) Link to this

I move, That the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time.

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

Labour members supported the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) to go to the Education and Science Committee, but we will not be supporting it from this point on. There are two major reasons for this. Firstly, we became aware that one of the major undertakings given to us by Anne Tolley was incorrect with regard to police checks on people in limited-attendance centres. Secondly, she failed to accept an approach to open up the Teachers Council disciplinary hearings, and desired to continue to hide those teachers who are abusing children. So we will not be supporting this bill to go forward.

However, I think it would be churlish of me not to congratulate the chair of the select committee, Allan Peachey, and all the members of the select committee on the contributions that were made there. I think the chair has an ability to haul together a variety of points of view—those of two ACT members, and those of National, Green and Labour members—and to work, as far as is possible with some of our different philosophies, for the benefit of young people. I think it is fair to say that we have those differences within parties as well as between parties, and there might even be some overlap in some matters.

Much of this bill is pretty much harmless. As I have indicated to the Minister of Education and to the chair of the select committee, I think the whole secondary-tertiary part of this bill is unnecessary. I think it will give us a pile of bureaucracy that we will come to regret later on. It will tie us down in a way that will mean that policy changes and improvements will be hard to make, and I regret that the Minister has chosen to take the advice of people who want to have everything possible written into legislation. I think that is a short-sighted approach on her part. It shows a poor understanding of the way both the education system and Parliament work.

The first and relatively minor point that I will focus on is the change to allow inherited rights to take precedence over local entry to State schools. It is my view that in New Zealand we are an egalitarian society. Some schools have limited places, generally because of geography and the way that populations have grown. Schools have good reputations, and they have to have enrolment schemes. Labour has always been firmly of the view that the people who live close to the school should have preference, and that a zone should be developed. If there are spare places from outside, they should be available by way of ballot. There is a method relating to current and former siblings, and people work through the matter on that basis.

The changes made by this bill state that if a child’s parent attended the school, the child will get access. That provision is intergenerational, so someone could end up having access to a school not because they or their mother or father live or lived in the zone, but because their grandparents lived in the zone. That is the idea of inherited rights to entry to State schools, while other people are excluded. Let me make this point clear; Allan Peachey understands it well. Zoning in zoned schools applies only when there are a limited number of places, and when one person gets in, another person does not. That is the way the system works, and what we are doing here—

ALLAN PEACHEY (National—Tāmaki) Link to this

I begin by acknowledging the opening remarks of the Hon Trevor Mallard, and I thank him for what he had to say. I join him in recognising the work the Education and Science Committee has done on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2), and the work it does generally on education issues. There are huge philosophical and practical differences between some of us on the committee, and certainly between Mr Mallard and me, but what is never in doubt is that both of us, and other members of the committee, have at heart the best interests of children and education in New Zealand. Although we have some very rigorous debates, and we do not always agree, the committee has shown an ability to find pretty broad common ground on a lot of issues. Sure, there are differences over this bill, but the committee members worked very hard to come back with recommendations that were as good as we possibly could make them. I also acknowledge Mr Mallard’s support as the deputy chairperson. He is a very experienced member with a very good grasp of the Standing Orders and procedures—

SUE MORONEY (Labour) Link to this

It is a pleasure to speak in the second reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). I thank the previous speaker, the chairperson of the Education and Science Committee, Allan Peachey. He does a very fine job in the chair. He was right when he said we did have a very strong sense of cooperation on our committee, particularly when the ministry wanted to bring some late information into this amendment bill. Even though we are the Opposition, we felt that these issues were important and appropriate for this bill, so we accorded the Government our agreement to make sure that those issues were addressed.

But we find ourselves debating this bill under urgency. That is kind of ironic, really, because although we were prepared to give the Government the time on the select committee to actually address some issues that came late to the table, we now find that we are using urgency time in Parliament to debate a standard bill that should go through under the normal processes. However, here we are debating it under urgency.

I want to focus on the part of the bill that impacts on the shadow portfolio that I am involved in, early childhood education, because there are substantial changes in relation to the lowering of standards for limited-attendance centres. As I think other members have already said, limited-attendance centres are described in this bill as being the sorts of facilities that we might use when we go to the gym or the shopping centre. They are defined in the bill as being early childhood education settings where children will not be for any longer than 2 hours in 1 day. I think people will imagine the sorts of settings that those places are in. But lowering early childhood education standards for our very vulnerable children is a bit of the theme with this Government:

I will just read from a very, very good submission that the select committee received on this bill on the matter of limited-attendance centres. It was from the Human Rights Commission. I want to read its actual words, because they tell us about the human rights aspects that are under threat with the passing of this bill, which is one of the main reasons why Labour opposes it. The Human Rights Commission said it “is concerned due regard does not appear to have been given to the vulnerability of babies, infants, and young children attending LACs and the steps required to ensure their physical and emotional safety and wellbeing. … The commission understands there is doubt as to whether staff in LACs would be required to undergo a police vetting check.” Of course, these are not its words, but what we found when we closely questioned officials about that is that this bill completely does away with the requirement for police vetting checks for those centres.

The Human Rights Commission said “We welcome the Minister’s reassurance during the Bill’s First Reading that it was not the Bill’s intention to remove police vetting.”, but, of course, we know now that that intention was not followed through. The Human Rights Commission went on to say “We strongly recommend that such checks remain mandatory for any staff member who has unsupervised access to young children and that the Select Committee identifies what measures are necessary to enforce such a requirement.”

There were members of the select committee who did exactly what the Human Rights Commission asked for. They were the members of the Labour Party and of the Green Party, and those issues are detailed in the, I am sad to say, minority reports in the report-back from the select committee. Although the Human Rights Commission asked the entire select committee to identify measures that were necessary to look after vulnerable children, only the Labour Party and the Green Party were determined to make a stand on that issue.

The submission went on to state: “The commission would be concerned if deregulation of LACs reflected any perception that caring for a group of young children is unskilled work with few responsibilities or that it does not require training.” But, of course, that is the view of the National Government, and we know that not only because of this bill but because of its determination to reduce the number of qualified staff in the early childhood education sector right across the board. In the Budget this year one of the largest cuts to any portfolio was to early childhood education, and that cut was meted out in particular to centres that dared to go after the goal that Labour had set when it was previously in Government—having 100 percent of the staff qualified. But John Key and Anne Tolley have said our children in New Zealand do not need or deserve to have 100 percent of the staff qualified. They say the children do not matter and it is good enough for 80 percent of the staff to be qualified.

We see exactly that attitude coming through in this bill. The National members do not understand that those young children are engaged in early childhood education. They see early childhood education as being glorified babysitting. That is why they have taken the knife to qualified teaching staff in early childhood education centres, and it is why they have moved to completely remove any standards and any form of regulation from these limited-attendance centres.

The Human Rights Commission went on to outline the safeguards that it wanted to ensure were in place. It wanted someone who is qualified in first aid to be available at all times. The Government members on the select committee did not see fit to do that. It wanted sufficient staff to be available, including cover for times when a staff member may need to locate a parent urgently. The Government members did not see fit to do that for limited-attendance centres. The Human Rights Commission wanted, as a bare minimum, staff to be aware of relevant child protection and abuse protocols. The Government members would not even agree to that. The last minimum that the Human Rights Commission wanted was for adequate records to be kept so that staff could ensure that children did not attend more than 2 hours a day. The Government members on the select committee could not even agree to that as a very, very basic level of protection for preschool children.

The Human Rights Commission gave a very well-thought-out submission, but unfortunately for the majority of the select committee, the Government members, it fell on completely deaf ears. It fell on completely deaf ears because this Government fundamentally does not believe in the value of early childhood education. Government members do not understand that the commission was in fact saying there is a vulnerability on the part of babies, infants, and young children. They think they do not deserve protection, but parents and families look to the Government for that protection.

I believe that in a country like New Zealand, a country that has always had very high educational standards, when parents drop off their children at a limited-attendance centre in a creche, a gym, or a shopping centre, they will expect some minimum standards to be set for the people who are charged with looking after their children. Parents will expect in a country like New Zealand that the Government has the courage to make sure their children are be safe, and that at the very least there will be police checks and, as my colleague Trevor Mallard said, a line of sight, for example. Those are just some very basic things that ensure the protection of young children when they are away from their parents or their primary caregivers—that is not too much to ask. They are very, very basic standards, but the Government members could not even bring themselves to recommend them.

I do not think it is too extreme to say Government members are potentially leaving these babies, these infants, and these children at the hands of potential sex abusers whom the police already know about. What will the Government’s response be when something happens? I would like to say “if something happens”, but I think my colleague Trevor Mallard is right to say the people who operate in this field will look for these opportunities. They will see this gap, and they will know that they can have access to young children who are unsupervised by their parents, without having to face a police vetting check. I think the Government members should think very seriously about the vulnerability of children and the position that they are putting them in. I really do hope that during the Committee stage we can find that there is some heart on the National benches.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) Link to this

Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker; tēnā koutou katoa. The Green Party is opposing the Education Amendment Bill (No 2), and I am pleased to have the opportunity at its second reading to explain why. I would like to acknowledge the Education and Science Committee, and the committee chair, and all the work that the committee does, but I cannot say that I found this particular bill edifying or coherent. Although it does have some value, the Greens will not be able to support it. This bill is so broad and diverse that the net effect is a strange mixture of the perfectly reasonable and the completely unreasonable. We have waded through this bill with the assistance of the small number of submitters who actually knew what it was about, and the result is as disparate and mediocre as when we started.

So I will begin with talking about what is reasonable in the bill. It is reasonable in Part 1 to provide a legislative framework for the secondary-tertiary programmes. These programmes are not new. There have always been these types of programmes, but there is probably no harm in updating and clarifying them in terms of some of the issues raised; whether or not it is necessary, it is not essentially harmful. I have no problem with issues such as recognising the providers, and the obscure issues that are important—which are not actually obscure—like pastoral care for students of school age. We must remember in debating this bill that the students are school age. We support clarification of the lead provider role.

The secondary-tertiary programme clauses support an existing provision of more options for young people who have an active interest in learning trades while still of school age, and this is a positive and practical development, so we do not have a problem with it. However, there are four main other issues that we have tried to contest, which prevent us from supporting the more reasonable provisions.

Firstly, I would like to speak about limited attendance centres, which have been well covered but there is more to say. The clauses on childcare provision at gyms and shopping mall creches remove the early childhood centre requirements but throw the baby out with the bathwater. Of course creches at malls and gyms are not formal educational establishments, but as the previous Labour speaker, Sue Moroney, pointed out, young children are learning at all times; it is a matter of what they learn and from whom they learn it. We cannot stop them learning and we need to protect them and create environments where that learning will support their well-being. This bill removes all requirements to ensure police vetting of staff, staff-to-child ratios, and health and safety provisions particular to the care of children.

It was said at the committee that there would be health and safety provisions as standard in any gym or shopping mall. Well, we are not talking about adults here. We are talking about the particular care of children. The argument that the parents will be nearby, so there is no need for extra protection, does not ring true. Meanwhile at the other end of the gymnasium or the shopping mall—and some of them are vast, with loud music deafening the ear—an untrained person may be trying to care for someone’s toddler, two 6-year-olds who did not like each other on sight, and a crawling bottle-fed baby, without facilities. I am not saying there should not be a creche at these places, but the public would assume—parents would definitely assume—that there are standards for care and protection. It is a given in a so-called modern civilised society that people’s children will be protected by the State when they enter into any formal environment, that at some level there will be that protection. That is a given that citizens and parents will assume. They will be astonished—any of them who know about this—to realise that the police vetting bottom line is not there.

The only argument that was raised at the Education and Science Committee on the issue by the Government was that parents could choose to use those facilities and would make their own calls about safety. The Green Party does not believe that parents will even know. There is not likely to be a sign outside the creche saying “No Police Vetting Here”; it will not really happen like that. The parents will not know about this law, which removes standards, and we cannot agree with that. We believe that removing the formal education requirement could happen in a sensible way without lowering the standards for safety and making them non-existent in terms of children and babies.

I do wonder how much imagination is needed to figure out what could happen if there are not enough staff or facilities or safety measures, in terms of police vetting for small children. But then, this is not about children, is it? This is about the ideological opposition to standards and regulation, and it is an opportunity—an inappropriate opportunity—to cut those at the expense of families, because the parents will not know, and the staff will not be trained. The children are the people we should be concerned about. So I really fail to understand how we got to this place. It is very bizarre.

The second issue is private school governance. The Law Commission review into private schools made a large number of recommendations, five of which this bill picks up. However, this bill is a missed opportunity. There are some gaps around the information to parents about suspension and expulsion in particular. The Law Commission recommended that there be transparency in terms of the suspension and expulsion policy being available to students and parents in the interest of natural justice and the welfare of children. In recommendation 28 and recommendation 29, the Law Commission has made two clear recommendations on appealing suspension and making disciplinary procedures available to families upon request. These were not included in the bill, so we cannot trumpet this bill as a celebration of the interpreting of the Law Commission’s recommendations. It is not. It has missed out some of these vital things, and this was brought to our attention by a couple of people. It may not be a major issue, on its own it might not have been enough for us to vote against the bill on this, but I can see what the Law Commission is saying in the interests of natural justice.

A more serious issue for the Green Party and a more profound issue is the out-of-zone enrolment priorities. At a recent Victoria University seminar on inequality—in fact, this week—a comment was made that social origins and inheritance matter more in less egalitarian societies. This change to out-of-zone enrolment priorities to offer priority to students of former pupils and children of board members, is simply reinforcing inequity. That might be a tenet of private schools but it does not belong in the public system. We wholeheartedly oppose this principle. Why would we want to increase privilege and inequity and create more power for social origins and inheritance than the ability to attend one’s local school, unless we want a less egalitarian society? If we do, let us come out and say it. Let us come out and say that we do not want egalitarian societies and we do not want public schools available to everybody, and that we want to create inherited privilege. That is fine, that is what the private school system does. But we will fight tooth and nail for the rights of children to go to local schools and we are absolutely opposed to this.

The amendments that came to the select committee late are of great concern to us, and not so much for the content. The amendments were regarding the Teachers Council. We do not have a problem with the annotation of the Teachers Council registers in terms of a teacher’s history, and neither do the unions, but I do have a problem with the process. It was the last days of consideration when these amendments were brought forward. The teachers’ unions and the staff had less than 2 days to consider them and make submissions. It was acknowledged verbally in the committee as a bad process. The issues in these amendments need to be tightened up, and if teacher suspension needs new law, then teachers themselves need to be consulted, and they need to take ownership of those changes. We have enough conflict going on at the moment between the Government and the sector without adding to it. We need good faith, and the teachers’ unions showed a clear willingness to look at the issues raised. They did not have a problem with looking at the issues around suspension, or even the suppression orders, but they did have a problem with being told they had 1 day to consider those issues.

These groups are representative groups. They wanted to go back to their members and talk through these issues, because it vitally affects those members. The issues around suspension and pay affect the daily lives of teachers, and maybe they need to be tightened up, and maybe there is room to improve the ability for hearings to be made more public and for names to be made more public. But we do not give them 1 day to consider it. I have been talking to those unions, and they said to me that they wanted to go back and talk to their members. That is what they do. They do not do Draconian decision-making on behalf of others. They are not the elite who speak on behalf of others. They speak with their members.

Given all of those issues combined, the Green Party is unable to support this bill. The education sector and the Government are in what I consider to be crisis, but we are spending a lot of time talking about things like the small centres where children will not get protection. We are spending a lot of time talking about how to privilege those people who already have an inherited relationship with a school. That is not actually what I thought we would be doing when I joined the select committee. I thought we would be at the heart of the debate, but we are not. In fact, there are a number of very negative things happening in the bill, and for those reasons the Green Party will not be supporting it.

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

I am pleased to stand and speak on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) today. A very interesting assessment of the current state of our education system was made in the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) submission to the Education and Science Committee on the bill. A comment was made by the former Deputy Minister of Education from Ontario, Professor Ben Levin, that when we look at New Zealand education policy, we see “lots of good projects, but no strategy.” They are words that could very well have summed up this bill.

It is a pretty good idea to refund course fees for international students who leave their courses before they are completed, but what about the bigger strategic direction in respect of international education or student fees? Another great idea is to stipulate specific requirements that would enable managers of private schools to be assessed as “fit and proper” for the responsibilities of managing a school. But, again, I ask what strategy is emerging from private schooling.

In Budget 2009, an extra $10 million was announced to supposedly make private schools more affordable, with $2.6 million going into Aspire Scholarships to provide assistance for students from low-income families to attend private schools. But how do we know whether that funding has made a difference? Was it just a nice gift to independent schools? How many Māori families have benefited from that gift? How effective has it been in overcoming the long tail of underachievement and system failure, which is consistently reported in the education sector?

There is also the issue of the removal of early childhood education regulatory requirements for limited-attendance centres. These centres are set up to provide short-term care in places like gyms or shopping malls. Again, it seems a good idea that there should be a different set of standards in place for such short-term centres. The last thing we want to do is make the compliance costs so burdensome that parents are stung by over-the-top fees for what is essentially an hour or two of supervision.

Some parents have it so easy. I remember when I had to go shopping with my five children. We did not have childcare centres there then. I had to take my five children with me, and they screamed around the supermarket and the mall. But now we have shopping malls with childcare centres, and that is a fantastic idea. But we should not make it too burdensome for parents to be able to leave their children there. We are not expecting such centres to provide comprehensive and developmentally appropriate learning opportunities. But on the other hand we do not expect those centres to compromise the health and safety of our precious children. So we take on board the concerns of Te Tari Puna Ora o Aotearoa, the New Zealand Childcare Association, that safety and well-being must not be compromised for short-term gain.

Finally, we come to the project proposed to open up secondary-tertiary programmes. We were interested to see that this project received support from as wide as the Human Rights Commission and the PPTA. The commission said that the experience of the Manukau Institute of Technology in seeking the opportunity to enable a tertiary high school to operate there should be supported in other centres. The PPTA did suggest, however, that the legislation would do well to learn from the successful models of secondary-tertiary partnerships, which have been trialled and positively evaluated to support students into work or further training. It talked about the fact that in most areas industry training organisations, polytechnics, and some private providers have successfully built partnerships that enable students to pursue alternative pathways towards work and further education while still at secondary school.

The Māori Party is willing to support this bill to enable opportunities to enhance education that will result in positive outcomes. But we do return to the question of the proper strategy to really make the difference. In essence, the ideas in this legislation are just tinkering around the edges, leaving the enormity of the problems confronting the education sector untouched. This bill will not make the difference that is desperately needed. Although that does not mean we should vote this bill down, it does mean we will continue to be vigilant in asking the Minister of Education about what she is doing in respect of general schooling and making the gains that we expect to see for Māori children.

The Hon Dr Pita Sharples is working in the area of kaupapa Māori education. He has announced a national review of Māori language education, and is helping to keep a focus on quality and excellence in kaupapa Māori schooling. But the reality is that less than 5 percent of our kids are in kura kaupapa education, leaving the great bulk of Māori children in the general system, in the mainstream. The 2005 annual report on Māori education showed that Māori students in year 11 who attended schools where teaching was in te reo for between 51 and 100 percent of the time had a higher rate of attaining National Certificate of Educational Achievement qualifications than Māori attending other schools. We have known that fact for 5 years, yet it still seems we are doing very little other than Te Kotahitanga to make the difference we need for Māori children to succeed in general schooling.

I have outlined the strategic questions that we expected this bill to cover. But they are not covered. I guess we have to admit that the bill was never set up to answer those questions, but it does not mean to say that the bigger questions should not be asked.

COLIN KING (National—Kaikōura) Link to this

It is a pleasure to rise and speak to the second reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). This bill is another part of this Government’s relentless push towards educational excellence, which is certainly is a priority for this Government. There is a lot of work to be done. We spend $12 billion on behalf of the taxpayer to ensure that all children have access to excellence in education, and we recognise the importance of that money being spent wisely. We do value early childhood education; we spend at least $1.3 billion on it. We have taken approximately $100 million out of the Budget to prioritise increased participation, because we know that there are areas in New Zealand where as many as 24 percent of children are not yet engaging in the very, very important foundation of early childhood education.

I would like to focus on the work the bill addresses. We have heard from members on the other side of the House that secondary-tertiary educational programmes are alive and thriving. I would say that there is a major issue in this area. We have failed miserably. We have focused on, basically, an academic pathway, and we have neglected the better part of 70 percent of hands-on learners in our schools. I believe that the way this bill is structured will empower a level of cooperation. It gives a very clear message about what we expect that relationship to look like.

The reason why it has not happened, as far as I can see, is that there is an issue over where the money goes. It is a real tragedy that when we look at a country that is considered a First World economy, we do not have an abundance of money to be able to spend and prioritise in this particular area. We have to spend it very carefully, because even though we spend $12 billion on education it is spread quite thinly.

Whenever I talk to tertiary providers and colleges, I hear that the colleges are very keen to see some of their children go across into high-quality tertiary education, with hands-on skills that lead to apprenticeships and high-quality trades. But it comes down to a question of where the money goes. I must mention the Manukau Institute of Technology, and Stuart Middleton, who has worked relentlessly on behalf of hands-on learners and who focuses his attention on how he can best do that. I think he will be very satisfied with this.

This Government has really focused on the youth guarantee, which relates to 16 and 17-year-olds. Hands-on learners are fascinated with learning. They have to have opportunities opened up to them where they can engage and get their hands on things. They design, build, and then understand why they must drill a hole in the right space, in respect of measurement and maths. They also have to be able to read and interpret plans and designs.

This bill takes us to another level. The Government has set a goal of starting at least five trades academies by 2011. I encourage everyone in the House to really get behind the initiative, because the biggest destructive aspect in education often is the politics. If we could get rid of the politics and get the cooperation going, we would certainly be doing a lot better.

I want to touch on an issue that is mentioned in Labour’s minority report. It talks about giving people privilege over one another, and it probably illustrates where we in the Government differ from the Opposition. When we turn to the Education Act 1989, we see section 11F, “How to select applicants who live outside home zone”. Subsection (1) states: “The order of priority in which applicants who live outside a school’s home zone are to be offered places at the school is as follows:”. The Opposition was saying that schools will manipulate their zones to exclude certain people and get the people they want. Well, members on this side of the House do not feel that that will be abused. That is a difference between the Government and the Opposition.

This is a very positive bill. It is relentlessly pushing forward to educational excellence, and I am pleased that the Government has had the internal fortitude to really make sure that tertiary education takes centre stage. I have pleasure in commending this bill to the House.

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) Link to this

The main parts of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) have been described by other speakers, but I will run through them quickly. As we have heard, secondary-tertiary programmes are part of this bill. It updates and clarifies the law affecting private schools, it changes the refund provisions for international students enrolled in private training establishments, and it exempts limited-attendance centres from early childhood education licensing standards to make it easier for recreational facilities, shopping centres, and similar organisations to provide short-term childcare. The bill also makes changes to school enrolment scheme priorities to make it easier for the children of board members and former pupils living out-of-zone to attend a school.

Labour will not support this bill because, as Trevor Mallard has said, a number of changes that the Labour members of the Education and Science Committee wanted were not included in it. I was not a member of that committee, but I have my own reasons for believing that this bill will do very little whatsoever to make a difference for the core purpose of education. This bill, in my opinion, tinkers at the margins. It does nothing to address what really needs to be addressed in education in order to improve outcomes for kids and in order to shorten the tail that we hear so much about.

Everybody in this House needs to realise that when it comes to talking about educational policy and educational legislation we need to fix on what will make the biggest difference in raising achievement. We make the biggest difference in raising achievement when we focus on teachers—no, not even on teachers but on teaching. It is not teachers who raise achievement; it is what teachers do that raises achievement. We will not raise achievement until our legislation and our policies send a laser beam down on what teachers do and how we can support them to better do what they do.

The person whom the Government refers to most of all when it wants advice on education policy is Professor John Hattie. He has done his best to create a science out of the art of teaching, and I agree with a lot of what he says. One of the big things that he says in his book Visible Learning is that teachers engage in about 136 strategies, and he makes it easy for us because he lists those strategies in order of what is most effective to what is least effective. He talks about strategies with an effect size of zero. Anything a teacher does with an effect size of zero will have no impact on learning. Of those 136 strategies, about five have an effect size of less than zero. So about five strategies actually make kids dumber. That means that all the other strategies do have a positive impact on student achievement. But there is no point fixating on those strategies that have an effect size just above zero. Professor Hattie says that the strategies we need to use are those that have an effect size of 0.4 or higher, because they are in the top half of the strategies that make a difference. He is not saying that we need to follow those strategies as a recipe and just tick them off; we need to focus our policy on those strategies because they have been proven to make the biggest difference in raising educational achievement.

Rahui Katene mentioned Te Kotahitanga. Te Kotahitanga is about the relationships that teachers have with their students. But on that scale that Professor Hattie talks about, relationships are No. 11. They are the 11th most effective strategy that can be employed. That means there are 10 other strategies or things that we can legislate for and can support teachers to do in their classrooms that will have a bigger impact on educational achievement than the Te Kotahitanga programme. And we all know that Te Kotahitanga is extremely effective.

It is not until this House fixes its educational legislation and its educational policies on those strategies that are proven to make the most difference to raising achievement that we will address the tail of underachievement and lift up everybody. I implore the Minister of Education, when she brings the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) to the House, to make sure that what is included in that bill focuses squarely on those strategies that are proven to be the most effective at raising achievement.

The secondary-tertiary programmes that are being talked about here probably will make a difference, I believe. They may not make a huge difference, but they may make some difference. What the secondary-tertiary programmes are doing is, as Colin King mentioned, providing another pathway for students to learn. They change the context in which they are learning. In themselves, they may not make a difference. It depends, again, on the teachers of the kids in the secondary-tertiary programmes; it is what they do that will make the difference. I think it is good that the Government is thinking along a different context.

I want to bring up something Allan Peachey said in a book he wrote, which I read while I was still a principal. He wrote that New Zealand is scared to allow students to specialise at an early age. I think we could be a bit braver in allowing students to specialise at an earlier age. We have in this bill the secondary-tertiary programmes pathway, and we already have the academic pathway that is going on in schools at the moment, and not all kids are successful at that pathway. We should try to think outside the square and come up with other pathways that students can participate in. One of the pathways that I believe we should look at is, quite simply, the art of teaching kids how to make money, how to use money, how to invest money, how to be entrepreneurs, and how to be enterprising. If students do not want to go off to a technical school or a practical school, or to do the academic stuff, but might want to set up their own business before they leave school, then that is a really worthwhile avenue that we could focus on.

Another strand could be that we allow students to specialise in sports. I am not saying that a sporting academy, for want of a better name, should be any less academically rigorous; it is just about changing the context of those kids’ learning, so that instead of learning in the traditional classroom with fours walls, a whiteboard, and a teacher standing at the front, they are learning in a context based on sports. If we look at the career pathways that that could lead kids into, we see that they could be trained to become All Blacks, or netballers, or rowers, but also sports managers, sports psychologists, personal trainers, physical training instructors, nurses, or doctors. It is all about giving kids a whole heap of options and pathways forward to their futures. We should not think that because we have secondary-tertiary programmes we are catering for all the needs of all the kids. I think we need to be brave and bold, and explore other pathways for children to achieve beyond their potential.

Finally, I am a very concerned about the limited-attendance centres not having to screen employees. It is very dangerous that people can just set up shop as an early childhood centre in a mall or shopping centre and start looking after kids. I think that is a really dangerous thing for us to pursue.

LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) Link to this

I am always proud to speak on education legislation in this House, particularly as part of this Government when the largest amount of money ever is being invested in education. Budget 2010 is investing $12 billion in education because this side of the House recognises that education is so vital for this country, for lifting achievement, and for growing our economy. We recognise that this legislation, the Education Amendment Bill (No 2), covers a number of areas, and I thought I would just cover them briefly and also bring in some practical examples of how these changes will be applied.

The first one is the trades academies, which as part of this bill will be able to function with the flexibility that they need to provide options for people in our high schools. I am sure many members in this House will have been at high school prize-givings in recent weeks. I know they are always a time of celebration when we see how fantastic our young people are and how well they are achieving in a range of topics and subjects such as sports, drama, and academics. This is something that provides further opportunities to make some of the policies we have been elected on come to fruition. We heard a number of speakers talk about the technical changes we made in the select committee, particularly around the New Zealand Teachers Council. I will not spend any more time on that, because I think it has been well covered in this second reading debate.

In terms of the six broad areas, as I said, the introduction of secondary tertiary programmes gives greater opportunities for young people in secondary schools up and down New Zealand to spend time learning in a tertiary environment or in the workplace. This is allowing us to have some flexibility to provide learning opportunities for young people that will better suit their needs. I want to come back and speak in a bit more detail about the exemptions for the limited attendance centres from early childhood education licensing standards, because I think we have heard a bit of dramatisation about what this part is about. It is changing refund provisions for international—[Interruption] It is fascinating to hear the comments that are being thrown across the House.

Let us talk about it now. As a mother with three children, I have had my children placed in early childhood centres, but this is quite different from that. We are talking about someone like me, who perhaps goes to the gym for an hour to hop on the indoor bike, and there is a glass panel over there—my children are not in preschool any more, but they were, not so long ago—that I can see through to my 4-year-old happy child. It is my decision to leave my child there. As a parent, I really like having the opportunity to leave my child in an environment where I am not far away. It gives me the flexibility to undertake some exercise, and we all know, particularly with Diabetes Awareness Week this week, how important it is for parents to be able to engage in exercise and for a gym to be able to offer that as a service.

If I as a mother make a choice to do that, it is my choice as a parent to do that. Therefore, there is some responsibility on me to be comfortable with the environment that I am leaving my children in. I trust parents to be able to make a decision if they want to go to the gym for an hour, to leave their child just over there where they can see them. It is the same with Sunday school. At Sunday School, if I want my children to be looked after for a couple of hours while I am in church, in the building next door, then actually I am quite comfortable with the fact that the person who is with my child or children for perhaps an hour or less—a maximum of 2 hours—will not be teaching them how to read, write, and do maths. I am quite comfortable with the fact that they are going to be looked after, which is very different from the rigour of the regulations that are required for a licensed early childhood centre. So this is about just bringing some common sense back to this sort of area.

I think back to when the present Opposition made this change initially, and I think back to some of the comments, and the horror and disgust and annoyance, from parents because of the overly bureaucratic, nonsensical regulations that that Opposition, when it was in Government, wrapped around a centre like this one—limited attendance. I am pleased I was able to put the record straight on this, because this is another measure that this Government is taking to get rid of stupid bureaucracy—absolutely stupid bureaucracy—and measures that assume that parents do not have the ability to make a decision for their children, and for parents to be able to exercise, perhaps for an hour in the gym, while their children are just there.

What else? The other thing I was really excited about in this bill relates to the member’s bill I put forward—I put it in the ballot—to change enrolment zones for schools. I was very excited when the changing of priorities was brought into this legislation, because it allows for children of board members and former pupils to get some priority in the enrolment schemes. This is important, and it is why I put it into the ballot in the first place, because I recognise that schools have a strong sense of community. I think it is really important for the achievement of children to have some connection to the school they are with, and those connections are often stronger and those bonds are deeper when they have a parent who has been there—obviously siblings are already one of the priorities—and also the pupils of board members. Board members have a strong connection to the school, and it makes sense, in terms of keeping that connection strong, that their children should be given priority to enrol in that school. I am proud of that amendment, which has been put into the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) as a result of a member’s bill that was on the ballot, and adopted to be incorporated into this legislation.

What else does the legislation do? We have talked about the limited-attendance centres. I could speak quite happily for 10 minutes on that subject alone, because I think it is so important. I will come back to a comment that was made earlier in the House about cuts to early childhood education, because I am sick to death of that comment, when I think that—and this is where the maths lesson comes in—an extra $107 million has gone into early childhood education.

DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) Link to this

First of all, I will say a few words on the cooperation that happened at the Education and Science Committee in respect of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). We have voiced some of our real opposition to the bill, but at the select committee itself there was some reasoned and good discussion around the some of the issues. But, ultimately, they went to the Minister of Education and were turned down, and I think that is very sad. I am pleased that the Minister, Anne Tolley, is in the House, because in a minute I will talk about limited-attendance centres, which are an appalling part of this legislation.

This bill is a mixed bag. There is the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. I will go through a couple of the bill’s provisions that are reasonably good. One of them—some members have already spoken about this; Louise Upston talked about it, as well—is the interface between secondary and tertiary. I am not 100 percent sure that this needed to be legislated for in the way that it was. Nevertheless, it does provide some opportunities for kids, particularly as they progress through secondary school, and it helps them transition into tertiary education in a way that will help them and ensure that some them stay at school longer, continue on to acquire more and better skills, and, therefore, move into tertiary education.

New Zealands needs, perhaps more than anything else, well trained and well-educated young people coming into the workforce to upskill it, and this bill will help in that regard. I acknowledge Colin King’s mention of Stuart Middleton, who was a former teacher of mine when I was in the seventh form, and who is still going strong with passion and zeal at the Manukau Institute of Technology.

The bill will enable the Minister to approve a board of trustees, a registered private school, a tertiary institution, or an industry training organisation as a lead provider of a secondary-tertiary programme, and then they can enter into a partnership or an agreement. The agreement or partnership is specified in the legislation. It will help 11 to 13-year-old students in particular to continue on. Some parts of this legislation are useful, but it is basically housekeeping. There is a tightening up in the international education area. Growth in the international education sector happened largely under the Labour Government. It is now a $2 billion industry. It needs to be well legislated for in order to ensure, as this bill does, that there is no waka jumping between various institutions and that the international education arena maintains standards and stability. That is a useful tightening of the legislation and it needed to happen.

Members have spoken about hereditary entitlements to attend schools. I am of the opinion that schools should be of excellent quality no matter where they are, and that if an element of competition is introduced, all that happens is the school that is most favoured—the best school of the day—gets bigger and bigger at the expense of the school down the road. As Mr Peachey knows, that can reverse when there is a change in the economic status of a particular area. When that happens, immediately people start flowing out of that school and into another school, which then gets bigger and bigger, and the first school is left with empty classrooms. It is inefficient in a State education system. What we have at the moment works. Although we do not necessarily agree with the provisions in this bill, it not necessarily something that would cause us to oppose it.

What causes us to oppose it, more than anything else, is the provision that brings in limited-attendance facilities. I will refer to two of best submissions the select committee had on this particular subject. Sue Moroney has mentioned the submission made by the Human Rights Commission. The submission mentions, of course, that the bill proposes to amend section 310(2) of the Education Act 1989 so that the limited-attendance centres would no longer be regulated as early childhood education centres. Labour does not have any problems with the education element of this, but it does have a problem with the lack of safety and care for children.

This is what the Human Rights Commission said: “The Commission understands there is doubt to as to whether staff in LACs would be required to undergo a police vetting check. We welcomed the Minister’s reassurance during the Bill’s First Reading that it was not the Bill’s intention to remove vetting, and we strongly recommended that such checks remain mandatory”. That did not happen. The Human Rights Commission was warning us. We had solid evidence from the Human Rights Commission and the New Zealand Educational Institute, which said more or less the same thing—that it was a cause for worry.

Louise Upston mentioned that she is OK about it because she goes to a gym and her gym has a glass panel. There is no requirement in the legislation for children to be visible from a gym. There are lots of gyms and lots of shopping centres that do not have that facility. The person responsible for the children is not required to have a police check. Would that not be the first thing that we would want to do if we had someone looking after our children? Would we not like to know that that person is not a child abuser? I would like to know that. I would like to think that I could leave my children at a gym and not have to ask about that. I would like to think I would not have to ask whether the person who is looking after my child has been vetted and is OK to look after my child.

Let us look at it another way. Why do we not have a sign outside all of these limited attendance centres saying: “Please note that the Government accepts no responsibility.”? Why do we not have a sign saying: “This person not been vetted for child abuse. This person does not necessarily have a first aid certificate. This person may leave children unattended while they go to the bathroom. This person does not necessarily have any qualifications or any knowledge about children and childcare.”? Let us have a sign outside every limited attendance centre saying that.

This legislation is effectively saying that this Government accepts no responsibility. This bill is an appalling bill. It goes backwards. [Interruption] I say to Louise Upston that it has nothing to do with over-regulation. That is complete nonsense. It has nothing to do with over-regulation, but it has everything to do with the safety of young people in this country. In a country that has some of the highest levels of child abuse in the world, we are enabling child abusers to go into these sorts of centres and wreak havoc. I do not believe that Louise Upston actually wants that to happen, but that is what this bill will do. That is what the Minister of Education is allowing to happen.

When the first instance of child abuse happens, I wonder what the Minister will say. It will be very interesting to hear what the Minister will say. She will say: “It is not my fault. It is the parents’ fault. They knew that nobody there knew how to look after children. The parents knew that nobody there was trained. The parents should have known that nobody there knew anything about first aid.” That is what will happen.

As Mr Mallard said, with this legislation we are opening the doors for child abusers and rapists to be in places like this and to abuse our children. I do not think it is good enough. It is kind of ironic that this Government has also brought in national standards—uselessly, I would argue. My child’s report arrived the other day, under the new national standards reporting facility. It is incomprehensible. I have no idea what it says compared with what it said a year ago—absolutely no idea. The Government is bullying schools to bring in national standards, but it is completely leaving out the most important thing, which is the safety of our children. It is absolutely appalling.

JO GOODHEW (National—Rangitata) Link to this

If ever there was an opportunity to see the philosophical differences between members on that side of the House and members on this side, now is the time. I will not spend a lot of time on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2), because I think a lot of it has been said, but the one thing that I want to finish on is very simply—

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) Link to this

I am slightly surprised to be on my feet and taking a call on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). People who are regular watchers of Parliament will know that Labour has taken up its full number of calls, but the Government—in particular, the Government’s junior partner, the ACT Party—for some bizarre reason has chosen not to take its calls on a bill that you rightly pointed out, Mr Assistant Speaker Roy, is raising a lot of passion and a lot of concern. I think the Government should be taking its full number of calls to explain to the public why this bill is a good bill, to explain why it is urgent, and to explain why putting New Zealand’s children at risk of harm is such a good idea—