Education Amendment Bill (No 3)

Hon CHRIS CARTER (Minister of Education) Link to this

I move, That the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) be considered by the Education and Science Committee. This bill does two important things. It implements a number of policy changes to improve accountability for student attendance and engagement at school and to make early childhood education services and schools safer for children and students.

The Government wants to support young people to stay in school, complete their qualifications, and identify the opportunities available to them once they leave school. This bill underpins this focus by making school responsibilities for managing student attendance more explicit. It sets out the minimum steps that a school board of trustees must ensure are taken to ensure school attendance, including taking action when students are absent without reason or justification. More and more, schools are searching for opportunities to provide individual learning programmes for their students and to link them with potential destinations beyond school. The $40 million Schools Plus package, announced by the Prime Minister at Massey High School last week, enables schools to offer new options for secondary students in 2009, with further decisions to be announced next year as we further develop Schools Plus. The bill also ensures that students get good guidance on career choices and pathways. Students will stay at school until at least the age of 16, and boards of trustees will get greater clarity about their roles and responsibilities.

The bill also strengthens students’ safety in early childhood education services and schools. New measures will improve and streamline the current provisions for police vetting of all non-teaching staff, contractors, and volunteers who may have unsupervised access to children as part of their role. We are also taking the opportunity to reduce the compliance burden on early childhood services and schools, so instead of applying through the New Zealand Teachers Council for a police vet, early childhood education services and schools will directly apply to the New Zealand Police. The bill also provides for information matching between the Ministry of Education and the New Zealand Teachers Council to identify those who are teaching in schools without registration, and for the Teachers Council Disciplinary Tribunal to suspend teachers for more than the current limit of 3 months, if needed, where potential serious misconduct is being investigated, while the matter is being resolved.

Other amendments in the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) will enhance the effective governance of schools. The timing of boards of trustees elections will be moved from term one, which is the busiest time of the year for schools, to later in the year. Establishment boards will be allowed to establish more than one new school, and the education Minister will have greater discretion to approve alternative constitutions for school boards. Several other measures in the bill are of a remedial nature and correct a number of unintended consequences of the current law, including the retrospective validation following an imperfect change of proprietor in an integrated school and removing the need for an Order in Council to authorise the continuing payment of teachers’ salaries through the central resourcing system. Finally, the bill introduces a small number of technical and minor remedial amendments. These include clarifying certain definitions, validating Crown payments to integrated schools, and correcting drafting errors.

Taken together, the measures contained in the bill serve to strengthen the education system so it can better respond to the different learning aspirations of students and better support improved educational outcomes for all of our students. I commend the first reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) to the House.

ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast) Link to this

I rise to speak on behalf of National to the Education Amendment Bill (No 3). I read in the general policy statement of the explanatory note of the bill, which the Minister of Education, Chris Carter, has just spoken to, that the purpose of the bill is “to enhance student safety in both the early childhood and compulsory sectors; and improve accountability for student attendance and engagement …”. The last sentence of that general policy statement states: “These changes will help to modernise and improve education legislation.” If that is the case, it is a very dark day for education in this country as we know it. It is a very dark day, because, typically, the current Minister has over-inflated exactly what this bill will do.

This bill has no vision whatsoever for education in the 21st century. There is no substance to this bill but a whole lot of rules and regulations. It reflects a socialist agenda reaching out to claw back control from schools and communities and to put in place central control over how our schools are run. In the last week of Parliament we get a bill on education, and, like the Minister, the bill is going nowhere. National is not supporting this Education Amendment Bill (No 3) as introduced to the House.

The Minister stood in this House and said he and Labour want to support young people in school to gain skills and to learn. But the bill and this reheated policy called Schools Plus—which is actually all about the 2002 Mayors Task Force for Jobs policy, which has been pumped up and given a catchy new name—show that this Government has no idea about how to keep and support young people in school so that they can develop some skills and get some qualifications. The bill shows that the Government really does not know what to do. Instead of the Government putting some real support behind the many principals out there who are doing amazing, innovative things with kids, who are enthusiastic, dedicated, and, what is more, very successful, despite the meagre resources that this Government is making available to them, and instead of the Government getting in behind those principals and asking what it can do to help them keep those kids in schools, what do we have? We have a bill that is full of rules and regulations telling those principals exactly what they can do, but, more important, what they cannot do. That is Labour’s answer to everything.

So let us look at what the bill is all about. We have police vetting. That has been dressed up as trying to keep our kids safe in the school environment, and we all want to do that. But because this bill has been rushed into the House without any consultation, to show that this Minister, who has done nothing for 12 months, has finally got off his chuff and done something—

DAIL JONES (NZ First) Link to this

I have read the Education Amendment Bill (No 3), and I can say that the speech that Anne Tolley has just given bears no relationship to what is actually in the bill. The member created a speech, and she has been determined to give it, come what may, at some stage during the latter part of this year. Tonight seemed to be the time to do it. But what she has just said has no relationship to what is in the bill. I am absolutely astonished that the National Party is prepared to allow people who are not vetted to have unsupervised access to young and little children. That is what this member would allow to happen by opposing this bill.

This bill is about the safety of children under 5—student safety in the early childhood and compulsory sectors—and the vetting of the people in charge of those children. The National Party says that anyone can be in charge of those children, regardless of what his or her criminal record may be. Essentially, Anne Tolley is saying that she is not interested in the criminal record of someone who is in charge of a child under 5. She is voting against legislation that says that Parliament wants to make sure people supervising young children are vetted by the police. Surely that is a fundamental point. We do it in every other area of the community; why should we not do it for the early childhood sector?

Of course, the issue in respect of playcentres has to be considered carefully. They have been around for a long time. We know the care and concern that parents have for children in playcentres. But the situation today in New Zealand is unsatisfactory. People with criminal records get involved in these areas for one unsavoury reason, and the National Party is opposing legislation that will ensure that there can be vetting of these people. I really do not believe it, but I guess I have to. That is the level to which the National Party has reduced itself today.

On the question of accountability for student attendance and engagement in the compulsory sector, Anne Tolley goes on and on about truancy levels in schools, and this bill makes a slight adjustment and improvement in this area, yet that National Party member, who is asking for something like this to happen, opposes it now that it is happening, even though in a minor way. How can we win with some people?

ALLAN PEACHEY (National—Tamaki) Link to this

Well, here it is—the Education Amendment Bill (No 3). That is all the Government has to show for 9 years in office, three Ministers, and goodness knows how many Associate Ministers. In the last days of this Parliament and in the dying days of that Government, it has dropped this bill, under urgency, into the House. That alone is good enough reason to oppose the bill, and I say the National Party does oppose it.

I assume that what we heard from New Zealand First’s Mr Jones was his final address in the House. I wish he had told us that earlier; we could have got a bit of a muster for him. But I hope that he will go back, read his Hansard, and just reflect a little on some of the things he actually said. You see, one of the problems with this bill is that it is typical of the Labour Government. It looks back—it looks back. It in no way looks forward to what will be the critical issues in New Zealand education.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) Link to this

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Kia ora tātou e te Whare. The news that broke this morning could not have been more timely, when thinking about the first reading of this Education Amendment Bill (No 3). The nation woke to the news that a police officer ended up hospitalised after a mass brawl between pupils of two Hastings schools. It was not just a playground fight. Hell no, we are talking about an all-in brawl involving, it is said, up to 200 pupils aged between 13 and 15 years old. It has been suggested that the fight had been organised via a text message, and it quickly steamrolled from there.

This incident left two officers injured, according to the newspapers, six students aged between 13 and 15 years old being arrested and charged with disorderly behaviour likely to cause violence, and a 14-year-old appearing before the Youth Court today, charged with assault. The issues of student safety therefore are clearly uppermost in our minds. The issue of student to student violence, however, is not identified in the scope of the bill. The matters of safety in this legislation are focused on non-teaching staff, contractors, and volunteers who may have unsupervised access to children. Students are clearly missing from the list, and, if this morning’s incident is of any value, it may be to ensure that when we talk about safe environments, we make the effort to ensure all are encompassed within this brief.

The bill has a broad focus of enhancing student safety in both the early childhood and compulsory sectors. Measures will be introduced to require police vetting of all people who have unsupervised access to children during the opening hours of early childhood centres and schools. The bill identifies a number of helpful scenarios that show how the regulations will work. A parent who coaches swimming or supervises reading in the school library with no other staff present will be affected by the legislation, but whānau members who go on a camp, who drive the kids to a school trip, or who supervise students with teachers present will not be affected. There seems to be a comprehensive consultation list included in the bill, which we were pleased to see, including the education sector union and Te Kōhanga Reo National Trust. Although these groups were consulted on the statement, we believe the select committee hearings on this bill will be crucial, in terms of testing that this bill has the balance right.

I ask whether students themselves should be included in the legislation, and whether volunteers will withdraw their services, wanting to avoid what Playcentre New Zealand president Marion Pilkington called “the indignity and stigma of a police check.” I ask whether the additional checks will discourage the community from becoming involved in the life of the school, and whether it will create a culture of mistrust, or, alternatively, whether the changes will make parents feel more confident that their child is under safe supervision. We will look forward to hearing the responses of whānau members, volunteers, educationalists, education professionals, managers, and all of those experts in the education sector who care for the well-being of our tamariki, of our children.

The quality of care is an issue that we in the Māori Party are particularly interested in, where the amendments in the bill look to improve accountability for student attendance and engagement in the compulsory sector. We are interested in the intention to ensure students receive good counselling and guidance to assist them in determining career choices and pathways. This is a matter we wholeheartedly endorse in the Māori Party.

We want to make sure that our young people make good decisions about tertiary study or industry training, and that they know the financial impact of the choices they make, but we are unsure that simply amending the principals’ existing duties regarding guidance counselling is all that it will take. Legislative changes are all well and good, but what schools are screaming out for is actual resources and pragmatic investment that will make the difference. It is our policy intention that to improve the choices our young people make, Career Services should be moved to the Ministry of Social Development to work alongside the Ministry of Youth Development, Work and Income, and StudyLink to collectively support the choices young people make. Similarly, with the overarching concerns that relate to attendance and engagement, the Māori Party, from day one of this Parliament, has brought to the fore the crucial need to reward school success and innovation in reducing underachievement and disengagement. In fact, one of my first contributions to the Education and Science Committee was setting up the inquiry into making the schooling system work for every child.

The report on that inquiry, which was tabled in the House in February of this year, revealed data from the Education Review Office that only 44 percent of schools had evidence of improved learning outcomes amongst their Māori students over time. We explored alternative models for Māori education that were benefiting Māori students, including kura kaupapa Māori, Māori boarding schools, designated character schools, and programmes such as Tū Toa, which uses sport and tikanga Māori as a catalyst to improve learning. In fact, a key recommendation in the report was that the schooling system should support worthwhile programmes outside the general stream for Māori.

It is disappointing that in this bill the focus on improving engagement in the compulsory sector appears to ignore the recommendations of the select committee report, instead focusing on technical amendments to monitor absences, or repealing the enrolment exemptions. Although contacting parents and following up on absences is useful, it still does not do anything to address the large-scale system failure to excite and engage students in ways that will engage them and encourage them to stay at school.

Another group of amendments in the bill to identify whether teachers are teaching without a current practicing certificate, or whether schools are illegally employing teachers, is also a bit of a concern. The amendments are introduced to ensure the ministry can keep accurate registration information, and that the Teachers Council is able to keep up with current authorisations. Now, that is all well and good, but, again, I ask whether the technical amendment is the most important variable in determining the quality of the teachers we put in front of our children. If we want to invest in the future of our nation, we must ensure our teachers are culturally competent and professionally capable to inspire our tamariki to a love of learning.

This same emphasis on technical accuracy carries through to the amendments proposed for school boards of trustees. The bill proposes minor amendments to do such things as repeal the requirement for a board to hold an election of trustees on the second Tuesday of May, for goodness’ sake. This is hardly the major issue for my constituents. When they talk about boards of trustees, their concern is not to do with the second Tuesday in May or the third Friday in June. Their focus is on wanting to ensure that schools are accountable as, essentially, community-based organisations. The Māori Party believes the public needs to be provided with much better information on school performance, particularly for Māori and Pacific Island student achievement. We want to ensure that boards of trustees are held accountable for Māori achievement, that Education Review Office reports are made available to whānau, hapū, and iwi, and that schools must disclose achievement statistics to all of their whānau and community. That would surely have all schools lift their standards in their education of Māori and Pacific Island students, but, as we in the Māori Party constantly say, what is good for Māori will be good for the nation.

We will support this bill, as it is a doorway to other important issues that must be discussed if we truly care for the learning outcomes of the next generation.

JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) Link to this

I rise on behalf of United Future to speak to the first reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 3), a bill that my New Zealand First colleague described as largely technical. I take exception to that. It actually has a large amount of quite substantial policy change in it. United Future is happy to support this first reading, because we think the content of the bill traverses a number of issues that should be considered. However, I have to signal that we are unconvinced by some of the solutions this bill seeks to provide. We would like to see some work done on those by the Education and Science Committee, and we hope the bill will return to the House with some of those issues resolved. We feel strongly enough about them to say that if they are not changed, we may have to reconsider our position on the bill.

Let us look at some of our concerns. The first part of the bill talks about introducing improved police vetting to keep both early childhood and compulsory sector educational facilities safer. Now, that sounds very good. However, I have already received, as I think many members will have, letters from Playcentre New Zealand and other groups that have read the wording of this provision and remain unconvinced that it will not be an onerous provision on them. Playcentres that pride themselves on their open-door policy and their open invitation to parents and extended family members to be part of their child’s education may well be disadvantaged if we are not clear that this bill does not capture them in some way. The information-matching provisions will help the Teachers Council make sure that only registered teachers holding current practice certificates are able to teach in our schools. We think this is a good thing, and United Future is largely happy with those provisions.

Around the issues of accountability for student attendance and engagement in compulsory education, we are open-minded about the provisions to clarify the steps a school board of trustees must take when a student is absent without explanation, and also to clarify the principal’s responsibility to ensure students get the guidance and counselling they may need if they are going through a difficult time before jumping to exclude children or stand them down for a period. We have some question marks around repealing the ability of the Secretary for Education to provide enrolment exemptions for 15-year-old students. We would like to know more about that provision, and we will be very interested to see what submitters say to the select committee about this and how it fits into the Government’s announced policy of Schools Plus. Anne Tolley read out a letter about a young girl about to turn 16 who had the opportunity to take up an apprenticeship. If that fits in with what the bill talks about, when it refers to valuing offsite experience as a key criterion to be considered by a board, and if obtaining things such as work experience counts, then it may be OK, but we are really unclear at this stage as to whether this provision will not limit the opportunities for some students in a way that could be unhelpful.

The other thing we find interesting is that any focus on middle schooling seems to be absent from this section of the bill. One of the problems United Future has focused on is that if we look evidentially at when a student is going to disconnect from schooling, lose interest, and possibly become truant, it is often in those emerging adolescent years—years 7 to 10—when students, particularly when they reach secondary school, are not coping well with 50-minute periods, swapping around, and a reduced level of pastoral care from what they were receiving in the primary sector. It can be just too much for some students. We certainly support some of the educationalists’ thinking about middle school students: the need to provide a lot more pastoral care within the high school system and to invest in those students so that fewer of them are disconnecting in the first place. We would love to see whether any submissions are received on this.

On the matter of school boards of trustees, we are unclear as to why there is any advantage to moving away from a set date towards a more flexible arrangement whereby the Minister can determine the date of the election. Maybe there are some benefits that we are unaware of, but it seems a little unusual. However, we are open to being persuaded on that. The amendment in relation to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is a technical amendment to include private schools in the definition of schools that are eligible to be accredited by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.

However, this week United Future has raised an additional concern that we think could fall within the brief of this bill, and we would love the select committee to consider it. Currently the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is not required to accept National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) marks from high schools if the students’ parents have not paid the New Zealand Qualifications Authority fee. It is also unclear whether schools are obliged to hold on to a school leaver’s marks in the hope that somebody will then pay the fee so that the marks can be sent on; and, if they are required to hold on to those marks, for how long. The real risk right now in New Zealand is that there could be literally hundreds and hundreds of New Zealand students who have completed 2 or 3 years of NCEA, and because their parents were unable or unwilling to make that payment, those marks could literally be lost within a short time after they have left school.

We would like to call on the select committee and the Government to consider making it an absolute requirement that all marks are passed on to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and stored there, and if it then chooses not to release those marks officially to students who have not paid their fees, that could be another consideration. But at least let us make sure that all achievement marks—all unit standards that have been achieved by students—are recorded and held in trust for that student, so that he or she can have access to them when that student needs to apply for jobs or for tertiary education. Beyond that, if the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is not going to be required to do this, then the Government needs to give some very clear guidelines to secondary schools as to how long they are to hold on to the information, and even to resource those schools with the storage capacity to hold on to those marks for so many years before they, in the end, disappear into the ether.

The third consideration that United Future would like the select committee to consider on this matter is whether there need to be some flexible payment options for students who want to move on to tertiary education. Could the $75 owed by a student to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority be lumped on to his or her tertiary student bill so that it could be paid with that? Could, for instance, Work and Income be allowed to manage the debt on behalf of such students and subtract it from their parents’ benefit, as it does with other debts, or are those students allowed to have access to their marks and pay off the bill themselves once they get employment? We think that this is a serious problem, and when we talk about the tail of underachievement coming out of New Zealand schools, part of that tail could well be hundreds of students who did get some NCEA units, have got some qualifications, but actually have no way of proving that because the New Zealand Qualifications Authority does not have those marks on record and is unwilling to receive them. United Future would love to see that problem be addressed. We consider it to be a lot more important and a much more urgent need than merely changing the definition of those who are eligible to be accredited by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.

We are very happy to support the first reading of this bill, but there are some serious things we want to see fixed if we are to support it beyond the first reading.

METIRIA TUREI (Green) Link to this

I want to take a very short call on this bill, the Education Amendment Bill (No 3). The Greens will be supporting its referral to a select committee, and I note that the select committee will not be considering it until after the election, so there is some time for its clauses to be looked at by the community and by politicians in the meantime.

The big issue that has arisen for me has been in relation to playcentres and the issues of supervision and police vetting. I understand that this is a very serious concern for playcentres, and I think they are right to be concerned. In our view we do need to look very carefully at balancing the concerns about the impact on playcentres and other centres of police vetting—the costs and the difficulty for, especially, volunteer activity in these centres—against the needs of children to be safe. It is something we need to look at very seriously at the select committee. I do think the select committee needs to address the issues, which is why we are supporting the bill.

There are a lot of other issues in the bill that we are concerned about, but we are concerned about this issue in particular. I support the New Zealand Playcentre Federation in its lobbying of politicians on the issue. We know that it is a serious concern for that organisation. I think there is an interesting discussion about the definition of “unsupervised access to children” in the bill, and in time the select committee will need to look at what that means.

I want to acknowledge the Green Party’s support for the legislation, as well as Playcentre and its very real concerns about the bill, and I want to send the message that the Greens will be taking this issue very seriously.

PAULA BENNETT (National) Link to this

To my mind the best way to describe the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) is that it is the good, the bad, and the ugly, and one starts with the good. The good in the bill has to be around the information-matching programme and the fact that we are finally getting to a stage where the Ministry of Education is talking to the Teachers Council. I have been on the Education and Science Committee for about 20 months now, and I was absolutely astounded to hear that the Teachers Council teachers register was not in sync with the Ministry of Education’s register. That meant that teachers who were not registered were able to teach in schools and actually say that they were registered; when their registration was suspended, obviously the Ministry of Education and the Teachers Council registers were not matching up.

The good part of this bill has to be that finally, after a long period of time, changes are being made. Certainly, in the time I was on the select committee I was astounded to hear from the officials that this sort of stuff was happening. The matter arose over a really serious issue: a teacher had been teaching in a school and there had been some inappropriate behaviour, and it turned out that the teacher was not registered. But no one actually knew; none of the matching that was needed was going on. So if we were looking for the good in this bill, then that would certainly be a small element of what we think is necessary and what we actually need to do.

We then move to the bad—some of this stuff is just incredible. Really, by reading this bill, we are getting the sense that this is not currently happening in schools, and that the only way the current Government has to make it happen is, yet again, to just legislate—legislate, legislate, and overlegislate.

I want to give those who might be reading this debate later or listening to it a little example of what this bill proposes to do. The explanatory note states that the bill is “designed to improve accountability by—specifying the minimum steps that a school board of trustees must ensure are taken in situations of unexplained or unjustified student absence.” Are we saying that right now school boards of trustees and their principals are not stepping up when children are absent from school for an unexplained reason, and are not doing something about it? Instead we should actually talk to those schools and identify where these pretty major problems are. If parents, principals, teachers, and boards of trustees are not addressing truancy and problems with children being away, we actually have more of an issue than a provision in this bill. The only way this Government has to address it is to put it in legislation and cross its fingers, quite frankly.