Education Amendment Bill

I move, That the Education Amendment Bill be now read a first time. It is my intention to move that the bill be referred to the Education and Science Committee at the conclusion of this reading. This bill is another good example of this Government’s commitment to raising the standard of our education system. Unlike the Opposition, the Government moves with the times. Current education legislation has been amended considerably, and some of it is out of date. This bill starts the process of tidying up and streamlining our education legislation to make it easier to follow and more efficient to implement. It is the first stage in a process to reform and improve the state of education legislation. I expect there will be further legislation in 2006.

The bill has two areas of significant policy change. These are to establish a new regulatory regime in the early childhood education sector and to extend the national student number to both the compulsory and early childhood education sectors. Early childhood education has been a key focus for this Government. We want every child to get the best start in life. Research has shown that those who participate in quality early childhood education are more likely to succeed later in life. The new regulatory regime in early childhood education sets minimum standards that will help us drive up quality.

It also gets rid of ambiguities in the current system of licensing of early childhood education centres, so that it is easier for services to understand what is required of them to meet licensing standards. I see that even in some of our more affluent suburbs, there are problems with getting the categories right in making applications for licences or for discretionary grants. This bill involves a simplification in that area.

Our approach to early childhood education contrasts starkly with that of the Opposition. Dr Brash has already said that he would do away with the policy of 20 hours’ free education per week. He did not say “by lunchtime”, he did say “after the next election”, but I think that one thing is for certain: children will be getting their 20 hours’ free education—and Dr Brash will be gone. [Interruption] Paul Swain will be working to keep our early childhood centres full of children.

💬 Hon Paul Swain: I will be on the pension!

He will be on the pension, and they will be getting their free early childhood education. The thing we know is that after the next election, there will be a change in the spokesperson on education in the Opposition. We think that Bill English will go back to being leader again. Thankfully, though, the chances of Opposition members being involved in setting policy will not happen for a very long time.

The extension of the National Student Number throughout the whole education sector will allow much more efficient collection and collation of information. The National Student Number is already used in the senior secondary school and tertiary sectors to keep students’ academic records, and to ensure the efficient and accurate funding of our education institutions. An offence provision is included for any instance where the National Student Number is misused. The maximum fine is $15,000. Other amendments in the Education Amendment Bill are designed to improve administration efficiency, to transfer and update some sections of the older legislation still in use in the Education Act 1989, and sections that are no longer necessary are repealed. We do need legislation for the 21st century to support an education system that will provide us with the skills and knowledge required to be an effective nation. Legislation needs to be easy to access and to understand. This bill does not totally achieve that, but it is a step in the right direction, and I commend the first reading of the Education Amendment Bill 2004 to the House.

Well, that was a quiet valedictory from that Minister.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Do you want a bet?

No, I would not bet on it. I just hope like anything that we get Steve Maharey. That would be great, we are really looking forward to it! This legislation is quite uncharacteristic of that Minister, in that some of it is useful. Some of it is actually quite good. I do not think that anyone would want to stand in the way of simplifying the regulatory regime for early childhood education.

I just want to draw attention to some of the issues that we will be looking to debate in select committee, when it goes through the detailed provisions of this bill. We support a better regime for early childhood education regulation. It is too complicated at the moment, there are doubled-up requirements, and it is time it was tidied up, but the way this bill approaches it does play with fire. I want to draw some of the risks to the attention of the Minister, as well as to the attention of the House. The Minister may do well to listen to this, regardless of whether he or someone else will see this legislation through.

There are some real lessons from going down a similar path to the path taken in the health sector. What this legislation imagines it will do is focus on outcomes—not health standards prescriptions—to set some very broad principles, and then allow officials to determine by regulation just what the requirements will be for setting up and running an early childhood centre. That is a path we went down with the legislation in the health sector in the mid to late 1990s. I can tell members that there are many potholes on that path. For instance, if we do not have much prescription in the legislation, there is no constraint on officials. What health providers have discovered is that we can end up with more prescriptive regulations, because officials feel free to lay down by regulation anything they like. They have no particular reason to be careful or economic about it. The legislation gives them a free hand. [Interruption] I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think that out of courtesy to the speaker, there is far too much talk, and people have their backs to the speaker and are not sitting down. I just give that final warning.

I would have thought that the Government would have—

💬 Darren Hughes: He’s so washed up, he’s not worth listening to.

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. That was a direct challenge to the ruling you have just made. I take offence at the way the Government members are treating the Speaker in the Chair by turning their backs to her and defying a ruling straight away, and I suggest you ask them to withdraw that interjection.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think that the member is quite right. I ask the member to stand and withdraw.

So I hope the Minister will pay attention to the problems that have been created in health by a regime of the type he is proposing. Also in this bill is a change in the way early childhood education will be funded. The legislation sets off down the path of permitting funding to be related to the type of service and to the cost of that service. I say that this is the bit I am most concerned about, because the legislation allows the Minister a free hand to determine the entitlement of New Zealand children, and we have seen how he is using that free hand at the moment. What the Government should be doing is taking the approach that every New Zealand child has an entitlement to early childhood education. It is not compulsory, so parents are free to choose whether to take up that entitlement.

It is effectively what is in place now, but what this legislation will do is validate the approach the Minister has taken. He has decided he likes some kinds of early childhood centres and does not like others. He will bring in a regime that provides a much more significant entitlement for some New Zealand children than for others. That entitlement will not be determined by the need of the children, the socio-economic status of their parents, social or educational need, or citizenship, but by which childcare centre the parents decide to send their child to—and that, in our current society, is pretty much random. Parents have no particular say or choice over whether they have access to the Minister’s preferred early childhood centres, which are community-led or teacher-led services.

He does not like private providers, so he will use the flexibility in this legislation to determine that children who go to private providers have a lesser entitlement. That is ridiculous, and we will oppose that right through the passage of this bill. We want this legislation to constrain the Minister’s and the bureaucrats’ opportunity to discriminate amongst New Zealand children. I never thought we would need to do that, because I thought all politicians in all parties would have the view that, if someone is 2, 3, or 4 years old, that person cannot be blamed for the ideological predispositions of a Government. Those children should have an entitlement that they can access anywhere, anytime, that is consistent with parents’ choices and preferences about early childhood education. But because of the way the Minister is behaving, as it is discriminatory and unfair, we believe that this Education Amendment Bill will have to be changed to ensure that every child under the age of 5 has a reasonable entitlement to early childhood education, and that every child is treated fairly.

It does not mean the funding has to be exactly the same for every child, but it does mean we want a provision that will prevent significant discrimination on no basis other than the Minister’s personal preferences. We see this exhibited in a story on the front page of the Dominion Post today, where a playcentre in Kelburn was refused funding by this Minister, personally, to repair its playcentre building clad in raw asbestos. If people rub their hands on it, they get asbestos on them. The Minister refused that application for funding at the same time as he funded two centres in his own electorate. One application from his electorate got $70,000 more than it applied for—it got $730,000 instead of $660,000. The Kelburn Playcentre, which applied for only $70,000, the amount of that difference, was turned down. So if he had simply applied fairness to his own electorate, the Kelburn Playcentre could have got the money. The playcentre did not get the money, because the Minister does not like playcentres. He does not like parents collectively providing early childhood education for their own children. That is why there needs to be some constraint in this bill.

I want to refer to a couple of other issues. Clause 29 introduces a new provision to the Act about the intimidation of teachers: every person commits an offence, and is liable for a fine, if he or she intimidates any teacher or member of the staff at a school. I am very worried about this provision. Of course teachers should have the protection of the law in the workplace, the same as any other worker, but bullying has become a fashionable accusation against school principals who demand performance of their staff. This provision is going to be wielded by the Post Primary Teachers Association, in particular, as a threat over any senior management in a school who have expectations of their staff, and that is a step backwards. In fact, that could end up being a huge step backwards and the most significant problem in this legislation, and we will want to examine that very closely. We believe that this provision is far too broad, that it will be a major constraint on the successful management of schools, and that it will have to be changed.

Finally, I want to talk a bit about the National Student Number. We support a National Student Number, but the House needs to bear in mind that this will create data about individual pupils on a scale that has never been possible, or imagined, in New Zealand. The intention of it is that individual pastoral and achievement information can be passed between schools, and between schools and the ministry.

There are many advantages from that, but when we ally it, when we put it alongside the Minister’s strong preference for the asTTle achievement tool, which is all good and quite successful, and the accreditation process for information technology systems in schools, those who have always opposed testing of pupils and the use of that information need to be aware that this amounts to the infrastructure of any kind of testing anyone could possibly imagine. The information will certainly be created and it will be potentially available to anyone at the level of the individual student. We want to make sure that that part of the legislation is also well scrutinised. It will be an offence to misuse it, but the definition of misuse will need a great deal of discussion, because it can be used positively or negatively.

I take this opportunity to extend my support for the bill. The bill’s main feature for me is that it implements the outcomes of the early childhood regulatory review by establishing a new scheme that gets rid of ambiguities in the current system of licensing early childhood education centres. Therefore, it will be easier for early childhood services to understand what is required of them to meet licensing standards. The regulatory review was part of the Government’s 10-year strategic plan for early childhood education. I extend my support for the bill.

This bill traverses such a wide range of areas that one could speak on it for hours but, given the particular circumstances, I am not too certain my colleagues would be very impressed if I planned to do that. The bill does range over a wide area, although most of it is nuts and bolts stuff. New Zealand First will be supporting the bill going to the Education and Science Committee, but we will also be guaranteeing that when it reaches that committee there will be very close scrutiny of the issues it traverses.

I want to take the House back to the days prior to the education reforms, when there was a Department of Education, education boards, and things called brown cards. The brown cards contained the record of attendance of a child for every year, and there was a 1 to 5 assessment system based around the normal distribution curves of the school population. The brown cards provided a system that enabled the tracking of students. If a student left a school, the brown card was not passed on until a slip was received from the new school saying the child had been enrolled. Then the brown card was sent on. If after a certain amount of time the school did not receive that slip, one went to the truancy officers at the education board who would then track the child down.

When Tomorrow’s Schools came along and the Government got rid of education boards, obviously there were no truancy officers any more and no one to employ them, so the answer to the problem of “What are we going to do?” was to leave it over to boards of trustees. Well, that has to be the stupidest solution to that problem that there could have been, because the last thing boards of trustees wanted was to use scarce resources in hunting down those kids who were not in the practice of attending school on a regular basis. They were not the kids that schools necessarily wanted, so we ended up with large numbers of students slipping through the cracks. It was a real problem during the 1990s.

I can tell members that as a principal of an intermediate school I used to hold on to all the cards of the students going on to various secondary schools, and wait for those schools to ask for them. The cards were kept in my office. One year I had cards in my office for over 6 months and they still had not been collected. We did not have a clue where the students were whose cards remained there. After a while we thought: “We’ve got all these cards packed up. We don’t know where the students have got to. We will send them to the Ministry of Education.” Do members know what the ministry did? It send them all back to us. That was how good the system was.

Now the Greens will argue that it is an infringement of human rights to give people a unique identifier. I would suggest to the Greens that it is an infringement of human rights not to provide an education for the young people of this country, and that too many of them, in fact, have been slipping through the cracks. So we believe that this legislation is a move in the right direction.

The Greens will ask: “Why don’t you just give them a name?” Well, I will use another anecdote. I was in Titikaveka in the Cook Islands, and over the Christmas break its school changed from what was basically an area school into a college. I did not find out until the day before that that change was going to be made. We even had the infants’ desks still there and we had to start arranging things. But after trying to track down all the cards and who was at the school we ended up with 20 cards that had no kids for those names. But there were 20 kids who did not have cards. They had gone to Takitimu school the year before. Then it dawned on us that the kids had changed their names over the Christmas period, which was quite a regular occurrence over there.

Given the number of Pacific Islanders in our Auckland schools and in New Zealand schools, one would assume that that is occurring on a fairly frequent basis here. This legislation will overcome the problems associated with the changing of names, which is quite literally what some people do.

I want to go into another area of genuine concern, but I really see the clause in question quite differently from the Hon Bill English. Up in Northland, many schools are small, isolated schools with only one, two, or maybe three staff, and most of them are staffed by women. The principals of those schools are expressing real concern about one of the things happening—that is, people who are tanked up on P are coming to their schools during the daytime over issues relating to kids, and the schools are too far away to get any help. I myself have been in a school where a distraught father threatened to shoot me, but that was under a very different circumstance.

I think that we do need to send out fairly strong messages from this House that we will defend our teachers, protect them, and give them fundamental protections from that sort of behaviour. I can assure members that there is genuine fear amongst many of the staff up in the far north about the sort of bullying behaviour that some parents take, in association with the unfortunate increase in the use of P. So we are very happy with section 139C inserted by clause 29. If anything, we would like to see section 139C amended upwards so that the penalties are greater than what they are in that provision.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Oh, no.

So we have people over there who do not want any protection for teachers. That is the National Party. It does not want to protect its teachers in rural areas, yet it claims that it is a rural party.

There are some minor changes to the way in which the New Zealand Teachers Council will be able to operate. We have to say at this point in time that the New Zealand Teachers Council has been a real disappointment. It was supposed to do wonderful things and be the professional body for teachers, but it has had a very unfortunate history, starting off with a very unfortunate appointment to its head position by the Minister of Education.

We do not believe that the council is doing a wonderful job. We believe that if it could get its work going properly, that would be very important. In fact, Dr Nick Smith will tell members that the National – New Zealand First Government was working along a policy in the same direction. However, the actual practicality of that has not been good.

Certainly, the changes that are reflected in the bill will enable the council to do its job better. There is some tidying up of matters around boards of trustees and annual general meetings. Once again, it is sensible stuff in the light of practical experience. When people designed the framework around which boards of trustees operated they were not fully aware of everything that would take place, but in the light of experience we can see that it is now necessary to make some changes.

Another feature of this bill that we see as positive is that it gives the potential, at least, for the Minister of Education to create some form of bonding around a scholarship system, or an upfront reduction of fees, for students at tertiary level. We have seen what I believe is a scandal—the increase in fees by the University of Otago for medical students of, I think, 10 percent on top of its current fees. Neither National nor Labour have treated our would-be medical practitioners very well, at all. Medical students are the cream of the bunch; they are taken off the top. They have the longest training programme of virtually anyone and they have such an important public-good function when they come out, yet we are lumbering them with huge amounts of debt—debt much higher than that of any other level of students. That really is unforgivable in terms of a society.

This bill would enable a Minister to inject some common sense into the funding of our medical students by upfronting the reduction of fees on the basis that students are bonded for a certain number of years. Those people who trained in teaching back in the time I trained as a teacher will know the benefits of the bonding system, particularly for people from working-class areas, as I was.

I will round off by saying that Bill English raised some very serious concerns about the early childhood sector—concerns that are reflected in this bill. We have to concur with Bill English on those concerns and on what he said. There is a very unfortunate situation occurring where the Minister seems to have been sucked in by one particular teachers’ group, and he has built policy all around one particular set of providers who are not necessarily the best providers—or the worst. They are just historically linked with Governments, going back to 1948, I think, when Peter Fraser first started paying kindergarten teachers.

Kindergartens have morning and afternoon sessions because the women, the philanthropists, etc., who first put them in place to look after the children of the poor did not believe that mothers should work. So the early childhood education provider—the service—has those sorts of anachronisms within its structure as the preferred provider. Kindergartens largely teach 4-year-olds, and so many of the provisions in the early childhood sector are built around the delivery of education for 4-year-olds.

I heard about a case last night of a staff person with a degree, in relation to a baby in an early childhood centre. The person realised that the baby was hot, but when someone said to take its temperature she did not know how to do that, even though she had a degree and was being paid at huge rates. I will bet, if my teaching of students is anything to go by, that that person will know the theories of Karl Marx. Students know the theories of Karl Marx and they get their degrees, but they do not know how to use a thermometer or take a baby’s temperature. Unfortunately, that is the direction in which the Minister’s policy priorities are taking us, so we will certainly be scrutinising that part.

That is the negative side of this legislation. Other than that, we will be supporting it going to a select committee and going through the select committee process.

The ACT party will also be supporting this bill’s referral to a select committee, but we have grave reservations about this legislation. It has wide-ranging reforms, especially to do with the early childhood sector, and we look forward, at the select committee, to receiving what will be some very good submissions from the early childhood sector.

The Minister has almost decimated early childhood education in this country. Yesterday he would have received—as would some of the members sitting over there—a letter from a woman who has been running early childhood care centres for 27 years, and has loved it, but is just fed up and is now putting her centre on the market. The end of her letter states: “Many who have brought their children to us, and those children now are grown up and bringing their children to the centres, confirm what joy they have brought to childcare over the years. The pleasures I have experienced educating and nurturing preschoolers through the years has been snuffed out by over-regulation and bureaucracy.” That says it all.

The serious concerns we have revolve around having things like a national identity number. There has been a call for years now for the Government to do something about truancy and the number of children in schools who just disappear. However, I do not see that having a national identity number will do anything to get children back into education. Many children are just resistant to school—they are not necessarily resistant to education—and if we keep dragging them back in front of a classroom with 30 other children and doing things the same way, we will get the same results. I seriously question having a national identity number for under 5-year-olds, children who are not in the compulsory education sector. I do not believe that I am being hysterical here, or over-reactive, and I am sure that the Greens have serious concerns about this too.

For years we have seen Governments try to bring in national identity numbers. We saw it with National, with drivers’ licences, with Maurice Williamson and Jenny Shipley. Is this another Trojan Horse for a national identity number for everyone? Will babies get a pin number when they are born so that we can trace them through the health system and through the education system—so called? Those sorts of State interferences are always brought in in everyone’s best interests, and when it is in the best interests of children, that is when people’s antennae should go up.

Early childhood education in this country used to be the best example of how parents could exercise choice in their children’s education. We have a huge amount of competition. There are kindergartens, kōhanga reo, playcentres, private centres, and community-owned centres. Most parents can choose where they want to send their children—or they could until recently, with the distortion of funding and the free hours for community-owned centres, which the Minister brought in, against Treasury advice. Just this week I received Treasury papers that warned the Minister that that would cause distortions. Treasury gave other warnings, which I will come to later.

The Minister does not like private education centres or early childhood centres. He has called them “Kentucky Fried childcare”. I have been to numerous conferences on the early childhood sector. Those people are extraordinary teachers. They take children probably at the most difficult time but the most receptive time, when children are little sponges and are the most vulnerable to good or bad education. There is the old saying that whatever one has put into children by the time they are 7 will make the adult later. These people are not nappy changers. They are educators and teachers. None the less, it is not a one-size-fits-all sector of the education system. One can go to a kindergarten where kindergarten teachers give 3 hours or 2 hours of intensive education, then go down the road, or next door, to an early childhood centre that is open for 8 or 10 hours and has two or three shifts of teachers where they are catering to a vast variety of needs of children, some intensive education, some just play education, and all sorts of issues. None the less, this Minister has driven through a new regulatory scheme whereby all so-called persons of responsibility in an early childhood centre need a minimum qualification of Bachelor of Education in early childhood education—not the qualification of Bachelor of Education in primary teaching, or of being a mother, and not even of being someone who has had 30 years’ experience.

I have four children, the youngest of whom is 19. Clearly, I was a danger to children, because when all my children were under 5, most of the time they were at home with me. They were on unlicensed premises with an unlicensed teacher—a teacher who did not have any tertiary qualifications. Clearly, those children should have been removed from my care, just as I should have been removed from my parents’ care, and just as a lot of the people in this House, who were brought up in the country, where there was no early childhood education, should have been removed from their parents’ care. Goodness knows how we grew up to be as sane as we are! Thank goodness this Minister is riding to the rescue and saving children from having such a dreadful upbringing! At last every person of responsibility in an early childhood centre has to have the right piece of paper to wave in front of his or her employer.

Treasury advised the Minister that there would be serious risks to bringing this measure in. It advised the Minister that up to 400 early childhood centres throughout New Zealand would close. That is exactly the case, because 400 centres are now under threat of closure by the end of January. This legislation does amend that by introducing provisional licensing that can go up to 18 months, but those centres have to comply by January, in a month’s time. This bill will not do anything for them.

If the Minister knew this legislation was coming in, why did Kāwhia Early Childhood Learning Centre—which is 90 percent Māori, is attached to the Kāwhia Primary School, and has total community and parent support—a brilliant centre, have to go to the High Court in Hamilton to remain open? Why was the Minister, in his bullying way, going to close it? Was it because the children were not safe? No. It was because the person of responsibility had a Bachelor of Education in primary teaching. She was also fluent in te reo, totally bilingual, and perfectly suited to the centre, because 90 percent of the children attending are Māori. But, despite all of that, she did not have the right piece of paper to wave in front of the woman who was running the centre, and the centre had to take its case to court.

I want to mention briefly the other concern I have, and that is the Teachers Council, which is to get extra teeth with this legislation. The Teachers Council has been a complete and utter failure. What we had, the Teacher Registration Board, was not broken. But, bowing to union demand, the Minister brought in the Teachers Council, which now passes people to teach despite their being red-flagged by the police. I will tell the House what that has meant in England. Obviously, the Teachers Council has never heard of 190-page report called the Bichard Inquiry, which was published in June this year. That inquiry investigated how Ian Huntley, the man who was convicted of murdering schoolgirls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, was able to be employed as a school caretaker when he had a history of allegations of rape, burglary, indecent assault, and unlawful sexual intercourse. Here was a man who had been red-flagged by the police in England, yet he was still able to be passed as someone who could work in a school. This bill will not do anything to improve the Teachers Council. It should be dumped, and we should start all over again with checking teachers.

The Greens will support this bill going to the select committee, but we make no promises after that. There are two issues I would like to raise in the first reading debate. The first is our concern—shared, obviously, by Deborah Coddington from ACT—with the extension of the student number system from the secondary sector, into the primary and early childhood sector. Currently, these numbers are used in the secondary and tertiary sectors to collect and combine data for policy and analysis purposes to enable the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to record credits and qualifications gained by learners on the national qualifications framework, and to allow tertiary education providers to use information on the National Student Number system to verify enrolling students’ identity.

On the face of it, the National Student Number system is used for fairly benign purposes, but the Greens have always been concerned that these unique personal identifiers could be readily misused. The only other existing national ID number is the National Health Index number, which is an identification number given to all children at birth. We are tracked for our entire lives. To that extent, there appears to be very little information about the effectiveness of these numbers in the secondary and tertiary sector, and virtually no checks on whether the numbers or the data have been misused. That is something we want to examine closely at the select committee, to ensure that there is scrutiny of how the numbers are used, and that there are mechanisms to ensure that the data is not abused.

The bill provides for these numbers to be extended to the primary and early childhood sector, primarily for the purposes of attracting students, to minimise non-enrolment, and to ensure no double-dipping. I point out to Brian Donnelly from New Zealand First that he has misrepresented us. We are not against numbers. We are not saying that everyone should have only a name, because there is a need to ensure that children are enrolled and attending schools. But although there may seem to be a laudable purpose in this, the capacity for the misuse of this data is very high. We want to know whether this information about non-enrolment will be shared with other State agencies, such as Work and Income. We want to know whether it could be used to financially penalise beneficiary families, for example. We want to know whether any other agency or body can be authorised to have access to this data under the bill. Without more information about the current misuse of the numbers already in use and concrete provisions to prevent unjustified sharing of information for punitive purposes, the Greens do not think that these numbers should be extended. We look forward to assurances about that at the select committee.

The second issue concerns clause 4, which amends section 14 of the Education Act. Section 14 concerns the suspension and exclusion powers of principals. The clause 4 amendment put up by the Government is merely a tidy-up, which is hugely disappointing for the vast number of families from all walks of life who suffer from the abuse of these provisions. The 2003 report on stand-downs, suspensions, exclusions, and expulsions shows that stand-down cases increased by 1,946, from 17,912 to 19,858, while suspensions dropped slightly to 4,887. Some programmes, like the suspension reduction initiative, are having an impact for some children, and that is great, but still we have nearly 20,000 students being stood down every year. Nearly 5,000 are suspended, and the ministry confesses that a suspended child is away from school for 62 days, on average. I see that Mr Carter is smiling. I do not know whether his partner is involved in any suspensions.

Suspensions are a behaviour management tool used by schools, but it is supposed to be used only as an absolute last resort. Sadly, for thousands of families that is not the case. In suspending children, a principal and a board exercise a statutory power of decision making. The only appeal for such a decision is to take a judicial review action to the High Court. The Ombudsman, the Children’s Commissioner, and youth advocates are inundated with complaints from parents who argue that their child has been wrongly, unjustly, or unlawfully excluded from his or her school. But where can they go to have their children reinstated? The only place they can go to is the High Court and only at considerable expense. Court fees increased again only 6 months ago, and only two such cases have ever been taken in New Zealand. The fact is that the best way of keeping kids at school is to engage them in learning, not kicking them out for stupid or unlawful reasons. The proposed change in clause 4 will do nothing for those children.

My colleague Metiria Turei has a member’s bill in the ballot that would establish a school review authority. That authority would be able to review the statutory decisions of boards and principals, and make binding decisions on both the families and the schools. The costs would be minimal for families, so justice would be accessible to all. The authority would provide legal guidelines to schools on how to properly use the statutory powers they have available to them, which would provide a sound legal platform for schools. Such an authority would ensure that all our families have access to justice and that all our kids get the best possible protection of the law.

The Greens are very disappointed that the Government’s bill does not deal with the real problems inherent in section 14 of the Education Act and the misuse of the suspension and stand-down provisions, and we will pursue the matter further in the select committee. There are a number of other significant issues in the bill. We look forward to dealing with them during the select committee process.

I stand on behalf of United Future to take a call in the debate on the first reading of the Education Amendment Bill. United Future will vote in favour of the bill going to the select committee. We have a number of reasons why we want to do that.

We are very conscious that the bill is a mixture of clean-up material—minor policy changes—and some major policy initiatives. That is why we are very happy to vote for the bill to go to a select committee—so that we can deal with the wide range of items on offer in the bill. It is there that we will hear the submitters put to us their questions on, and their solutions for, some of the elements in the bill, and it is there that we will be able to find out first-hand from the appropriate submitters on the various wide-ranging parts whether the proposed deletions and transfers from each of the Acts listed in the bill should occur in the first place.

For example, as a select committee, when the bill comes before us we will need to reflect on the expertise of the School Trustees Association in terms of some of the old regulations that are modified, discounted, or folded into the present legislation. I will also be interested to hear from the experts on school property. I hope they will share whether the proposed changes hold any water at all.

On top of that, as I said, United Future will want to be satisfied that the proposed significant policy changes or new additions to education in this bill are kosher. We will be listening and wanting to hear from the stakeholders in those areas whether they favour those matters. I am sure that most of the education sector stakeholders will want to give us their wisdom, their knowledge from their workplaces, and their opinions.

I am convinced that all Kiwis, or most of us, have an opinion about education. After all, it is a subject we all think we are experts in—one of the criteria being that we all have had an education of sorts. If we are married and have children, we have seen our children go off to be educated, as well. I have got to the stage now where I am seeing my grandchildren go through the same process, and I now have a sharper, keener perception about education, my grandchildren’s growth, and learning.

United Future takes a proactive position on this bill, based on the fact that there are many general components within it. We do not see in it many policies that present problems, but there are some provisions that we need to scrutinise, and that is why we will be very happy to see it move forward. As the Minister of Education knows, and as is no secret in the House, it is really hard philosophically for us to agree with some of the education policies that have been proposed in the past by the Minister. They are normally so socialistic and ideologically driven that we have always disagreed, and have acted more as a brake on his madness than anything else. So for United Future to say that the bill should be scrutinised in a select committee is a step forward in that we recognise that we should work together with the Minister so that we can see something achieved in that committee. However, the Minister should note that he is on notice that we will still be very inquisitive and will ask the hard questions in the committee, to ensure that no social engineering takes place or is sneaked in under the radar.

There are a few areas that we will definitely be tracking down on. One has already been mentioned by a number of speakers in the debate, and that is the ID number that is being proposed for every student. The idea is that every child will be tracked through his or her school life, from the age of 3, from early childhood, right on through to his or her tertiary education. Possibly, I imagine, it would go on through to lifelong learning programmes. Children will be given a unique identity number. I have feedback that some mums and dads will no doubt see that as the most controversial part of the bill. After the huge outcry, which we are all very conscious of, that blocked a national ID card being introduced in New Zealand, some are suspicious that this measure could be an under-the-radar-screen attempt to get a similar process going. We believe that public discussion and agreement are critical to this issue. We ask whether it is a sneaky, back-door way to introduce a lost cause of earlier Governments.

I want to touch on two or three of the advantages of the ID number provision that is laid out in the bill. One is that, we are told, it will make it easier to trace truants. We know that the issue of tracking truants was one of Mr Mallard’s proclaimed great centrepieces when he was in Opposition. He has ultimately failed to do anything about the issue, and I am wondering whether this measure will achieve it for him, at all. I have read the bill and I have no assurances that that will be the case.

Another argument that is touted as being in favour of an ID number is that it would trace students who have dropped out of the education system. I do not know about that, but I am a little bit perplexed, to be honest. Would it really find such a student who is living under a bridge and smoking P? I have no idea how a number will trace a student who is hiding somewhere. So I have questions about that, and it needs to be looked at in the select committee.

Another aim touted is that it would administer the Government’s 20-hour-a-week free early education programme from 2007 onwards. The thought is that there is a possibility of double-dipping taking place, or rorts going on, and that by having a single number the Government will make sure it eliminates that. I have questions around how effective it will be.

The early childhood education programme elements that are set out here are another area that we will certainly scrutinise. Education, as we all know, is about children learning, and that is certainly not in this bill. That seems to me to be a major omission.

Our questions do need full and complete answers. United Future recommends that the bill go to a select committee so that the committee can hear from submitters, and so that we can make our assessments and modifications, if necessary, and bring those back to the House in 2005.

I take this call to support the Education Amendment Bill and its committal to the Education and Science Committee. It is a good bill, and it underpins the direction that this Government has signalled since coming into office, and that is that it cares about education. This Government wants all kids to have a good start in life. This Government wants to ensure that all kids reach their full potential, and to ensure that investment in education makes sure that that happens. So I support this bill, and I want to speak to the particular parts that underpin a lot of the Government’s thinking. It is about children getting a good start from the very first point of entry into education, and that is in early childhood.

In September 2002 the Government released its report Pathways to the Future: Ngā Huarahi Arataki. That was a 10-year strategic plan that set out an agenda for early childhood education. That plan foreshadowed a review of the regulatory system. Parts of those findings are in this bill, and that will ensure that we work towards a good-quality early childhood education system. That is what this bill is all about.

I am particularly excited that, for example, in Pukekohe, in the Tainui electorate, we have opened the first purpose-built early childhood education centre. Eighty percent of the students are Māori, and all those tamariki are keen to wake up every morning and go to that centre. Why? Because they are excited about learning. That is what we want to see happen more often in our communities.

One of the earlier speakers commented on issues in Kāwhia. The regional office of the ministry has worked very hard, alongside the Kāwhia Educational Trust, to make sure that early childhood education is provided in that community. Yes, there have been issues around the qualifications of the teachers there, and, yes, the matter went to court, and, yes, the Government is still committed to working with the trust to find a solution. What might that solution be? The Minister has raised in the House, in response to questions brought up by members of the Opposition, that if the Kāwhia Educational Trust wants to apply for a provisional licence from the regional office, it is quite able to do that and find a solution and a way forward. I can tell members that all parents in that community are committed to working with this Government to ensure that the centre stays open. They want to see a quality education delivered to their children. They want to see that the teachers deliver good-quality education, and bilingual at that—and I want to see that in all education centres. They know they can work through their issues with this Government, and they know we are committed to these types of things.

I think that when the bill goes to the select committee a number of issues may be raised in terms of what is happening across the broader sector of early childhood education. In terms of Māori participation, it was only with the introduction of kōhanga reo that we had the first surge of increased participation in early childhood education. Now we are seeing another increased level of participation. I hope those issues are raised at the select committee. I think they are all important issues to be considered by the select committee. I commit the bill to the select committee for consideration.

It speaks volumes about the lack of commitment from this Government to education that in a mad rush before Christmas, under urgency, we are introducing major education legislation.

💬 Hon Paul Swain: National would never do this!

I highlight for the member who has just suddenly perked up—he did not want to contribute to the debate—

💬 Hon Paul Swain: Remember benefit cuts? I remember those.

The member may want to reflect on the fact that in visiting schools in my electorate this month I have gone from one school to another that has a huge deficit. Nelson College and my other major colleges have huge deficits, at the same time as this Government sits on a surplus of $6.3 billion. That is the priority the Government gives to education.

We hear from the Minister of Education, Trevor Mallard, and from members about early childhood education, and about how much they supposedly care about it. We read on the front page of the Dominion Post today: “Rotting playcentre faces closure”. The Government has turned down the Kelburn Playcentre for a grant of $71,000, because, the Minister says, he is not clear about what the issue is. Well, one need only look at the picture in the paper of that disgusting facility in this very city, and that situation exists because of this Government’s early childhood education policies. Is it not interesting that the Minister, Trevor Mallard, can find $755,000—$75,000 more than was asked for—for a kōhanga reo in his own electorate, but cannot find $71,000 to fix this appalling early childhood education centre? That is a disgrace. That is the sort of policy we get from this Labour Government, and that is one reason why New Zealanders will next year change the Government.

💬 Government Members: Ha, ha!

We hear from the arrogant members opposite. That arrogance is also one of the reasons there will be a change of Government. We hear so much from the likes of Chris Carter about how Labour is opposed to discrimination, yet in this bill we see the Government’s early—[Interruption]

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member will withdraw that remark.

💬 Hon Chris Carter: I apologise for calling the member a bigot.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member will stand, withdraw, and apologise for that. The member knows he cannot repeat what he has been called to order for.

💬 Hon Chris Carter: I apologise.

The problem with the Government is that when we attempt to hold it to account for its appalling early childhood education policies and what those policies mean for New Zealand, the best we can get from the Minister is a phrase that I will not repeat—just some personal abuse. What a disgrace to this institution of Parliament! Again, that is why there will be a change of Government next year. People have had a gutsful of that sort of arrogance.

The Government is saying in respect of early childhood education that it is not the needs of children that matter—it is political ideology. It says through the provisions of this bill that it is the bricks and mortar of an early childhood education centre that matter, not the quality of the care and not the needs of the children. We will see thousands of children in New Zealand discriminated against simply because their parents choose to use an independent early childhood education provider, and that is a serious mistake. This bill further chips away at parents’ choices and rights. There is absolutely no respect in this Government for the fact that parents play an absolutely pivotal role in raising children, and that they should be able to have a choice about where their children go for early childhood education.

We also see in this bill further development of the mess in respect of the issues around the qualifications of people in charge of early childhood education centres. What the Government has done in that area is an absolute mess, and, as Treasury has rightly said, it will see up to 400 early childhood education centres start 2005 in breach of the mad regulations that have been passed by this Government. The Government is so obsessed with regulation that it says of people who have served early childhood education well for 20 to 30 years: “No, you’re not good enough. You can no longer be in charge of an early childhood centre.” The mistake it has made is although it is acceptable for the Government to say that a new qualification—a diploma—is required for someone to be in charge of an early childhood education centre, it is wrong and it is insulting to say to a 50-year-old person, generally a woman, who has served in early childhood education centres, has years of experience, and is very good at the job: “Sorry, for Labour you’re not good enough. We’re changing the rules. We’re going to dump you on the scrap heap.”

💬 Darren Hughes: What is National’s policy on that? Is it going to repeal that?

I tell the member that National’s policy is very simple. It is the same policy that we had when we were in Government, a good policy that had support, and it is that it is OK to have a diploma requirement for new people coming into the sector. That is what we have for doctors. That is what we have for accountants. That is what we have for engineers. Why, when it comes to the early childhood education sector, are we going to throw away very experienced people by having a new requirement in that regard?

I want to raise concerns specifically about section 139C, inserted by clause 29. I will read what it says, because it is quite bizarre. Again, it shows the way in which this Government will screw the scrum to suit its own. The section states: “Every person commits an offence, and is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding $1,000, who, while on the premises of any registered school … and within the presence or hearing of any student of the school, intentionally insults, abuses, or intimidates any teacher or member of staff of the school.” Members may ask what is wrong with that. Well, I first want to ask what is different about a school. All sorts of personal relationships and tensions arise, but why is this provision only in respect of a teaching staff member? It is true that there are parents who have abused and insulted teachers. It is also true that teachers have abused and insulted parents. But why does the law cover the relationship going only one way? Why do we have that special protection for the teacher but not for the principal? There will be many who see it simply as a provision—as so correctly pointed out by Bill English—that many principals who are trying to get a better performance out of their teachers will have used against them as they try to raise the standards in our schools.

My real question is why we have to have this special provision regarding insults, abuse, and intimidation in schools alone. Why does it not apply to hospitals or to Parliament? Why do we not have it in all other areas? Why are we creating a specific law for teachers only, when there is nothing for parents, and when it is all about changing the power balance? This Government is determined to undermine the leadership role that principals play in our schools, to undermine the role parents have in choosing which school to send their children to, and to undermine the right of parents to choose where they send their children for early childhood education. This section 139C, which is intended to make a criminal of a parent simply for questioning a teacher about his or her child, is over the top. Even if our criminal law currently is not satisfactory, there is no reason for creating a special law that applies just within schools, and that provides for the protection of teachers alone. It suggests that it is only principals or parents who ever insult, abuse, or intimidate people. I say that it is just another dose of political correctness from this Government.

Again, I stress that it is a disgrace that Parliament, under urgency, is debating such important legislation in a mad rush.

People listening to the contribution of that member from the Nelson area, Nick Smith, would have just been reminded again of something we hear so often from him—that is, negativity, negativity, negativity. All we hear is whinge, moan, and whine.

That member never acknowledges the fact that this Government has increased spending on education by 40 percent since 1999, and that there is not a school in this country that has not benefited from a massive burst in building. I know that every one of the 27 schools in my electorate of Te Atatu in west Auckland has had a new building project in the last 2 years. Principals have laptops, there is extra staffing, the operations grant has gone up, and so it goes on.

This Government is absolutely committed to education, because we see it as the tool for improving the chances of every person in New Zealand to get ahead in life. We are the Government of education. No Government has delivered more for education than this Government, and this Education Amendment Bill we are debating today is part of the package of resources that this Government, under the very wise leadership of the Minister of Education, the Hon Trevor Mallard, is giving to this country to shape a better education service. It is through the schools of New Zealand that we will change society, give that chance for everybody to get ahead, and build a strong economy and a better-educated nation.

This is excellent legislation. It builds on the incredible progress we have made over the last 5 years in the education sector.

That speech was made by a member who has been away from the classroom for too long. He no longer has any understanding of the classrooms of today. The speech was made by a Minister in a Government that has closed schools. In actual fact, 2004 will go down as a year in which the Government closed more schools than it opened, and, even more ironically for a party that espouses the Treaty of Waitangi as one of the core components of its thinking, a year in which the Government has done more to deny that reality in its day-to-day practice in relation to schools by closing down schools with significant Māori rolls. So as the Minister departs from the Chamber, I say “So be it.” I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Education Amendment Bill that is before the House, but I am confused about where I should start because in these omnibus, wash-up bills there is so much elusive material.

I will look first of all at clause 4, where a little slip states that the phrase “for an unspecified period” is to be taken out of section 14(1)(b) of the principal Act. There is no explanation given of that. Yet there is one, because those who have been in schools know about the immense problems of stand-downs and suspensions. They know that the figures the Ministry of Education has in its database are not correct. I have been collecting figures from Northland schools throughout this year, and I can say absolutely that the ministry’s figures for stand-downs in some of those schools are not correct, at all. In fact, many schools do not want to tell the wider world just how serious the problem is in their schools, with robust children and robust communities. No one wants to be upfront, but the figures are there in reality, and the figures, if they were real, would show that a large number of schools have problems even in maintaining day-to-day order and discipline. In clause 4 there is a solution. For some strange reason, we are to take out the phrase “for an unspecified period”, which has historically been part of the wording of the provision since the 1989 Act and before that in regard to “gross misbehaviour or continual disobedience”, or the situation of a student’s behaviour making it “likely that that student or other students will be seriously harmed”.

But that leaves an issue. If the word “unspecified” is taken out, which is the current term used by boards of trustees, there is the lurking suspicion in my mind that boards will then have to justify a specified period. If they have to justify why there is a specified period, that will introduce into the whole business of school stand-downs and suspensions a whole new category—a very interesting category for boards that are endeavouring to maintain fair order and discipline in the classroom, and endeavouring to maintain that safety in the classroom, room by room, is paramount with regard to the operation of their charters in their schools. So I believe that schools ought to be aware of that major issue, and I hope schools will bring submissions on it to the select committee.

That issue is also behind the whole issue of truancy. If ever there was an issue that the Ministry of Education has not handled with any great ability, I say it is the issue of truancy. Throughout the 1990s—at least in the late 1990s—there was a move towards dealing with truanting students and students who were not being recorded. And that brings me to the matter of the national truancy database. The issue is that there were thousands of truanting students in the 1990s. In Auckland, an estimated 7,400 students under the age of 16 were not in any school. They were unrecognised and unrecorded, and the numbers today are not much changed. In other words, after almost a decade of tracking and monitoring truancy in schools the situation has not changed, and the moves in this bill will not make things any better.

The other issues are these. Why would the Minister remove the function of requiring boards to provide an annual report to the community? Why are those reports to be no longer a requirement? Why would a board of trustees not wish to have an annual meeting at which it presents the annual report? Why would a board not wish to be scrutinised by the community, and have dialogue with parents on the proper function of recognising whether a school is doing its job?

💬 Hon Tony Ryall: What have they got to hide?

That is right—exactly. In this day of spin, of public relations people working for schools, it simply fits in with that that if boards can get away with not presenting their annual report, and can send it off to the Minister of Education via the local regional office, that will be it. That is what the suggested amendment will allow. It is just not good enough. We are living an age when schools that do not have favourable Education Review Office reports will not bother to publish their community report. They will now no longer be required even to meet with their community to discuss the annual report, and the effectiveness, quality, and competence of their staff.

That brings me to the next matter. If ever there was an organisation that has performed dismally, with successive chief executive officers coming and going every year, it is the Teachers Council. I can say that the Teacher Registration Board did a far, far superior job, working with limited staff and within the framework that it had. So here we have the suggested disciplinary functions of the board being enhanced when the board does not have a reliable database, and when there are unqualified teachers who have just finished in schools—teachers who were not experienced in any sense. But, worse than that, many people are working beyond the 20 half-days allowed for unqualified persons to work in schools, and the council has no ability to do anything about it. When applications are made to the council—and they were being made over the last year—the delay in processing them was not just days; it was weeks and sometimes months. So we have an inoperative system. The council ought to be out there, scrutinising—and it should be in 2005—to ensure that every teacher is registered and qualified, and that those who are not qualified serve for no more than 20 half-days. In fact that has not been happening, and it will not happen after this bill is passed. Yet the board is demanding greater powers of discipline—to hear what? I hope that those who come before the select committee will demand an answer to that question.

The other matter that I want to quickly mention is clause 32, “Preparing charters”. There is an underlying issue there about why there is, and has been, some disparity between the charters of industry training organisations and the acceptance of those charters by that fabulous group known as the Tertiary Education Commission. We all know that the Education (Tertiary Reform) Amendment Act of 2002 had many pains in its set-up period. It is no wonder that that was the case, because the Tertiary Education Commission, the Ministry of Education, and those who are responsible tried to take a Skill New Zealand group and incorporate it into a group that had tertiary oversight of the polytechnics in a major way—and universities—and did not give it the required staff or funding. The set-up period of what was called reforming legislation has actually shown no ability for there to be reform, at all. I find the final acceptance of the alignment of the tertiary charters with the needs of industry training groups to be quite interesting. That provision seems to have a history to it, and it would be very interesting if one knew what it was all about.

In summary, in an omnibus sense the amendments in this bill may seem to be just a tidy-up, but I want to come back to the first one. What does “unspecified removal” mean? It means problems for schools and boards of trustees. What does it mean when the annual reporting requirement is taken away? It means a lack of accountability on a face-to-face basis—parent to teacher, and teacher to the community. And what does a change in the Teachers Council rules mean? It means more of the same: a supposed workload, and a supposed ability to monitor effectiveness and the quality of teaching, but in actual fact the reality that because of how that group has worked out in a practical way nothing will be changed from this day on, despite the intention that there should be change. I look forward to hearing and seeing the submissions that are made on the bill, because these matters are worthy of serious attention.

I want to take a very brief call on this bill. The debate on it has been very good and very constructive. Research has clearly shown that children who participate in early childhood education get a better start in life, and are more likely to succeed later on as they progress through the education sector. I am very pleased to support this bill.

Bill read a first time, and referred to the Education and Science Committee.