Education Amendment Bill (No 4)

on behalf of the Minister for Tertiary Education: I move, That the Education Amendment Bill (No 4) be now read a third time. I thank members for the work that they have done on the bill. Their amendments have enhanced a good bill. Improving skills is a key part of the Government’s agenda for lifting New Zealand’s economic growth. We spend over $4 billion per annum on tertiary education, and this includes student support. That is about 1.6 percent of GDP, which is high, relative to the OECD average of 1.2 percent. Given our substantial investment, we must continually look at ways to improve outcomes for students and ensure that taxpayers are getting value for money.

The changes in this bill will result in a higher-performing system and will provide the foundations for a significant boost to our international education sector. First, this bill provides for the regulation of compulsory student services fees at tertiary institutions. This will ensure that students get a say in how these fees are charged and what they are used for. There has been growing concern over the rapid rise in the amount of compulsory student services fees charged by individual tertiary education institutions in recent years. I am not convinced that there has been a commensurate rise in the quality of these services.

The bill allows the Minister to issue directions on the categories of services that compulsory student services fees can be used for and how these fees are reported, as well as ensuring that students are closely involved in the decision-making processes related to these compulsory fees. The changes in the bill will lead to a significant improvement in accountability and transparency for students and the Government.

Secondly, the bill enhances our international education sector. International education contributes more than $2 billion in total to our economy each year and supports 32,000 jobs. The bill will facilitate the expansion of international education by establishing the new Crown agency Education New Zealand—a single agency solely focused on international education that will provide a sharper focus, better coordination, and better value for money in terms of both marketing and representation abroad. The new agency will begin operating from 1 September, with almost double the budget of its predecessors.

The changes in the bill represent an exciting opportunity for a real step change in the performance of our export education sector and for international education to make a greater contribution to the economic, social, and cultural well-being of New Zealand.

Thirdly, the bill will strengthen the regulation of the tertiary education system by improving and updating the legal arrangements of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. In particular, the functions and powers of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority will be updated, with a new rules regime replacing the existing powers of the authority. We have also updated and strengthened the regulatory management of private training establishments, including expanding the range of enforcement measures available to the authority.

Although most private training establishments are good performers, the work of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to drive improvements in the lowest-performing establishments has been hampered by the outdated nature of the legislative provisions and the inconsistencies within them. This bill ensures that meaningful steps can be taken to address problems as they arise, and students can have more confidence in the quality and strength of New Zealand’s private education system and its protection of students’ interests.

It is vital that we keep working on enhancing the quality of the sector, so that New Zealand remains an attractive place to study. This bill will strengthen our tertiary and international education sectors and improve accountability and transparency for students. I commend this bill to the House.

It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the third reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 4). It is an omnibus bill, and being the deputy chair of the Education and Science Committee, which heard the deliberations, I am pleased to say that Labour supports it. The bill’s primary amendment is to provide greater transparency and accountability in the setting of student levies. Student levies increased hugely in 2010—just last year. We saw an average—yes, an average—increase of 102 percent in student levies right across the country. Of course, we know that when we talk about averages it hides the variances. What we do know is that at its extreme, 600 percent was the rate of increase in the student levy at Canterbury University last year.

Although this bill is an admirable attempt to do something about that problem, and to do it in a transparent way that gives students a voice and a role in seeing how their compulsory levies are being spent, it does not address the root causes. So I urge the Government to understand that this bill, although useful, does not fix the problem. The problem that was clearly identified by the submitters when they came to see us was the funding squeeze for tertiary institutions, with Government funding not covering the cost of providing education to tertiary students in New Zealand. Of course, they are not the only part of the education sector that is feeling this squeeze, but with regard to this bill, it is incredibly important that the Government understands the funding squeeze for tertiary institutions. That is why they sought to find other funding sources, and actually ended up with what looks like a user-pays model. Their natural inclination, when they were not getting the Government support they needed to provide the services they want to provide, was to look to the students themselves. That is why we saw increases in the order of 600 percent at Canterbury University, and increases across the board of 102 percent, on average, in our tertiary institutions.

This is a very timely bill. It also establishes a new Crown agency in charge of export education, as well as providing stricter requirements around the registration of private training establishments, and we welcome that also. The registration of private training establishments is designed to stamp out growing qualification fraud in the sector, and we certainly hope that it does meet that goal, which is set out in the bill.

However, I will come back to an issue that was debated earlier today with regard to this bill, because it is an important one for the Government to understand. Not only does the Government need to understand what caused the significant increase in student levies last year right around the country—and it was not just at one or two institutions but pretty much right across the board—it also needs to understand the implications of other legislation that the Government wants to push through before the election. I am referring to the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill. That bill, in tandem with the Education Amendment Bill (No 4), will let student services fall through the gaps. The effect of the voluntary student membership bill is to gut students associations—those students associations that provide the very services, such as the advocacy services and the hardship grants, that keep students afloat in very difficult times. Students associations also help students to get through their studies.

If the Government is successful in pushing through that bill—or, more accurately, I should say that if the ACT Party is successful in garnering the support of the National Government—then that will lead to a reduction in student services; we know it will. Why do we know this? We know this because this is exactly what has happened overseas, where exactly the same measure has been brought to bear. If ACT gets its way with the Government and that happens, then student services will suffer. Institutions will want to pick up those student services, because they will not want to see students going without. They will want to make sure that students are well supported throughout the course of their education. They will then find that they are restricted by this very bill we are debating here today. That is tragic because, by itself, this bill is actually a very good bill. It is a very good bill because it aims to contain spiralling costs for students. That is a good thing, particularly when the cost of living is out of control in New Zealand as it is. Students are facing increases to their transport costs, because of the rising cost of petrol. They have faced increases to the cost of everything they buy, because the Government increased GST. They also face increased childcare costs. I know of a number of students who have had to pull out of their studies, because they can no longer afford to have their children in early childhood education while they are studying, and that is because of that Government’s cuts to that sector.

These are the sorts of cost of living increases that students face anyway. The last thing they needed last year was for their levies to go up by an average of 102 percent. So I commend the Government for, even in some small way, understanding that cost of living increases are out of control, and for moving with this bill in order to contain a particular part of the problem. But unless the Government also moves to address the underlying concerns and the underlying funding pressures within the tertiary institutions, and unless the Government also wakes up and stops the bill that will gut students associations so that they cannot provide those services, then I am afraid they will be doing students a disservice. I do, however, want to lend Labour’s support to this bill, because this is the good twin. I urge the Government to vote down the evil twin.

I am pleased to speak in support of the Education Amendment Bill (No 4). As chair of the Education and Science Committee, which held the hearings into the bill and reported it back to the House with some constructive changes, I would like to acknowledge the role of the select committee, including the cooperation of Opposition parties in getting this job done. I would also like to acknowledge the assistance and cooperation of the officials.

The Minister of Immigration on behalf of the Minister for Tertiary Education has very clearly outlined the provisions of the bill, and I do not need to repeat them. I just want to say a couple of things. One is that whether we are talking about the changes to the legal framework of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, the establishment of the new Crown agency Education New Zealand, or the power that the Minister is being given to issue directions on student services fees, this is good legislation. It is aimed at, and it will achieve, greater accountability in the tertiary sector. It will achieve higher performance by the sector and it will take New Zealand tertiary education forward into the future.

I will make just one comment about the arguments being advanced by the Labour Opposition. I am a little bit disappointed in the Opposition members—although they support the bill, and we very much appreciate that—for making continual linkages to a piece of legislation that, frankly, in my mind, is irrelevant to this bill. The thrust of this bill, as the Opposition well understands—and I reiterate my gratitude to the Opposition for its support and its work on the select committee—is all about rising quality, rising accountability, a better tertiary education system in New Zealand, and a better international student education system. I commend the bill to the House.

Debate interrupted.