Education Amendment Bill

I move, That the Education Amendment Bill be now read a second time. I wish to thank the members of the Education and Science Committee for their assiduous efforts in considering all aspects of this bill. I would also like to thank those members of the public who made very thoughtful submissions and informed the consideration of the committee. I would particularly like to acknowledge the work done by Tracey Martin as part of the Education and Science Committee to develop useful recommendations, and in particular those relating to the application of the Ombudsmen Act to the disciplinary parts of the bill. I have no doubt that her role on boards of trustees informed that particular contribution. All of these views are reflected in the changes made to improve the bill.

The Education Amendment Bill has three main objectives. The first is to establish the framework for the creation of partnership schools kura hourua. They will be one of a third type of school in our system, alongside State and State integrated schools and private schools, that brings together the education, community, and business sectors to create new opportunities for student achievement. The second objective is to safeguard students by establishing clear provisions around the exercise of search, surrender, and retention powers in schools. This will enable principals, trustees, and teachers to create a learning environment that is safe and conducive to positive learning while respecting the privacy and dignity of students. Thirdly, the bill enables changes and clarifications to be made to such areas as the functions and powers of boards, alternative board constitutions, the allocation of national student numbers, and the use of Crown land for building early childhood centres.

We believe that the Education Amendment Bill will provide fresh opportunities for the New Zealand education system, but, most of all, will provide levers to raise student achievement.

The bill generated a lot of public interest, which was reflected by the number of submissions received by the Education and Science Committee. The committee has carefully considered all of the submissions and recommended some changes to the legislation.

By majority the committee has recommended one change to the legal framework for partnership kura. The committee considered the concerns of those who made submissions, particularly regarding parents’ ability to challenge disciplinary decisions by a partnership kura. It is proposed that the accountability to parents be strengthened by the inclusion of a new dispute resolution process. This process has two strands. First, each partnership kura must set up an independent review procedure to manage disputes regarding decisions made by the school—clause 31, new section 158D—and, second, partnership kura will be subject to the Ombudsman’s complaints jurisdiction regarding disciplinary decisions. The independent review requirement recognises the importance of having an impartial decision-making procedure for students who are legally required to enrol and attend school and whose parents have no contractual relationship with the institution. It will be fit for purpose, targeted towards meeting the needs of students, and reflect the particular characteristics of the school.

Giving the Ombudsman jurisdiction over complaints relating to disciplinary matters means that it can bring to bear its years of experience and expertise, including the significant body of precedent that has been built up over time. In addition, this will ensure that partnership kura, in this particular regard, are treated consistently with all the schools across the New Zealand school sector. The amendments make it clear how parents can be involved in the successful resolution of disputes at partnership kura, ensuring that these schools are accountable to their stakeholders.

By majority the committee has recommended changes be made to the search, surrender, and retention provisions of the bill. These changes respond to concerns expressed by submitters from across the education sector. The proposed approach will contribute to safe learning environments, which in turn will better enable schools to focus on the goals that the Government has set in relation to raising achievement, and, in particular, for 85 percent of all 18-year-olds achieving National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 equivalent or better in 2017. Submitters spoke of the need for a robust and comprehensive legal regime, one that would enable schools to address issues arising from students bringing harmful items such as drugs or weapons on to school premises.

The Government is keen to give teachers and authorised persons the full range of tools and powers to ensure that a positive and safe environment is created, within which student learning can get on unhindered. We want to increase the level of safety for students and teachers. Schools where students do not feel safe are not fit for purpose. We want students to feel secure in their surroundings, in order that they can learn. At the same time, we want to ensure that the privacy and dignity of students is protected, and that the actions taken by teachers and authorised persons fit within boundaries that protect everyone. The amendments make it clear that if teachers and authorised staff members have grounds to believe a student is carrying a harmful item, they may direct the student to produce and surrender it. Should the student refuse, teachers and authorised staff members can require a student to remove outer clothing and surrender any bag or container for the purposes of a search.

The amendments provide further clarity on the collection of bodily samples, the use of drug testing and voluntary drug programmes, and the use of drug dogs by contractors in the school environment. The bill ensures that teachers and authorised staff members must conduct any search with respect and sensitivity, and in a manner that affords the student the greatest degree of privacy. This is an important safeguard—that is, the reciprocal obligations of search, surrender, and retention, and respect for the privacy of students and reasonable search.

The Secretary of Education will be required to issue rules and guidelines. These guidelines will be prepared in full consultation with the sector and will cover practical aspects of the new search, surrender, and retention provisions, providing guidance to support and help boards in developing policies that are fit for purpose. The guidelines will provide best-practice advice, examples, and scenarios, and boards must give regard to these in forming their policies. I am confident that the bill provides schools with an effective legal framework to create safe learning environments.

By a majority, the Education and Science Committee has recommended a change be made to provisions for alternative constitutions. Some submitters expressed concern that under the new streamlined option for ministerial approval of alternative board constitutions, the Minister of Education’s powers were unconstrained. The committee has recommended that the Minister be required to approve such a constitution only if she or he has reasonable cause to believe that it is in the best interests of the affected school or schools.

The Government intends to support the amendments recommended by the majority of the committee. The Government is committed to ensuring that every young New Zealander has the potential to succeed through acquiring the relevant skills and qualifications to successfully participate in the modern economy. Our unrelenting focus is on how we raise achievement for all students and move past the average of four out of five, to how we can ensure that five out of five can be educationally successful.

To conclude, the Education Amendment Bill provides the foundation for further positive changes to our education system. It creates the framework for partnership schools kura hourua partnering New Zealand communities with education and business, alongside parents, and giving them more options. It ensures that we focus on raising achievement. It provides for schools to have a safe and secure environment, and balances the reciprocal rights of creating security for students while respecting the privacy and dignity of other students. The bill enables a small number of other changes and clarifications to be made to such areas as the functions and powers of school boards, alternative board constitutions, the issuing of national student numbers, and the ability to build new early childhood centres on Crown land.

I am confident that this bill supports the Government’s aim of providing that five out of five learners are achieving educational success. I now commend the Education Amendment Bill to the House.

The very first question that any member of the House should ask themselves when debating any legislative change regarding education is whether this is going to be good for education. That should be our first question when we are debating any changes in the education system, and on that count this bill, the Education Amendment Bill, fails at the very first hurdle because it will not be good for education. The question the Government asked itself was: “How do we get the votes in the House? Well, we do it by giving John Banks charter schools.” It asked: “Is this consistent with Act Party ideology?”, rather than: “Is this consistent with the evidence-based approach to education?”.

We should start from the presumption that we have a very good education system in New Zealand. Our challenge is not to fix something that is not broken; it is to take a very good education system and make it a great education system. We can do that. We can do that, but there is no evidence—no evidence—that charter schools are going to lead to improved results for New Zealand kids. There is no evidence—in fact, there is very compelling evidence to the contrary—that having unqualified teachers in classrooms will lead to better educational outcomes. It will not. It is a recipe for disaster.

Narrowing the focus of the education system in the way that the current Government is intent on doing is not going to be good for New Zealand kids. We should be focused on making sure that every student in New Zealand has the opportunity to reach their full potential, and that means teaching them a broad and balanced curriculum—

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: Correct.

I am glad Hekia Parata agrees with that, because everything that this Government is doing—everything that this Government is doing—goes in the opposite direction. It goes in the direction of narrowing the focus of our education system down to two measures of success. Hekia Parata has two measures of success: national standards and National Certificate of Education Achievement level 2. According to Hekia Parata, those are the only measures of success for our education system, and that is fundamentally wrong. There are so many other things that go on within the education system that are far more important than that that Hekia Parata simply fails to acknowledge.

This bill does not require even the head teacher in a charter school be a qualified and registered teacher. Even people who were in favour of charter schools—even the people who came to the select committee to argue in favour of charter schools—almost without exception argued that teachers teaching in them should be qualified and registered. Yet the Government continues to turn its back on amendments—

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: Then how do you account for the early childhood centres, or kura kaupapa or trades academies?

I think teachers in kura kaupapa should be registered teachers, and the fact that we have a shortage of registered teachers in kura kaupapa is something that the Government should be focused on addressing, not on lowering the bar—not on lowering the standard—for teachers.

💬 Hon John Banks: Shh!

John Banks says “Shh!”. He does not like hearing the truth. He does not like hearing the truth, although I suspect Mr Banks is going to hear a lot more about the truth in another area in the next few weeks. But let us talk about the truth around charter schools.

Having unregistered and unqualified teachers in our schools will not be good for education. Who should we listen to on that? Well, we could listen to one of the many contradictory statements that the Prime Minister has made about that, because, in fact, a year ago John Key was telling the country—and I will give you a quote: “It’s not class sizes that matter; it’s the quality of teaching that we’re getting in our schools.” So what is the Government’s solution to that? The Government’s solution to that issue is simply to remove the requirement for teachers to be trained and qualified for the job that they are going to do, because—make no bones about it—that is what this legislation does. It allows charter schools to be established without qualified and registered teachers, and that is not going to be good for education.

Under this legislation, a teacher who has been the subject of disciplinary action in the State school system could go and teach in a charter school. And the Government members are silent. They are silent because they know that is true. A teacher who is suspended from the State school system could walk down the road to a charter school and they could get a job, and there is nothing in this bill that will stop them from doing that—absolutely nothing in this bill will stop them from doing that. That is fundamentally wrong.

I invite the Minister right now to tell me which clause stops this from happening. There is no clause. She is shaking her head, because there is no clause that stops a teacher who is the subject of disciplinary action from teaching in a charter school. That is absolutely, fundamentally wrong, and Labour will under no circumstances support this. We recognise that the quality of teaching is vitally important to educational outcomes. It is the single biggest in-school influencer of student achievement, and yet this Government—although it talks about valuing quality teaching—does so many things that go in the opposite direction.

It is not just around charter schools. The Government promised to focus on teacher professional development, and yet it has cut $15 million from the budget for teacher professional development. Under this National Government, teachers have lost $15 million per year in professional development funding. That is not the action of a Government that cares about raising the quality of teaching in New Zealand.

What did John Key say? Again, after last year’s Budget, when the Government thought that the big solution to improving the quality of education was to put more kids in every class, what did John Key say? He said: “We have to find another way to go and lift those teacher quality outcomes. And we’ll go away and do that.” Well, this seems to be his answer. John Key’s answer to lifting the quality of teaching in New Zealand is to remove the requirement for teachers to be trained and qualified. That is fundamentally wrong.

The Government’s own advisers in the Ministry of Education, who, of course, probably start their analysis of this from the question: “Is this good for education?”—what have they said? They have advised—and it is a quote—that there is a “potential for a negative impact on students’ education from teachers who do not meet the minimum standards for the profession”. That is what the Ministry of Education has said, and it has also argued that changes in this bill will significantly damage the credibility of the Crown. I agree with the Ministry of Education that this bill will significantly damage the credibility of the Crown, because the Government should be focused on lifting the quality of teaching in New Zealand and on making sure that every school in New Zealand is a good school—every school in New Zealand is a good school—not on trying to pour money into private profit-making institutions, because money that is going towards the profits of the private providers of these charter schools is money that is not going into quality teacher education.

I talked about teacher and school safety a moment ago, and we agree with the amendments that have been made in this bill around the surrender and retention of student property. We worked through that process with the members of the Education and Science Committee very constructively, and I want to thank all of the members of the select committee for the manner in which they approached that particular debate. I think we came to a very sensible compromise in the end.

But I am concerned about students’ safety from being in classrooms with unqualified, unregistered teachers, and we were unable to reach any agreement on that because the Government followed Catherine Isaac’s advice. She came along and said: “Do not water down the purity of this legislation. The ideological purity of the legislation should not be watered down.” That was Catherine Isaac’s advice to the select committee, and that was exactly what the National Government members on the select committee said that they would not do. There is—

💬 Hon Nikki Kaye: Is the member saying that children in early childhood centres are unsafe—is that what the member is saying? Is that what he’s saying to every single child in an early childhood centre?

At least 50 percent of the teachers in early childhood centres have to be qualified and teachers in charter schools do not have to be qualified. Why should students in charter schools have a lower standard than those in early childhood education? In fact, until this National Government came along, we were working towards having 100 percent qualified teachers in early childhood education. But the Government does not like having qualified teachers, because it has lowered the standard in early childhood education to 50 percent, and now it is removing it altogether for charter schools.

Actually, we believe in quality teaching, and we believe in having registered, qualified teachers in classrooms, including in early childhood education settings. That is something that this Government does not support, so now it is going to lower the standard, rather than focusing on how we get more teachers who are qualified and who are filling the skills shortages and gaps that we do have—and we have big gaps. Rather than focusing on that, and rather than focusing on saying how we can improve the quality of teaching by making every teacher a brilliant teacher, it is saying: “Let’s just do away with the requirements altogether.”, and that is fundamentally wrong.

There are so many other aspects of this legislation that are wrong, which I am sure we will get into as we get to the debate in the Committee stage of this bill. Charter schools will not have to enrol students who live right next door. A charter school could decline the enrolment of a student who lives right next door to the school—no problem with that. There is nothing to stop a public school in Christchurch being forced to close by Hekia Parata only to have a charter school then pop up on exactly the same site, and that is fundamentally wrong as well. That is also very, very wrong.

Charter schools will not have to teach to the curriculum. They will not have to teach to the New Zealand Curriculum. They will not have to teach science in the way that public schools have to do. Under the wording of this legislation they could teach creationism and there is nothing the Government could do to stop it. It is fundamentally wrong.

This is bad legislation. It is going to be bad for education, it is not based on evidence of what works, and Labour will certainly not be supporting it. We have not supported it at all up to this stage, and we will not be supporting it from this point onwards.

I rise to speak in favour of the second reading of the Education Amendment Bill. The bill provides the legal framework for partnership schools, which are well overdue. I want to join with the Hon Hekia Parata in thanking Dr Cam Calder, the chairman of the Education and Science Committee, and the members of the committee for their hard work. He is a first-class member of Parliament from the National Party who did a first-class job with this important work. The committee has improved the bill. The first change is to require the existing independent review option to now be a mandatory term of all sponsorship contracts. I can advise the House that officials are working on some default dispute resolution options that will be focused on the educational needs of the student. These will be superior to arrangements in most State schools. The second change is a partial extension of the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman to suspensions, stand downs, exclusions, and expulsions. This change both protects the students and ensures sponsors who are non-governmental organisations have their status preserved. I want to acknowledge all of those who took the time to make a submission to the select committee. Even when we disagree, I know that our education system can only improve with the passionate engagement of learners, parents, and education professionals.

This bill, as it relates to partnership schools, is drawn from a proposal in the ACT-National confidence and supply agreement. That proposal was given life by the Partnership Schools/Kura Hourua Working Group, ably led by Catherine Isaac, whose work shaped this bill and which we acknowledge on the record today. Partnership schools spring from the values of ACT Party. In education, we believe in parental choice and the funding following the child, whatever the school type. We know that in education one size does not fit all. In essence, we believe in the transformative potential of education. That is why we backed Aspire Scholarships last parliamentary term and why we promoted partnership schools this term. Every child has potential, however humble their origins; every child has an inherent value; and every child deserves the opportunity to get a world-class education. No member can say in their heart of hearts that New Zealand is delivering on that, so this bill is important. It will determine whether this House is on the right side of history.

I believe we will stand with young Māori and Pasifika people, who deserve to discover the spark of learning. We will stand with those with learning difficulties or from low socio-economic backgrounds, who yearn to achieve and want to be successful. We will stand with the dedicated educators, including Māori and Pasifika educators, who are able to inspire, lead, and achieve for our most vulnerable learners. We will stand with the proposition that greater freedom for educators should be coupled with higher levels of accountability—more freedom, and much more accountability. Partnership schools offer an important option to address the endemic problem of the underachievement of our most vulnerable learners.

The good news is that the current education system works well for the majority of our young people. Our best students are, indeed, the best in the world. There is more good news. There have been significant recent gains for Pasifika students and slight gains for Māori students. The bad news is that still far too many of our vulnerable students are being left behind. In terms of equity, which is the size of the gap between our highest and lowest achievers, we are amongst the worst in all of the OECD countries. The good news is that partnership schools are on the way. Being a First World nation means five out of five students gaining the knowledge and skills to be successful citizens in the 21st century—not four out of five, but five out of five. This country has huge potential. However, we waste that potential because of the continuing disparity that characterises our education system.

Partnership schools will help target the problem of underachievement. In the partnership schools model, the Crown enters into a contract with a sponsor, who operates the school. Sponsors vary from school to school and could be, for example, groups of parents, not-for-profit community groups, business, churches, iwi or Pasifika groups, or, indeed, trusts. The term “partnership” captures the essence of what these schools represent—a partnership between the Crown, the business sector, and the community. They will introduce more choice and more flexibility into our education system, which is well overdue. More choice for parents means they will have greater freedom to choose the education that best suits their children’s learning needs and their future. More flexibility for partnership schools means there will be greater freedom around how they operate. They will be given more autonomy from the usual rules and regulations under which State schools are required to operate. This includes the freedom to offer a different curriculum so long as it can be mapped against the New Zealand curriculum and its principles and qualifications framework, and adaptable operating hours.

They must employ teachers who are trained and qualified in their fields. Unregistered does not mean untrained, but they may, in certain limited circumstances, be teachers who are not registered with the teachers union—[Interruption] Let me tell the Opposition today: the greatest fear the trade union movement within education has is that these partnership schools will be a huge success—a huge success. These partnership schools must employ teachers who are trained and qualified in their fields. This flexibility will allow them to do things differently. Flexibility allows things to be done differently to meet the needs of the pupils, not the needs of the teacher trade unions or teachers themselves. They will be allowed to use new and diverse approaches to teaching and learning, and to property and school organisation. They can focus on specialist areas of learning, such as art, music, or sport, and they can answer a particular need in the community. In exchange for this flexibility, partnership schools will have higher levels of accountability with a unique evaluation framework.

I am pleased to advise the House that we have received 35 applications from potential sponsors for partnership schools. They are currently being considered by the authorisation board, which is an expert panel of independent advisers, and this authorisation board will make recommendations to the Minister of Education. No final decisions will be made or contracts with potential sponsors entered into until this bill is passed. Contracts are expected to be in place by the middle of the year. This ensures successful sponsors have enough time to prepare their schools to open in 2014.

Can I once again express my appreciation for the work of the select committee. Can I also place on record my appreciation for the support of the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of Education, the Associate Ministers of Education, and the Māori Party for partnership schools. Partnership schools will transform education in this country. It will be a paradigm shift for the aspirations of some of the most vulnerable and poorest families in this country. Partnership schools can help deliver world-class business opportunity and success in the future for young people coming out of those schools. They will have the dignity of contributing, and the dignity of work and making a difference. Roll on day 1, term one, 2014.

I would like to extend my appreciation to the scores of passionate submitters—mums, dads, teachers, and educators throughout the country—who submitted on this bill, the Education Amendment Bill, and who are passionate about public education in New Zealand. What today marks is a deliberate darkening, a dimming, of the public education light by the National-ACT Government.

How will this be done under this bill? Charter schools will not be a welcome addition to our public education system. If we look overseas at the models and look at the research, we can see that charter schools have not made a significant and systemic difference to educational achievement for the most vulnerable groups. If we look at some of the models from overseas, charter schools will start to erode public funding going into your local school and will set up a competitive funding model. If we look at what the Government is proposing with charter schools, kura hourua, it will create a tiered system within the New Zealand context that will not benefit the great majority of Kiwi kids who do have the luxury right now of going to their local school and expecting that their local school will deliver a quality public education.

We should be concerned about that as parliamentarians. We should not accept the rhetoric about charter schools without understanding the research and the evidence that was presented to the Education and Science Committee and that was presented to education spokespeople on this side of the House, which obviously the Government is choosing to ignore. Why? Because our children are just too important to be experiments. Our children in Christchurch, our children in South Auckland—those young people deserve a lot more from parliamentarians in this House when it comes to education policy.

All the evidence that has been presented, certainly to Opposition spokespeople, which I am sure members of the Government are aware of, shows that charter schools do not make a structurally significant difference to improving the learning outcomes for the most vulnerable learners. We should reflect on that because we have heard a lot of rhetoric from members on that side of the House. I would like to ask this question: why are we following failed examples from overseas and promoting them within the New Zealand context? You see, we have choices here in New Zealand that other countries do not have. We have public schools, boys schools, girls schools, integrated schools, private schools—all manner of options—kura kaupapa, wharekura, kōhanga reo, early childhood centres, playcentres. We have enough scope within our public education system to do things well, but there has to be a common strand and intent of education policy that drive quality and expectation to deliver widespread, systemic benefits to the most vulnerable students.

I do not accept what the previous speaker, John Banks, has spoken about, that this bill will transform outcomes for Māori and Pacific students. In fact, I find it intolerable that Māori and Pacific students are being used as guinea pigs for this type of initiative. I find it intolerable. If, for example, priority learners and Māori and Pacific learning outcomes were so important to the Government, why are they not specifically mentioned within the bill? No answer from the Government. Why are those targets not set in the bill and specifically targeted, to ensure that those outcomes will be delivered on? No answer. They cannot answer, because they are being disingenuous with the rhetoric that they are providing on this particular matter.

So what is the Government proposing with charter schools, and how does this fundamentally challenge what is currently happening within our public education system curriculum? Every other school has to deliver a national curriculum, but charter schools have choice—unbelievable. In relation to the entry criteria, models from overseas show that, through entry criteria, charter schools will cherry-pick the best students. In the proposal here for New Zealand, there will be no enrolment zone. You can just bet your bottom dollar that charter schools will be cherry-picking the best students. There will be the potential for charter schools in New Zealand, under this Government and this model, to manage those schools for profit—for profit. Every dollar that a public school gets must be spent on its children and on public education, but that is not so for charter schools, oh no. We will not know how they will be spending that dollar, and it is highly likely that they can manage the income coming from the Government to deliver education in order to deliver a profit, not a quality education.

The fact that they are exempt from the Official Information Act is, I think, a real farce. If we want to ensure that the outcomes delivered are going to be publicly transparent to those who matter most, the students and the parents, then the Official Information Act must apply—must apply. But the Government continues to omit that really important amendment from the bill.

The other point concerns the management of charter schools. The Government proposes that a board can oversee the management of a charter school. Board members do not have to come from the local community; they could be business people. Parents’ voices are lost. We challenge communities and parents to get actively involved in their local school within the next week, so they can have a say about what is happening at their local school, how the curriculum can be delivered, and how it can be delivered for the best outcomes of the students at their school. But not charter schools, oh no. Business people will be leading those charter schools, and there will be no parent voice. In some of the overseas examples it is evident—it is evident—that this is a fundamental disconnect with the delivery of education, where the parent does not have an active role in saying what happens at their local charter school.

What else is happening? Well, there has been a lot of discussion around teachers not being registered but being able to teach at charter schools. We have heard the previous speaker giving some justification for that, but if we are really concerned about quality teaching and effective teaching practices in New Zealand, we have to have a uniform standard across the board. There cannot be ins and outs. Everybody is all in or it is all over the show. It is as simple as that—everybody is all in or it is all over the show. If you want to ensure that there is quality teaching and effective teaching practices, teacher registration is one way of achieving that. The Minister of Education is shaking her head, disagreeing with that. I do not see her hurrying to disestablish the Teachers Council at all. I do not see her promoting in our public schools that the same standards that apply to charter schools should apply to our public schools. In fact, what the Minister continues to perpetuate is that there are two standards that can be delivered in education: one through charter schools and one through our public education system. Our children deserve better. They deserve quality public education that is not infringed or compromised by dual standards set up by the Government.

I am really concerned because I know that some of the best learning outcomes for Māori students have come through kura kaupapa and wharekura. David Bennett would know very well that the wharekura that has delivered the highest-performing outcomes of National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 qualifications is in our backyard: Te Wharekura o Ngā Taiātea, a wharekura under the public education system.

What needs to happen is for us to take the innovations from those schools that are currently delivering them and extend them across the public education system. John Banks shakes his head and says: “No, no, no. My mates aren’t going to benefit from that model, because it’s in the public education system. Let’s give these charter schools some public funds and let them make a profit. Who cares what the outcomes are?”. If the Government really did care, why are the targets for Māori and Pacific achievement not clearly set out in the legislation? Will he take a question in the House to answer that? He bends his head low, because he knows very well that the Trojan Horse for this bill, sadly, was that it was done under the guise of Māori and Pacific achievement, with the support of the Māori Party.

This is a woeful step in the disintegration of the public education system, and the Government should be ashamed.

Thank you, Mr Speaker—

💬 Hon John Banks: Oh no, not this one!

Oh, John Banks is frightened—he is frightened. I do not know whether the people out there heard that. “Oh no!”, he says. The Green Party knows that education can transform societies, transform communities, and transform lives. Education was a route out of poverty for me, and it certainly can be for others. But for that to happen New Zealand must have a strong, free, inclusive, and quality public education system whose quality does not depend on the size of your wallet, where every New Zealand child is entitled to the highest-quality public education. That is where equity rests. That is where we get the best advantage from an education system to deal with the terrible issues of poverty that afflict 270,000 New Zealand children. Despite what Bill English said this morning about poverty not really existing in this country, there is a solution to poverty, and it is education.

The ACT-National Government is fond of promoting charter schools as a choice for Māori children, for Pacific children, and for vulnerable children, one that is comparable to the choice wealthy parents apparently get when they choose to send their kids to private schools. That is part of the spin. But it is absolute and utter rubbish—it is absolute and utter rubbish. The reality could not be further from the truth. Charter schools offer to poor children, to Māori and Pacific children, a choice that wealthy families would not touch with a barge pole. They would not touch it with a barge pole. I challenge any National Party member here who sends their child to a private school to stand up and say that they would move their child from a private school to a charter school, where there are untrained teachers, where there is reduced funding, where there is no oversight, and where there is no parent representation. I challenge them to shift one of their kids into one of these schools.

In fact, it is such a problem that the association representing private schools submitted against this Education Amendment Bill, along with 2,100 other submitters. Only 93 submitters were in favour of it. Along with 2,100 others, the private schools association submitted against the bill, because it knows that charter schools threaten the very reputation of the New Zealand education system, which is one of the best in the world, actually. For all the spin from the other side, it is one of the best in the world. What is being done here is incorporating, importing a system that has failed elsewhere.

The truth is that this Government wants charter schools because they are cheaper—they are cheaper and they funnel money into the private profits of people whom it knows. These schools do not employ trained teachers, they can make up their own curriculum and decide whatever they like to teach these kids, they do not need to bother with parents on school boards, they can determine the length of their own school day, they are free from much of the oversight, they are cheap, and they are nasty. What is worse is that this Government knows that it is easier to try out this experiment on the children of families who have the least power, are the least likely to complain, and have the least resources to say whether something is going wrong with their kids—the most vulnerable families. Rather than giving Māori, Pacific, and less well-off Kiwi kids the best education that the Government can, utilising decades of evidence built up by some of New Zealand’s best educationalists, the National-ACT Government is inflicting this imported charter schools experiment on the children who most need to be protected from it.

💬 Catherine Delahunty: Quite right, Metiria.

Thank you. And why? It is because of this one, sole MP from a little, teeny-weeny dying party, which sneaked into Government at the last election, which Judith Collins is trying to protect for next time, and which this Government is dependent on to get its scarce few pieces of legislation over the line. It is very much about the tail wagging the dog in this case. That MP from that failing party has made no secret that he wants the entire public education sector privatised. That is what he said in the weekend: that ACT would demand from a future Government its commitment to “private provision of education”. That is an unqualified declaration to privatise New Zealand’s education system.

Privatising the education system is what this bill is all about, actually. Charter schools are at the top of the waterfall, triggering a cascade of changes in the public education system that will lead to an elitist education system in New Zealand, where the primary school education that you get comes with a hefty price tag if it is going to be decent. What this means for kids and for parents is that the kind of school that you get to go to will entirely depend on the size of your wallet.

Let us have a quick look at some of the changes in the bill. These charter schools can be established by overseas owners as long as they have a shell company in New Zealand, and they can make a profit—as much profit as they like—from taxpayer education funds. We do not believe that this is at all right. In fact, public education money should go towards public education, not private profit. So we have introduced Supplementary Order Paper 236 to this bill to ensure that no profit-making entity can establish a charter school. There must be some protections for the public purse. This is public money, after all.

These schools can also be established anywhere the sponsor wants to set one up, with no consideration of the impact on local schools. At the moment the Minister is legally obliged to consider the impact a new school will have on any nearby school before she lets a private school be established or integrated into the State system. This helps to protect public schools, State schools, from roll decline and it helps to manage the system overall. But National is pretty poor at sticking to the rules when those rules interfere with its mates and potential profit, as we saw with the decision to integrate Wanganui Collegiate School, where officials told Cabinet it would damage the local school rolls if it did that. It did it anyway, because of its mates.

Nevertheless, the rule is there, but it does not apply to charter schools, which have the freedom to erode the rolls of other local State schools and continue to undermine the public education system, as overseas evidence has shown that they will. We have a Supplementary Order Paper, which also will protect local schools from the corrosive effects of charter schools, obliging the Minister to consider the local school network before agreeing that a charter school can be established.

Children need to learn from adults who know how to teach. Teaching is a skill. It is a highly professional skill. It is a profession. Children need to be taught by people who understand how children learn. That is why private schools are full of really well-trained teachers, actually, because those schools can afford to pay for the best. That is why we need to have the best possible teachers in our State schools as well, particularly in front of our most vulnerable learners, because all of the evidence shows that the most vulnerable learners need the best possible teachers in front of them in order to be able to do well.

Yet teaching is more than just subject expertise. It is about pedagogy; it is about the science of learning. It is about a compassionate and caring profession where people dedicate their lives to the well-being of children in order to make sure they can live good lives and have good futures. The New Zealand Post Primary Teachers Association today produced a survey that showed that 86 percent of New Zealanders do not want untrained teachers in schools; that 86 percent of New Zealanders actually believe that teaching is a profession for which there should be good remuneration, for which there should be some professional acknowledgment of their skill; and that they want their kids taught by professionals. Seventy-one percent thought that it was wrong for private business to make a profit from public education. The Government has completely ignored this feedback because, of course, this deal was the result of a cup of tea, a quiet little cup of tea and a conversation, the content of which it tried to keep secret, if you remember. As a result, the most vulnerable learners in this country are now going to have foisted on them an experiment that is proven to fail.

We have already said that we will require any charter school, if we are in a position to do so after the next election, to subject itself to the integration process. If they fail that process, they will have to close, and if they pass that process, they are in a better position to continue. We do not believe that these charter schools can continue to be made available to our kids when we know that even in the best-case scenario only one in five of those schools will do well. We are opposed to this legislation and look forward to the changes that can be made at the Committee stage.

As the chairman of the Education and Science Committee it is a great pleasure to rise and take this call. I just want to correct an assertion made by my colleague Mr Chris Hipkins, who believed that partnership schools are exempt from current exemptions in the Education Act 1989 regarding the employment—or the continuing employment—of a teacher whose practising certificate or limited authority to teach has been suspended or cancelled. The schools are not exempt from those current restrictions.

We received and considered 2,277 submissions from interested groups—a large number of them were form submissions from the teacher unions and on the subject of partnership schools. Much of the committee’s work, in fact, has been looking closely at submissions on the surrender and retention issues and crafting amendments to clarify provisions in the bill and ensure schools can exercise powers in respect of the properties they occupy.

I want to pay thanks to the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers Association and also Grant McMillan, principal of Ashburton College, for their very helpful submissions on the surrender and retention issues. May I also thank my National colleagues on the committee for their work. We were particularly fortunate to be able to co-opt Mike Sabin on to the committee. Mike brought 12 years of experience as a police detective and his time running a national consultancy addressing drug policies for schools and corporates. He has also spoken at the UN on drug-related issues. I wish to also acknowledge, though opposing the bill, the constructive engagement of New Zealand First’s Tracey Martin and Labour MPs, particularly in framing and supporting the amendments made to this Education Amendment Bill—it was appreciated.

The partnership school model is but a strand in this Government’s efforts to lift student achievement. Currently four out of five students are doing well in our system, but we are working towards lifting five out of five students and equipping them to unlock the potential that lies within them all.

The Programme for International Student Assessment studies are often held out to show that all is right with our education system, but what is the reality? In 2009 New Zealand ranked seventh for reading. On the surface that is ostensibly a good result, but if we disaggregate the score, we find that Pākehā were second in the world, Asians seventh in the world, Māori 34th equal between Slovakia and Slovenia, and Pasifika students 44th—just above Mexico. Our much vaunted system is not working for everyone. As one submitter to the committee pointed out, in truth, the only place where New Zealand is first in education in the Programme for International Student Assessment 2009 study is in the inequality scores. Our highest and lowest achievers are further apart than in any other OECD country. Another submitter said: “Are we living in two different countries? Can we afford to be complacent?”.

The committee heard that the partnership schools working group has received 35 indications of interest, with groups saying they want the chance to do something about this, they want to see innovation to enable their kids to engage in learning and get a decent start in life, and they are willing to be held accountable for their success in doing that.

The most fundamental difference between partnership schools and State or State-integrated schools is that the relationship with the ministry is contractual rather than regulatory: a contract to deliver engagement and achievement outcomes in return for per-student funding. The Government will still safeguard taxpayers’ interests but with more emphasis on what results are achieved and less on micro-managing how they are achieved—a point that seems to be overlooked in the baying obscurantism of the unions in that the policy aims to lift achievement for children by empowering teachers and offering teachers greater autonomy. They overlook the point that this policy is aiming to empower teachers and offer teachers greater autonomy.

It is noteworthy that in Sweden teachers unions did not oppose the introduction of this model. Believe it or not, they did not oppose the introduction of this model some 20 years ago because they recognised the partnership schools model’s potential to provide professional development opportunities for their members. Interestingly, the Swedish unions were proved correct, and later research by the independent Swedish Quality Index found that teachers in the partnership model schools had a higher level of satisfaction than teachers in regular State schools.

I have spoken in the House in the past regarding the outstanding principals and teachers I have met in the schools that I have visited in the vibrant and diverse community of Manurewa. I have long felt that the innovation and passion these committed professionals bring to their vocation do not square with the education unions’ quasi-nihilistic denial of any soupçon of merit in any of the measures this Government has introduced to lift student achievement.

As recently as 26 April, an opinion piece in the New Zealand Herald by the national president of the New Zealand Educational Institute criticised this Government’s—listen to this—$1.4 billion spend on early childhood education. The highest ever spend on early childhood education was criticised—our drive for parents, students, and teachers to understand at an early stage how a student’s achievement measured up against others of a similar age, the clustering of specialist resources to facilitate access to them for a greater number of students, and, yes, potentially and inevitably the partnership schools initiative. Virtually every strand in the education cable to help lift our children’s level of achievement in New Zealand has been opposed by the teacher unions and, incidentally, by their thralls in the Opposition.

Their opposition flies in the face of the McKinsey consultancy report that looks at why countries like Finland, Canada, Korea, and Singapore succeed so well in educating their young people. Fundamentally, they get the best teachers, they get the best out of teachers, and they intervene early when children are falling behind. So why are the unions opposing all efforts to lift student achievement? The surprising tenor of the submissions seems to suggest that the unions alone know what is best for our children, that experience elsewhere in the world can be ignored, and that we can solipsistically say that all is right with our educational world and that we have enough choice already. Nothing new needs to be contemplated and nothing needs to change. This, I find, is a very worrying mind-set, particularly among people charged with our children’s education and in the Opposition, who you would hope would be trying to lift student achievement, as well. The unions cannot seem to cope with choice. The unions and, I should add, the Opposition cannot seem to cope with choice and they seem to have a deep-seated anathema to democracy.

Partnership schools are not compulsory. No one has to go to them. This Government is providing an education system that is capable of helping unlock the potential of all New Zealanders, particularly our most vulnerable. Our public education system does well for many, but not for all.

To suggest that a partnership school, because it sits outside the public system, is inherently unable to provide an environment capable of lifting student achievement and unlocking individual student potential is fatuous, naive, and wrong. Successful education, of necessity, must be infinitely varied in its engagement strategies—no one size fits all. Partnership schools, in their different manifestations, will empower teachers working within them to use all their myriad of skills, abilities, and passion to engage with, and lift the achievement levels of, those students who choose to attend them. Partnership schools are but another strand in this Government’s drive for educational equity. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. The focus of our contribution will be on the charter school section of the Education Amendment Bill. Although there are other issues inside the amendment bill that concern us greatly, at this moment we will concentrate on the charter schools section. I wish to acknowledge the kind mention by the Minister of Education of my contribution at the Education and Science Committee. As New Zealand First has always stated, we will come to this House and do our best to be constructive to gain the best outcomes for New Zealanders. That is our single goal and our single purpose here.

So, when, at the first reading, the then chair of the Education and Science Committee and now Associate Minister of Education, Nikki Kaye, stood and implored all Opposition members to keep an open mind, specifically around the charter schools issue during the select committee hearings, I took that on board. I personally took that on board. I read every submission looking for a key element that would show up, that would highlight, a reason—a single reason—why charter schools would be of benefit to New Zealand children and New Zealand communities. I asked questions and I believe that my select committee colleagues on both sides of this House can attest to the fact that these questions were to seek answers. They were not vicious or overly political. They were designed to uncover any truth to the statements that these schools were an answer to those students currently performing in the stanine 1 to stanine 3 band of academic performance—the tail of underachievement.

I listened to the comments and questions from the Government members in an attempt to judge their commitment to the open-minded consideration of this topic requested by us, the Opposition. I listened to Paul Goldsmith tell submitters that because he had given some lectures at university, that proved that it was not necessary for every teacher to be qualified or registered. I heard Colin King tell submitters that it was not really the quality of the school you attended but it was surely the school tie that would judge the students’ professional success or failure. For the party he represents, that may well be true. We heard Government members and pro-submitters tell us that being non-registered did not mean non-qualified. We heard from Simon O’Connor that to teach was a natural human ability, so, therefore, anyone can do it—no big deal. That is probably the single greatest problem with education today—every man and his dog think they can do it. I sat in those select committee hearings and I recognised that good people though they may be on the Government benches, they had already been instructed to close their minds to any alteration of the charter school section of this bill.

We spent hours discussing socks being up or down or roundabout or on or off under the surrender and retention provisions, but hardly a single hour on charter schools. I am deeply, deeply disappointed in my counterparts on the Government benches. Although evidence was produced again and again and again, the flexibility and innovation touted as being required for charter schools are already there inside the current Education Act 1989. Although this evidence was put out by so many submitters—2,100 submitters—the Government members on the select committee were left with a single course because they already had instruction. The only course that they had was to shrug their shoulders and say: “Oh, well. Why not?”. So there is only one way to stop this profit-driven madness from destroying our country’s commitment to a high-quality education system for all—a system that does not discriminate by race or need, and a system where the Government reinforces its commitment to lift its own performance, rather than outsourcing it to a profit organisation—and that is for the New Zealand public to once again flex their muscle. So I am going to ask the New Zealand public. I am going to ask Māoridom to bombard the Māori Party MPs with calls to withdraw their support for this bill. Only they stand in the way of turning back this profiteering from our education system.

I mentioned before—and I do not know where Mr Calder got his numbers from—that there were 2,193 submitters to this bill. Of those, 2,100 were opposed—and, yes, some of them are actually trained educationalists—62 were in support of partnership schools, and 31 remained silent on that specific issue. I say to the Māori Party: “Tell your people the truth.” On 8 May Te Ururoa Flavell and the Minister of Education, through a manipulation of question time, tried to send a message to Māoridom that there was overwhelming support amongst Māori educators for this proposal. There is not. The number of individuals involved in Māori education who are represented by submitters opposed to this legislation overwhelmingly outnumbers those who submitted in favour of this bill. The submission quoted by the Minister during question time on 8 May was in fact on behalf of 23 iwi schools that currently operate very successfully under the flexibility of the existing Act. They are a perfect example, in fact, of why we do not need to change this legislation.

What we need is for this Government to commit to expanding those types of best-practice models throughout the country through compulsory professional development. Instead of introducing legislation that allows it to wash its hands of its responsibility to our Māori and Pasifika students—and we give warning to those communities—this Government will give you a contract. Yes, you will receive public money, but then you are on your own. There is an old saying out there: “Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.”

I note that one of the schools recently showcased in a mainstream newspaper as one of the possible best-practice solutions for Māori children boasts an 85 percent success rate among the students who remain in that school. I believe it is probably one of the 35 that have expressed an interest for charter schools. Considering the requirement of that school for physical activity in order to even gain entry, this removes any special-needs children from this environment. Under this bill the school needs to be careful with its application because under an open-door policy, you cannot have a requirement such as that. You cannot have a requirement that means only people who can run 300 metres in so many seconds can come into your school. But that requirement in that school removes any special-needs children from that environment, and those children make up approximately 5 percent of the compulsory sector tail. I guess we are now looking at marketing spin, because 85 percent is the same success rate as that of our State schools. It is a hell of a marketing job that is being put on to the public of New Zealand.

I have here The New Zealand Curriculum. This is a world-recognised document. This document was developed within the profession and with the profession, and it has been endorsed not only by educational professionals but by all political parties. Not a single political party says that this document is anything but valuable. This is a rubbish bin. This page I am holding is the single piece of The New Zealand Curriculum that charter schools have to follow. This is what you can do with the rest of it—you can bin it.

And to the Māori Party, this document here is the curriculum guidelines for teaching and learning Te Reo Māori in English medium schools. We can chuck it out too—there is no requirement for it. There is no requirement for it any longer under this legislation. Do Māori voters know that? Does the Māori Party itself know that? Never has this been mentioned, and this is the sort of secrecy and this is the sort of comment that has been removed from any part of this conversation. What annoys me even more is when Mr Banks, who is completely ignorant of how the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) works, goes on national television and makes a statement that every second young Māori is leaving school after 12 years of schooling without NCEA level 2, with no numeracy or literacy. I have here the numbers for school-leavers from 2011. There were 63,362 school-leavers in the 2011 year, and 28.25 percent of them left without NCEA level 2 qualifications. Of those, 14.5 percent were Pākehā, 10.33 percent were Māori, and 3.87 percent were Pasifika. The New Zealand people need to see through the information and the spin that has been placed on this bill, and they will. We will oppose the bill.

Can I suggest that the previous speaker, Tracey Martin, might want to keep hold of the rubbish bin, and when the Hansard comes out, she might want to throw her contribution straight into the bin, as well. But I will move on. I am happy to take a call on the second reading of the Education Amendment Bill. I am not a member of the Education and Science Committee, but I was happy to be involved predominantly in the search, surrender, and retention components of the bill. I just want to commend the work of the committee in what is a really challenging area. I think that in schools, workplaces, and communities, the issue of drugs and the impact of some of the social dysfunction from that is significant. I just want to commend the committee for working very hard to traverse a number of the submissions that were made. Some very sensible changes have been made as a result of that.

First and foremost, the surrender and retention component of this bill is dealing with three core areas: the search of students and property within their control, the use of dogs, and the collection of bodily samples. The first point I want to make in respect of that is that over and above everything this is about ensuring that boards and principals can have a safe environment for learning, and an environment that is conducive to students to learn and be educated in. That is where everything must come back to and be centred on when decisions are made as to how to deal with students who bring weapons or drugs into schools. The changes that have been made really were called for by the sector, and, I think, they provide real clarity and a legislative framework upon which the sector can operate with some confidence. I think that is very important because of some of the confusion and ambiguity that has existed in terms of the practices in schools.

I want to acknowledge a couple of submitters in particular, and the reason for this is that I think what they have done has reflected some of the realities that it is very easy for the bureaucracies to lose touch with. It is a very evolving scene out there. I just want to commend submitters from the Post Primary Teachers Association, and Tom Haig in particular; Patrick Walsh from the Secondary Principals’ Association of New Zealand; and Grant McMillan and Al Kirk from Ashburton College and Whangarei Boys’ High School, respectively, for the pragmatism that they brought and the reality that, I think, they brought into the conversation, which were of great assistance to the committee.

I just want to very briefly summarise the three main components that the surrender and retention aspects really deal with. Firstly, when a teacher believes that a student has an item that is harmful to that learning environment, the teacher or another authorised person has the ability to require that item to be revealed and surrendered. If that is not done, and if the teacher has a reasonable belief that the item is harmful, they can then require the student to hand over a bag or their outer clothing, including headwear, socks, and shoes, for the purpose of searching for that harmful item. Obviously, the searches do have to be carried out—and it is set out quite explicitly in the legislation—in a sensitive, private, and decent manner, as we would expect, and I will touch on the guidelines that I think will provide great assistance in that. Also, the bill makes it clear that where students refuse these requirements, the teachers are entitled to take an alternative disciplinary approach. So we get to a situation where the boards, the teachers, and the principals must be in a position to ensure that that environment is safe. This bill ensures that where requirements are not met, an alternative consequence can be taken, because a school cannot be held to ransom by students who fail to follow the rules of that school. The bill provides some real clarity in that.

The bill goes on to be very clear around drug testing and the fact that pre-suspension drug testing in the manner of a Rubicon programme, where a requirement can be made for a student to pass a drug test as part of a condition of that programme, is very much an allowable practice within the framework. There is nothing stopping schools at the moment, by virtue of their board, from having a requirement to pass a drug test when coming back from suspension—post-suspension—but the unintended consequence of saying that drug testing should be a requirement only after suspension is that teachers will suspend students simply to try to deal with the drug issue. So the ability to engage and encourage students to participate in voluntary programmes pre-suspension is infinitely sensible and is very reflective of the fact that the best place to get on and solve these issues is actually in the school environment.

With regard to drug dogs, the bill clarifies that contractors can be used and can engage with their dogs in schools for the purpose of searching the school grounds, but not the students themselves or bags in their control. We have to be very careful that arbitrary, random searches by virtue of a dog running along a line of students is just not an acceptable practice. Where there are reasonable grounds to believe that a student may have drugs on them, then, if need be, you can certainly involve the police in that, but there are other means to deal with it. But the bill points out the theatre of having drug dogs in schools—the ability to send that deterrent message and get that balance right.

Can I just conclude with one of the important components of the changes to this particular part of the bill, in the requirement for the Ministry of Education to prepare guidelines in consultation with the sector. Those guidelines must be given regard to when schools are forming their policies. This is vital in two ways: firstly, because the sector and the ministry will engage in this on an ongoing basis in the realities, and will form a much closer and better working relationship in reflecting the needs of schools in dealing with this; and, secondly, I think it will provide a great best-practice methodology and mechanism for boards and principals to ensure that in responding to the needs of this law, they put some flesh on the bones and actually have a pragmatic and sensible means of achieving purpose. I wholeheartedly commend to the House the changes made here in this bill. Thank you.

I am pleased to be able to take a call on this bill, the Education Amendment Bill, to address some of the speeches that we have heard in this House this afternoon about this legislation. I would describe some of the claims that we have heard in this House about partnership schools as truly extraordinary. First of all, we had John Banks stand up and tell us that partnership schools will transform education in this country. This is about where my agreement with Mr Banks finished, because, yes, they will. They will introduce State-funded education for profit. They will introduce unqualified and non-registered teachers into our classrooms. They will be run by individual contracts, which is the way in which this Government seems to want to govern our country: government by contract. And it will mean a loss of boards of trustees and local communities having a say in how their schools are run. But then Mr Banks really hit the nail on the head when he told us that this was a “paradigm shift” and a “world-class business opportunity”. Well, I thought we were here debating the Education Amendment Bill, not talking about where the mates of this Government could make their next buck, because that is what it seems to be boiling down to.

Then we had an equally extraordinary speech from the chair of the Education and Science Committee, Dr Cam Calder. I sat through the hearings on this bill. I am a member of that select committee, and to sit there and hear or read 2,100 submissions from people who told us very good reasons why it was that charter or partnership schools were a bad idea for education in this country, and then hear a number of those submitters being denigrated by the chair of that committee is truly extraordinary. Dr Calder told us that the teacher unions should have behaved like their Swedish counterparts. They should have rolled over, in the way the Swedish teacher unions did. Well, Dr Calder, let me tell you that educational achievement in Sweden stopped with the introduction of freedom schools. Even the Maxim Institute will tell you that it was a failed model. The chair of the Education and Science Committee should do his homework before he comes to this House and bandies examples about. It truly was 10 minutes of union bashing. How dare teachers in this country and their representative bodies make submissions on a bill about education! This shows today that the ideological blinkers that this Government is wearing, with its coalition partner the ACT Party, are firmly in place. This is about ideology. This is about votes in the House. The best he could come up with was 10 minutes of union bashing.

Well, Dr Calder, these are educational professionals. These are the people charged with teaching our children, and who do have opinions on education and the future of our education system in New Zealand. And do you know what, Dr Calder? I do not know one teacher who would ever, ever offer an apology for the fact that they do care about the education system in New Zealand, and that they do care about the education of our children. New Zealand teachers whom I speak to are in favour of change. To claim that they do not want to see any change is simply not true. What they want to see is change that works, and the legislation that we have before this House is in no way change that works.

This is a sad day for New Zealand children, because we are getting a step closer to a scheme that was cooked up over a cup of tea to ensure that this Government held the votes in this Parliament. Instead of the Government focusing on making all our schools the very best that they can be, we have got a Government that is putting profit before our children’s education, and that is not something that anybody in this House should be proud of. There are crocodile tears and words coming from the opposite side that this bill is not about profit; that it is about choice, that it is about freedom, and that it is about ACT Party values. Well, then, I challenge members of the Government to vote for my colleague Chris Hipkins’ amendment to this bill that says: “Fine. Take the profit motive out of it.” If you really do believe that it is for not-for-profits and iwi groups, then vote in favour of the Supplementary Order Paper that removes the ability for people to make a profit from these partnership schools, because until you do your words are hollow. They are—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

Sorry, Mr Assistant Speaker, your words are not hollow. Until the Government votes for this Supplementary Order Paper, they are going to be just hollow words, words with little meaning, and a thin veneer of what the Government is trying to do, which is open up new business opportunities for its mates.

Labour does strongly oppose this bill. We will not agree to National’s charter schools in any way, shape, or form. People need to know that the ongoing funding and support for charter schools will not be guaranteed under a future Labour Government. We will not guarantee any charter school established during the term of the present Government the right to integrate into the State school system. No further charter schools will be established under a Labour Government, and legislation allowing for their establishment will be repealed. Why is this? It is because children in New Zealand deserve better than what the legislation we are debating offers them. They deserve more than a dangerous gimmick and a political stitch-up over a cup of tea between John Key and John Banks. Education is not a business; it is about the future of our children.

There is no evidence that charter schools lead to improved results. In fact, the overseas evidence has proved that, more often than not, charter schools fail. The evidence base for making the case to establish charter schools is simply not there. This is simply a Government that is continuing its modus operandi of governing us by contract. This is the traders’ approach to education, not the educationalists’ approach to education. Under this legislation all we are getting is contracts that will not deliver for our children, and unqualified and deregistered teachers in our classrooms. How is this going to be better for the education of our children? Would anybody in this House allow an untrained doctor to treat their child? The answer is, more than likely, a resounding no, so why would anybody in this House want an untrained teacher to teach their child? If the Government’s claims that it is about educational achievement are true, then why is it not following all the evidence that shows within the OECD that where the tightest teacher registration occurs, you have the highest educational outcomes? The simple fact of the matter is that if this was a Government that did care about educational outcomes, teacher registration would be high on its agenda.

We heard from submitter after submitter to the Education and Science Committee about what could be done—even about the utilisation of people who did not have formal teaching qualifications under the present education system that we have. The difference is that they fell within a recognised system and that they were part of an overall scheme where registration was valued. They were not thrown in front of our children.

The other objection we have to this, amongst many—and my colleague Tracey Martin from New Zealand First spoke of this—is that there is no compulsion on charter schools or partnership schools to deliver the agreed curriculum. We have a very good curriculum in New Zealand. It is well developed, and in many ways it is the envy of the world, but there is no onus on charter schools to deliver the curriculum. The tragedy of this—and this has been lost by the rhetoric from the Government on this—is that New Zealand has a world-leading education system. Many of our approaches are seen by others around the world as innovative, and our parents and our communities have some of the most say in the world in governing our schools through our boards of trustees model. This legislation does away with that for charter schools. Communities and parents will not be the governors of them. Contracts and boards are what are going to govern this type of education in our country, and this is not good enough. Submitter after submitter came to the select committee and told us that this would not work and they did not want it. The Government did not listen to them. It did not listen to them about the flexibility.

The other important piece in the puzzle in this, for me, is that of course Christchurch is being seen as one of the sites where we are going to experiment on our children. We have seen in New Orleans what happened post - Hurricane Katrina. Christchurch is being eyed up by the Government as a prime site for experimentation. Our schools are being closed. We are going to hear about that later this month. The children of Christchurch, who have already been through so much, are going to become the guinea pigs of this Government and the price of a coalition deal cooked up over a cup of tea. The poorest children in the eastern suburbs—

Sorry to interrupt the honourable member. Her time has expired.

It is a pleasure to take a call in the second reading of the Education Amendment Bill. Just to push back a little at the comments from Opposition members, if they accuse us of being ideologically focused on things, then I trust that they will read their second reading speeches and try to understand the venom that is coming out from that other side, which has absolutely no base. When you step back from it, we are not actually taking over the State system. What we are doing is empowering communities. We are empowering cultures, ethnic communities, and groups to be able to find a way forward in education.

I just want, as time permits, to talk about the challenge that confronts New Zealand around underachievement for both Māori and Pasifika. I can clearly understand why the Māori Party is supporting this bill, because it would be fair to say that the State system has tried very, very hard to be successful in that particular area, but it admits itself that it has not succeeded. So on that basis I commend the Māori Party for having the courage and the strength of its convictions to support this bill so that it can have more input into Māori education.

The major challenge is definitely about getting the right teachers in front of young people to spark learning. I must admit that in my early days on the Education and Science Committee I was motivated by the Post Primary Teachers Association paper that came out about technology, which talked about technology or theory with no practice. That is sort of a piece of work that I have followed through for some time, and I say that the limited authority to teach is a halfway house, but it does not go anywhere near far enough. Although we listen to the other side talking about the untrained, unregistered teachers, there are some outstanding people out there who do spark and inspire people, and we want to get them in front of our children. We want them to get in front of the communities that are crying out to be heard and to be given an opportunity.

I would just like to refer to a couple of the submissions that came before the select committee and just read one from one particular school: “All too frequently we read about how badly Māori are doing at all levels of New Zealand society. Someone somewhere finally has got the guts to do something constructive with the decades of research that says why Māori is underachieving. We acknowledge the Education and Science Committee for taking a stand for our future.” There is another select committee submission here that says: “It is time for New Zealand to be innovative, to prove to the world we do have a world class education system for ALL New Zealanders, including Maori and Pasifika. At the moment our education system is 2nd in the OECD world for Pakeha and 33rd for Maori. This is unacceptable.”

The one I really want to draw to the attention of the House is from Dr Stuart Middleton from the Manukau Institute of Technology, who said: “I believe that the accommodation of Partnership Schools … into the education system is appropriate at this time when focus is sharpening on responding to the issues of disengagement”—hear that; responding to the issues of disengagement—“and low achievement, the related issues of poor progression to tertiary education and training, to pathways into employment”, and so on.

There were certainly a lot of people who spoke against this bill, but on balance I would have to say that there was a very creditable cry for help, for further input, and I would have to say on that basis that we want to bear in mind that there will be a contract between the Minister and a partnership school. That contract will ensure that ERO—the Education Review Office—will review the learning outcomes. There will be national standards that will be measured against the outcome from years 1 to 8, and they will also be measured against what the national outcome is in the National Certificate of Educational Achievement level. They will be police vetted.

So from that point of view, what we are hearing from the other side is that they are ideologically opposed to the fact that we look for innovative solutions to address the problems that we are facing within education. I am looking forward to seeing when the first of these schools are opened, because in my view we have narrowed down our focus around education. Sure, we have got an outstanding curriculum, but when we consider what is required to engage young men and young women in education, to turn that light—that spark—on, to turn it into a raging bushfire so that they see their place in society in being outstanding achievers, the partnership school model will help to achieve that. It broadens out the options and choices.

Nobody is going to be forced, under compulsion, to go there. The Ombudsman made a very, very poor call when she submitted to us. She said that the Ombudsman should be there to judge, and she used an analogy about prisons. But the point that we would like to make there is that partnership schools are not prisons, because people can leave if they choose to. They can come in if they choose to. They are not being held against their will. What we hear from the other side is just a lot of noise, and a lot of huff and puff and venom. They had no options. They were in Government for 9 years, and they accepted failure.

I understand the next call is a split call.

Look, I think anyone listening to this debate could not help but see where the passion for education in this House lies. Clearly, it is on the Opposition benches and not with the Government. Those dry, boring speeches, where Government members have tried to distract from the real issues, are not fooling anyone. Our children, the children of this nation, are being used as guinea pigs—as guinea pigs. That would not be quite so bad if we thought it might work, but, given that we know that it almost certainly will not work because of what we have seen overseas, it is absolutely criminal that that party, that Government, is using this charter schools legislation to use our children as guinea pigs.

What is behind this? What is all behind it? Well, two things. The Government clearly does not value teachers. Government members have had it in for teachers ever since they got into Government. They started off with early childhood education, where they scrapped the funding for 100 percent qualified teachers, and now they are on to the compulsory sector, and they want to scrap teachers in the compulsory sector as well. The vehicle for that is this legislation, the Education Amendment Bill, which is bringing in charter schools, where they do not have to employ qualified teachers.

What has the National Government got against teachers? Every teacher in this country needs to listen to this debate and understand that the National Government does not like teachers and does not want them in front of the children of this nation. All the parents need to understand that that Government does not want quality teaching in front of their children. This is just another slant at its failed attempt to increase class sizes. It could not get away with that, but it wants to get away with dumbing down education by introducing charter schools.

So it is about not valuing teachers, but it is also about privatising our education system because National’s rich mates want to get their hands on taxpayer funding in education, and that is the other motivation for this. For all the bluff and bluster about how concerned the Government is about Māori achievement and Pasifika achievement in our education system, why did the Government not listen to what Ngāi Tahu had to say when they came before the Education and Science Committee? Ngāi Tahu said that they did not support this legislation, because they thought that the introduction of charter schools would lead to corruption and fraud because of the privatisation agenda.

But, importantly, they also said that poverty—poverty—is the largest factor in the underachievement of Māori and Pasifika students. That Government, week in and week out, refuses to deal with poverty in this country. It refuses to even measure poverty in this country. If it was serious about dealing with underachievement for those children it would deal with the underlying issue of poverty, but it refuses to. Instead, it is treating our children as guinea pigs through this legislation, and it is doing it in a way where it is hiding it from the public. Those charter schools will not have any scrutiny under the Official Information Act or from the Ombudsman, and I think that just about says it all.

But one of the really frightening things that I saw when I was on that select committee was, actually, a fantastic submission—well, it was not a submission; it was a briefing, actually—from a parent activist from New Orleans, a woman by the name of Karran Harper Royal, who came to warn us off charter schools. She told us that in New Orleans they had shut down perfectly good State-funded schools and they had used that to bring in the privatised charter school model. Where does that remind you of? New Orleans had had a natural disaster. Christchurch has had a natural disaster, and guess what! The Government is up to exactly the same thing in Christchurch. It is closing down perfectly good State-funded and State-operated schools, and it is doing that in order to make way for this guinea pig, this trial situation, of charter schools. That is what it is doing to some of the most vulnerable children in Christchurch and up and down New Zealand.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou i te Whare Pāremata. The Education Amendment Bill is ridiculous, and it is also quite sick. It takes some of our most vulnerable students and is going to try to use them as lab rats for a profit-making experiment, which has failed all over the world, and which at best nearly equals the achievement results of the State schools in a number of countries including the United States. But this was never about evidence; it was always about ideology. We have a school system based on board of trustee charters. It allows for self-determination in communities and autonomy to a huge degree in schools already. The bill deliberately undermines it in order to sell a privatisation tool that nobody, not one person, ever mentioned during my experience on numerous education election platforms. At many meetings with the National Party, and even with some of the relatively interesting ACT candidates, no one said that we are going to bring in charter schools, and we desperately need these. No one in the audience got up and said: “Please privatise the education system. That is what we need.” But we need to recognise that this bill is not the result of short-term thinking. It is clear that Treasury and the National Cabinet have been keen on this failed model for quite some time. The ACT-National coalition agreement was a good opportunity for them to force it on to the country.

So let us think about who is supposed to benefit. I went to a meeting and met a Samoan parent. She works three part-time jobs and her husband works two. She said to me: “My children are not doing very well at school. It is because neither of us is ever home at the same time to help them with their homework. If you want our children to succeed, please lift the minimum wage.” That is what she said, and she was not making excuses. But she said: “We have many good Pasifika parents and teachers who know that if we lifted the minimum wage, we might actually be able to put the time into the kids that they deserve, and support them in the education. But right now poverty is getting in the way of our kids’ learning.” It is an unpalatable message, but nevertheless very true.

But the bill itself mandates the unwanted and unethical model, and facilitates for-profit funded State schools with no requirement for some very interesting things—for a start, registered teachers. A number of my colleagues have spoken about the fact that teaching is a profession. I myself have done a lot of tutoring. I know the difference between teaching and tutoring. There is great scope for tutors and experts to come into the school system. I find the Government speakers have a bizarre idea as if the schools were locked-down institutions where nobody without a certificate is allowed to walk through the door. That is not how the education system works. They do show their ignorance in this bill as well as their ideological commitment to a failed model. We need to look behind this in order to understand what is really going on, because why would we set up for-profit State-funded schools with no requirement for registered teachers and unaccountable sponsors?

Anyone can be a sponsor—anybody at all. They do not need an educational background. They do not need to have any experience or academic qualification. Anyone who wants to do this can be a sponsor. And then there is a secret contract that only the Ministry of Education knows about that it will set with the sponsor, and that will be results based, because, of course, results—meaning numbers—are the only thing that counts to people who do not understand how children’s learning actually works. We have had that demonstrated in the national standards debacle as well. People who are running this have no idea. Therefore, we have no registered teachers, no Official Information Act, no board of trustees, no commitment to The New Zealand Curriculum, no fixed hours to protect families’ and teachers’ time, and very limited powers in respect of the Ombudsman.

The overwhelming number of submitters opposed this bill, including parents of children with learning disabilities, who are 5 percent of the tail. They expressed deep concern about what will happen to their children in this model—the one in five that John Banks is supposedly so concerned about, as he suggests untrained staff with no accountability. The one in five is very interesting.

Professor John O’Neill brought the Massey University study to the Education and Science Committee. What we found out was that we have innovation already, but what is going to happen now is that education is going to be about privatisation for the benefit of the global franchises.

Members of the public who are listening will be aware that the provisions for kura hourua or partnership schools have excited a lot of public debate and controversy, especially among the teacher unions and the parties opposite. Many submitters did oppose partnership schools when they appeared before the Education and Science Committee, and that opposition has been widely publicised. However, many others came to support them, and that was much less widely publicised. So I think it is important to set out in this debate on the Education Amendment Bill the views of some of those who are in favour and their reasons for proposing the concept.

One such submitter, as we heard from my colleague Colin King a short time ago, was Dr Stuart Middleton. He is currently Director of External Relations at the Manukau Institute of Technology. I have no doubt that he is widely respected in this House and throughout the country for his educational experience and expertise. He told us, as Mr King has reminded us, that the “accommodation of Partnership Schools Kura Hourua into the education system is appropriate at this time when focus is sharpening on responding to the issues of disengagement and low achievement,”. Dr Middleton also argued that the “scale of disengagement from schools and the level of educational failure in New Zealand are such that no opportunity to provide new and other pathways through education and training and subsequently into employment should be discounted nor should the opportunity to widen the system capability to bring success to young people be lost.” Dr Middleton concluded that “It must be noted that this proposal is not as radical as it is being painted, and that there are already existing and clear similarities between the international ‘academy school’ development and the New Zealand education system in general.”

Importantly, we heard from Catherine Isaac, the Chair of the Partnership Schools/ Kura Hourua Working Group, and her colleagues Dr Margaret Southwick of Whitireia Community Polytechnic, and Mike Hollings, the Chief Executive of Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu—The Correspondence School, and, although they were not able to be there in person, it is notable that others on that working group include Hana O’Regan, John Taylor, Tony Falkenstein, and Vicki Buck. These are a representative and experienced group of very credible people. Ms Isaac told us that the motivation for kura hourua is to lift educational achievement amongst our most disadvantaged students, pure and simple. It is just one more tool in the educational tool box to help those children who are not currently succeeding in regular State schools, because, despite the fact that we do have a world-leading public education system, we have to acknowledge that it is currently not working for all of our children.

Tellingly, Ms Isaac and her colleagues made the point that, as the chair of the Education and Science Committee, my good colleague Dr Calder, reiterated earlier, when you disaggregate the figures for all OECD countries, New Zealand European and New Zealand Asian children are doing very well and they are up there in the top 10. In fact, New Zealand European are up in the first or second, but New Zealand Māori are down below 25, and New Zealand Pasifika cannot even make it into the top 30. That is a real worry and we have to ensure that we do something about it. That is what the partnership schools model is all about: greater freedom to use fresh ways of engaging with our struggling students, and much stronger accountability for ensuring that they will succeed. That is a really important part of the equation.

At the heart of the partnership schools model is a contract. The Crown will contract with an entity to provide education services in a binding, legally enforceable contract that will require the entity to meet specific and measurable performance goals, including student academic achievement; student engagement indicators, and we know that truancy is a major challenge for many of these young people; parents, whānau, and community engagement indicators; mission-specific outcomes; and financial, legal, and organisational performance. Applicants who wish to open a kura hourua will have to provide a very high-quality proposal and they will face a rigorous authorisation process. They will be assessed on their capacity, their educational track record, financial competence, mission and demonstrated demand for it, and how the target students will be attracted. These are good, meaty things. They need to be placed on the record because we have not heard about them at all from members opposite. Their students must be from the Government’s priority learner groups: Māori, Pasifika, and low socio-economic and special-needs groups.

The working group members went on to assure us that partnership schools will be subject to much greater scrutiny and accountability than regular State schools, and monitored quarterly, six-monthly, and annually on the agreed outcomes set out in the contract. They will be bound to the same statutory accountability procedures as State schools with regard to enrolment policy, special education needs, exemptions and expulsions, providing audited financial statements, Education Review Office reviews, and health and safety. It is important for the public to have these assurances. It is also important to note that the working group has closely heeded the failures and successes from around the world, and they have assured us that they have drawn on the very best. They have provided evidence that shows how well they can work.

This is an option that does work when it is well implemented and appropriately delivered. I commend the working group for its input and its thorough and dedicated work. I believe that this option will be a very positive addition to our options for some of the most vulnerable learners in New Zealand. I wish those children well as they seek to raise their levels of aspiration and achievement. Why would we deny them that opportunity?

The question was put that the amendments recommended by the Education and Science Committee by majority be agreed to.