Education Amendment Bill

Talofa, Mr Chair. As I was saying last night before we went to the break, I wanted to make sure that we understood that any conversation around the development of policy or procedures by the Ministry of Education with stakeholders must include the boards of trustees. It is the boards of trustees that hold the discipline hearings. This is something that is not well known to most people, because most people do not end up in front of a board of trustees for a discipline hearing. Very few children inside our school system end up inside this process.

I want to clarify that when we call it a discipline hearing, it is somewhat misleading. The purpose of this process is to identify with an issue, make sure that all the evidence around the issue dealing with that student is put on to the table, and make sure that every effort is made by the school, the staff, and the board of trustees to provide the supports necessary to re-engage that student safely—safely for themselves and safely for everybody else in the school—with their education. So it is the boards of trustees at the end of the day that have the power under current legislation to implement random drug-testing, for example. Random drug-testing, or the ability to take bodily samples—for example, urine tests—was one of the conversations we had, and this goes to the commencement clause. This goes to the reason why very clear guidelines need to be worked out with all stakeholders prior to the commencement of these clauses, and one of those major stakeholders, if not the major stakeholder, is the boards of trustees.

I was expressing my ill ease—it was a conversation had, and Mr Sabin put in a lot of conversation around the surrender and retention parts of this Education Amendment Bill—and I still carry some ill ease that the bill refers to teachers constantly, as opposed to boards of trustees in the legislation. Although the teachers are on the front line and there is an aspect of this bill that has been put into place to keep them safe, just as it has been put into place to keep students safe, the boards of trustees are actually the people who set those governance rules, who create those policies and then delegate down authority to implement those policies to staff through senior management. So at the end of the day, after much discussion, it was agreed by a majority in the Education and Science Committee that it was the teachers at the front line who needed to be referred to in the legislation. That was the recommendation of the officials.

I trust that that will work. I trust that teachers do not feel empowered by this legislation to go beyond the boundaries that they are delegated down to do by their boards of trustees, and I trust that prior to the commencement date the ministry will work closely with all those groups to make sure that we all clearly understand that this is about safety, not about restriction of freedom, and that this is about working together for the best outcomes for all our students, including those students who show up at our discipline hearings.

The other parts that we are discussing tonight are around the title of the bill. I did think that there is some room—I mean, the Education Amendment Bill is a somewhat innocuous little title for this bill. So I have a couple of suggestions. One is the “Bill English Outlasts, Outwits, Outplays”—

The Education Amendment Bill—let me pick up from where Tracey Martin was on this bill. The title of this bill is an innocuous one, is it not? The Education Amendment Bill—it could be anything, but, actually, the title does not reflect the magnitude of change that is being proposed in this legislation. The changes are probably some of the biggest changes for decades. In particular, the changes around the charter schools are the ones that I wish to focus on, and I want to look at them in the context of the title and also look at what is being changed, and reflect that in the title.

The charter school provisions are providing for a number of things that Labour is strongly opposed to. They give schools the right to have unqualified and unregistered teachers, and that includes the principal of the charter school. It also means that the school will not have to follow the New Zealand Curriculum. So I have been reflecting on this title, the Education Amendment Bill, and thinking that if we are serious about this, and if the Government is so proud of this initiative, let us call it something that does reflect what this bill is actually about. It could be called the “Charter Schools (Parents Don’t Deserve to Have a Voice) Bill”, because what this bill provides for is doing away with our democratic provisions in our school system, our elected boards of trustees that provide parents and the community with a say on what happens in their local school. That is all done away with. Instead, the sponsor of the school can determine what happens in that school. That includes, as I say, staff who are not necessarily qualified as teachers or indeed registered to teach. Maybe it could be called the “Charter Schools (Profit Before Pupils) Bill’, because what this bill does is allow schools to operate at a profit.

We had quite a lot of discussion last night about why it is that this legislation excludes charter schools from coverage from the Official Information Act and the Ombudsmen Act. We had a lot of debate about what was excluded, in terms of the Official Information Act. It was pointed out by the Minister that those things that are in the contract of the charter school would be able to be accessed from the ministry by people using the Official Information Act if they needed to. But a lot of debate last night was about what information would and would not be included in that reporting against the contract. The information held by the school will not be covered by the Official Information Act. So I wonder whether perhaps an alternative title for the bill could be “Charter Schools (Lack of Transparency and Accountability) Bill”, because I think the fact is that information about what is going on in these schools, at least in part, will not be covered by the Official Information Act, and certainly the Ombudsman is not able to be used in relation to charter schools. I was not there for the submissions process, but I understand the Ombudsman was absolutely critical—absolutely determinedly critical, in fact—of what the Government was proposing here and the lack of transparency, the lack of accountability, in this legislation. I think “Charter Schools (Lack of Transparency and Accountability) Bill” may well be a good name for this bill.

I want to go back to where I started from. I am somebody who values education very highly, as I know my colleagues on this side of the Chamber do, and we recognise the importance of teachers and those who lead teachers—principals—and their very critical role in terms of delivering quality education. I think I am going to go with the title “Charter School Students Don’t Deserve Qualified and Registered Teachers Bill”, because that is what is enabled by this legislation.

Teacher quality is something that those across the other side of the Chamber say they believe in. At a time when the Government claims it is focusing on increasing the quality of teaching—in Budget 2012 the Government indicated that it intended to introduce a postgraduate qualification as a requirement for trainee teachers—this bill allows charter schools to employ staff with no formal teaching qualifications at all. That is like saying that, in the end, anybody could teach. There are no specific requirements of teachers. There is no specific knowledge base. There are no particular competencies or skill requirements of teachers. In the end, perhaps if you are funny enough or engaging enough, you could teach. That is what it is really saying—that this is not a real profession. Well, actually, we all know, if we are honest, that that is not true. We all know that that is not true.

Even the principal of a charter school does not need to be a qualified teacher. You have to say to yourself—and all of us, I am sure, visit schools—that the role that is played by a principal as a leader of education and learning in a school is absolutely critical. A good principal has to understand what teachers do. They have to understand the learning environment. Having as a principal somebody who is not a qualified or registered teacher just does not make sense. I have to say that that just seems to me to reinforce the need to change the title of this bill to make it really clear to New Zealanders who hear about this legislation going through that it is not the innocuous Education Amendment Bill. This is the “Charter School Students Don’t Deserve Qualified and Registered Teachers Bill”.

There is a unique set of skills that teachers require. Apparently the Prime Minister, on the other hand, said that people should not be “hung up” on the fact that teachers without qualifications will be able to teach New Zealand children in charter schools. So let us not be “hung up” about that, says the Prime Minister. But, actually, not that long ago that same Prime Minister was telling parents that it is not the class sizes that matter but the quality of the teaching that we are getting in our schools. How are we going to get this quality teaching if we are able to have unqualified and unregistered teachers across that school? It is astounding, really, that the Prime Minister thinks that those two statements go together.

Part of National’s promise to improve teacher quality does not make sense, because it said that it wanted to improve teacher quality at the same time that it cut funding for teacher professional development by $15 million per year.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: Where is this speech going?

This speech is about what this bill is really about. It is not about the title, the Education Amendment Bill. My suggestion, if we are being honest, is that this bill should be called the “Charter School Students Don’t Deserve Qualified and Registered Teachers Bill”.

I know that the Government likes to say that teacher opposition to this bill is all because they are unionists and they are trying to protect their wages and conditions. I have been appalled, during the last term and the current term of this Government, by the way it thinks it is appropriate to attack teachers constantly, to undermine teachers, when we all know that the community actually values and respects teachers and that their job is critically important to the future social and economic development of this country. Let me say that it was not just teachers, teacher unions, principals, and principals’ organisations that raised concerns about this bill and the lack of a requirement for qualified and registered teachers—not at all. The National Council of Women, New Zealand’s largest women’s organisation, which is made up of branches from all around New Zealand and women from an absolutely diverse range of professions and organisations, in its submission to the Education and Science Committee was absolutely adamant that having unqualified and unregistered teachers in our schools was the wrong way to go.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: They did not.

It is not just about teachers. They did say that, Mr Bridges. Have a look at the submission.

I just want to say that this concern and this disquiet about what is being proposed in this legislation are widely shared in the community—by teachers and principals, yes indeed, but also by the wider community and the parents, who know what a difference teachers can make. If we are all honest—

I move, That the question be now put.

I really appreciate this opportunity, having spent the last hour on my back coughing when I would have liked to be critiquing. However, now is my one chance; I am going to have a go. I recognise that where we have got to is the commencement and title clauses of the Education Amendment Bill and I am really, really disappointed to be standing here at all on this particular issue, but it is par for the course. I do not think that children will get used to it, and I think that is the point. It is not actually about the business agenda; it is actually about our kids.

Let us have a look at the title. I would agree with some of my colleagues that there should be a change of title. The Education Amendment Bill is a meaningless and innocuous title for something that is really the “Charter for Disasters Bill”. I would like to call it the “Charters for Disasters Bill”, or “Accountability is Just a Secret Bill”, because that is really what it is all about. It is about a disaster for education and it is about secrecy in terms of contracting, which may be perfectly acceptable for some businesses but actually has no bearing on education for our kids. The title is misleading and disingenuous, which is not usual in Parliament, but this one in particular does not tell the public what is happening here, which is probably one of the most profound shifts in the history of education legislation away from what it says in Part 1 of the Education Act 1989: “free primary and secondary education”.

“Free” is such an interesting word, and “free” is what the schools in Britain are called. That is their title: free schools. In America they are called charter schools. When we are talking about the title of this bill both those words need to be considered, because Aotearoa New Zealand in the 1980s introduced charters for every single school. What we did not do is introduce secrecy, privatisation, unregistered teachers, no boards of trustees, any hours that the school chooses to set, a contract that is only with the Government, a sponsor who has no educational background, and so on. That is what “charter” meant to the citizens of this country. It was not perfect—Tomorrow’s Schools has its critics and there are things we need to do for it—but rather than chucking that out what is happening is an undermining through this really odd initiative that has failed elsewhere. At the very best, all the research can be called mixed in terms of its results.

Let us a spade a spade in the title of the bill. I think it would be a refreshing change. I think that perhaps we should call the bill the “Throw Away the Rule Book Bill”, because the rule book around what works for an equitable, quality public education system is being undermined by this. What I would also like to call the bill is the “Privatisation (Trojan Horse) Education Amendment Bill”, because it is actually a Trojan Horse for a fascinating speech that Heather Roy made some time ago, which I wrote a blog about called “Bad News from Bunnythorpe”. She made it in Bunnythorpe, which is an interesting place to announce the end of quality public education, but it sums up the way of life in this country in some ways in that disastrous educational policy was whispered in an obscure small town called Bunnythorpe. I am sure it is a very good place, but did it need Heather Roy announcing that vouchers and privatisation were the solution to education? That was prior to the election, then we had the cup of tea, then we had the coalition agreement, and now we have disastrous legislation that will undermine something that is very, very important to people in this country, which is the concept of a local school being good enough for all children.

I am not saying—no one is—that we cannot innovate and improve the quality of the public education system that we have; of course we can. I do not think anybody wants to deny that there are real issues from poverty, from disadvantage, and from the growing gap between the richest and the poorest families attending schools, and that there is the need for a much greater level of cultural responsiveness in the diversity of Aotearoa. That has always been needed. But we do have special character sections in our education legislation. We do have a whole range of mechanisms, such as kura kaupapa, that need resourcing.

If we are going to talk about the title of the bill, we should really be honest and say that this bill is not about any of the stated goals that we hold dear around free primary and secondary education; it is about facilitating business. So the bill could perhaps be called the “Business Facilitation in Education Bill”. I have had a look at some of the international groups that have expressed an interest in setting up charters, and they are franchises. It is basically an opportunity for international educational franchises to take over.

Another opportunity is there for unqualified teachers. This is what we heard at the select committee and this is why the title is mild and misleading. What we heard was that if you have failed to keep your registration—sorry, not you, Mr Chair—if there has been a failure to keep your registration up to date or you have committed some kind of misdemeanour that the Teachers Council is concerned about, do not worry; that person will be able to go and teach in a charter school. We are going to have this bizarre scenario where half the teachers in a school—or fewer, because there is no requirement for a particular number to be registered—will be registered, and the others will not. We will not know why, the parents will not know why, and that is the Government’s idea of accountability in education. That is the Government’s idea of safety for our children. It is extremely odd and totally inconsistent that it is building this into the Education Amendment Bill as it is titled.

I am very concerned about these titles. I think that, as well as reflecting that unregistered teachers are being allowed access through this bill, the title could also be the “Good at Lecturing? You Can Easily Be a Teacher Bill”, because what I heard at the select committee from some people—not the submitters, but other members of the committee—is that they did not understand the huge difference between lecturing in quantum physics at a university, and facilitating children’s learning in a primary school. And so the idea from some people was that you could just hijack some lecturers from a university who have a degree, throw them into a charter school, and then everything will be fine. Of course, 6-year-olds will really enjoy being lectured, because lecturing is learning to some people—just shows you what they do not know about learning.

The most offensive thing about this Education Amendment Bill and its title is that it does not expose the fact that children’s learning is not well served by privatisation and competition. I would much prefer that we call it just the “Competition Bill”. The league table is the way to go. The sports team model for education, which says that we should all be in league tables and that we should all compete because people learn best by competing, is worse than a fallacy. It is incredibly destructive. There is plenty of evidence of that all over the world when you read into the evidence about the creation of these so-called free, so-called charter, so-called helpful for education schools. I am also very concerned about the idea that perhaps a person could finish their university degree in their subject, be considered an expert, and then be hijacked into a school where they had 6 weeks’ training. Charter schools will be well positioned to take those people, but it will not work for kids.

So we have a bill that is called the Education Amendment Bill and is supposedly about free primary and secondary education, but it creates risk. It creates risk for parents trying to decide what will be sustainable, because if the schools fall over—and they often do, in other parts of the world—then your child has been mucked around. People are vulnerable about what is going to be best for their kids’ education. They need to know. Christchurch yesterday is a case in point. There is huge vulnerability. There is not a need for lab rat experimentation. Therefore, the title of this bill really needs to change. It really needs to be—I think my favourite is the Trojan Horse one, actually. I think the Trojan Horse one is my favourite because, yes, it is educational—it sort of inspires history. We think about what happened in Troy when the wooden horse was rolled through and everybody was smiling, thinking the siege was over—but the siege was not over. The siege was just beginning. That is what we see in the title of this bill: an innocuous title when the siege of Troy, after years of battle, has just begun. Out of the wooden horse will come the warriors of privatisation, who will break it open and create an amazingly well-resourced experiment, which no doubt the Government in its first few years will refuse to allow to fail, whatever the definition of success is.

I certainly do not think that competition will work for these kids. The experience overseas in terms of this bill is that charter schools counsel out students who fail, because it is a contract, and if you fail to meet the contract, it is over—it is over. That is what is so destructive from the students’ point of view. I am sure the experiment will not fail in the first few years because it will be heavily resourced, but we could have done a whole lot better with that $19 million we wasted in the Budget on this. We could have done a whole lot better with our ethos around education. We could have stuck to the title of section 3 of the Education Act, “Right to free primary and secondary education”. We should add some words. If the Green Party was going to amend the Education Act, we would add words around creating a quality, local, culturally responsive, and equitable public system for the benefit of all students. We would not play games with the future of our children.

I move, That the question be now put.

I appreciate that this is my first call on this bill, the Education Amendment Bill, and, I hope, the first of many in this Committee stage. I have come to the Chamber because I am extremely concerned about the bill. I am extremely concerned. I once held the office of Minister of Health. I am trying to imagine a health parallel for this bill. Imagine public money going into a private hospital where, by special dispensation from an Act of Parliament, they had unqualified doctors, unqualified nurses, and medicines that did not have to go through Medsafe and that were never trialled. Just imagine putting your family into a hospital where you could not, by law, have access to your medical records. It sounds so preposterous that it is creating excitement—even disorder—around the Chamber. But that is exactly what this bill says about education.

From the people who brought you Novopay, the people who brought you the Christchurch schools debacle, the people who brought you the record number of unfunded contingencies in the education budget, and the people who brought you increases in funding for private schools while cutting money for public schools, they are bringing you the big granddaddy of them all, the innocuous-sounding Education Amendment Bill. This is the thin end of a very, very dangerous wedge. This is the idea that private, for-profit interests are going to be on the take for public money, with no scrutiny, no financial accountability, no curriculum, no qualifications required for teachers, and no qualifications required for principals. You have got to ask what an appropriate title is for this ridiculous piece of rubbish. The answer is: how about the “Education (You’ve Got to be Joking) Amendment Bill”?

This is so ridiculous, it is like some neo-liberal Martian—let us call him “John Banks”—landed on planet Earth and thought that they were going to lay waste to public education because they just hate anything with the word “public” in it. This is so ridiculous. Wake up, New Zealand. Your treasured education system is going to be ripped apart into a two-tier, for-profit, discriminating against minorities, discriminating against the poor, pile of rubbish—pile of rubbish. If you do not like a two-tier health system, you are not going to like a two-tier education system.

Or perhaps we should call this the “Education (Death of the Kiwi Dream) Bill”. The death of the Kiwi dream that the daughter of a doctor and the son of a driver could grow up and have equal access—

💬 Jami-Lee Ross: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I am struggling to see how this fits in with the title and commencement of the bill. Perhaps the member could be brought back to the actual clauses.

Speaking to the point of order—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): I do not really need any assistance on this. Relevance is a pertinent issue, particularly on clauses 1 to 3. I just remind the member to bring us into his realm of thinking pertinent to clauses 1 to 3.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Of course, we are discussing the title of the bill, and that is an opportunity, as Standing Orders dictate and as you have previously reminded us, to draw together the general themes of what the bill is intending, and, of course, that is what we are trying to do by emphasising the craziness of disembowelling the concept of public education in this country. It is a very serious matter.

All hyperbole aside, all jokes and argy-bargy aside, this is a precious thing that we are handling here. This is the idea that Kiwi kids all should have a good start in life—in fact, all deserve an equal start in life. We know that in our country we are already too far from that. We know, just from recent international surveys, that we are now one of the most unequal countries in the entire OECD—the rich countries’ club. And you know that Kiwi dream that we grew up with, the egalitarian idea that everybody could have a fair suck of the sav, that everybody deserved a fair chance in life? That is going so fast in this country, and it is going further under National Governments.

The Labour and Green Opposition parties are incredibly concerned by this bill. We are worried that its genesis was out of a cup of tea, a shabby deal between National and its neo-liberal wet-dream ACT partner. We are worried about—

💬 Jami-Lee Ross: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I am sorry to labour the point, but I am still struggling to see the relevance in the member’s comments in relation to the clauses.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Speaking to the point of order—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): I will hear from the Hon Trevor Mallard.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: I know that the member is a relatively new member, but I think relevance—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order!

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Well—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): No, please sit down. When the member gets up to give a contribution to help the Chair decide, attacking a member on his length of experience is completely outside, because then I think the member is standing up to attack the member, and that is not appropriate. If the member wants to make a contribution, I will hear it, but he must desist from making comment on other members.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: And I apologise, Mr Chair. I was being generous, rather than attacking him—I think he would know if I was.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): You must not speak on my ruling.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: The point that I am trying to make is that the question of relevance is one for the Chair to determine, and not one for which points of order are meant to be taken.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): The member is correct on that point.

Let us take this down to the level of evidence. We have heard from Government members that it does not matter if charter schools have unqualified teachers, it does not matter if the Official Information Act and other forms of accountability to the public for public money do not apply, and it does not matter if principals do not need teaching qualifications. None of that matters. Well, I think we should look at the evidence. Here is a very interesting study from none other than Stanford University. As it happens, it is a private university—[Bell rung]

I call Simon O’Connor.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Without wishing to create any sense of obligation on your good self, you will have noted that this was my first call on this bill, and—

Excuse me, please. I am going to hear the call of Simon O’Connor.

I move, That the question be now put.