Education Amendment Bill (No 2)

I move, That the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time. This is an important bill for the education sector, system, and profession. The bill strengthens the education profession by establishing a new professional body for teachers. It both clarifies and strengthens the regulatory framework and the disciplinary regime for the teaching profession, modernises governance arrangements for universities and wānanga, establishes a legal framework for the code of practice for the pastoral care of international students, establishes an independent contract disputes resolution scheme for international students and their education providers, and strengthens quality assurance arrangements in the tertiary education sector. The bill also makes an administrative amendment enabling the Secretary for Education, after consultation with the Auditor-General, to determine the form of school boards of trustees’ annual financial statements. Taken together, the amendments to the Education Act 1989 made by this bill will ensure that New Zealand’s education system is equipped to meet the challenges and opportunities of the modern learning environment.

This bill proposes the establishment of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ), a statutorily independent body for the teaching profession and the leadership within it. The bill reflects the recommendations of the 2012 review of the New Zealand Teachers Council and the 2013 report of the ministerial advisory group. It represents comprehensive sector-wide engagement on the transformation of the New Zealand Teachers Council into a body to provide leadership to the profession and strengthen its status in the 21st century. I wish to thank the very able people who led and contributed to those reviews and the consultation and advice that laid the groundwork for this legislation. Amongst the many people involved in this work I wish to thank Dr Judith Aitken, Robyn Baker, John Morris, and Pauline Winter, who were involved in the review of the New Zealand Teachers Council. I would like to thank Barbara Ala’alatoa, Nancy Bell, Irene Cooper, Professor Alister Jones, Lynda Reid, Peter Simpson, Arihia Stirling, and Patrick Walsh, who formed the ministerial advisory group, ably charged by Dr Graham Stoop, that recommended the establishment of EDUCANZ. Their recommendations are given effect in this bill.

As an independent professional body EDUCANZ will use its skill, expertise, and authority to promote educational leadership, accountability, and consistently high standards across the education system and drive continuous improvement of quality assurance processes. EDUCANZ will be governed by a board of nine members. The majority will come from the education profession, and all will be appointed on the basis of individual skills and experience. Together they will provide the necessary capability and balance. The board will not take representative positions on parts of the sector but will be expected to take a system-wide set of perspectives. There will be an open and public nominations process to identify appropriately skilled candidates. As is the case with other statutorily independent professional bodies, the appointments process will provide for the protection of the public interest—in this case, in education.

The EDUCANZ board will set its strategic direction in consultation with the broad education sector and can make independent comment on education policy, in keeping with its independent role. The council will also be able to enter into contracts for the provision of specific services. The measures set out in the bill present significant new opportunities for strengthening the profession and support EDUCANZ’s independent leadership outside the constraints of both Government and industrial organisations.

The bill also creates a regulatory environment that promotes accountability and high standards, including consistently high standards of entry into the profession and ongoing competence of teachers and education leaders. The bill clearly separates registration, which recognises that a graduate is qualified to become a member of the profession, from the issuing of practising certificates, which recognise the competencies and experience required to work successfully as a teacher. The bill provides a new audit and moderation function designed to ensure that appraisals for the issue and renewal of practising certificates reach a consistent standard. The audit and moderation function is a response to both persistent reports of inconsistency and a lack of rigour in assessments and ensures constant raising of the quality of teaching and leadership. The council’s ability to set its own standards for the profession will further contribute to this.

The new professional body is a cornerstone of our Government’s programme to raise the status of the profession and publicly recognise the value it contributes to New Zealand. This is the culmination of 3 years of widespread consultation, discussion, deliberation, and consolidated review. We know that we must attract the best and the brightest to the profession, raise the profile of teaching and its contribution to our nation, continuously improve the quality of teaching practice, and invest in capable and inspirational leadership. We must do this for our children and young people at all points in their learning pathway, whether at early childhood institutions or in primary or secondary schools.

The council will strengthen the disciplinary framework by having open proceedings unless there is good reason to withhold information, enabling the investigation of matters on its own motion, referring all matters of serious misconduct to the disciplinary tribunal, and developing a code of conduct. The bill bolsters and simplifies the disciplinary regime for teachers to ensure high standards of conduct and a timely, effective, and fair response to possible misconduct. The new disciplinary procedures will give parents even more confidence that the professional quality and personal attributes of the education workforce are of the required standard when dealing with their children. A national professional code of conduct will clarify the standards that are expected of teachers and the consequences of not meeting those standards. This differs from a code of ethics, which establishes the values and principles of the profession. A code of conduct was one of the recommendations of the ministerial inquiry into the employment of a sex offender in the education sector.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

The bill has generated a lot of public interest, reflected in the number of submissions received by the Education and Science Committee. The committee’s careful consideration resulted in a small number of important changes to the bill, helping to further clarify the intent of the bill and the functions of EDUCANZ. Again, I wish to thank the members of the committee, both past and present, for their thorough consideration of all aspects of the bill and their work throughout the process.

To support the change to EDUCANZ from the New Zealand Teachers Council, there has been a very skilled transition board ensuring a well-planned and seamless transition to the new arrangements. The transition board has played a key role in shaping the direction and vision of the new body with the profession. Much of this work has been undertaken over the last year and is now ready. The board of EDUCANZ, once appointed, will be able to consider this as part of its initial work. I want to thank that transition board, in particular Nancy Bell, Professor Graham Hingangaroa Smith, Hon Steve Maharey, Paul Matthews, John Morris, Richard Newton, Hoana Pearson, Dr Margaret Southwick, Arihia Stirling, Linda Tame, and Allan Vester, who have provided great leadership throughout the EDUCANZ transition board.

I would also like to again express my deep appreciation to the board and staff of the New Zealand Teachers Council, in particular to Alison McAlpine as chair and to Dr Peter Lind, long-time director, and latterly to Rob McIntosh in his recent acting capacity. I also want to acknowledge the seamless transition and the professionalism of the staff of the council, which has engendered this transition. The Teachers Council has developed a broad body of work in over a decade of operation that sets a strong platform for the new body.

In conclusion, the teaching profession makes a powerful and critical contribution to lifting student achievement. The quality of teaching and the education leadership have a direct impact on educational success. Supporting a transformed professional body is one of a number of reforms by this Government to grow the quality of teaching, leading, and learning, and is the cornerstone of our quality teaching agenda. I commend the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) to the House.

The Education Amendment Bill (No 2) represents a hugely wasted opportunity to make some changes that would genuinely increase the quality of teaching in New Zealand and genuinely lead to better outcomes for New Zealand students. The review of the New Zealand Teachers Council was welcomed by the whole profession. There was nobody in the teaching profession who thought that things were going swimmingly well and that there was not room for improvement. Everybody whom I have spoken to in the teaching profession believes that there is a significant role for a regulatory body like the Teachers Council to set the standards of entry into the teaching profession, to review and manage the registration and renewal of practising certificates, and to manage the competency and disciplinary functions that the council should have. Everybody accepts that there is a role for that body, and the teaching profession want to ensure that it is a quality body that will genuinely be owned and driven by the profession.

So right from the outset this bill is flawed and the measures in this bill are flawed because it simply removes the autonomy of that whole teaching profession and gives away complete control of the regulation of the profession to the Government. All of the appointees on the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ) will be selected by the Minister of Education. What other profession that we genuinely believe is a profession and that we genuinely respect the autonomy of would we do that to? We do not do it to lawyers, doctors, or engineers, and we do not even do it to real estate agents. Yet the Government seems to think that it can take complete control of the profession. I can see the knowing smile from the Deputy Speaker, but it is absolutely important that we ensure that if this is going to be a professional body for teachers, teachers feel that they have some ownership over it, and they simply do not.

The Minister of Education mentioned in her opening remarks in this debate that there was widespread consultation and there were a huge number of submissions to the Education and Science Committee. That is true. There was widespread consultation and there was a huge volume of submissions to the select committee. Those submissions were listened to but they were not heard. The Government members sat there on their email checking their messages. They did not listen. The overwhelming feedback from the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who came along and gave up their time to have their say on this bill was that they were opposed to it and that they did not support the provisions of the bill. They made some very constructive suggestions for improvement, because, like I said, there is not a teacher in the country who does not want the education system to be better. That is why they go to work every single day. They want better outcomes for Kiwi kids and they have been completely ignored by this Government and the changes that are being made in this legislation. So although there was widespread consultation, it was listened to but it was not heard.

The Government is going to handpick all of the members of this council. I went and had a look at what other jurisdictions do. In Australia they have elected representatives. In Scotland, in England, and in all of those other countries where we look to compare our education system, they all have some form of elected representation on the professional body for teachers—not here; not in New Zealand under a National Government.

This bill creates a huge duplication of roles and confuses responsibilities rather than clarifying them. For example, the bill gives the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand the responsibility for sharing best practice. Is that not the role of the Ministry of Education, the Education Review Office, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, and so many other Government agencies? Now it is being given to another agency, and it is simply dissecting that very important task down even further and confusing more roles.

And, of course it adds to the burden of costs on individual teachers themselves, because who pays for this? It is not the taxpayer. It is not the Government. It is actually individual teachers. Their teaching registration fees are going to go up. Most teachers that I have spoken to would say: “Well, what are we going to get from this increase in the cost of our teacher registration?”. A lot of it is simply going to go into bureaucracy. Another example is that the bill requires 10 percent of all practising certificate renewals in any given year to be audited. That audit will be a paper-based process undertaken in Wellington. It will not result in one additional appraisal of a teacher in their classroom—not one. It will not result in one additional person sitting in somebody’s classroom, monitoring their teaching, and giving them constructive feedback on how they can be better teachers. This is going to increase bureaucracy. It is going to increase bureaucracy, which individual teachers will pay for. It is not going to increase the quality of teaching and learning that take place in our classrooms.

What we need to do is take best practice and make it common practice without making it standard practice. When we make it standard practice it becomes form-filling compliance, a bureaucratic exercise, and it completely defeats the purpose, and that is what this bill does. Everyone will have seen news stories about people who simply should not be in classrooms because somehow they have fallen through the cracks and something bad has happened. Let us be clear about this: the provisions of this bill would not have changed the outcome in any one of those cases. Not one of those people who should not have been teaching would be prevented from getting into the classroom by the provisions of this bill. It would not have made one bit of difference. We all agree that we do not want people who should not be in classrooms to be in classrooms, so how can we effectively do that?

It actually starts with quality professional development from the top of the system to the bottom. School boards of trustees need quality professional development when it comes to the recruitment and appraisal of school principals. School principals need quality professional development when it comes to the recruitment, appraisal, and professional development for their teaching staff. And yes, principals need support on how to deal with teachers who are not performing, because at the end of the day who is responsible for removing teachers from classrooms who should not be there? In most cases, in almost every instance, the first port of call for that is the school’s principal. And if the school’s principal is not being supported in that role, then we are going to end up with teachers in classrooms who should not be there.

This bill does nothing—absolutely nothing—to deal with that. It does nothing to provide the additional support to where it will actually make a difference. These are not functions that should be undertaken by regulators; these are functions that should be undertaken in schools by getting the right support in the right place. This bill simply is not going to deliver on any of that. There is a disconnection, for example, between the Education Review Office, which will go in and audit whether a school is doing what it should do in terms of its teacher appraisal processes, and where the support comes from. So if a school is found to have ineffective leadership, there has not been early enough intervention in there. If it is found that a school does not have the right systems in place for the development of its staff, the follow-up is so critical, and yet there is a real disconnect. Those are the things that we should be debating. Those are the things that the Government should be working on fixing. This bill does not address any of them.

The Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand is being set up to fail from the beginning. It is being set up to fail because it does not have the support of the profession because the profession does not have any say on who is going to be on its governing body. It is set up to fail because it is being given a massive increase in its remit compared with what the Teachers Council had, and yet, as we know from past experience, the Teachers Council had not fully got on top of the remit that it already had. There was room for improvement there, and it was making incredible strides. It was making big improvements, but to throw more responsibilities on to it before it has really nailed down what it was already doing is simply irresponsible, and yet that is what this bill and this Government are doing at the moment.

And is there not an enormous double standard at play here where the Government talks about wanting to increase the quality of teaching and increase the status of the teaching profession and yet it says that charter schools do not have to employ registered and qualified teachers? And then it talks about EDUCANZ having to have openness as its default setting, and yet the charter schools have no such provisions. They are not subject to the Official Information Act. And this Government still will not release their quarterly reports from last year, so while schools are enrolling new kids for this year, the Government still will not tell anybody how those schools actually performed last year.

This is bad legislation. It is bad for the teaching profession. It is not going to result in better education for New Zealand kids. That is what the Government should be focused on. This is going to increase bureaucracy and increase red tape, and it is not going to result in the removal of one ineffective teacher from any school in New Zealand.

I rise to speak on the third reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). Before I come to the content of the bill, I would like to emphasise that the National Government pays special attention to education. We have made a consistent effort to ensure a good education for all, because we share the Kiwi concept of giving everyone a fair go. I would like to note that of 32 developed countries surveyed in the OECD’s 2013 Better Life index, New Zealand devoted the highest percentage of public expenditure to education. According to the OECD, New Zealand is a top-performing country in terms of the quality of its educational system. We are very proud of our world-class education system, but we can make it even better and we must make it better because a good education is an essential requirement for a skilled, creative, and productive workforce, and this is exactly what this bill is trying to achieve.

The purpose of this bill is to help the education sector meet the challenges and opportunities of modern learning and promote high standards of safety and accountability. The bill will strengthen the regulatory framework for teachers with the establishment of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand, or EDUCANZ; it will improve the discipline and reporting requirements that protect children; and it will continue to improve the accountability of the education profession. It will also strengthen and streamline the quality assurance framework for the tertiary education sector.

In addition, the bill makes a good effort to protect our international students. It establishes a new legal framework for a revised code of practice for the pastoral care of international students. It also establishes an independent contract disputes resolution scheme for international students and their education providers. I used to be an international student, and I fully understand the importance of pastoral care for international students. International education is a significant service export and a key contributor to the Government’s Business Growth Agenda. International education contributes around $2.6 billion to the New Zealand economy. International education is also important to our cultural and social links with the world. So I commend the bill to the House.

I would like to address three particular issues related to this bill. First of all, the Labour Party does not support it. Secondly, the first issue I would like to address is the make-up of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ). Chris Hipkins has already alluded to the fact that the Minister of Education is going to be the person who appoints the members of the council. As Chris Hipkins said, there are no other careers or places of work where the people who work in the sector are not elected to represent their sector. It just goes to show that the voice of teachers is not being listened to. As a former teacher and as a former principal, I would like to think that the people who were representing me on any council were people whom the sector had put there—at least the majority of them. I see in the first draft of the bill that there was going to be a maximum of five teachers put on to the council; however, there was no minimum. So what we are saying is that there could have been a case where absolutely no teachers were part of that council. I know that teachers would find that abhorrent.

The second point I would like to make is around the appraisal audits. I see that 10 percent of appraisals for re-registration are going to be audited. I think that what this does is it undermines or underestimates the complexity of teaching—the complexity and the dynamic nature of being a teacher. EDUCANZ is going to be responsible for auditing 10 percent of appraisals. What I would like to know, then, is what the criteria are that those appraisals are going to be subject to. We have got 2,000 or thereabouts schools in New Zealand, and every one of those schools does its appraisals according to its own needs. So there is not a standard format for appraisal, and yet the council is going to come along and audit them and say to this school over here “Well, your appraisal system is good.” and to this school over here “Your appraisal system isn’t good.” But based on whose criteria? Is it based on what suits the council? Nobody knows, so we need to actually have some criteria, but that is problematic in itself because then if we have criteria for appraisal, we are absolutely going to narrow down appraisal and the curriculum and education to what the council thinks is important for education. That is unacceptable because education and teaching are such dynamic work.

When we look at the breakdown of the curriculum—at least, when I was still teaching, some 7 years ago, there were seven curriculum areas. Each of those curriculum areas was broken down into strands. Each of those curriculum areas was broken down into levels. There are so many aspects of the curriculum that a teacher could be appraised on. So what is important to EDUCANZ? Is it what is important to the communities of those schools? I am not sure, because we do not know what the criteria are. But if we do have criteria, then we narrow down the way teachers are going to teach and be appraised, and that is not good for education.

If we focus the appraisals solely on the curriculum, then that absolutely ignores the rest of the work that teachers do. For example, are teachers going to be appraised on the extracurricular work they do—the sports teams they coach, the music groups they coach, running a school fair, having a school drama or play, all the duties they do, and the camps they run? Are teachers going to be given credit for the broad nature of the work they do, or are their appraisals going to be audited, basically, on a very narrow set of criteria? It is really important that teachers are recognised and valued for the dynamic nature of the work they do. It is such a relentless job, and they are not getting credit for what they do in the schools on a daily basis for all the children in our communities.

There was some count-up of all the different objectives throughout the curriculum. There are thousands of specific objectives. Are teachers going to be appraised on each of those? Which ones are the most important? If we take the subject of maths—there are five strands, I think, from memory—a teacher could be appraised on how well they teach number. So they may get a whole heap of children over the national standard in number but not in measurement for whatever reason. Does that mean they are a good teacher in maths, or a bad teacher because the students are achieving in one strand but not in the other? In maths alone there is number, there is measurement, there is geometry, there is statistics, and there is algebra. How do we determine how good a teacher is or whether they deserve any increments in their pay if we have some sort of EDUCANZ-imposed appraisal system?

Then we have English. There is written language, oral language—there are so many ways. So a teacher could be teaching reading really, really well but not doing so well in written language. How is EDUCANZ going to say that in the school over here, the teachers who are doing really well in reading but not so well in writing deserve to pass the audit for their appraisals? It is just such a fraught concept. I just do not think that it is going to work, and I do not think that it is going to be fair on teachers, because, as I say, it is such a dynamic job. I think that Parliament needs to recognise and needs to really understand the relentless nature of teaching, the paperwork, the number of objectives, and the number of curriculum levels.

We have curriculum levels, but then over the top come national standards. Where does that leave the curriculum levels that we used to assess children against, which could make up part of appraisals? Now national standards have turned up and been imposed on schools, and again it just makes this whole auditing of appraisals fraught. I am talking only about the primary sector. I was never a secondary teacher, so I do not know how much more complicated it is for secondary teachers, but I also wonder whether the same standards for appraisal are going to be imposed on secondary schools as are imposed on primary schools. I have real concerns about that part of the bill in particular.

Another part of the bill that I have concerns about goes specifically to clause 38, which inserts new section 353. It says—this is referring to registration of teachers—“(1) The Education Council must register an applicant under section 352 if satisfied that the applicant—”. Then we go down to subsection (1)(e)(ii): “has (in accordance with the provisions of any relevant enactment) been granted an exemption by the chief executive in respect of every conviction for a specified offence listed in schedule 21.” So there is a list of offences in schedule 21 where a person can apply to be a teacher and get exemption even if they have committed one of these specified offences. These offences are (a) sexual violation, (b) attempted violation, (c) sexual conduct. Why on earth would we try to grant any exemption for anybody who is guilty of any of these offences? It starts at (a) and goes down to (z). So there are 26 pretty abhorrent types of offences, and yet we are allowing the possibility of somebody who has been convicted of one of these offences actually becoming a teacher. I think that that part of the bill is really quite ridiculous. Why would we want to employ anybody who is guilty of any serious sexual type of crime?

Labour opposes this bill. I have those concerns around the make-up of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand, around the appraisal, and also around that section that I have just spoken about—around the list of offences that teachers could get exemptions from. Labour does not support this bill. Kia ora.

This is another important bill that will improve our education system. I would like to thank members for the work they have done on the bill. Their suggestions and amendments have improved it. I have listened carefully to the two previous Labour Party speakers. I have to say that we respectfully disagree with their connotations on the bill, and I suspect that will be true for subsequent speakers as well, although we shall wait and see.

I want to focus on the areas of the bill that are related to my role as the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment. The changes proposed are the latest in a series of reforms made by this Government to improve the performance and quality of tertiary education in this country. We have reduced the spending in low-value areas, such as student loans for people who consistently fail their courses, and we have improved the way the system targets need. We have set performance incentives on providers and students and have improved information for students about the performance providers and the outcomes of their study, and our approach is paying off. The tertiary system delivered a record number of qualifications in 2013. Also in that year 26,200 Bachelor’s degrees were completed by domestic students, up by just over 4,500 since 2010. Right through the 2000s the number of degree graduates flat-lined, despite big increases in tertiary funding by the previous Government, so these results are great to see.

We are also in the process of improving outcomes for Māori and Pasifika students. The number of Māori students enrolled in qualifications at Bachelor’s level or higher increased from 17,500 in 2007 to 22,100 in 2013, and the number of Pasifika students enrolled in qualifications at Bachelor’s level or higher has increased from 8,570 in 2007 to 12,602 in 2013. There is more work to do, but the direction is positive.

The changes to university and wānanga governance proposed in this bill build on these gains. There are four major changes from the current model. Firstly, councils will decrease in size, from 12 to 20 members to 8 to 12 members. Universities and wānanga will choose their council size from within those limits. Secondly, council membership requirements will be made more flexible by the removal of specific representative requirements. Thirdly, the Minister and councils will be required to appoint members with relevant knowledge, skills, or experience. And, fourthly, the duties and accountabilities of individual council members will be clarified, including the circumstances in which a member may be dismissed. All university and wānanga councils will be required to have at least one Māori member to assist the Government’s goal of raising achievement for Māori, and I would note that that would not involve significant change to current arrangements.

These changes will support councils to respond effectively to a rapidly changing employment market, to adapt to new challenges from changing technology and teaching, and to operate more strategically and effectively in an increasingly competitive international university environment. The changes will help address the difficulties large councils can have with timely decision-making and communication. They will bring university and wānanga councils more in line with the governance bodies of other organisations of all types.

The changes are particularly important for wānanga. The current governance settings were not written with them in mind. The changes will allow increased flexibility for wānanga to reflect their unique stakeholders, particularly iwi, on their councils.

Some members of this House have expressed concern that these changes would compromise institutional autonomy or academic freedom. That is simply not the case, as a reading of the Act will tell you, as these are guaranteed—

💬 Dr Megan Woods: So all the vice-chancellors are wrong—the vice-chancellors of all 11 universities are wrong.

—just for the member’s benefit—by section 161 of the Education Act 1989, and, again for member’s benefit, that section is not changing.

Some members have claimed that council members will owe their duties only to the Minister, or that the Minister will be able to remove council members if he or she disagrees with a council member’s decision. That is also incorrect. Members will owe their duties to the council and the Minister, and the Minister could remove a council member only on the recommendation of the council and with just cause.

Some members have also expressed concern about staff and student representation on councils. These changes will mean it is for institutions to decide whether they want staff and student representatives on their councils, and given the feedback from institutions about the contributions of these stakeholders, I would expect that many institutions will choose to retain that representation.

Universities and wānanga will not be expected to transition to the new councils immediately. They will have until 30 June next year, which will give them plenty of time to draft new constitutions and statutes in consultation with their stakeholders, and, if required, to hold elections for new members. However, those institutions that wish to transition to new councils immediately will be able to do so.

The bill will also improve the tertiary education system’s responsiveness to the needs of international students. International education is very important to New Zealand. It contributes, the latest figures say, $2.85 billion a year to our economy and over 30,000 additional jobs for New Zealanders. The leadership statement for international education has set the goal of doubling the total value of New Zealand’s international education sector from where it was a few years ago to $5 billion by 2025.

International education also showcases New Zealand to the world and improves our connectedness as a country. It provides us with lifelong ambassadors. Graduates return to their home countries and share their experiences with their friends, families, and colleagues. International education also enhances teaching and research, as students share their knowledge with New Zealand teachers and researchers.

Of course, if New Zealand is to sustain and grow the international sector, international students and their families must have confidence that they will be well cared for and have a great experience in this country. This bill strengthens the legal framework governing the care and support of international students and improves the responsiveness of the education system to the needs of those students. This bill creates a strengthened legal framework for a revised code of practice for the pastoral care of international students. The bill targets intervention to providers who are not complying with their obligations under the code. It requires that all reasonable steps are taken to protect international students in a timely manner and to ensure that they have a positive experience in this country.

The bill also establishes a dedicated independent contract disputes resolution scheme for international students and improves the student fee protection regime, which covers both domestic and international students. The bill also strengthens quality assurance to promote accountability and high standards. To protect the quality of tertiary education, the bill strengthens enforcement and offence provisions.

This bill builds on the strong foundations of the tertiary education system and the Government’s commitment to continually improving that system. It makes important changes to the governance of our universities and wānanga so that they can respond more quickly and strategically to the challenges of modern-day tertiary education. The bill will create a more robust regulatory framework for our international education sector, and it will improve the quality assurance of our tertiary providers. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. In my first speech of the year I would just like to mihi to Ngati Porou whanau, hapū, and iwi and acknowledge their loss of their rangatira Apirana Mahuika. Moe mai e rangatira.

Ostensibly, this bill is about tidying up the governance of universities and making the Teachers Council into a more effective body, although how this is achieved by changing the names, confusing the functions, cutting the representation, and annoying enormous numbers of teachers and education professionals is anybody’s guess. In 6 years of being on the Education and Science Committee I have never seen so much unity and solidarity from all parts of the tertiary education sector against this bill and so little of even an attempt by the Government to explain why it is needed. A great idea is that a bill should have a reason. If the Government is going to gut the governance structures of universities, it should at least have the intestinal fortitude to explain why this is necessary.

Virtually no academic or student who came before the select committee said “Thank you, Government. What a fantastic idea.” Au contraire—when the main supporters of the bill who appear at the select committee are the Gloriavale fundamentalist Christian school, from a closed community, who discourage university education on the grounds that it might give people ideas, my guess is that it is time for the Government to stop and ask itself why this bill was drafted. My guess is that Steven Joyce thought he had a great idea, as he often does, and thought it would make university governance more business-like, so let us cut the numbers. That was all the evidence he needed in order to do this to university councils. My colleague Gareth Hughes will speak more about that later. However, the 1,525 submitters told the Government it was wrong.

So what does the bill say now? Did the Government hear those submissions? There was one modification to the bill around the teachers’ right to have a maximum, not a minimum, set on their own council. That is the only change we managed to achieve after all of those submissions. So I would say that the score to the Government is ideology, one; listening skills, nil.

The changes to the Teachers Council itself are fraught with contradiction. On the one hand the Government says it is tightening things up to make sure that teachers are properly registered, which is a good idea. We all support that. We all think that the proper registration of teachers is critical. On the other hand the Government is expanding the way in which the limited authority to teach can be applied, which will facilitate more unregistered teachers. So we are so worried about the risk to children, except when we are not. Having it both ways does not actually work. Maybe I have digressed into the absurd idea that the Government should have some consistency in education policy.

I listened very carefully to the Minister of Education’s third reading speech. She talked about things like constantly raising—I am quoting—the quality of leadership, setting standards, and raising the status of the profession. I am fascinated by what this rhetoric means, because it was not clear in the bill and we could not get answers to our questions about it. The Minister said there were 3 years of consultation to create this confusing piece of legislation. I do not know who was talked to in the 3 years but I do know that 90 percent of 1,525 submitters were extremely unhappy when they came before the select committee. Perhaps the consultation was an example of my father’s very special definition of the word “consultation”—being a cross between a con and an insult. Either way, it did not build a constituency in the education sector that was prepared to come to that select committee and show any support whatsoever, whether they were from the tertiary or the compulsory sector.

The other aspects of the Teachers Council changes include confusing their function with a new broad, undefined role, and changing the code of ethics to a code of conduct, and that has been a very controversial issue. It is designed either to insult the profession or to attempt more control. Let us hope it is not about controlling teachers in terms of their voice. We have had enough Eleanor Catton intellectual-bashing in this country lately, and it is really important that we show some respect for teachers and their right to their intellectualism.

This bill gives us a low-trust model, and it is very, very concerning when the code of ethics is replaced with a code of conduct. The Minister actually referred in her speech to the code of conduct being different from the code of ethics because there would be consequences if you did not meet the conduct standards. She said this part of the bill was inspired by a famous sex-offender case in schools, and I think she is referring to a case where the person basically lied their way into the classroom and was not caught even though they faked their name and also hid their history. I am not sure that any code of conduct or code of ethics would stop someone who is prepared to go that far, to fake their name and to have so little ethics. I am not sure that a piece of paper called a code of conduct is going to intimidate them into responsible behaviour. It certainly is not even going to catch them. The consequence for this kind of offending against children is not a slap on the wrist with a code of conduct; it is getting arrested, and so it should be. So what are we trying to control by getting rid of the ethics concept and turning it into a code of conduct?

Returning to the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ) function, the Government took out the word “teacher”. Although the Minister has been at great pains to say they want to raise the status of the teaching profession, the word “teacher” is no longer in the title. I am all for the “Aotearoa” bit. It is overdue that we acknowledge we are in Aotearoa, but what is actually wrong with the word “teacher”? Let us see who pays for this body. This body is paid for out of the fees of teachers. So if they want a user-pays system, then the Government should at least listen to the users who are going to pay. How quaint is that?

The Minister said today that the board’s role was to set consistently high standards and continuous improvement—to what? Why? What is the Education Review Office’s role for? What are they going to do that the Education Review Office and the other agencies that were described by other speakers going to do? The Minister said something about undertaking contracts. What kinds of contracts? For whom? Is EDUCANZ, paid for out of the teachers’ fees, going to be contracting out, and for what purpose? We never got answers on any of this.

We had a weird fight in the select committee about how many members of the Teachers Council in the new EDUCANZ would be from the education profession, because originally the draft said there would be a maximum number of teachers with practising certificates. The Government said this was a mistake in the original drafting, but, cynically, some of us thought it did it on purpose to draw the heat and then look as if it was listening by amending the draft. Fancy me being that cynical—it is hard to believe, is it not? Would any Government do that with a piece of legislation? But, actually, either that or it is incredibly bad at drafting laws. Which is it? No one really believes the Government.

The issue of appointment and not election—again, if the piper is paying for the organisation and if the teachers are the pipers, should they not be the electors rather than the Minister? If the Minister believes that the status of the profession should be raised, she should trust the profession and build teachers’ status by allowing them to have responsibility for their own professional body. It is actually that simple.

The moderation clause is also frustrating. Ten percent of the registrations will be audited annually through a paper-based appraisal. I think this was well covered by the previous speaker from the Labour Party because he was a teacher and he knew exactly why it was not going to work. Excellent work. Kelvin Davis made a really clear case—“actually listen to teachers”. He was like the many who came. So that one is not going to work either.

So my message—not to the Government because I have given up trying to give them messages, but my message to the education professionals here, trying to do their best for the students of this country on every level, whether it is tertiary or compulsory—is simple and it is in Latin. I did not do Latin at school, but I think this fits: nil carborundum. Now I did not really know what nil carborundum is so I had to look it up, and I always thought that “Nils Carborundum” was a 1970s Norwegian punk folk singer with stringy long blond hair. But it turns out that “Nils” is not that character. It turns out that what it means—and I am quoting—is: “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

So I urge the teachers and the university staff and the governors: do not be ground down, keep standing the ground for education and its vital role as critic and conscience of society, and be the professionals who put children first. We need to raise the status of teaching, we need to protect our kids from people who are abusing the system or, at the very least, being boring, because that is one of the worst faults of teachers. However, this is about leadership in the schools. This is not about changing the law in a way that insults the profession at every level.

So, nil carborundum, people. We actually have to keep standing up for what is important. The Government can grind away with its ideology, but most people who enter education are motivated by a higher mission and a higher purpose, and that higher mission is actually about children getting the best they can from the system. It is not a business, folks. Steven Joyce is living on “Planet Steven”, but it is not a business. It is about education, and it is about a bill that fails to make it better. Kia ora tātou. We oppose the bill.

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. Firstly, can I acknowledge the teachers who have all in the last 2 weeks returned to the classroom. I hope they had a break. I know that with the schools that I have driven past, teachers have actually been there at least a fortnight before the students have returned, doing preparation, making sure that they are up to speed, and having teacher-only days to set the course for the rest of the year.

I want to reiterate what Catherine Delahunty just said, which is to hold on. I mean, it has been 7 years—we are entering our seventh year, I believe—of the attack on the teaching profession by the National Government, and all I can say is to support what Catherine has said to you. This Government cannot last for ever—hold on. We will get through at the end of the day.

This is a profession that only the most honourable of us actually enter. Out of I do not know how many thousands upon thousands of teachers there are in this country, in the last 10 years, or something like that, there have been only 55 of them who have caused any serious misdemeanour or whatever. Yet this code of conduct conversation that goes on in this bill—the rhetoric from this Government—would suggest to parents that their children are in peril when they go to school. The code of conduct alterations in this bill are, we believe, a knee-jerk reaction to a mistaken belief out there—which has been encouraged, assisted, and helped along by National to shift across its programme of privatisation and distrust of the public education system—that you cannot get rid of a teacher.

I went to the Vanguard Military School, because I have an open mind. Unlike what some people might accuse us of being, New Zealand First is open to having a look at things and seeing whether they work for children and for New Zealanders, and so we go and have a look. I went to Vanguard, and it was very interesting. A haka was put on by the children—a lovely haka. I do not know what you would call the gentleman—I do not think he is a principal; I think he is a general manager. He said to me as we walked away: “You would never be able to get a full school haka at a public school.”. I said to him: “Oh, how funny. There are 1,500 children at Mahurangi College who can do their own school haka. They don’t have to borrow it off Ngāti Whātua.”

Then we went to his office and he said: “Oh, but you can’t get rid of teachers—you can’t get rid of teachers.” That is what Mr Seymour thinks too. That is why Mr Seymour—in that insidious little voice that he has—starts to push education policy through the National Government, because he also believes that you cannot get rid of teachers in this country. But we have appraisal processes, we have competency, we have laws of natural justice. But the code of conduct—you have a listen to what it says in here. It is specifically there. Here you go, this is from the revised departmental report of July 2014: “The lack of a code of conduct could make employers’ assessment of professional conduct arbitrary and problematic.” That is actually a really nice way to say that if we want to get rid of you, we want to get rid of you now; that if we do not like something about what you are doing in your classroom or if you stand up against us because you are standing up for that child because you believe that that child should not be ostracised or excluded or whatever, you will have broken the code of conduct and we will fire you. That is what this is about.

This is about making sure that teachers do as they are told. That is what this is about, because the Government mistakenly seems to believe that the teachers are its employees. The Government seems to think that teachers are its employees and, therefore, its employees should do as they are told or it is down the road with them. The boards of trustees employ the teaching staff; the Government is merely the paymaster. The boards of trustees are the people who, through the direction of the principal, are responsible for the employment and the appraisal and the competency of those employees, and it is all there. There is no need for a code of conduct—there is no need at all—but it is a quick way to fire somebody, and it has come out of the business association, I guarantee it.

Out of 1,525 submissions, only 13 were in support. There is consultation for you. It is getting tiring. What a shame it is to start the political year again trying to explain to National Government Ministers that consultation is not asking everybody what they think and then doing what you want anyway. I know that the National Government Ministers find consultation incredibly irritating—I know they do. Mr Finlayson has said it before. He said that it is nothing but a waste of time. Ms Parata did the same thing again around Christchurch. I know it is annoying. Democracy takes time. Democracy takes energy. Democracy means you have got to work with other people.

Unfortunately, the National Government does not like democracy, which is why we had the Minister of Education repeat the word “independent” three times in her contribution here this evening to try to get that embedded into the psyche of the New Zealand public, when what is true about the bodies that are being organised here is that they are all Minister-appointed. If she does not like you, you will not get on. If he does not like you, you will not get on. They can say it is at arm’s length—left, right, and centre—but it is not. Until there is true democracy and the people who pay for the body get to elect the people on to the body, it is not independent. It is a farce, and it is a misrepresentation of that word “independent” and a misrepresentation of this legislation.

I want to pick up on one thing, however. Dr Jian Yang, chair of the Education and Science Committee, said in his contribution that this Government gives special attention to education. Poor things. That is all we can say about that: poor things. You have had the special attention of this Government for 7 years. Again I say, as Catherine Delahunty said, hold on. Do not let them grind you down. We are coming. We will get there.

I say to the rest of New Zealanders who are not teachers that teachers are people too. Teachers are people too. They deserve the same respect inside their workplace, they deserve the same levels of natural justice, they deserve the same rights as everybody else. A teacher said to me the other day: “If my students do well inside my class, they are rewarded. They get a pat on the back. They have worked hard, and their parents take them out for tea or something. If my students fail, it is my fault.” That is what is being perpetuated by this Government.

Unfortunately, Mr Davis said the same thing. Mr Davis said in his contribution that teachers do really well in reading but not so good in writing. I will guarantee you that every person who is a registered and qualified teacher inside a mainstream school—not a person inside a charter school—can read and can write at an appropriate level. This is not about the teachers’ reading and writing; it is about the students. We have lost sight of the students. We have turned them into numbers.

We have got a new league table out in the last couple of days that now sets iwi against iwi. How interesting. We now know which iwi outperforms which other iwi, depending on where their rohe is and how they have identified themselves in mainstream schools. How useful is that to the contribution of education in this country? So you have got Ngāti Whakauē now standing up and saying: “We are at the top of the iwi trail because that league table tells us so.” How useful! If you were any other iwi, why would you self-identify inside our schools?

Mr Joyce talked about the fact that this bill is to make tertiary governance more streamlined, more flexible, more whatever. There is no proof of that—no proof of that at all. But I will tell you exactly what this is, New Zealand. Not a single university came and supported this legislation—not a single one. The wānanga did not come to submit. The wānanga did not put in any submission around this bill, but when we pressed the public servants what we found out was that this came from the wānanga. This is a nod to the wānanga. The removal of the student voice, the removal of the staff voice, came from the wānanga. I suggest the staff and students ask the wānanga why.

I stand to relieve members’ ears from the previous peroration and also to speak strongly in favour of this excellent bill, the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). I can agree with the previous speaker, Tracey Martin, on one account, and one account only—that this is about the students more than it is about teachers. This is about ensuring that New Zealand children can achieve among the very best in the world, and that every child going through our education system has an opportunity to succeed in life. I am proud to stand by our excellent Minister of Education, the Hon Hekia Parata, and the Hon Steven Joyce, the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment, in supporting this legislation.

I would like to refer to a couple of remarks made by the honourable member Kelvin Davis, whom I have respect for as a former practitioner in this profession. But this is just to correct, perhaps, a misunderstanding that Mr Davis might have around an argument he was making, that it is difficult to audit different systems. Of course, that is a ludicrous argument, given Audit New Zealand can, up and down this country, audit district health boards, local government, central government, departments and ministries, Crown entities, State-owned enterprises, and companies, all of which have different accounting systems and all of which do very different kinds of business in this country. Auditing is about ensuring that the approach taken through their processes is correct, and that entities are following their own processes. It is not about going around dictating and determining what the outcome should be and how schools should run themselves. So that is just to correct that misunderstanding.

One other point. Mr Davis talked about a maximum of five teachers being permitted on the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand under the bill. Of course, that was in the original draft, which has been amended to make no maximum number of teachers, but a minimum number of teachers. I think that is a positive change to the bill. But it is an important principle, that people are appointed to this body on merit, rather than representing different interests within the community. I commend this bill to the House.

This is a split call between the Greens and Labour. Labour is taking the first 5-minute call.

Kia ora to the Government. Kia ora to New Zealanders. It is our first day back in this House. It was a bit hard getting my tie on. I do not know about members opposite, but it certainly chafes on this neck. I want to say a quick thankyou to all the Kiwis whom I met over the summer break, because I had a good long time off. What I rediscovered, whether it was from Cape Reinga to the South Island, is that New Zealanders are fair, decent, wonderful people—fair, decent, wonderful people. They want to do well; they want their neighbour to do well too. One thing they are not, though, is they are not, by and large, ideological. They are practical. Kiwis are down-to-earth folks. So they would be scratching their heads if they knew what was behind this bill.

Take the charter schools stuff. Imagine a kind of school that has unqualified teachers, that does not have to teach the curriculum, that is not subject to the normal accountabilities, and that gets three times as much money per student. Try explaining that to your average plumber in Timaru. They would go: “Why?”. The member who has just resumed his seat, Paul Foster-Bell, is trying to dress up this piece of ideology as some sort of social service initiative. Bunkum! It is about the interests of private providers driving a wedge through the public education system. So to the plumber in Timaru: “Mate, that is what this is all about—their money, not your kids.”

In bringing us to the tertiary education bit, for a moment I was tempted to think that Steven Joyce had lost his marbles. Exhibit A is a press report that says 1,600 submissions to one the public hates this piece of legislation. Steven Joyce, the master tactician, has put up a piece of legislation so politically stinky that people voted against it in submissions, 1,600 to one. Why? Why would a smart guy like Mr Joyce do something that dumb? The answer is that this is part of an ongoing ideological agenda. First, they take the guts out of student unions by creating a free-rider problem through voluntary student membership. And then they knacker university councils by taking university staff and students off them. What the heck is a university for if not to educate students and to provide employment for staff? Why would you not want them on your council? The answer that the Government has come up with: “Because it’s more efficient.”

God, you can hear Margaret Thatcher, can you not? You can hear Margaret Thatcher from this far distance. Did these Tories learn nothing? I will tell you one lesson they are going to learn again over the next 3 years. It is that New Zealanders have had just about enough of this ideological claptrap, and they want to get back to common sense. They want a school system that is about their kids and where everyone gets a fair go. The kid of a miner or a driver and the kid of a doctor can both aspire to be the best they can be. That starts off at preschool. It goes through primary school, intermediate, and high school, and it goes through tertiary education. They want tertiary institutions—universities, polys, and others—to be responsive. That is why we want students on university councils and staff on university councils, not Margaret Thatchers returned to New Zealand education through Steven Joyce and Hekia Parata. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to take a call to oppose this bill, the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). The Green Party is opposed to this incredibly flawed piece of legislation because we stand for students. We want to see their voices, along with staff, reflected around those university councils. Catherine Delahunty talked about all the reforms crammed into the bill, which deals with the likes of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ). She spoke very well there. In my contribution I want to focus on the need for student and staff voices on our councils.

The honourable member David Cunliffe is incredibly right. We have seen a host of incredibly negative changes gutting the student experience—from the voluntary student membership legislation through to this legislation. The sector should not be surprised by this. What we have seen over the last 6 years is a raft of negative changes that have affected students, and that have made tertiary education less affordable, less accessible, and in some cases downright impossible as they have locked the doors with capped enrolments to students who want to get ahead, who want to benefit the country, and who want to do what is right. Yet National has shut the door to them and made it all the more hard or all the more expensive. And what we see with this enormous bill, which is also enormously unpopular, is another negative change to go on the list with reducing student loan access to people over 55 who want to retrain and get another course, or the postgraduate students who want to get an allowance to get ahead in our modern economy, which in many cases demands a postgraduate qualification, through to the host of other negative changes.

I just wish the Government would actually listen to the people, the experts, and the submitters, but it is clear it did not. Because what we saw when it came to the EDUCANZ part of the bill was that there were 1,032 submissions and only five supported it. When you look at the submissions when it comes to the university councils, only 1 percent supported the Government’s proposed changes. If the Government will not listen to the submitters, maybe at this last late point it will listen to the officials. On the first page of the regulatory impact assessment, the officials advise: “This regulatory impact statement identifies significant risks with proceeding with the recommended changes.” Even the officials were criticising the bill and warning against it.

Why is the Green Party opposed to reducing the size of university councils and giving the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment more powers? Firstly, we do not want to see more meddling by Minister Joyce when it comes to our tertiary education sector. This bill further expands his influence and powers. We are seeing the removal of representation of the most significant stakeholders at the councils, who are the staff and students. I do not believe that tertiary education is a corporation that should be run only for a cost, but let us just say the National Party does. If that was the case, any smart business would listen to its customers. It wants to hear from them and get feedback so it can provide a top-notch product or service. In this case, we are eliminating that student and staff voice from the all-important council. What we are going to see is more confusion in management and governance. I acknowledge it may be best practice when you look at some of the business case studies to have small, efficient groups for management. But what the Government is confusing is the difference between management and governance. In fact, when you look at governance, and you look around the world at top-notch institutions, like Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it does not have eight people on its board, as the Minister is implying with a smaller group; it has got 70. How many does Oxford University have—again a world-class institution? It has got 30.

In fact, we have never heard anyone from the Government explain what the need is that this bill addresses. Where is the mischief, in that term? When you look across the Ditch at Australia—and New Zealand—with the corporate boards, in fact, larger boards have been associated with better financial performance. So we have got fears that the Government is confusing management and governance. We have got fears it is just a further example of a weakening of the students’ voice. We have got fears it is further invasive meddling by Minister Steven Joyce. We have got fears the ministerial appointments on these boards will look exactly like Minister Joyce. In his previous appointments, five out of 30—five out of 30—have been women. One out of 30 has been Māori. Zero out of 30 has been Pasifika. Twenty percent have been lawyers. We have seen chief executive officers, company directors, and accountants. What we are not going to see are students and staff.

The Green Party believes in an affordable and accessible world-class education, yet what we have seen under this Government is fees going up and up—in fact, triple the CPI. We have seen the average student loan up to $24,000 under National, and, just lastly, what we have seen is Government direct funding decline by 4 percent. It is time for affordable, accessible, world-class tertiary education under the Greens.

I would like to begin my short contribution by wishing everybody a happy New Year. I know it is a little bit late, but in my culture the New Year is just about to dawn. It is the Year of the Blue Sheep.

💬 Paul Foster-Bell: Oh, very good.

It is the Year of the Blue Sheep.

💬 Kris Faafoi: You said it!

In Korean it is called Eul-Mi Nyeon—Cheong Yang. Yes, it is quite different in my culture versus the European culture. The word “sheep” is actually not what you think you are. So I shall hope that that member will develop a little bit of cultural sensitivity.

Apart from the New Year, I know Mr David Cunliffe talked about how, up and down the country, New Zealanders are fair-minded and they enjoyed the summer. I too have enjoyed the summer. I would like to begin by saying what a fantastic performance by Lydia Ko in becoming world No. 1 at the age of 17 years, 9 months, and 7 days, on 1 February. What a fantastic thing that is—for a Korean Kiwi to become the world No. 1 in golf.

If we follow the analogy of the Opposition members, that only qualified teachers can teach, maybe Lydia would not be where she is right now, because it was her father who actually got her into golf. It was her father who coached her at the beginning, and he is not a qualified teacher, nor is he a qualified coach. But what a fantastic result that Lydia Ko delivered for New Zealand. What a fantastic role model she is.

I am standing to support this Education Amendment Bill (No 2) in its third reading. What I would like to say is that there are some members who actually said they did not do any consultation on the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand. Well, let me just say that changes are being made as a result of a 3-year conversation. Widespread consultation did, in fact, begin back in 2010 with the Education Workforce Advisory Group report, which ended with the 2013 ministerial advisory group report, which then led to sector engagement on the proposals. I do not know what kind of engagement the Opposition is wanting or what kind of consultation it is wanting. To me, that is actually consultation plenty enough. This is a great bill. I commend it to the House.

I would like to acknowledge this House in my first contribution back here this year. It is not with any joy that I am giving the last of my many contributions on this piece of legislation, the Education Amendment Bill (No 2), having sat through, along with many colleagues, literally hundreds of submissions from members of the professions across the teaching profession and across the tertiary sector, and hearing from people who are, as the Government would no doubt put it, the consumers of this product telling us that these were not changes that were wanted. These are fundamental changes to our education system. We have two very different changes weaved together in one piece of legislation. On one hand, we have some legislative changes that are going to fundamentally change how it is that our teaching profession is organised in our primary and secondary schools. Then, hidden under the cloak of this legislation, we are slipping in something that undermines centuries of evolution of how it is that we govern our tertiary institutions and what has evolved across the Western World in terms of how we protect freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and the rights of academics to be able to pursue those lofty goals.

It goes without saying that Labour does not support this legislation. We have opposed this legislation consistently throughout because it is bad legislation. This is not legislation that has identified a problem and sought to create a solution. It is, in fact, the latest in a line of terrible education decisions by this Government. Labour believes in delivering a world-class education system for our children; National believes in fiddling with the bureaucracy. We have seen that across a range of education measures over the last couple of terms. Under National we have seen literally a litany of failed initiatives in this area and a decline in our international rankings. This is from a Government that is unable to even pay its teachers. This is a Government that has mucked up education to this extent. This is not something we take any joy from, because when we heard the state of the nation speeches from our respective leaders a few weeks ago, the lines were very clearly drawn. For Labour, it is about jobs and it is about making sure that we have people equipped with the requisite skills and education to take those jobs. In order to be able to achieve that, we cannot bungle our education system in the way that this Government has. This is a Government that is hell-bent on destroying the education sector for whatever reason that it has. National members need to wake up and realise that their vision for education is not that of New Zealanders.

Let us take some of the changes in the secondary area that the Government is proposing in this legislation. At present, schools have a great amount of flexibility in order to get people who are not qualified and are not registered where they need to fill gaps. This is called the limited authority to teach. What we heard from schools and teachers coming in is that, actually, this is really useful in some areas—itinerant music teachers being the primary place where this limited authority to teach is used. What happens at the moment, before we pass this bad piece of legislation, is that if a school has a gap and it cannot hire a teacher in that area, it applies for this limited authority to teach. The limited authority to teach applies to that school and it has the right to bring in someone with expert skills but who lacks a formal teacher qualification and registration. What this bill—this piece of legislation—does is that instead of licensing a school to fill a gap, it is going to license individuals to roam the country for 3 years with a limited authority to teach. This is not about schools filling gaps; this is about the Government downgrading the respect for the profession and having people who are neither qualified nor registered teaching our children. I do not want a non-registered or non-qualified doctor treating me if I am ill and I certainly do not want non-qualified and non-registered teachers teaching in our schools. This is too important to get wrong.

Then we move on to the tertiary education changes that Steven Joyce has slipped in there. He told us that it is all about international rankings. It is all about innovation. It is all about the need for flexibility. This is a solution looking for a problem. Other members have talked about the size of councils. Let us go through some of those. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has 72 members. Is that something slipping down the international rankings? Is that an institution—the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—that cannot get innovation right? This is simply not going to deliver what the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment has claimed he wants it to do. All the while, New Zealand universities are slipping down the international rankings.

We had academics—the vice-chancellors of all of our universities—come and tell us at the Education and Science Committee that they fear what this will do further for our international reputation. A university’s prime asset is academic freedom and the ability of its academics to be academics, and this bill undercuts this. For the Minister to come and say: “It’s OK. I’m not touching section 161.” is simply disingenuous, because other measures in this bill, subsequent clauses in this bill, fundamentally undermine academic freedom. When you have a Minister not only with the power to appoint but also with the power to dismiss, which is bad enough, and too great a proportion of that university council made up of ministerial appointments, you have a Minister who then goes and changes to whom those appointees are accountable. Are they accountable to the institution on whose board they are serving? No. They are accountable to the Minister. This legislation goes far too many steps too far. It is undercutting the very things that we hold dear about our education system: to have our teachers, to have our university academics, to have our university students represented and having a say in the governance of their institutions.

We heard from a number of universities that there were some compromises they were willing to make around the size of their councils. The Government’s suggestion of eight to 12 members was not something that they could work with. They did point out that they were not corporations, they were not a business. They needed to run an academic institution and that is a little bit different. That is something that this Government does fail to recognise and understand. Not one vice-chancellor told us that this was going to make their institution better. Not one vice-chancellor told us that this would make them more internationally competitive. Not one vice-chancellor told us that this would increase their ability to innovate and not one vice-chancellor told us that this was going to make the New Zealand education sector better. For me that is good enough. I have come into politics because I want to institute change that will bring about betterment, not something that is going to undermine.

If we look at some of the other tinkering of Steven Joyce when he tinkered around with the governance of our polytechs, if we take Minister Joyce’s own measure of what would be a good measure of whether a polytechnic or an institute of technology is doing well, it is profitability. This has all declined since he tinkered with the governance of our polytechnics and reduced the number and moved to this type of governance model for our institutes of technology and polytechnics. So we have no reason to believe that this is going to work in our universities. We have been told consistently by the very people who know and understand, who have a huge stake in the game in tertiary education in New Zealand, that it is not going to work. We are going to limit academic freedom. We are stifling the student voice. We are stifling the staff voice. And to say that universities can choose to appoint these members to their boards is not good enough. It is our job as legislators in this country to enshrine in the Act that governs how our tertiary education is administered in this country that legislative protection and not just leave it to the whim of an institution that can be downgraded. This legislation is not good legislation. It is not going to improve our education system—whether it be at primary, secondary, or tertiary level—and we oppose it strongly.

It is a pleasure to speak in support of this bill, the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). The new school year is under way and I want to acknowledge and thank all of the hard-working and passionate teachers, principals, support staff, and boards of trustees, in particular across the 69 schools in Clutha-Southland. I wish them all the best for the year ahead.

This year there will be over 60,000 new entrants starting school across New Zealand and we want every single one of them to have the chance to do their very best and to grow successful and fulfilling lives. This would not be possible without a dedicated teaching profession, school leaders, and parents who make sure their kids are attending early childhood education schools or other schools and who support their learning at home. This is why the establishment of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand is so important, as it is critical to the components of the mechanics of the education system. That is what I want to focus on in my short contribution tonight.

The establishment of the Education Council fundamentally strengthens the regulatory framework for teachers. It provides a clear separation of registration from the issuing of practising certificates and it improves the discipline and reporting requirements that protect children. This is critical. The protection of children must be a central component to the philosophy and the function and status of the education profession because, in fact, clear reporting requirements also protect the profession. The requirement for the Education Council to develop a code of conduct and enabling the council to refer matters relating to teacher conduct to a complaints assessment committee on its own motion without relying on a third party to make a complaint are examples of how this bill puts the protection of children at the centre. That is why I commend this bill to the House.