Education Legislation Bill

I move, That the Education Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Science Committee to consider the bill. This year I had the privilege of showcasing to our international counterparts how great our education system is in New Zealand and, I hope, reflect that back to us as New Zealanders. We have so much to be proud of.

We have increased the proportion of 18-year-olds who achieve our National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2 or higher from 68 percent in 2008 to 88.3 percent in 2014. I am particularly proud of the lifts for Pacific students, from 44.6 percent in 2008 to 67.7 percent, and for Māori students, from just over 51 percent in 2008 to 75 percent in 2014. Those are extraordinary lifts in achievement, and they owe that achievement to the students themselves, to their parents and whānau, and, of course, to the teachers and principals who have worked to make that possible.

Since 2010 the rate of children starting school having previously participated in early childhood education has also increased by 1.7 percentage points, to 96.1 percent. For Māori and Pasifika, this has increased at an even faster rate—up to 93.8 percent for Māori and up to 91 percent for Pasifika. In 15 of the 16 regions, primary school achievement in writing and mathematics has increased since 2011. I am particularly pleased by the progress in areas such as the West Coast, Gisborne, and Northland, where the percentage of 18-year-olds with NCEA level 2 or an equivalent qualification has risen by between 11.7 and 18.4 percentage points. Teachers and principals deserve a great deal of credit for taking up this Government’s achievement challenge.

Ninety-six communities of learning, involving 793 schools and more than a quarter of a million pupils, are working together to systematically raise student achievement through communities of learning. That means a year into the 4-year roll-out of the programme, about a third of all our students are in line to benefit from the additional funding that enables schools to set their own achievement challenges and share expertise and resources.

When the brand new trades academy opens in Southland next year, we will have a trades academy in every region in New Zealand. Trades academies deliver overwhelmingly positive results for our children—not just any of our kids, but those who are risk of not achieving in education. We opened our first trades academy in 2009 with 600 places and since then we have increased this tenfold, whereby next year over 6,000 will be participating in trades academies. Provisional 2014 results indicate that 85 percent of 18-year-olds who have participated in trades academies achieved at least NCEA level 2, compared with 77 percent for a comparison group of 18-year-olds who did not participate in trades academies.

We have also established nine partnership schools kura hourua, and my colleague David Seymour, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Education, has invited applications for a third round to open in 2017. These schools are a little bit of innovation in our system. They are designed to give kids a shot at education and brighter prospects than they otherwise would not have had, and they respect the fact that parents make the choice of the school that their children go to. The choice and diversity in the New Zealand education system has resulted, however, in complex legislation spread across multiple Acts.

💬 Chris Hipkins: Ah! She’s finally getting to the bill.

The Education Legislation Bill—just providing a little context to inform our consideration—is an omnibus bill amending eight Acts, which will improve administrative and governance arrangements for educational entities and funding organisations.

One of the eight statutes being amended is the Education Act 1989. That Act is also the subject of a separate, targeted update that will set the strategic direction for the education system. The Government is currently consulting on the update of that Act.

This bill contains amendments implementing a number of policies. They are principals managing more than one school, minimum school opening hours, tertiary education institutions sponsoring partnership schools, enabling licensed home-based education and care services to simultaneously provide early childhood education in out-of-school care services, tertiary education policies modernising antiquated Acts, and miscellaneous amendments.

We know that quality teaching and leadership makes a significant difference to student achievement. However, many schools face ongoing challenges to recruit and retain suitable principals, particularly in our rural areas. The Government has introduced a range of measures through our Investing in Educational Success initiative to improve schools’ access to effective principals. An example is the principal recruitment allowance. This allowance enables certain schools to offer a more competitive salary in order to recruit an experienced principal.

To complement these measures, schools should also have the option of being able to share a principal. However, under the current legislation this option is available only where there is a combined board of trustees. This bill addresses this anomaly by giving all school boards, irrespective of their governance arrangements, the option of appointing a principal to manage more than one school. It also gives our very good principals more challenge and a more interesting career path.

Schools are increasingly seeking more flexibility in their timetables to cater to the particular needs of their school and their students. This bill provides school boards with the opportunity to vary their opening hours. This kind of innovation and responsiveness to what works for students must be encouraged. But we know that this must be balanced with the needs of the community, and so the bill mandates that boards must consult with their parents, staff, the local community, and anyone else they consider to be affected. The longstanding requirement for schools to be open for instruction for a minimum of 4 hours a day will not be changed. A requirement to consult and to ensure that students do not spend less time in school than students in comparable and other local schools acts as a constraint on any arbitrary exercise of the boards’ new discretion.

This bill amends the Education Act 1989 to allow tertiary education institutions to become sponsors of partnership schools. The parliamentary under-secretary and I, through partnership schools, have been focused on providing parents with greater choice. This change reflects the Government’s continued backing of partnership schools and its belief that tertiary education institutions’ strong links with secondary education and industry’s understanding of the latest educational research and proven track record as capable managers of significant budgets will strengthen the network of partnership school sponsors.

The bill will enable licensed home-based early childhood education providers to also simultaneously provide early childhood education and out-of-school care services, subject to constraints. The amendments will allow for increased parental choice, and will better support workforce participation by parents of their children.

On behalf of my colleague the Hon Steven Joyce, the tertiary education aspects of the bill will clarify that tertiary education institutions are not required to seek the Minister of Finance’s approval before investing in related entities, but will require parent-level reporting and a power for the Minister responsible for tertiary education institutions to require information. It will also make a minor change to the process for setting conditions on fees that tertiary education providers can charge domestic students.

Other amendments include proposals for the national student number, which will support the increasing use of online educational services, enabling the State Services Commissioner to approve generic or specific terms in conditions of employment, remove unnecessary operational specifications relating to the provision of payroll services, and update aspects of the Ngarimu VC and 28th (Maori) Battalion Memorial Scholarship Fund Act 1945 and the Pacific Islands Polynesian Education Foundation Act 1972.

The ability of the education sector to effectively and efficiently meet its statutory obligations, including delivering financial assistance to students, is being hampered by overly complex legislation. The Education Legislation Bill will address this situation. Broadly, the proposals in this bill will continue to support this Government’s unswerving focus on lifting aspiration and raising the educational achievement of New Zealanders. I now commend the bill to the House.

There is absolutely no doubt that the education legislation in New Zealand does need to be modernised, it does need to be streamlined, and it does need to be simplified. It needs to be less prescriptive, and, certainly, the education legislation needs to be consolidated.

Of course, this legislation—the bill being brought before the House by the Minister of Education—does none of those things. It does not actually deliver on that. We will end up with no fewer Acts governing the education sector at the end of this than we have now. It is a missed opportunity.

We do need to streamline and simplify the Education Act and we need to remove a lot of the red tape and restriction that currently wraps up our education system. This bill, far from doing that, actually adds more. It makes the law more prescriptive, it puts more constraints around what schools can and cannot do, and I think that this is an opportunity that is being completely missed.

I do want to deal with some of the smaller provisions in the bill before I get on to what I think are some of the more substantial ones. The Minister mentioned school hours. School hours are one of those topics that I think people look at and think “In theory, yes, it’s a good idea. Give schools more flexibility.”, but, actually, think through the practical implications of this, and you do start to uncover some difficulty.

Parents who have kids at multiple schools and at multiple ages actually may find it quite difficult to have those kids starting and finishing school at different times of the day. So although it may sound nice and easy and simple in theory, in practice this could have significant implications for parents that have not necessarily been thought through. I think that is the first thing.

Principals running multiple schools—in theory you would think, particularly in the case of very small schools, would it make it sense to have one principal overseeing the management of more than one school? You would think “OK, in theory, yes, maybe there is some merit to that.”, but where they are reporting to multiple boards of trustees where does the ultimate accountability lie? Who can sack that principal if a principal is reporting to multiple different employers? What happens if one of the employers has a difficulty with them, but the others quite like them? It, potentially, sets up a whole heap of conflicts for the boards and for the principals, and, potentially, undermines the entire model that we have.

There are certainly issues with the legislative model that we have around how schools are governed and run in New Zealand. It does not adequately promote cooperation amongst schools and collaboration amongst schools, and we do need to deal with that. But I am not sure that giving principals, in isolation, the power to run more than one school without dealing with many of the other issues that hinder collaboration is necessarily going to deal with that particular problem.

In terms of the expansion of home-based early childhood education services to allow them to provide out-of-school care, I think the first question that we have got to ask is how satisfied can we be, as taxpayers and the parents of the kids who are attending those services, that they are getting a quality outcome as a result of sending their kids to home-based early childhood education? The reality is they cannot be, because there is not any research. No research has been done to assess the quality of home-based early childhood education, and it is one of the fastest-growing parts of the early childhood education system. No research has been done to assess the quality of the outcomes from home-based compared with centre-based early childhood education.

I have visited home-based services; there is no doubt that there are some really innovative and interesting things happening within the home-based sector, but there are also some cowboy, cut-price operators who are not doing a good job of educating kids in home-based services. I think, until we get that particular issue sorted out, why massively expand the remit of the home-based sector? So we will be looking at that very closely.

Then I want to turn to the amendments around charter schools, because this bill massively expands the potential number of operators of charter schools in a way that, again, confuses the accountability mechanism. We already know that charter schools are less accountable than State schools. They have less scrutiny applied to them than State schools because they are not covered by the Official Information Act.

So let us deal with the first change. The first change is that the Government wants to allow tertiary education institutions to set up and operate charter schools. But, of course, those tertiary education institutions would no longer be covered by the Official Information Act and the Ombudsman in so far as the operations of charter schools go.

So, potentially, here we have a State institution—a State institution—setting up a charter school that would then have less scrutiny applied to it than the institution itself or the comparable school down the road. Despite the fact that it is a 100 percent owned, operated, and funded taxpayer operation, there would be no scrutiny over that charter school under the Official Information Act or through the Ombudsmen Act, and that, of course, is wrong.

If the Government is so comfortable with the way charter schools are operating, why is it being so secretive about it? Why will it not release all the information? Why will it not have—

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: They are more transparent than every other kind of school.

—them covered by the Official Information Act and the Ombudsmen Act?

Hekia Parata screeches that they are more accountable. That is absolute nonsense. If that is true, why is it that after nearly 2 years of operation, she is still sitting on massive amounts of information that she will not release about the operation of charter schools, and the complaints that there have been from parents about the operation of those charter schools?

There have been multiple complaints from parents about the operation of the charter schools, and the Government simply sits on that information and chooses to ignore it. Of course, the tertiary education system is not without fault itself. The Government is going to allow tertiary education institutions, some of which have been enrolling their own staff in their tertiary education courses in order to boost their numbers—the Government’s response to that is to say: “Well, let’s let them operate some charter schools as well.”

The tertiary education system is full of rorts, and the Government wants to expand—expand—the potential for more rorts in the education system by allowing it to operate charter schools as well, and that is simply wrong. It is no wonder that the Government does not want them to be covered by the Official Information Act when it is opening up massive loopholes—massive loopholes—that will allow for more and more rorting of the system.

And let us deal with another aspect of the charter school system. If charter schools are so successful, why is it that in this legislation the Government is proposing that it would allow charter schools to contract out of the very education provision that they are set up to provide? Let us be clear what this bill does. This bill allows a charter school to go to a State school and pay the State school to provide the education that the charter school was supposed to provide in the first place.

So what on earth is the point of the middle man? Why pay for a charter school to deliver education that it then contracts out to the State school? Why not give the money directly to the State school instead of having for-profit—for-profit—charter schools creaming the money off the top, which is what this very bill allows them to do. It is an extension of the powers that charter schools have to opt out of the education provision that they are being contracted by the Government to provide.

If the Government thinks that charter schools are doing so well, why is it that it wants to allow them to opt out of the responsibilities they have to provide education? Why is it that it does not want them to be scrutinised under the Official Information Act? Why is it that it wants to hide their activities from the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman—not that I have a lot of faith in that particular organisation after the events of today. Why is it that it is so secretive about the operation of charter schools?

There really is not a lot of justification for this extension. The only justification the Government has is that it could not get enough people—and it says so in the regulatory impact statement—who wanted to operate charter schools. So in its desperation to get more of them set up, it is now going to go to tertiary education providers and say: “Please, please, set up charter schools, because it is turning into such a disaster for the Government.” It has had problem after problem.

And, of course, what was the ideology behind charter schools? Well, if they fail, the Government will close them down. That is what John Key said. The Government has had a massive failure of a charter school, with drug use, absenteeism, high staff turnover, student failure, students dropping out—and what did it do? It said: “Oh, we’d better give them a bit more time.”

Well, how many more kids have to have their futures ruined by that charter school before Hekia Parata will step in and live up to the promise that John Key made that failing charter schools will be closed down? How many more kids? Because there have already been plenty of kids who have had their futures ruined by that school, and there should not be more. So the Government members can stand over there with their crocodile tears about it, but these are real kids, and they are ruining their futures by allowing them to attend that school, which is absolutely failing.

If the Government was sincere in what it is saying it would close that school down—which is what John Key said the Government going to do, and that is what the Ministry of Education recommended to Hekia Parata. It said that the case was already there for the Government to close that school down because it was failing, and, for whatever reason, Hekia Parata decided to do her own thing, ignore that advice, and leave that school open.

So charter schools are not more accountable. There is no justification for expanding charter schools. This is a bad piece of legislation. Although there are good aspects to it, the negatives outweigh the positives, and we will be voting against it.

Partnership schools are providing parents with greater choice and are also showing signs of improved outcomes for high-priority students. Education has been a top priority for this National-led Government. This Government is committed to ensuring that every young New Zealander has the skills and the qualifications required to successfully participate in the modern economy. I would like to congratulate our Minister of Education, the Hon Hekia Parata, on her excellent work in the past few years. We have seen the Minister constantly visiting schools and talking to teachers, staff, the management team, and communities, so under her leadership we have achieved a lot.

We have a long list of achievements, of course, but here are just a couple of examples. The proportion of 18-year-olds who achieve National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 or more has increased by over 20 percent, up from 68 percent in 2008 to 88.3 percent in 2014. There are also the increased percentages for Pasifika and Māori students, which are even higher. We have also had substantially increased collaboration among our schools, which is another very important achievement. As Minister Hekia Parata has just mentioned, 793 schools are now working together to systematically raise student achievement through a community of learning.

National’s unrelenting focus is on raising achievement for all of our students. This Government will never stop working, and it will work even harder in the coming years. We want to further improve our education system. Now, of course, we are facing some challenges, particularly because of overly complex legal requirements, and it has become increasingly difficult for the officials and for the sector to effectively meet statutory obligations and provide particular services. That is why we are introducing this bill.

This bill will amend eight statutes to improve administrative and governance arrangements for educational entities and funding organisations across the education sector. Changes include allowing schools to change their opening hours, with the agreement of their communities. This change will give schools the opportunity for more flexibility in their timetables, to cater for the particular needs of their schools and students. This bill will also enable a principal to be employed to manage more than one school. This bill will help ensure that we will have a modern education system that reflects New Zealand now and into the future. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on this omnibus Education Legislation Bill. This bill is proposed because it will apparently improve, as we heard from the previous speaker, Jian Yang, the administration and the governance arrangements for educational entities as well as funding organisations. I note that this is the first omnibus bill of its kind for education in over a quarter of a century. If passed, it would amend eight different pieces of legislation to ensure that they align with the Government’s policy objectives.

According to the general policy statement, the bill will make operational and administrative changes to early childhood education and to compulsory schooling, as well as to the tertiary education sector. The proposed changes span the breadth of our education system, allowing tertiary institutions to sponsor charter schools, creating the role of a “super-principal”, allowing the State Services Commissioner to approve generic or specific terms and conditions of employment, adjusting school opening hours, and modernising the Pacific Islands Polynesian Education Foundation Act 1972, amongst many other things. These are very wide-ranging changes to the education system. These are a myriad of issues, and the changes that this bill proposes are way, way too wide. I have time to touch on only one, possibly two, of those matters.

Firstly, I turn to the measures allowing principals to run multiple schools. Labour is certainly very open to discussion about how best to encourage collaboration between schools as well as to reduce the negative impacts of the competitive model of schooling. But taking a successful principal and, first, diluting their positive impact on their own school, and then, second, stretching them thinly across other schools and hoping for beneficial effects on par with the current successes that they are actually enjoying in their school is, I believe, taking a huge gamble with our children’s future.

Are the successful principals in our community keen to do this? In my electorate of Manukau East there is an excellently performing school, which some of you may have heard of: McAuley High School, an integrated Catholic school. I am very, very proud of the achievements of girls and students at McAuley High School. The principal of this school is someone whom I really admire. She is hard working, she is passionate, she is very intelligent, and she is one of the best—one of the best—principals whom I know. She is aspirational for her students. She helps each and every one of her 800 students. She and her teachers help their girls to believe that they can achieve and that the sky is the limit. She helps them believe that they can succeed in life regardless of their home, their socio-economic status, or, indeed, even their race.

The principal has informed me that it has taken her several years of dedicated effort, with the support of a good governance board as well as the support of her teachers, support of the parents, and support of her students, to get the results that they enjoy now at McAuley High School. Even the Education Review Office has decided that McAuley High School does not need to be reviewed in the next 3 years. It will not be reviewed again by the Education Review Office for another 5 years. McAuley High School outperforms other schools like it in the country. It even outperforms other schools that are decile 9 and 10. It is made up mainly of Pacific—

💬 David Seymour: Fabulous.

Maybe if you listen, Mr Seymour, you might learn a thing or two. It is made up mainly of female Pacific students. This is a community where the median income ranges from $19,700 for those from the Māngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board area, up to $21,000 for those from the Ōtara-Papatoetoe Local Board area. Last year the McAuley High School pass rate for university entrance was 74 percent. The national average was 69 percent, and many other schools like McAuley High School—because it is a decile 1b school—sit at around 40 percent. For National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 1 at McAuley High School it was 90 and 95 percent—

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: What’s this got to do with the bill?

The national pass rate was 81 percent. For level 2 it was 91 percent and for level 3 at McAuley High School it was 91 percent, compared with the national average of 78 percent.

These academic results are astonishing. McAuley High School results are transformational for the students. They are transformational for their families and for our local communities. You would think—this is where it relates to this bill—that the principal of this school would be the very sort of principal who should be asked to manage a super-school pursuant to this bill, but she does not want a bar of this. She is strongly dedicated to making a difference for her students, for the girls in her school. She does not want to put any of that at risk. Similarly, she says that she cannot imagine another principal coming in from the outside, not knowing what things are like for her teachers and for her students, and deciding how things should be done differently in her school.

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: Read the bill.

I have read the bill. According to this principal, the success that is elsewhere, perhaps, based on theory and success that others have met in other schools would not necessarily be successful for her school. Our children—our students—must be at the centre. The changes we propose in this House must be about what works for our children. Putting principals in charge of multiple schools is gambling with our children’s education and their future. Further, looking at the details a bit more, having a principal reporting to multiple boards of trustees is fraught with risk. This could create significant accountability issues that would need to be carefully worked through.

I would like to turn now to the provisions relating to charter schools. This Education Legislation Bill allows for the expansion of the charter schools model to many other schools. I am most familiar with the charter schools model in the United States, particularly charter schools in the state of Michigan, where my husband and I lived for 10 years. The state of Michigan introduced an unlimited number of charter schools. The model was brought in from other states because it was touted as a silver bullet—as the solution, especially, for educational failure rates of African-American, Latino, and other ethnic minority students. There are over 10 million people who live in the state of Michigan. In the city of Detroit charter schools were opened left, right, and centre. Educational success for these students was supposed to improve. Detroit was supposed to save millions. Instead, the educational success rate either remained static or, as in most of the schools, went downhill, and, worse, the city of Detroit became bankrupt.

Charter schools are a very expensive experiment here in New Zealand. The few charter schools that we have here right now have been and continue to be plagued with problems. Only a few streets away from the school that I spoke about earlier on, McAuley High School, we have a charter school that has been opened—a Pacific charter school, to be exact. It is apparently supposed to deal with the issues of Pacific students. It is supposed to fix the issues for our community. That is just disgraceful when you already have a school with over 90 percent Pacific female students who are already doing very well. McAuley High School is achieving way better than many other schools across the country here in New Zealand.

We do not support this bill. Thank you.

E Te Mana Whakawā Tuarua, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou katoa. As much as I like and respect the member Jenny Salesa, I pity her for having to recite and parrot such absolute ideological bilge in this House. This is a Government that cares very much about the education of New Zealand’s children, our future generations. I want to congratulate the Minister of Education, the Hon Hekia Parata, who has an unrelenting focus on achievement in our education system.

In supporting this Education Legislation Bill in its first reading, I want to point out, I think, just two of its advantages. It allows principals to manage multiple schools and, as much as the Opposition may wish to characterise that as some sort of gamble, this is hardly an exciting or novel concept. It is, in fact, something that we share in common with 15 other countries that have a shared head of State. If it works well at that level, I think we can expect it to work well where we have high-performing principals managing multiple schools. Secondly, it allows much more flexibility in school opening hours. This is common in the workplace. If you look at Government departments, they have flexible hours. You can see the advantage of allowing, perhaps, education to take place in the morning and then trades training in the afternoon in some institutions.

This bill simply brings schools up to working in the modern world in which we live. It is a very fine bill, put forward by an outstanding Minister, and I commend it to the House.

Mr Deputy Speaker, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare Pāremata ko tēnei pō. I am very pleased to make a first reading speech. There is quite a lot in the bill, which I have read, and there are a few things in the bill that we are very comfortable with—for example, the modernisation of the scholarships for the Pacific Islands Polynesian Education Foundation and the Ngārimu VC and 28th (Māori) Battalion Memorial Scholarships. Obviously, those things are useful. But in the main this bill is a continuation of the privatisation, myth-of-flexibility meme that is dominating the education system.

It is interesting, because parallel to the bill there is a process going on at the moment that is about consultation on the purpose of education. What I would love to see in this bill—which is not addressing the purpose; it is just a whole lot of fairly conflicting and, in some ways, confusing amendments—is the purpose of education defined, myself. I would love it to be—and so would the Greens—that the purpose of education is not the myth of choice. It is equity, human development, and mutual liberation, but that is a foreign country, where children come first. It is not about measuring, not about targets, and not about managing a business.

To get down to the specifics of the bill, of which there are quite a few, there are some parts of this on which I am looking forward to their scrutiny at the select committee. The joint principals clauses are not necessarily the worst. I would say that the worst clauses are those around home care, after-school care, and early childhood education, which I will talk about in a minute. The joint principal of a number of schools is an idea that might sound very logical, in a “franchise-y”, spin-it-around, “let’s get flexible and see about managing” kind of manner—because this is all about managing, not about children. But having spent last year, in particular, visiting decile 1 schools and talking to principals, the principals of decile 1 schools told me that they were passionate to stay there, in that specific community, with that specific school, to support those communities that are suffering from major inequality, and they were needed to be there every single day. They did not want to spread themselves around; they wanted to stay there for that community and be there every single day because the principal is where the buck stops when things melt down, when communities are suffering from poverty, transience, and social stress. That is why a principal needs to be there with their school.

There might be situations, for example, in rural areas where there are very small schools, where you might argue that so long as you have got an excellent teacher or two, you can share the principalship, but that needs to have safeguards and it needs to be spelt out. If there were safeguards and it was spelt out properly, we might consider it, but right now, no. We would be interested in that debate taking place at the select committee. The Minister of Education talked about moving these principals, these very high-performing—it sounds a bit like a type of sport—people, into interesting career paths. I think that for those at the front line of where education is critical—which is every school, and particularly schools where communities are in distress—it is interesting enough. What they actually need is the ability to focus on their community and to be accountable to that community.

But the issue in the bill that most concerns us is the changes to the home-care and after-school care provisions, because home care was already a concern. Home care was a concern because there was a review into the quality of it that got dropped. As earlier speakers have said, some home carers are extremely successful—I am thinking about some of the Pacific models in Porirua working with the Wellington kindergartens—but there are also others where we are very concerned about what is happening. This bill will make it worse, because now the home-care industry, if you like, can actually include after-school care for children, and those people are allowed to have up to six of those children, excluding children of the person themselves. So if that person has up to four to five children themselves, they can have another six in their home, with one adult, who may or may not be trained, and that will be sufficient to give them the right to be called a service and to have a licensed home-based service.

There is not enough protection in this bill to make sure that expanding from early childhood education to including after-school care in one service is actually going to be protecting the ratios, which is so critical. At the moment you are not supposed to exceed more than four children per home, but in clause 31, inserting new section 317A, it says that while children are receiving the service the total number of children aged 13 or younger in the home—because now it is about older children as well—other than the children of the educator must not exceed six. So we have got these children of the educator not being counted—they do not matter. We can have a number of those, plus another six children.

That is why I call it a business bill, because this is about facilitating the opening up of the early childhood home-care industry to after-school care without putting the kids first, without saying that there has to be quality, and without putting in ratios that would normally be expected across the early childhood education service. It is all about making money; it is not about children. It is objectionable to do that when we know that early childhood education—much of it—is not meeting the standards required for actually supporting children’s development. The Ministry of Education said that, not me. There is a lot of work to be done, and we will be opposing this bill primarily because we believe that this is creating a lack of safety and creating risk. It is very, very serious. That is the serious point.

We would like to see some discussion at the select committee about the student number and its efficacy. Some people—and I am not saying that the Greens agree with them—want us to have a look into this one because of how student numbers are used in early childhood education to actually try to dob in beneficiaries and force their children into sometimes inappropriate care. But we do not think this is necessarily going to be a problem with this.

The school hours flexibility does currently exist, so why do we need to change this? There is a little clue as to why this is being put in the bill. That clue is that—

💬 David Seymour: Is the member for or against school hour flexibility?

—parents can work longer hours, with kids in schools. The Green Party is not romantically for flexibility or romantically against it, Mr Seymour. It is not ideological. It is about what will work best for kids. What is important is whether we do need a legal change here. Is it necessary to change the law? What about school transport? What about parents with kids going to different schools? Flexibility is a universe that people do not actually live in—it is a universe of theory that everything is just wide open out there. Flexibility already does exist in some schools, and we support what is happening already, so we do not think it needs to go further at this point in time.

When it comes to charter schools, these enabling clauses do concern us. We are not here to enable a continuation of charter schools. Interestingly, I just read the PhD work of a Crawford School of Public Policy study in Australia that looks at the charter schools so far. You would have to say that you would not want to enable more, because the conclusions of this research were very interesting. It kind of said: “Charter schools? Hmm, New Zealand, hmm. Not necessarily better, not necessarily worse, not necessarily anything, really—just kind of like State schools.” The most interesting part, then, is the well-being study of the children. At the beginning of their term in a new charter school 84 percent of the children themselves said their life was good, and by term 3, 59 percent said the same. It had dropped that much. You see, if you look at the figures and if you look at the statistics on the literacy achievements, that the schools, at best, keep up with the State schools or, at worst, drop. It shows you that when independent people from other countries start researching our models that exist so far, they find that there is a problem.

There are these issues with the tertiary institutions being able to be expanded to run charter schools as well. It really concerns me that we would assume that private training education institutes know more about teaching than schoolteachers and that we need to allow these people whose pedagogy is focused on older people, focused on the older end of the education system—we assume that they are going to be the people to really make a difference. We assume that without accountability, without the Official Information Act, without Ombudsmen, these people who are not focused on the pedagy of how children learn—

💬 David Seymour: “Pedagy”?

—pedagogy—will be able to do that. Having just been part of the inquiry on special needs, I just wonder, because they are falling through the cracks now, what is going to happen if there is more of a training focus and less of a whole-child focus in education? It is really concerning that we would allow that to happen. It might be great from a business point of view—yes, make more money if you want to—but actually—

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: What about Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, famous for looking after Māori communities?

It is completely not typical. Te Wānanga o Aotearoa is not typical of other training organisations.

I oppose this bill because I do not believe it is correct. We will be having a lot more discussion about this. Thank you very much. Tēnā koutou.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. New Zealand First believes that there needs to be a review of the Education Act 1989. Absolutely, it has been in our manifesto since 2011, but not like this—not like this.

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: No, that’s happening separately.

Actually, no, Minister. Where did this come from, because there was no call from parents, actually, for this bill and these pieces of legislation—there is no parent voice here, there is no student voice here, there is actually no school voice here, and there is no board of trustees voice here. The Minister will stand up and say—I think she has already done it once at question time, actually—that this bill has been developed after 2 years of work and consultation.

She is referring to the report of the Taskforce on Regulations Affecting School Performance—[Interruption] Yes, 26 individuals were spoken to by that task force, and this is a quote from the report: “During the consultation phase, the Taskforce met with 26 individuals or groups from education sector representative groups and a small selection of schools. Generally consultation respondents were pleased to have the opportunity to engage with the Taskforce. They put forward a wide range of views and provided significant input into the thinking of the Taskforce. Some respondents commented that the limited time period was not ideal and that the Taskforce would have benefited from a wider consultation.” Twenty-six individuals or groups—there is no parent voice in there, there is no student voice in there. None of them were consulted around this.

We have got this bill going through the House that actually makes substantial changes to the Education Act 1989—not small legislative corrections; it makes substantial changes to the Education Act 1989. The Minister is happy to ask parents how they feel about 5-year-olds enrolling in cohorts into school—something that schools can already do by choice—but she does not think it is appropriate to ask parents and students whether they want their school’s principal to be able to take on more than one school at a time. We are going to ask parents—and, actually, we are not even asking parents. There have been nine meetings throughout New Zealand from the 2 November date—and submissions close on 14 December—about a piece of legislation running alongside this one. There have been nine meetings in the whole of the country, including one in Auckland—one—to ask parents what they think about it.

It is interesting that this piece of legislation is here now before the House, 2 days before we rise. I will guarantee that Dr Yang and the National Party backbenchers who are on the Education and Science Committee tomorrow will come up with a date for when the submissions need to be closed, and that date will be before school returns in February—I guarantee it. That is because they know that the boards of trustees have had their last meetings for this year. They know that schools have 2 more weeks to go, if that, with prize-givings and final trips. They know that teachers will go away while this House rises and those members go away for 9 weeks’ recess. They have an expectation that teachers will come back and will discuss this legislation and will submit on it. This is what this Government does again and again and again. It is a ploy. It is a farce—the review is a farce. That is why New Zealand First will not support this.

There are other reasons why New Zealand First cannot support this. Here is one: the amendments in clause 18. Clause 18 amends section 158 of the principal Act to enable students of specified schools, with the agreement of the boards or sponsors concerned, to receive tuition from other specified schools. They can do it now. What this is about is that there have been schools that have refused to allow charter schools to use their technology rooms. Charter schools are funded at a much higher level than State schools are, and yet they have—and let us take the Whangarei kura that has banked millions of dollars because it has used an industrial site. It has used an industrial site and decided not to build technology rooms, but it is supposed to deliver the curriculum—it is supposed to deliver the New Zealand Curriculum. But it has not built the technology rooms. So this bill is to break that impasse.

This is about this Government removing powers from schools and making a suggestion—hiding it under different language—to make it look as if they are getting some power that they do not already have. They have it—they do not want charter schools inside their technology rooms. They do not want untrained teachers inside their technology rooms. They do not want schools that are funded higher than they are using the things that they have to pay the maintenance on, that they have to get the property dollar for, and that they then have to monitor. They do not want the discipline issues. If a charter school student should actually interfere with—or attack, or whatever—another student in that school, they do not want it. But they have the power to make that decision now, so this is unnecessary.

Clause 12 amends section 79 to allow grants from public money to be paid to sponsors of partnership schools—charter schools. This is interesting—did you miss that bit? Did the Government miss this bit? Was there some money that charter schools could not get their hands on, so now we have an amendment to section 79? Is there a bucket of money somewhere that they did not get, so now we have to change the law to allow them to do it? Let us have a look at the regulatory impact statement here about why tertiary institutions should actually need to have this capacity: “Since the introduction of partnership schools in 2013, many potential sponsors have been small community organisations.” Gosh, I thought this was about parental choice and local communities, so that they were connected to those communities for these children who needed extra support.

It says: “New Zealand has yet to see the emergence of larger organisations acting as sponsors, as occurs for similar schools in the United States and England.” I just sat here and listened to Mr Seymour and Ms Parata berate Jenny Salesa for actually talking about America, and yet this is the Minister’s—actually, this is not a regulatory impact statement. This is the Cabinet paper—this is the Cabinet paper. Yet I sat here and listened to Mr Seymour and Ms Parata having a go at Ms Salesa, shouting out: “This is about New Zealand—this is about New Zealand.” This is the Cabinet paper, parliamentary under-secretary. Did you not read it—did you not read it? We cannot ask you under the Official Information Act to find out.

In the United States, universities are associated with charter schools, and in England they are associated with free schools and academies. New Zealand First could not possibly support any extension to charter schools. The only reason we have the task force to start with is that the ACT Party demanded it—the ACT Party, which had two members on that task force. It was part of its confidence and supply agreement. Supposedly, it is about removing regulation. It is interesting that one of the other options here actually not only adds more regulation but it adds more cost to New Zealand schools. If you have a look at the regulatory impact statement about principals being able to manage more than one school, and you go and have a look at option 4, you see that enabling principals to manage more than one school would be cost-neutral for the Crown. However, there may be additional costs on the schools that they will need to absorb.

So not only is the Crown going to legislate for this to happen—and again I sit here and I listen to Ms Parata and Mr Seymour talk about schools with 60 students or schools with 40 students that should not have their own principal. In only April 2015 we had the best evidence synthesis around the value of principals in New Zealand schools—April 2015. This is what it said: “They show unequivocally that focused pedagogical leadership is essential—one in which the principal participates as a co-learner with teachers in moving learning and schools forward.”

These changes have nothing to do with educating students; this has to do with money. Everything the ACT Party does has to do with money. It has to do with privatising the education system. It has to do with making sure that big business can get hold of the public purse.

💬 David Seymour: Oh, damn it—you got us!

It is about troughing, and Mr Seymour knows it.

Mr Assistant Speaker—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I want to hear Melissa Lee.

I was a little bit slow in getting up, and I apologise for that. I had not quite realised that Miss Tracey Martin had finished. I understand her passion, and I believe her passion comes from having actually sat on a school board.

Thank you for the opportunity to take a short call in support of this bill. Unlike Miss Tracey Martin, I think it is actually a great bill. I do not understand why Miss Martin thinks we have not consulted or we are not going to be consulting. I thought the whole point about legislation going to a select committee is that it is opened up for the public to make a submission to the committee to see whether they can improve it, show they hate it, or put forward their recommendations for the select committee to consider.

This bill, the Education Legislation Bill, is a key piece of omnibus legislation. Indeed, it is the first of its kind in over 25 years. I am pleased that I can have the opportunity to take a short call on this. This bill is being proposed because this Government is committed to ensuring that every New Zealander can have the same opportunities within our education system as part of our aspirational country. I would like to commend the amazing Minister of Education. I have never seen anybody as passionate as Minister Parata about education and the future of our children. I also commend the parliamentary—actually, the private secretary, Mr Seymour, on this as well.

This bill, when passed, will see a number of changes designed to reinforce and promote the best possible learning approaches for our nation’s children and raise achievement for students wherever they are learning around New Zealand. These changes include the ability for communities and their schools to make schooling hours more flexible for their students, as well as new tools for better support of the partnership and kura hourua schools programme, which we successfully implemented during the last term of this Government.

This bill also will support better online learning through the national student numbers, which will work as an identification code, supporting participation and innovative online learning. My whip was just looking at me, so I think she wants me to wrap it up. This is a great bill, and I commend the bill to the House, because the quicker we get on with it, the quicker we will consider it in the select committee. I look forward to this bill coming to the Education and Science Committee in the new year.

The next call is a split call. Gareth Hughes—5 minutes.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. The previous speaker got the formal title for the architect of charter schools, David Seymour, incorrect, but I guess I am not surprised because it is an entirely secretive role, not open to the Official Information Act. So I am not surprised that Government members do not actually know the formal title of their support parties—the parties that are foisting charter schools on the kids of New Zealand. It is not surprising.

There are some parts of the bill that the Green Party supports. We have heard that from our education spokesperson, Catherine Delahunty. But the thing that rang true for me in her speech is what this bill really is—it is the “Business of Education Bill”. It is not the business of educating kids to top-quality highest international standards; it is the business of business educating kids.

There are four parts of the bill I would like to touch on. The first is the deeply damaging potential changes we see with allowing some early childhood centres to be also opening as after-school centres. We heard about the ratios and the concerns there. We could be seeing more kids crammed into private homes that have been turned into after-school centres without trained teachers, with big concerns. Secondly, this bill also allows tertiary education institutes to sponsor charter schools. The thing is we have seen, I believe—I may be wrong—only a single applicant declined from running a charter school. That was, of course, Destiny Church—the only one the Government did not want to see running a charter school. But what we have not seen are long queues of people wanting to set them up. In fact, it has been a dismal failure, the number of people wanting to run charter schools. So now the Government is literally going out, trying to cast its net wider, and trying to get our tertiary education institutes to sponsor and run charter schools.

As the Greens’ tertiary education spokesperson, I want to see those institutes focusing on good tertiary skills training to get those people into employment, to set up the entrepreneurs of the future and new business enterprises, not running charter schools and getting into the business of educating kids for profit. A big concern, of course, when you allow private training establishments—from which we have seen some concerning practices in New Zealand over many years—is whether these are the groups we want to see also running the secretive charter schools. Of course, when these tertiary education institutes become sponsors for charter schools, their employees, who are currently State employees, are removed from the current provisions that apply to State employees—for example, the Official Information Act.

Thirdly, we also see a change to tertiary education institutes when it comes to setting their fees. Currently, consultation is protected in the statute as a 2-month period. Although the term “consultation” is still in this bill, which will be going to a select committee, it entirely removes the 2-month consultation period. I believe in consultation. I think it is important that students get to have a say when their fees are being raised or—it has not happened in an awful long time—lowered. The fact is we should have an appropriate consultation time. Look, I have seen a number of what I would consider sham consultations over the years, and not all from the current Government. These sham consultations are run just simply to get an outcome. If you remove the statutory 2-month requirement, that is a legitimate fear.

Fourthly, and lastly, as a dad with two kids in schools, the idea of a principal running two schools is a little bit concerning. I know it has been happening since 2000, but it is kind of like the captain of a ship. How many ships can a captain be running and managing at the same time? When you look at the idea that a principal can be responsible to two boards, where is the buck going to stop? Is a parent able to go to a school and know where the principal is—which office they will be in that day? I think it is important that, although there is a case—and we have heard the argument of the rural schools—we need to set some common sense. Parents want to know that their kids’ education is going to have someone where the buck is going to stop who is responsible to a board. What we see here is another piece of education legislation focused on the business of education with an emphasis on business.

I think, actually, it is the last night this House will be sitting.

💬 David Seymour: Who made the member’s suit?

I would not say it is robust debate—in fact, what we have seen is some incredibly rude interjections from this side from the member who, I guess from want of an intellectual argument, would prefer to barrack from the sidelines in lieu of a debate.

David Seymour—5 minutes.

I sometimes have to remind myself that this is actually the best system of Government that humans have so far discovered, but that does not apply to the honourable Minister who introduced that bill. I want to pay a tribute to Hekia Parata, who has worked passionately and diligently to introduce a bill that is fundamentally enabling. “Enabling” is the key point that has been missed by every other member in this debate. So many members on the other side of the House have made the argument that they know a school somewhere that might not want to take advantage of an enablement in this bill. What a non sequitur—to say that because not everybody wants to take advantage of a freedom, the freedom should not be allowed.

This bill enables educators to act more freely in a number of ways. It allows, for instance, principals to operate more than one school. There is ample evidence that the critical factor in the success of a school is the school leader. Are the Opposition members seriously saying that a top-flight, high-quality school leader who has the ability and the desire to lead more than one school, and whose communities both want him or her to lead that school, should not be allowed to? Is that what the Opposition is really saying—that those leaders should not be enabled to do that because of the Opposition’s ideology, even though the school communities and the principal both want that transaction to occur? This is about enablement, a concept the Opposition cannot, or at least will not, understand.

💬 Phil Twyford: “Enablement”?

A similar argument could be made for opening hours and allowing schools to become more flexible. I would like to focus on a particular enablement, and, Mr Twyford, I am not too concerned as to whether it is a word or not, because everybody knows what I mean.

The enablement for partnership schools kura hourua is that their sponsors can be tertiary institutions. I liken this initiative to the concept of a teaching hospital, where a highly competent institution with a great store of knowledge and human capital is allowed to transfer that knowledge to the operation of what it studies. In the case of a teaching hospital it is medical researchers running hospitals so that people get better care at that hospital. In the case of a partnership school sponsored by a tertiary institution that has a deep well of know-how and resource, it will allow students to get better service from the range of schools open to them.

Only the Opposition would say that if the student wants to do it, if the teacher wants to do it, if the tertiary education institution wants to do it, and if the sponsor of the school wants to operate the school, then, oh no, we in this House should stand up, give asinine, content-free speeches, and tell them they shall not pass.

I am proud to be on the side of a Government that says to our communities that we will enable them to do the things that make their lives better. That is what it means to be a liberal. That is what it means to stand on this side of the House. That is what it means to be connected with communities and care about them—

💬 Phil Twyford: They’re not liberals.

—and give them better options for educating themselves. The member interjecting over there knows that his party should be supporting this policy, but his party cannot, and he knows exactly why that is and the letters are P-P-T-A. How pathetic. This bill enables our communities to better educate their children and their mokopuna. I stand proudly here today for the ACT Party in support of this bill. Thank you.

I rise in support of the Education Legislation Bill. I am stunned listening to the Opposition this evening, particularly the Labour members. I recall the words uttered by my colleague and friend Chris Bishop in this House just a couple of months ago when he pointed out that the Labour Party has become a mere shadow of its former self, not just in numbers of members but as a party that fears change and that runs scared of any due progress. That is now a party of ultra-conservatives. The only genuine reforming parties in this House are the National Party and the ACT Party. They are the ones that know and put the achievement of our students in school ahead of fear of change. They are parties that are not scared to make good change in order to make progress in students’ educational attainment.

Labour is now backed up by the Greens, I see, who are so scared of something that has been working since the year 2000—that is, principals being in charge of more than one school—that they now want to stop the practice. So they are catching up to Labour in that sense.

This Government believes in progress. It believes in good education for our children. I commend this bill to the House.

Ā, tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare, otirā, tēnā tātou katoa. Can I just start off by saying that the Education Act 1989 was actually brought in by a Labour Government. This is the Act that we are speaking about, and there are other Acts as well.

Can I start off there because, to be fair, I want to say that the amendments to the Ngarimu VC and 28th (Maori) Battalion Memorial Scholarship Fund Act are necessary. I want to acknowledge what has been put into this part of the bill. The problem that I have, though, is that this is an omnibus bill, and quite frankly there are a number of things that have been widely canvassed that are not good. That is why we cannot support this bill.

From my view of the world what is actually going on with this Education Legislation Bill, the way I see it, is that the National Government has a policy agenda. The policy agenda is around providing a commercial model for our free education system. It is also about partially privatising, or even moving towards fully privatising, some parts of education. That is my view of what this is all about. It is not a policy that the Government has announced; it is a policy that it does by stealth. It brings in certain things in a bill like this that make incremental steps towards where it really wants to take this country, where it really wants to take the education system in our country, and that is to partially privatise education.

Let us talk about charter schools. Schools or other entities can choose to apply to start a charter school. These charter schools are unfair in this respect: each child at those schools get funded up to five times more than a child in other schools. I have a big problem with that. The Minister spoke about how students in those schools are performing much better. Well, I would think so—I would hope so. I would hope that if you were getting five times more funding than other schools—you would expect those schools to be performing better. But the reality of it is that they hardly do better overall than State-funded schools.

So why would the Government do it? I put forward that the argument as to why it is doing it is that it wants to make incremental steps towards a different kind of education system for our country, and we will not agree to that. That is why we are standing up here to say no to this bill. The shame of it is that there are some things in other parts of the bill that are necessary, but I go back to my key point around charter schools: we do not agree with it.

The previous speaker, Mr Seymour, said that the bill was enabling. From my view of the world it enables the application of a commercial model. A case in point—I will go to that part—are the changes to sections 75 and 76 of the Education Act. Some of us, or a number of us actually, on this side of the House, and probably on the other side as well, have had a lot to do with school boards of trustees. Some of us, like myself, did our training in governance in that arena. I can tell that you just making a change and adding in this new section 75A, in clause 9, does not automatically mean that schools are going to have the capacity to be able to unite in a way that that commercial model suggests that it can do. I know that from where I come from all of the rural schools are actually the central points, the hubs, of those communities. It is where those communities go to. I would be very surprised if any of the schools that I know of that are involved in a rural setting would put forward a proposal to have one principal to cover all of those communities. Some of those communities are unique. Some of them have a large Māori population; others are mainly non-Māori. They have different interests. All of these things supposedly are able to be handled by one principal. Well, I would be very surprised if that happened in a rural setting.

I also want to address some of the actually quite mean and nasty comments that have been made in this debate. In particular, I would suggest that the member from ACT, David Seymour, go and have a good think about what he said in the House tonight. In respect of the issue around the Official Information Act, I suspect and would probably go so far as to say that he has probably turned down a ministerial post so that he does not have to be subject to the Official Information Act. If you have a look at it in this bill, issues around charter schools are not subject to the Official Information Act, and if you are about having an open and transparent Government, then I would say that it is a shocking situation that we find ourselves in. If charter schools are so good—if they are so good—then why is it that both charter schools and the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Education are not subject to the Official Information Act? I think that he does a great disservice to this House on the issues that he talked about.

I think also that allowing tertiary education providers to operate charter schools, as my colleague Jenny Salesa pointed out, does raise a number of issues. It raises the question of exactly why there is a need to have tertiary institutes starting up charter schools. Well, I suspect that has got a lot to do with the fact that there are not enough schools showing interest in becoming charter schools. I think that the whole notion around that scares them off—and so it should do, purely and simply on the basis that it is an unfair system that treats some schools a lot better than others. I believe that if that funding was equally distributed amongst all schools, then we would get far better outcomes for our children who attend those schools.

Just on the other matters that are within this bill, it provides a new schedule too for the Pacific Islands Polynesian Education Foundation Act. It is equally a shame that this part of this bill is part of an omnibus bill of which the principal part, fundamentally, we cannot agree with. My contribution tonight is purely and simply on that—that we will not support this bill at its first reading. Thank you.

E Te Mana Whakawā Tuarua, tēnā koe. The Education Legislation Bill has clearly identified a philosophical divide across the House. The absolute bottom line on this on this side of the House is that it is actually all about the students—quite a novel concept, with the students being the centre of education! I congratulate the Minister of Education, the Hon Hekia Parata, on being bold enough to actually get in and put a bill forward that is going to make a big difference to education.

I have 54 schools in my electorate. It is really obvious, when you get around a number of schools, that there are some that do a better job than others, and it comes down to the people at the top running the school. To have a principal who is more than capable of running more than one school get out there and actually make a difference in students’ lives, if the community and the students and the parents in that community want that to happen—why would you not want that to happen? I cannot understand that. It is not about the kids, if that is what you are worried about. Actually, having flexibility in opening hours is all about education for the actual situation that you are talking about in that community. It is with that that I commend what is one of the better pieces of legislation I have seen in a long time come to this House. Thank you.