Education Legislation Bill

Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā, otirā, tēnā tātou i roto i Te Whare i tēnei pō.

[I acknowledge you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and, at the same time, us in the House this evening.]

I move, That the Education Legislation Bill be now read a second time. This bill is an omnibus bill amending nine different Acts. The purpose of this bill is to improve administrative and governance arrangements for educational institutions and entities and funding organisations across the education sector. It also modernises out-of-date legislation to ensure that it remains relevant, effective, and fit for purpose. Our Government has a clear expectation of an education system that provides for high achievement and a high rate of progress for every student. To support this expectation, education legislation must be modern, flexible, and have an unrelenting focus on the learning and achievement of all children and young people. This bill plays a big part in achieving that goal, as will the update of the Education Act that I also intend to introduce to the House this year.

I would like to thank the chair and the members of the Education and Science Committee for their diligent consideration of the bill. I also want to thank the organisations and individuals that made submissions on the bill, and I want to commend them for taking up the opportunity to have their voices heard on such an important matter. The Education and Science Committee received a diverse range of submissions from both individual submitters and organisations in relation to the bill. In particular, submitters commented on amendments relating to enabling a principal to manage more than one school, minimum school opening hours, tertiary education institution sponsorship of partnership schools kura hourua, and the establishment of employment-based teacher trainee positions.

The proposal that principals be permitted to manage more than one school and that schools be permitted to vary school opening hours provides schools with additional flexibility. Both of these amendments provide options for schools and their communities to adopt only if they choose to do so. The Education and Science Committee recommended amendments to the bill, including enabling boards of trustees to appoint trainees to trainee teacher positions through amendments to the Education Act 1989, modernising the New Zealand Council for Educational Research Act 1972, allowing school boards of trustees to follow a more streamlined process in varying a school’s opening times if the variation is for operational reasons and on an occasional and short-term basis, and specifying that the power of the State Services Commissioner to approve additional terms and conditions of employment would relate only to an individual employee and not to any class of employees. I am pleased that the select committee has recommended, by majority, that the Education Legislation Bill be passed with these amendments.

The bill introduces a new trainee teacher category. This will enable school boards to employ people who are working towards a teaching qualification through an Initial Teacher Education (ITE) provider that offers a period of employment by a school board as part of its programme. These are known as field-based ITEs. This Government is focused on strengthening the teaching profession as part of a broader strategy to lift overall education system performance. The new trainee teacher category is designed to attract high-calibre students into teaching and to equip them with the skills and knowledge to meet the needs of diverse learners. This initiative is one approach to lifting the status of the teaching profession by attracting a different cohort of recruits from those who enrol in traditional ITE programmes. It seeks to strengthen the relationship between the ITE provider, school, and student teacher, which has been an area of concern across ITE programmes in New Zealand and internationally.

I am committed to ensuring that we are getting the best and brightest people into the teaching profession. That was why I was delighted to announce just recently that we are expanding Teach First by another 10 places, focused on science, technology, and maths, in 2017. With the extension of a further 3 years, this means that we will have 50 newly trained Teach First teachers by the end of 2018. Teach First has been successfully recruiting high-achieving graduates and placing them in secondary schools that need them the most: lower-decile schools and those with large Māori and Pasifika populations.

The New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER)—in line with the changes that this bill makes, the Education and Science Committee has recommended that this bill be amended to modernise the NZCER. These changes to modernise the NZCER Act will establish that the New Zealand Council for Educational Research has nine members, that new members are appointed by the Minister or the council and, that when appointing new members the council and the Minister must have regard to the skills, experience, and knowledge that makes up the overall composition of the council. This is a streamlined process for council elections that allows the council to make its own rules relating to elected members.

Tertiary amendments—I am also pleased to speak on behalf of my colleague, the honourable Minister Joyce, about the amendments relating to tertiary schooling policies. The tertiary education amendments strengthen and modernise the regulatory framework for investment in related entities. This change will give the Government access to better information about the investments tertiary education institutions (TEIs) are making in related entities. This will enable us to better support TEIs to manage any potential risks posed by those related entities. There are also changes aimed at streamlining the process for setting conditions on fees charged to domestic education students.

Overall work programme—this is a busy Government that is ambitious for New Zealand’s future. Education is a passport to the future. This Government recognises that, and that is why in this Budget, for the first time, we are spending over $11 billion in education. That spend is an investment in the future and one that is already paying out with great results. I was delighted to announce earlier this month that more of our young people are leaving school with National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2. The latest data shows that 51,299 18-year-olds—that is, 83.3 percent—achieved NCEA level 2 last year. That is around 38,000 more young people achieving our minimum qualification for success than if the achievement rate had remained at the level it was when we came into Government in 2008. We also have record numbers of children taking part in quality early childhood education. Student stand downs, suspensions, and exclusions are the lowest that they have been since records began 16 years ago. Since 2008, suspensions have fallen by 40 percent, stand downs have dropped by 30 percent, and exclusions have fallen by 35 percent, but of course we can do more.

We need to modernise our education system to meet the challenges of the 21st century and to ensure our young people and children are part of an economy where they can be locally and globally competitive. As part of this work we are reviewing the way that early childhood services and schooling are funded. My goal is to have funding systems based on the size of the education challenge, not the size of the institution, and on learning growth and achievement of all children and young people. A number of proposals are currently being considered, and I look forward to hearing recommendations from the funding advisory group.

On the ground we are seeing growing numbers of schools coming together to share best practice to raise student achievement. The number of communities of learning continues to grow, and we now have 117 communities, which account for a thousand schools and more than 320,000 students. Individual communities of learning are agreeing their achievement challenges and making key appointments.

The Education Legislation Bill, alongside everything that we are doing, is designed to lift our education system into one that puts children and young people at the very centre of everything we do in education, and it delivers great education outcomes. I now commend the Education Legislation Bill to the House.

I respectfully suggest to the Minister of Education that she ask the people who write her speeches to perhaps mention a little bit more about the bill being debated, rather than talking about all of the other things the Government is doing that are not actually in any way connected to the bill currently before the House.

The question that the House should turn its attention to in any debate on education is twofold: first of all, how will this improve learning or impact on students’ learning, and what does research tell us about whether it is going to work or not? I want to go through several of the provisions of the bill and pose those two questions as we go through. So, first of all, in terms of enabling a principal to manage more than one school, the question has to be: what impact will this have on student learning, and what does research tell us?

I will deal with the second one first—what does research tell us? It tells us that we have already got provisions in law to allow a board of trustees to manage more than one school and to employ a principal to manage that group of schools. It has barely ever been used. So we have an existing provision that allows the Government to do exactly what it wants to do, and it is barely ever used. So what is the demand for having a principal managing more than one school, and how would that work? That is where the question: “How this will impact on student learning?” comes in.

Well, what is the role of the school principal? Any school principal will tell you it is more than a full-time job. Running one school is more than a full-time job. They are not only the supervisor and mentor to all of the teaching staff and all of the support staff working in their school; they are the curriculum leader for their school. They set the tone of the school. They set the culture of the school. They provide leadership to the students. That is more than a full-time role, so how would a principal doing their job effectively manage more than one school, and what would happen if things started to go wrong?

Those were the questions that we, rightly, asked at the Education and Science Committee, and those are the questions that many of the submitters who came to the select committee also asked. No answers were forthcoming. Officials were unable to say whether the principal would report to more than one school board of trustees. So if there were several boards involved and a principal is managing more than one school, who would the principal’s ultimate accountability be to? Well, the officials told us that one board would ultimately be the employer. What would happen if other boards in the employment arrangement had a problem with the principal? Would they pull out, and then what would happen to the principal when their job, effectively, was disestablished? Would they express that concern to the board of trustees that was the employer, and what would happen if the employing board of trustees did not agree with those concerns that were raised?

None of those questions could be answered by the officials who attended the select committee. So if this is a good provision, how is it going to work and what is the impact going to be on student learning? We could not get answers to those questions. I am open to the debate about it. I am absolutely open to debate about whether or not this is a good idea. I have not yet seen any evidence to suggest that it would work or that it is a good idea.

How would changes to school opening hours impact on student learning, and what does the evidence and research tell us? Again, this is a debate that I am completely open to. For example, I have seen some research that suggests that young kids—very young kids—learn better in the mornings and older kids learn better in the afternoons. The teenagers prefer to stay in bed in the mornings, and their concentration span is better in the afternoon. I am open to that debate, but let us consider the obvious implication of that for families if they have got kids of multiple ages attending different schools. What happens to those families if those kids are all attending school at different times during the day? What are the implications for their parents of their doing so?

What happens if the primary school decides in consultation with its community that it wants to open earlier and close earlier in the day, and the secondary school where the other kids go wants to open later in the day and close later in the day? What are the implications of that for parents? How are they going to be able to juggle that, and what are the implications for their participation in the labour market—i.e., their jobs? Nobody can answer that question, and the Government does not even seem to have considered it. When we put those questions to the officials, they sort of said: “Oh well, communities can manage it, and we are not going to force any schools to do it.” But that is not the point. The schools can consult with their communities and still come up with arrangements that will be a nightmare for parents to juggle, and there is not really any evidence to support them doing so.

So then we come to the issue of enabling tertiary institutions to sponsor partnership schools, or charter schools. How will this impact on learning, and what does the research tell us? Well, the research tells us, of course, that this is an admission by the Government that its partnership schools policy has failed. Let us go back to the very first debate when the Government proposed introducing partnership schools. This was not necessary at the time because the whole notion behind partnership schools was that there would be these external sponsors who would put their own capital into establishing them. Well, let us do a fact check. Not one of the existing charter schools has had a significant injection of capital from its sponsor. They are almost exclusively reliant on 100 percent taxpayer funding, and they have not had enough applications.

The Partnership Schools Authorisation Board, as the glorified name suggests, has constantly come back to the Government and expressed its disappointment at the calibre of applications. This is the board that was set up by the Government to champion the policy, and it is saying that it has been disappointed by the calibre of applications. So what is the Government’s solution to that? It is to say that polytechs should now go setting up charter schools. And what are the implications of that? Well, ultimately, some of those polytechs are struggling to run their own institutions. Many of them are in deficit. The Government—Steven Joyce—has serious concerns about the financial viability of them, and now the Government is saying that it wants them to set up partnership schools, or charter schools.

But it gets even better than that, because if they do set up a charter school, they will be exempt from the Official Information Act and all of the public accountability that goes with it in respect of the operation of the partnership school. Despite the fact that it will be a 100 percent taxpayer-owned organisation establishing them, using 100 percent funding from the taxpayer, there will be no scrutiny of them. That is absolutely wrong. There is no evidence to suggest it, and if there was the Government would have produced it, but it has not.

Then we come to the issue of partnership schools dual provision. That sounds like a fairly innocuous term. What does that mean? Again, it is an admission of failure. What it is is the Government saying that charter schools should be able to go along to the local State schools and say: “Oh, by the way, can you teach our kids, because we don’t have the ability or the subject matter knowledge or the resources to teach the kids?”. Despite the fact that they are getting significantly more funding than the local State school, they can now palm their kids off on the local State school. Talk about double-dipping—they can claim the money and then get the State school to deliver the education. There is no evidence base to support that.

But let us come back to my first fundamental question: what will the implication of that be for student learning? Well, not so good for the State school that now has to teach not only its own kids but the kids who are attending the local charter school as well. There is no evidence to suggest that is a good idea.

Then we come to the next provision in the bill, which is to enable home-based early childhood education services to offer out-of-school care. This is an interesting one because there are some good arguments in favour and some good arguments against, but let us just look at some evidence.

Why did the Government cancel the review into home-based early childhood education services when there are concerns about the quality of some of the home-based services? I have had home-based service providers come to me and say “We want this review to be resumed because we are worried that our reputation is being dragged through the mud by some of the services that aren’t delivering good quality.”, and yet the Government cancelled the review because it did not like where it was going. It was going to highlight that there are serious and legitimate quality issues with the standard of some of the home-based early childhood education that the Government is currently funding, and now it wants to compound that problem by extending that to include not only early childhood education but out-of-school care, or after-school care, for kids who are currently in schooling. There has been no evidence base produced to suggest that that is going to be good for kids’ learning.

The final thing I want to talk about is the decision that Hekia Parata and the Government made to create trainee teacher positions—introduced after public submissions had been heard on this bill. We basically had to beg to get them to allow us to open public submissions for 2 weeks. There are some good arguments in favour of a much greater on-the-job component to initial teacher education. Some of the initial teacher education providers would say that, and some of the schools would say that. But there was no opportunity for us to have a proper, robust debate about how to do that whilst maintaining the quality of teaching graduates. What the impact of that is going to be on student learning we do not know because no evidence base was produced to support the amendments put forward by the Government. On those two measures, what does the evidence tell us and what is this going to do for kids’ learning? This bill fails because it does not produce the evidence base to support the changes that it makes.

The previous speaker, Chris Hipkins, gave us a picture of gloom and doom, but the reality is just the opposite. It is just the opposite. We have a very, very hard-working and innovative Minister of Education. Our families and children should be very grateful we have such a capable Minister. As I said here earlier—a few weeks ago—education is a huge responsibility for any Government. In New Zealand we have a million children going to school. These kids are the future citizens and future workers. They are the future of New Zealand. For that reason the Government has been investing heavily in education, and also we have been working very hard to make sure we have a modern education system that reflects New Zealand today and in the future. This bill is yet another example of our effort.

The Education Legislation Bill is an omnibus bill, as the Minister said. It aims to improve administrative and also governance arrangements for education entities and also funding organisations. The bill enables a principal to manage more than one school. That is very important. Both of my girls went to Newmarket Primary School in Auckland. It was a great school with a great principal. Whenever I recommended the school to someone, I would always say that the school had a very good principal. So we all know that principals are extremely important to schools and to students’ achievement. However, not all schools are able to recruit or retain great principals, especially small schools and schools in isolated rural areas. For that reason we may need to expand our ways of getting great principals for those small schools in isolated areas, and this is the option.

The bill enables the boards of schools to agree to—to agree to—a principal managing more than one school. It is an option. It is not compulsory; it is an option. It depends on the will of the boards of schools. That is very important. Some schools may not agree to a principal managing more than one school. However, some schools would say: “This is good for us. It is good for the school and good for the community.” That is why we need to have this innovative way of solving the problem. I would like to congratulate the Minister on that.

Another area is minimum school opening hours. Schools are seeking more flexibility simply because they need a flexible timetable to adjust to, to cater for, or to care for their particular students. The bill allows schools to vary their hours so long as it will not result in less school time for students in this particular school than for students in other local schools. However, to do so, school boards of trustees must meet the requirements that are currently placed upon them by the Minister of Education. More importantly, school boards of trustees must adequately consult not only parents, staff, and the local community, but also “any other person who the board considers may be affected”. This is an option, again, and also it will not be done without adequate consultation. So “any other person who the board considers may be affected” could include local and regional councils and school bus operators.

Another point is about licensed, home-based early childhood education (ECE) providers. This bill will enable these people to offer ECE and an out-of-school care service at the same time to children aged 13 and under. This change provides flexibility for families with preschool and school-age children, as their children can be cared for together. Simultaneous care is currently an unregulated activity, and the proposed amendment would allow Government oversight of that. It is also important to note that this is subject to limits on child numbers, the maintenance of stringent adult to child ratios, and existing regulations around safety and the provision of quality learning environments. The Ministry of Education will continue to monitor home-based ECE services, and will intervene if the health and safety or the quality of learning of any enrolled child is being compromised.

To quote the Minister, Hekia Parata: “These changes and others in the Bill are all about providing more flexibility throughout the education system for the benefit of students, parents, schools and other education providers.” National’s unrelenting focus is on raising achievement for all our students. Thank you.

I rise to take a call on the Education Legislation Bill. The purpose and principles of this bill, as proposed by the National Government, are to look at improving the “administrative and governance arrangements for educational entities and funding organisations.” The changes proposed are going to run across the entire education system.

The bill will allow tertiary institutions to sponsor charter schools, which this Government calls partnership schools. It will look at allowing the creation of “super-principals”, adjusting the opening hours of schools, and so forth. These are wide-ranging changes to our education system, and dragging in their wake will be a range of issues that we in the Labour Party believe will be detrimental to the futures of our young people. New trainee teachers, for instance, which the honourable Minister of Education spoke about—when this was presented to the Education and Science Committee, most of those who came to give us their submissions were actually against having trainee teachers. It is one thing to allow trainee teachers at the high school level, but what this bill actually proposes is to allow trainee teachers at all levels of the education system—one of the things that are being proposed under this that we think are just cost-saving measures. Instead of allowing trainee teachers across all of the levels of education, we should have 100 percent qualified, registered teachers.

It is clear, as noted in the minority view from Labour, New Zealand First, and the Greens, that there is not really a strong case for allowing a “super-principal” to manage more than one school; nor do we actually have the details, as my colleague Chris Hipkins spoke about. At the select committee we asked our ministerial folks to explain to us why it is that we are having this proposal in front of us to allow a “super-principal”—to allow having a principal of not just one school but potentially two schools and in some cases possibly even three schools; to actually have one principal overlooking a lot of schools. When we asked some of our principals—I actually went out and asked several of the principals in my area. One of the schools that we have in our area, in Ōtāhuhu, is actually a really successful school—McAuley High School. In fact, it actually won the Prime Minister’s Supreme Award for education, and it also won the Excellence in Engaging - Atahāpara Award this year.

I asked Anne Miles, the principal over at McAuley High School, what her thoughts were on becoming one of these “super-principals”. Her answer to me was that she is dedicated to her students at McAuley High School. She looks after around about 800 students, she has put together teachers and a school board and support staff, and she works well with the parents. She said to me that it would be putting the success that she has actually got for her school at risk if she were to then divide her time between her school and other schools—possibly not even two schools, but up to three schools. It would be, in her words, diluting the success that she already has—stretching it across many schools. In her words, as a principal, she found it hard to know how she would take it if another principal was a “super-principal”, who would come into her school and tell her what she should be doing and tell her from experience what might possibly work based on theories from another school. In her words, she would prefer not to actually do that to another school.

McAuley High School outperforms many schools across the country. It produces marvellous educational achievements, but it actually did not get to this place overnight. In fact, it has taken 10 to 20 years or so for McAuley High School to get to the really good academic results that it has right now. For instance, last year the university entrance results from McAuley High School were 74 percent, compared with the national average rate of 69 percent. National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 1 was 95 percent at McAuley High School, compared with the national average of 81 percent. Level 2 NCEA was 91 percent, and for level 3 for McAuley High School it was 91 percent, compared with the national average of 78 percent. However, McAuley High School is a decile 1b school. In terms of the socio-economics of the kinds of students who attend McAuley High School and of the surrounding area, there is a high unemployment rate. The average median funding that is coming into these families is between $19,000 and $21,000 per family in these places, but they have turned their school around.

I now want to talk about charter schools, because one of the things that this current bill would allow is the expansion of the charter school model. After actually covering the academic results of an outstanding school in one of my areas, given the socio-economic area that we have in Ōtāhuhu, what this current Government has done is, two streets away—only two streets away—it has actually opened up a charter school to be in direct competition with McAuley High School, a school that has outstanding results, and a school that has excellent results, according to this Government, which has given it the Prime Minister’s Education Excellence Award this year.

You would think that a principal like Anne Miles of McAuley High School would be just the kind of principal who we would look at to be a “super-principal”—you know, to actually spread her expertise around, to lead other schools—but she does not want a bar of this kind of initiative or to be a “super-principal”. Looking at this pragmatically, a “super-principal”—and Chris Hipkins already discussed this earlier on—would also have other issues that they would contend with. They would be accountable not just to one school board. They would potentially be accountable to two or, possibly, three school boards, and at the same time, given that they are already a principal of one school, they would also be accountable to that particular school and to that community. So there would be quite a few things that this “super-principal” is supposed to be trapezing just to make sure that it actually works.

But back to the charter school model. When the charter school model was first proposed, we were told that this was a model that would be one that would turn around the educational achievements of Māori and Pacific children. But here in Aotearoa New Zealand, the charter school model has already failed. Whangaruru charter school is a model that has failed. It has been closed down. This Government has invested $5.5 million in that charter school, and we, as taxpayers, do not know whether we will get even one dollar back from that $5.5 million investment, yet what does this Government do? It is expanding the charter school model, investing even more millions and millions of dollars into even more charter schools across New Zealand.

Most Māori and Pacific students do not attend charter schools. There are only a few hundred who actually attend charter schools. Most of our Māori and Pacific students attend State schools right now—thousands and thousands. Our State schools are the ones that are serving Māori and Pacific students. We contend that instead of investing—wasting—millions and millions of dollars more in charter schools, we should be looking at what we are doing in the State schools that we have right now. Already this Government is freezing the operational budget of the current State schools, and instead spending millions on charter schools. It is not even investing in special schools like Salisbury School over in Nelson. Instead, it is wasting millions and millions of dollars on charter schools. It is, to me, really just ridiculous that here we have a chance to turn around educational achievement where the majority of Māori and Pacific students go to school right now, which is State schools. But no, we are trifling, experimenting, and wasting millions and millions of dollars on charter schools instead.

This bill also allows for the charter school model to be funded by vesting it in polytechnics—yet another sign that this Government is not actually that successful in attracting other people who are out there to come through and actually establish charter schools. It actually has to now reach out to the current public system, to polytechnics, to open up their doors, because it has failed at actually expanding the charter schools in any other way. Thank you.

It is a great privilege to stand and speak for a few minutes on the second reading of the Education Legislation Bill, which is in the name of Minister Joyce and, of course, the Minister of Education, Hekia Parata, who I believe is demonstrating day after day an absolute philosophy to have child learning and supporting them to ensure that they can be the best they can be at the core of this Government’s delivery in education.

It is absolutely critical that we do this because, in my view, we are on the cusp of extraordinary technological change, not only here in New Zealand but across the world, and it is an absolute obligation on this House and on this Government that we create conditions, that we provide the opportunity for our young people to be able to enter that changing world equipped with skills and resilience and capacity to be able to be successful. That is what this bill does. It creates flexibility in the governance framework of education, and I have found it not that surprising, to be honest, but extraordinarily consistent of the left and of Labour and others on that side, who are unrelentingly ideological, that when this Government puts choice in hands of the board of trustees they oppose it, because we cannot have that, can we! We cannot have a board of trustees given the choice as to whether they should consider employing a trainee teacher, because that is not appropriate because the unions have said that is not appropriate. So let us block it!

Well, I find that quite remarkable, and if you just look through some of the key recommendations that we reflected on—yes, the debate at the Education and Science Committee was quite heated, and we have heard some of it already this evening. When we considered Supplementary Order Paper 176 relating to creating the opportunity for the new teacher training category in schools, the key word that we discussed, which is encapsulated in this bill, is the “enabling” of this position. It is not telling the board of trustees to do it. There is no direction from the Secretary of Education, but it enables a board of trustees and a school so that if they think this is an opportunity that is going to enhance the learning of their children, they have the choice.

The Opposition says: “Oh, where’s the evidence?”. Well, I will tell you what the evidence was. The evidence was the schools where this is in place turning up to the select committee and saying: “This is working for our kids.” Well, as a parent who has kids in school, when I hear teachers turn up and when I hear people from the school turn up and say this is adding value, then for me that needs to be part of what we are offering, and this is what that particular clause enables, and so should it.

Then, on the debate about principals leading more than one school—yet again—from Chris Hipkins, what do we hear? We hear: “Oh, I agree about it in principle. It sort of feels OK. But where are all the permutations of the contract for when it might turn to custard, maybe somewhere in 5, 10 years’ time?”. Well, with respect, Mr Hipkins, we trust our boards of trustees to have the competency to have the community at heart and the capacity to enable a contractual interface between them and this principal of great talent to make it work for their school and their kids.

Again, it is a kid-centric model—not a union-centric model that sits over that side, but a kid-centric model—and that is why I am so proud to be able to support this Government and the leadership in the education sector that Hekia Parata provides. At her core, and you see it expressed every day, is an absolute determination to keep our children at the front of our focus—not those who protect the interests of those involved in the sector, who do not always agree, but the children are at the focus.

💬 Tracey Martin: Rubbish—absolute rubbish.

It is not rubbish, Tracey Martin. It is not.

I just conclude with the reference to the school opening hours to reinforce the point. Again, in this bill is the freedom for the conversation to occur around a board of trustees, their communities, and their parents. No compulsion—there is no compulsion in this. This is enabling. It is for boards of trustees, it is for parents, it is for communities, and it is for our kids. Long may that continue, and long may this philosophy being led by Hekia Parata hold the day. Thank you very much.

Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. He mihi nui ki Te Whare Pāremata mō tēnei pō.

[A huge acknowledgment to the House in regard to this evening.]

Is it not great to be talking about something that really matters, even though everybody is claiming to be child-centric—whatever that is? Child-centric is not a very pretty word; I do not even know what it means. It sounds really odd—child-centric.

💬 Alastair Scott: It means the child is at the centre—it means the child is at the centre.

I think it means children at the centre, but child-centric sounds very mechanistic. But, of course, this is a very mechanistic bill. It has got all kinds of bizarre processes and ideas that nobody asked for, and I would have to ask where it comes from.

Where is the evidence of educational benefit to children, whom those members are supposed to be so centred on? Who asked for these changes? Who came and begged for more flexible hours for schools, so that children could all finish at different times? Which schools came and said: “Oh, please, we need a ‘super-principal’. We need three or four schools under one principal.”? No one came and asked us that. No one came and said that was a brilliant idea, either. All of these “wonderful” changes in this bill—which I would describe as a mishmash of dubious ideas—were not asked for by the education community or parents. But it was somebody’s idea, because—

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: Tomorrow’s Schools.

Yeah, Tomorrow’s Schools. They have had some very odd ideas—ideologically consistent ideas.

If you think a principal is like a business manager, an inspiring captain of the ship, a distant figure with an entrepreneurial gleam in their eye, gazing across the vista of a number of schools where they give the odd bit of inspirational guidance—that might be what this Government imagines a “super-principal” does. But a real principal—and we all talk to them—is up to their neck in multitasking and building relationships within their school every single day.

There might be one or two rural schools that would benefit from this provision, but most of the schools actually need somebody who has that relationship with the students, and the member Jenny Salesa described one example of that very clearly. It does seem like an odd provision, given that there is no outcry in the community for taking the idea of a principal who is intimately involved in the relationship with students in their school and spreading them around. But I do think it is part of an ethos.

If you see education as a business, then of course efficiency is a key value, and it is sometimes more “efficient” to do things with one leader over a number of modules, shall we call them, or a number of widgets, or a number of organisational blocs. It is a business idea, much like the idea of getting people to come in who are not particularly well trained, so long as they have got a graduate degree, and then saying that they have got the pedagogy of education after 6 weeks. That is another idea of efficiency. It is pretty efficient, because you do not want to waste your graduates; some of them might be quite good at it!

However, the values behind education are a lot more profound, and that is why we cannot support the bill. We looked through it and we thought: “Well, what can we support?”. There were a few good things that happened at select committee. A few improvements were made, but most of the time, as Chris Hipkins said, we could not get any of our questions answered about the practicality of some of these ideas. We could not get that question answered about who would be the employer of the principal. We could not get the question answered about how you would manage school transport when you had a complex family arrangement—probably already complex, and then the schools decided to make it even more complicated. We could not get questions answered about home care. It is a very, very contested space.

Again, these provisions open up and facilitate the further development of a business. It is fantastically lucrative in some ways, for some of the franchises—these businesses that have not been properly reviewed, some of which do a great job and some of which do not, but none of which experience the kind of scrutiny or rigour that the kindergartens and the community-based education centres that are under scrutiny actually receive.

We did manage to improve some of this section, because, originally, they were going to be allowed to have no more than six children but they could have—I do not know—12 of their own. We managed to tighten up some very loose drafting there and make it a little bit safer, but we are concerned about home care. We are very concerned about the frozen review and what that actually means for children, because the Government’s goal in early childhood education is participation, not quality. Participation—meet the target, 98 percent. Home care plays a big role in—it is not education, mainly it is home care—actually meeting the target. From a business point of view, the Government has met the target, but we do not know whether the kids are safe or not, and that is not really acceptable.

Other aspects of the bill were pretty interesting. The Teach First issue—you can debate its contribution to secondary schools, but the New Zealand Educational Institute made a submission in which it raised some concerns about primary schools. When we asked the Teach First people who came as submitters, they did not seem to know whether it was for primary or secondary, or who it was for. We did not have a whole lot of schools come and actually attest to their brilliance. They did not seem to know what the law said, but the law actually does say in this bill that it could possibly be primary schools as well.

What it is suggesting is that subject graduates in specialist subjects can now teach in primary schools under this model because the pedagogy of learning is not important. That is what concerns me about this Government’s members’ attitude towards the education system as a whole—that the teaching pedagogy does not exist as a thing in their minds. What exists are ways of being innovative or ways of being flexible, but the core ideas about what it is that one needs to be able to do to understand how children learn do not get much of a look-in, so we do not get much discussion about children as learners. We get a lot of discussion about measuring, targets, flexibility, choice, efficiency, blah-blah-blah, but we do not get much talk about how different children learn, particularly at the primary level, where it is not focused on subject but focused on child.

A graduate might turn out to be the most brilliant teacher, or they might not have a clue how a child with dyslexia entering the school system actually learns, or how a child who is non-verbal or a child who will become a capable learner but is relatively slow and does not “meet the standard”—how they operate in the complex new environment for that child. We all know that early childhood and the early years of primary are the most important time in a child’s life, so let us throw some untrained people at them and see what happens. Would that not be a good idea! We are particularly concerned about that.

As for the charter schools being sponsored by the universities, I think Chris Hipkins is right. I think this relates to the disappointing, patchy performance of the existing charter schools, and also the problem of getting new ones on board. When there is a strong push to make this work, because the ACT - National Government agreement says we must have these schools—and then there are incidents that take place like Whangaruru, which was a disaster for those children. It is the children, we should never forget, who suffered from what happened at Whangaruru.

The evaluation of the first round of charter schools showed that this expensive model failed some children, and the only area in which they were innovative, educationally, was in governance—which is actually not particularly innovative. What it means is, again, they got rid of the parents, they got rid of the boards of trustees, and they have corporate sponsors, who can be unaccountable governors with no input from parents. So that is the big innovation in charter schools.

But educational innovation is not about governance, it is about education, and we are not seeing amazing educational or pedagogical innovation in those schools. If you look at the results, some of them are as good as other schools; some of them are worse. It is not worth the money we are putting in, let alone trying to get the universities—which have a very interesting pedagogical model, but it is really not about young people who are unconventional, not neurotypical, different types of learners. It is actually about lecturing people and hoping they can go away and do their own research. That is not the model we want in primary schools, let alone charter schools, which are not accountable.

So we have got real concerns about some of those issues. I think that an education bill like this—a sort of dubious mishmash like this—could have been improved by answering questions at the Education and Science Committee, and that is what we did not get. We could not get any answer to the question on flexible school hours. We could not get any answer on the employment of principals. We could not get any clarity. What we did get was Supplementary Order Paper 176, which was forced upon us, and then we had to go into a rearguard action and debate. So, really, it has been a mess, and it is still a mess. Thanks.

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. I stand on behalf of New Zealand First to oppose this bill. There is a lot in it that we wish to oppose. There is one single thing that I want to acknowledge. Inside this bill the Education and Science Committee has managed to amend clause 53, which amends the part of the Pacific Islands Polynesian Education Foundation Act—that is, the interpretation of what “Pacific person” means. We were able to gain Kiribati and Tuvalu to be able to be recognised inside that Act, because they are now part of the New Zealand community. So that is a big up. That is a big win. Thank you very much. That was it. That was the positivity that came out of what was the most bizarre select committee I have ever sat on. It was very, very, very interesting.

I just want to make this point, too, about the National Party member who spoke last, Todd Muller. Not a single school came to submit to us on Teach First NZ. Not a single school came to submit. I go to the comment that the member made suggesting that a whole lot of schools came to submit to us—not a single one came. So I thought that was a very interesting participation record.

I want to go back to—make sure we put on the record—the background of how we got this Supplementary Order Paper 176, first of all. Nobody heard a word about it. But where this came from was that back in December 2015, there was an Employment Relations Authority determination that the employment of Teach First NZ graduates, who were largely untrained teachers, was illegal. That was a determination of the Employment Relations Authority back in December 2015. Why was it illegal? It was because they were shoulder-tapped to go into jobs inside schools. They were shoulder-tapped to go into jobs inside State schools. That meant that registered and qualified teachers were disadvantaged, because they could not apply for the job. The Teach First NZ graduates—they are not graduates; I mean, they are graduates of a degree, but they are not teaching graduates—were able to go in there for a job that was not advertised and get that position. So that was why it was deemed illegal.

After that employment relations case, the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA), the Ministry of Education, and Teach First NZ came to an arrangement. Teach First NZ said: “We don’t have a problem with our graduates having to apply for advertised positions. We are confident in our young people that they are totally capable after a 6- to 8-week Christmas course of being able to be put unsupervised in front of the classroom, but with the support and recognition of Auckland University.” That was the arrangement that was in place until suddenly, in this Education Legislation Bill, with no notice to anybody at all, after the full period of submissions had been heard, Supplementary Order Paper 176 came in from Minister Parata.

Then there was an enormous row—the biggest row I have ever seen at a select committee, which is normally a collegial environment. This was because the Government members decided that this was not a big enough change—this was not a big enough change—to actually ask anybody inside the education sector whether there was anything we should be concerned about. So there was the biggest spat I have ever seen inside a select committee, and, strangely enough, we ended up with the Government overturning the original position of not having any submissions, and we opened it for 2 weeks—so a 2-week period of submissions. I can tell you exactly how many submissions we had. We had submissions from the PPTA, we had the New Zealand Educational Institute, we had two members from Teach First NZ, we had a gentleman from a teachers’ training college down in Christchurch, and that was it—that was it—on this bill.

The only people to speak in favour of this particular amendment were from Teach First NZ itself. Why should they do that, do you think? Well, what is interesting is that if you have a read about what this bill actually does, it gives Teach First NZ a monopoly—a monopoly—to have the Secretary for Education designate positions at a school for the “employment-based trainee teacher”. This is the really large title that the ministry came up with, because calling them trainee teachers—well, that has already been taken. Student teachers has already been taken. Teachers are teachers, actually registered and qualified, and they have done the hard yards. So the ministry had to come up with another way of saying this to try to suggest that these individuals, who are going to stand in front of our children—quite possibly from year 1 all the way through to year 13—have some form of qualification.

They actually should be called apprentices, because that is what they technically are. They are learning on the job. They are apprentices. They have done a degree, and good on them. They have done a degree in science, biology, engineering, or whatever. Then, supposedly, after a 6- to 8-week block course, they can now stand in front of 5-year-olds—because that is what this legislation allows them to do; stand in front of 5-year-olds—and kid those parents that they are teachers. They are not teachers, and if there is a barrier to these young people becoming teachers, because 1 year’s teacher training is, what, too long for them, or too expensive, then for goodness’ sake, give them a scholarship and put them through the whole 1-year training and then allow them to teach only in secondary schools—allow them to teach only in secondary schools.

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: They do 2 years. The programme is 2 years.

Ms Parata rants on that they do 2 years. They do 2 years as apprentices in the classroom, practising on real live children—real live children—and that is not good enough. That is not enhancing the profession. That is not raising the status of the profession. That is not good enough for our children. Parents have the right to know that the person standing in front of their child has been fully qualified before they get there, and if they are not good enough they should not be there practising on them. There was another way to do this. There is no way that New Zealand First will actually support that sort of amendment.

Let us talk about the suggestion that there are all these people asking for principals to be able to manage or be principal across several schools. I think what Mr Muller said was really, really interesting. He said a contractual interface—that the principals can have a contractual interface with a variety of schools. I think he has hit the nail on the Government’s head. It sees this as a business. The Government sees this as a business. It has no concept whatsoever that principals are the leaders of teaching and learning inside of a school. It has no concept about how hands-on a principal inside a school is. They set the tone and the culture for the school. I think what is interesting is that the only way that this will work for multiple boards is if the principal becomes a contractor. The principal will have to become an independent contractor. It will not be an employment agreement, because how could a principal have five employment agreements unless they are contracting part of their time? So this is a move—and I think it is a really interesting move—to turn principals into contractors.

The other thing we have got here—let us just go to charter schools and this dual provision that is in this bill. Charter schools are funded in a cashed-up way. They are bulk funded, basically, in a cashed-up way that includes the property dollar. The property dollar is supposed to be given to provide all the technical classrooms and so on required for them to deliver the curriculum for those students. What has happened? Charter schools have not spent their property dollars. They have banked them or they have paid big salaries to their chief executive officers, or whatever, whatever, and now they want to use the technology rooms of other schools—the State schools that have to provide them for them. So on one hand they have been given the money to provide the technology classrooms; on the other hand they have banked it and decided they are going to use somebody else’s. The State schools are required to maintain, they are required to shift around their own timetables so that they can facilitate—it is another failing of charter schools. Charter schools, if you are given the dollar, spend the dollar.

The last thing is around the opening hours. Schools can already do exactly what this amendment says. There is one major change. The schools have to consult with business. Before this bill they did not have to consult with business. This bill says they have to consult with business about their opening hours. I guarantee you this is not about shortening opening hours; this is about extending opening hours to suit the workplace, not to suit children, and not to suit parents.

It is a pleasure to take a call on the second reading of the Education Legislation Bill. I heard Tracey Martin speak, and I will just make one comment. I believe that during the select committee process, which Supplementary Order Paper 176 actually came through, the Education and Science Committee as a whole agreed on the process and we did actually open it up for submissions, and we did get only five submissions. With the select committee, there is a process that actually happens and the committee does it together as a whole. It is not like we, in fact, strong armed the Opposition to reduce the time or extend the time; it has actually happened. I thought it was actually quite a nice committee. Even the Opposition members—I have tremendous respect for them. Their opinions differ from mine, but I do actually feel that they care about education in a different way, and I thought the Education and Science Committee worked very well.

It was a key bill for the select committee for the first half of this year, and I would like to take my hat off to the chairperson, Dr Jian Yang, who does a tremendous job, and quite a difficult job, I would have thought. Sometimes I think it is sort of like he is the teacher trying to keep the students quiet and in order at the committee. [Interruption] He was a professor. I do not know if he actually went to school to become a teacher, however, but he did a tremendous job. I would also like to thank the committee secretariat for all its hard work during the discussion of this bill.

As the Minister of Education and other members have actually said, this Education Legislation Bill is, in fact, an omnibus bill that updates eight Acts to better improve the administrative and governance arrangements for education entities and funding organisations. This bill is an example of the hard work that this Government is undertaking to ensure that all young New Zealand learners have the skills and qualifications that they need to successfully participate as a part of our community.

One of the key aims of this bill is the ability to give more say to the school boards of trustees to determine when and how the required minimum opening hours of a school can be. During the select committee process we amended the suggested legislation in favour of a more streamlined process for when variances in operational hours are short term and on an occasional basis. I know some members have said that that kind of flexibility may not be a good thing. In my opinion it is actually a good thing because not all communities are equal. Schools in regional New Zealand may differ. Schools’ needs and the students’ needs are quite different from region to region as well, and I think having the flexibility allows schools to operate in the optimum way that they can as a community, and they can decide for that school community what is required for their student body as well as the school.

I also believe it is important for the ability of tertiary education providers to help sponsor partnership schools and kura hourua schools. Such a process will help forge links between younger students and older adult learners, and will overall continue to work to create better learning environments across New Zealand. I think one of the best ways I can talk about the learning thing is through culture. We revere the elders, and often teachers and mentors and seniors of universities actually come back to teach kids at school. In my culture that is actually celebrated, and I run something called a Kimchi Club in my Korean community, where a more experienced professional actually comes in and mentors the younger kids who are currently at high school or university to teach them about some of the pitfalls they can get into and also talk about the career prospects that they might face. I think young students, both in high school and university, appreciate this kind of mentoring, and I think even in schools we can actually learn from that experience.

This bill, of course, is just part of a great plan that we have undertaken to improve education in New Zealand, and on that score I would like to commend the tremendous Minister of Education, Hekia Parata. I have said this many times over in this House: every time I see her talk about education and children, I see great passion in her eyes, in her voice, and in her heart. I know that some of my friends might actually laugh at my pronunciation, but there is a great Māori proverb “He aha te mea nui o te ao?” What is the most important thing in the world? “He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.” This proverb has been quoted many times over in this House, but for me the most important people are our children because they are the future of this country. They are the future of our families, our whānau, our districts, our regions, our country. Our children need to have the best education system in this country, and I believe that this Government, this Minister, and this bill actually deliver for our children. I commend this bill to the House.

The next call is a split call. Jan Logie—5 minutes.

I rise to take a call on behalf of the Green Party on the Education Legislation Bill. The Green Party continues to oppose this piece of legislation. As has been mentioned by other speakers, we have struggled to find any compelling reason for this legislation and struggled to see any coherence in the provisions that are being put forward. What this bill does is several things, really. It will enable a principal to manage more than one school, it will make changes to school opening hours, it will enable tertiary education institutions to sponsor charter schools, it will enable those charter schools to have their students use the facilities of a State-funded school, it will enable home-based early childhood education (ECE) services to offer out-of-school care services as well, and it will create a new category of teaching position that will enable unqualified teachers to enter our school system, and presumably to have similar responsibilities as teachers—formally qualified teachers with educational training—but without the experience and qualifications.

If you look at all of those different provisions, it is really hard to see what the common thread is, and it is also very hard to see where the arguments of some of the speakers from the Government come from, where they are saying: “This Government is all about putting the children first.”. It is really, really hard for me to see how enabling a principal to manage more than one school is putting the interests of the child first. I really struggle to see how enabling a tertiary education institute to sponsor a failed charter school concept is putting the interests of the child first. And I really do not see how enabling home-based ECE services to provide after-school care as well is putting the child first, either. I would like to speak a little bit more on that point because I think it does need talking about.

Home-based care has proliferated under this Government. There has been more than a doubling of home-based ECE services between 2000 and 2013, to over 20,000 places now. They are services that get the same amount of funding as, say, kindergartens, where they are trying to have 100 percent fully qualified teachers. A home-based service, which, in effect, in many instances is just a childcare arrangement, gets the same funding as an educational service like a kindergarten. Most home-based services have a teacher who is qualified sitting off somewhere else. That qualified person sitting way over there on the end of a phone may oversee 20 different home-based services. There may be 80 children across those 20 different centres, with only one qualified person sitting somewhere over there, and the same funding is provided to that service and those children—supposedly—as to a kindergarten, where it is trying to have 100 percent qualified teachers because it knows that that is what will set those children up for life.

And now this Government is introducing into that very, very chaotic system the ability for those same providers to provide after-school care. So you have a dynamic where you have got babies and you have got very young children, and now you have older children all in the same mix—supervised by one person without any qualification whatsoever, and with external supervision way out there from one teacher for over 20 services. That in no way puts the interests of our children first. I was at a kindergarten yesterday, and because of the funding system that has been set up, kindergartens are now having to fund-raise to provide paint for their children. It is an essential ingredient in the learning and play of our children, and kindergartens are now having to fund-raise to provide it because of this system. The Government, in this legislation, is just making it worse.

I call the Hon David Cunliffe—5 minutes.

Labour opposes this bill. It is bad in conception, it is bad in detail, and it sets up what is already a very, very dodgy system in the tertiary sector to infect our secondary sector through its tertiary provisions. That is what I want to focus on today.

The background to this is that the tertiary education’s private training establishments have had a sorry litany of woe over the last year, and the Tertiary Education Commission is having to pedal very fast to catch up. The Labour Opposition has blown the lid off scandals that have required paybacks and, in several cases, the closure of institutions at places like the Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki, Tai Poutini Polytechnic, Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre, Agribusiness Training Ltd, the Intueri Education Group, Quantum Education Group, and Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi. That is just some of them, and there are plenty of others under investigation. In fact, 19 others are under investigation, according to the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment.

Against that background, which has been driven by the Government’s virtual starvation of tertiary education, with yet another real-terms funding cut and the insistence that the sector goes private to get more foreign students and become more innovative in the market place, now it is handing that fox the door to the chicken coop in terms of charter schools. That is another disaster area of the application of market ideology to what should be a State-provided service—quality education for all our children based on ability and common standards, not money and the ability to pay. That is what is fundamentally wrong with this.

In the detail it gets worse. Tertiary education institutions have a change of definition so that they become a sponsoring body of charter schools. That then enables several things to happen. The first is that they get an exemption from the Official Information Act in the same way that charter schools do. But, hang on—this is public money that is being invested in these godforsaken market experiments. The second thing is that they are exempted from the provisions of the State Sector Act, the Act that normally provides governance and fiduciary constraints on State sector organisations. Thirdly, they are exempt from the full provisions of the Ombudsmen Act. Taken together, these three exemptions continue what is a very clear trend by the current Government to shrink the purview and the resourcing of the independent watchdogs of the State and commercial business and to hand power to investors, in this case, blurring the line in a very unfortunate way between tertiary institutions and the failed charter school experiment.

Our education spokesperson, Chris Hipkins, has asked the obvious question: why? What evidence is there to suggest that one jot of this is going to be good for our students and our children? The answer is that that has never been the point. This legislation is designed to suit the investors—the National Party’s donors.

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: Ha, ha!

That is the group whom this education seeks to serve. The Minister laughs with apparent innocence, but when one sees time and time again the running down of the watchdogs of the State, the gradual ringbarking of those institutions, and, in this case, the deliberate removal of the protections of the Official Information Act, the Ombudsmen Act, and the State Sector Act from any sponsoring tertiary institution that gets into a sponsorship deal with a charter school, either it is naivety in the extreme or it is the deliberate application of market ideology to an area that should be for the benefit of all our children.

Politics is a tipping game—we all know that—and this crazy neo-liberal experiment has been trundling on and on and on. But, you know what, it is very rapidly approaching a cliff—a cliff based on the housing crisis and the dislocation in the market, which this Government is very soon to fall off. If this bill does pass, it will not be long before we are back in the House repealing it and putting right what should be a fundamental obligation of the State to ensure the good education of every New Zealand child.

I rise to take a short call on the Education Legislation Bill in its second reading. As we have already heard, this is an omnibus bill that is to amend eight statutes to improve the administration and governance of educational entities. This is a Government that is committed to delivering a world-class education system to our children. As such, to do that we must ensure that there is a modern framework to enable our teachers and administrators to deliver that.

I have listened to the Opposition’s arguments very carefully and, notwithstanding the latest conspiracy theory, what I can hear, especially from the Green Party, is that we should not make any changes if there is a lack of evidence as to the effect. That, to me, suggests that we should not be innovating. I mean, if Homo erectus was told not to rub two sticks together, where on earth would we be? So from my perspective, I think we need to deliver a flexible framework to our boards of trustees that are based in the community, that can make decisions for their students and look at the community around them, and that are best placed to make decisions as to how to deliver education for their students. I think that we should enable that. I think we should celebrate that, and we should celebrate the fact that the people who are elected to these boards are elected, and that they are the right people to deliver that service for our children.

In respect of trainee teachers, I also want to say that this is a Government that invests in our teachers, and training is an important part of that. On-the-job training, again, should be celebrated. What better way to learn than to be in the classroom, to be experiencing what it is like to teach students, and to have the ability to be mentored by more experienced teachers on the job? There is nothing that can substitute on-the-job training.

So I celebrate these changes, especially in the rural sector. If I look at my electorate, in respect of building on communities of learning to incorporate these concepts of trainee teachers and shared principals—in rural areas we have some problems attracting people. To have the ability to share expertise and put in place mechanisms to deliver quality education across a rural sector is nothing but good news.

These changes are necessary. They are part of an evolution of an education system that is going to deliver quality education moving forward. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare, otirā, tēnā tātou katoa. Well, this has been an interesting discussion, or debate, tonight. We have heard about “He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.” Well, if that was correct, then why is it that the New Zealand Principals’ Federation, in its submission to the Education and Science Committee, said the following: “On the surface, they might be described as a collection of ill-conceived baseless changes which lack any intelligent rationale. They might otherwise be described as changes without openly expressed rationale yet intended to enable further expansion of certain policies and direction.” That is coming from one of the most important education organisations in our country. That is what it has got to say about it.

So why is it, then, if we can quote such whakataukī in this House, that we do not uphold it and listen to this New Zealand Principals’ Federation? Why is that? Why do we not listen also to its supplementary submission, where it says it has not had the opportunity to consult widely amongst principals because there is only a 2-week period for submissions on Supplementary Order Paper 176? We have heard from other members, and I support what the member Tracey Martin had to say on the process—that it was totally inappropriate for the Government majority members to try to stop this consultation.

So I ask the question again: if people are so important, why are we not giving them enough time to consult with their constituents so that they can make a more effective and widely consulted-on submission to the select committee? We might actually have better outcomes if we used better processes. I pose that question for the House to consider. Not only the Principals’ Federation but others as well who submitted—there were many submissions on this. Of course, only those submitters were advised personally or by letter that there was another part to this legislation that had not been considered by the select committee or given the opportunity by organisations to make submissions on it.

Within that, the main issue was around trainee teachers. I ask the question again: he aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. Well, what about the children who are in front of those trainee teachers? Are we putting them front and centre of this discussion? From my point of view, no, we are not. We are putting other dynamics front and centre in that discussion.

I go back to what the Principals’ Federation has said—that it is to enable the expansion of certain policies and direction. I also ask about the charter schools because I remember reading quotes when charter schools were first proposed. I think what we have got is quite different from what was even being proposed back then. But that is one of the areas that has been, in this bill, a policy and direction that has been expanded, so now tertiary institutes are able to sponsor charter schools. I have got to ask myself in reading through all of these things—because we have not been given a rationale, as a number of submitters have pointed out—as to why we are taking this overall direction through this bill. I think that these changes collectively do exactly what the New Zealand Principals’ Federation say they do.

I think that in opposing this bill, we are quite right to oppose this bill. It takes New Zealand down a track in terms of education, and, actually, not only education. Let us look at the principals managing more than one school. Principals are seen as professional leaders of their schools. Not only that; quite often they are one of the leaders of their community. They are required to have good relationships with their families, with iwi, with whānau, and with a number of groups within their communities. Under this bill they will be expected to do that perhaps amongst three or four communities. That kind of tells me that within each of their communities they are going to get only part of the attention of that one principal. We have to ask again, what does that do to small communities? What does that do across a number of communities? Well, I think that diminishes their role as professional leaders, not only of their school but also leadership roles within their community.

I also question, as a number of submitters did, is there really a need for this? Are we fixing something that does not really exist? As others have pointed out, there already exists opportunity for principals to manage more than one school, so why are we going down this track? I think, again, it is to perpetuate and fulfil the expansion of certain policies.

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: That’s what Governments do.

Yes, OK then. Absolutely. Governments should do that, but they should tell the country what they are doing, not do it by stealth by making several changes within a bill like this and not actually saying what the overall effect to the education system and our society is going to be. That is a fundamental issue around what is happening in this bill.

I suggest that Minister Parata and members opposite actually go and read the submissions properly because they are really serious ones. I think we do both the New Zealand public and the submitters an injustice by not taking seriously their submissions on this bill.

I agree with the points made about opening schools, being able to alter school hours. That would be great if you can alter all the bus timetables as well, say, particularly in a provincial area where schoolchildren catch buses to school—that would be great as well. I am not convinced. Again, some of the submissions that I sat in on, I heard there were concerns about such things as families that have children who go to a number of different schools, and trying to align all of those along with extracurricular activities and along with all the other issues that families have to cope with. There are a lot of families out there that are trying to cope with poverty. These changes do not address and do not help them. In fact, they probably make it more difficult for children to attend school if their siblings are attending other schools that have different hours.

We can make fun of what I am saying but I am saying to the House that this House needs to consider more carefully these issues. It gives me no pleasure at all, actually, to be standing speaking on this bill. We could be speaking on much better legislation than what we have in front of us. Nō reira, tēnā tātou katoa.

Education is something that the National Government takes very, very seriously. I think that is best demonstrated by the 2.5 percent increase in the Budget to $11 billion for education, which is a phenomenal actual bet—putting all our money where our mouth is and actually ensuring education goes forward, but this Education Legislation Bill takes things another step. I think it is about enabling excellence—that is what this legislation is about. It does, as has been said, amend eight different Acts, some of which date back over 70 years—or one of them does—and another one dates back just over 60 years. You know, we do need to have legislation that is fit for the modern purpose. I would like to challenge the last speaker, Adrian Rurawhe. I was on the Education and Science Committee, and all of the submitters who came and gave evidence to the select committee were taken seriously and all were listened to. That does not mean to say that we agreed with them. We all have a brain—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Well, hmm!

—we were all round there; we made our own choices. Yes, there are exceptions, but not on our side. I would like to say that when we come to the principals being able to manage more than one school, what we have in the Opposition is really a triumph of ideology over good sense. What we have here are people who are very, very capable people who—with the board of trustees’ consent and agreement, the principal’s consent and agreement, and the consent of the board of trustees of the other school—are getting together and agreeing that that principal will share their skills across two schools. I think that is about getting excellence out there.

We all know from our own experience at school that there will be a teacher whom we remember who made a tremendous difference to us and to others, and that teacher did that. I said this last week in the House. It is not about the knowledge that is in the head of the teacher; it is about the skills they have to get that knowledge across to their students. That is something that is almost intangible. Some people have it in spades; other people do not. For those who do, it is quite right that they share their skills out for others so that the students might benefit from that.

We also talked about initial teacher education, or Teach First NZ. In fact, we had a cross-party briefing here last week from the Teach First NZ organisation. We also had the deputy principal of Tāmaki College, and she spoke extremely highly of the progress that has been made by those Teach First NZ teachers. All of this nonsense about the pedagogy—I do not know how many times I heard that from the Green person; it must be the new word—that came out in that speech. It is about what those students got out of those teachers. Those teachers brought their experience from other backgrounds—in fact, one of them came from a banking background and a graduate programme, got involved in teaching, and he loves it. His passion when he spoke about it was there for all to see, and the deputy principal could not speak highly enough of the contribution that he is making, both in the education sense, directly to the students, but he is also now the teachers’ representative on the board and is making a tremendous difference to that school.

It is with great pleasure that I commend this fantastic bill to the House.

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