Education (Update) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Education (Update) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Science Committee to consider the bill. Our Government has a clear expectation of an education system that meets the educational achievement challenge for every child and young person. The update of the Education Act 1989, along with the review of funding systems, will provide a framework for an education system focused on student achievement and progress that is given expression through communities of learning, schools, kura, and early learning centres. The changes this bill proposes will put student progress and their learning environment more firmly in the centre of education legislation. The underlying drive for this update is a more flexible and innovative education system, a system that serves all our children and young people. This bill will help to encourage and enable cooperation, creating a system where teachers and principals can focus on inspiring our young people, rather than being distracted on to administrative tasks.

The current Education Act 1989—the Act—focuses on how schools are run, rather than on student learning and achievement. It currently provides little guidance to schools on what education success or student well-being should look like, or how schools can best meet parents’ expectations. The Education (Update) Amendment Bill makes the most significant changes to the Education Act since it was passed 27 years ago. It is consistent with the fundamental principles of self-management established by Tomorrow’s Schools, but is being amended in a way that signals my expectations of collaboration between education providers, for the benefit of children and young people.

This bill is also about equipping students with skills and qualities they need to thrive in an increasingly complex global and digital society. It is about giving students the information they need to successfully understand and navigate the opportunities that are available to them through education and into the world of work. When we consulted on the update of the Education Act, 1,854 submissions were received. In addition, hundreds of principals, members of boards of trustees, representatives of national organisations, students, parents, family, and whānau, as well as other members of the public, attended workshops and presentations held throughout the country. Throughout the wide range of views expressed, the common theme was the importance of education to providing better personal, economic, and civic outcomes for our children and young people.

The Act as it stands is focused on the administration of schools and is not explicitly focused on the learning of children and young people. This bill will bring the achievement and learning of children and young people to the centre of the early childhood education and compulsory schooling parts of the Act. This includes, for the first time, setting out in the Act what New Zealand’s education objectives are, and how communities of learning, early learning services, schools, and kura can contribute to, and are accountable for, achieving those objectives. These objectives will inform a statement—the National Education and Learning Priorities statement—issued by the Government of the day, setting out what is important to that Government for education.

This bill strengthens accountability and reporting in the education system. It will ensure that school boards know what they are required to do and are focused on what is most important: children and young people, and their learning and educational outcomes.

Most schools in New Zealand are doing a very good job already, but a small number need extra help from the Government. This bill creates additional interventions to enable faster, more tailored responses when schools are struggling, to ensure the achievement of all children and young people. It will allow a Government to step in earlier to assist schools, with minimal intervention, to support operation of schools and to protect the education and welfare of students.

One of the most important contributions this Government has made to the education system is introducing communities of learning. These communities of learning are made up of education providers, including early childhood education, schools, and kura, which track an end-to-end pathway through a neighbourhood or a particular kind of education. They come together to raise achievement for children and young people by setting shared learning and teaching objectives based on evidence, and working together to achieve them by sharing expertise in teaching and learning, and by working together to ensure a child’s journey through the entire education system is successful and no longer truncated by only sectoral imperatives.

I am pleased to advice that more than half of New Zealand schools are now working together in communities of learning, with 148 formed to support more than 410,000 children and young people. For these schools, kura, and early learning services that have formed communities of learning—and for those who wish to join—this bill will further support them by providing an enabling framework for the evolution of communities of learning. This bill allows for the formalising of agreements among members of a community of learning, which will support that community to explore shared packages of support. This will allow teaching professionals to focus more on what only they can do: the magic and the core purpose of causing learning to happen and raising student achievement.

This bill will enable those schools that wish to, to enrol new entrants in groups at the beginning of each term, rather than on their individual birthdays, provided that the school or community of learning has consulted with their communities first. Many primary schools have expressed interest in adopting cohort entry requirements or arrangements for new entrants, suggesting that it would enable them to better manage the transition to school, simplify school and classroom planning, and minimise disruption for existing new entrants.

Regular attendance at school or kura is a significant factor in student achievement. To establish good attendance habits, the Act will be changed to make attendance at school and kura compulsory once children have started, should they choose to start before the age of 6.

This bill will also update aspects of education law that have become outmoded and inefficient. It will update and streamline the legislative framework of the State integrated schools by transferring the provisions of the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act 1975 into the Education Act, by improving the way enrolment schemes are managed, and by updating Part 12 of the Act relating to the opening, closing, and merging of schools.

This bill will create a framework for online learning, making it easier for students to study online. Online learning gives students more flexibility, more personalisation, and more options about what and how they learn. This bill will let students choose whether to study some subjects, or all of them, online, as an alternative to face-to-face education, as a supplement, or as a complement. It also provides an innovative digital option to engage students who may be struggling in the traditional school environment. New providers will be able to enter the market as accredited communities of online learning, and a wide range of potential provider types can seek accreditation.

The bill establishes a Competence Authority in the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand. This will improve the time it takes for competence complaints to be resolved. The Competence Authority will ensure that these complaints are dealt with by professional leaders who have expertise in relation to teachers’ competence, while allowing the council to focus on all of its other strategic governance.

The bill will increase the effectiveness of the New Zealand careers system, to help drive improvements in achievement for all learners. The bill will achieve this by disestablishing Careers New Zealand and creating a refocused careers service within the Tertiary Education Commission. This will consolidate in one place all of the careers information that users need, enable better integration of the online careers planning tools that are currently offered by the Government, and establish clear lines for accountability for the delivery of careers services. It will also enable the Government to better incentivise connections between educators and employers, and ensure that students are supported to successfully transition to further study and employment.

The Act has been amended in a piecemeal way over the last 27 years. We have the opportunity to undertake the necessary updates to provide a more coherent framework that meets the needs of communities of learning, early childhood, and schooling environments now and into the future. I now commend the bill to the House.

Just before I put the question, I am going to refer the Minister of Education, as I have referred the Minister once previously, to Speaker’s ruling 53/4 relating to reading speeches. There is an understanding that Ministers with highly technical matters—or matters where, for example, in the case of the Minister of Justice the courts are likely to, if you like, hang on every word—have a lot of flexibility with regard to reading speeches and can read their entire speech. The speech that the Minister just read was one that, I think, it could be fair to say was not highly technical. Therefore, although it is appropriate to refer to notes and sometimes to quote numbers in a similar way, I would certainly prefer it if Ministers could take some care to acquaint themselves with their speech notes rather than just read them.

The education legislation—there is absolutely no question that it desperately needs updating and consolidating. I know that the education community, including parents, teachers, school trustees, principals, and students themselves, has welcomed the opportunity to discuss the objectives of our education system and the purpose of education. Why is it that we spend $11 billion a year on a public education system? Why do we make all kids after the age of 6 attend school? I know that people have welcomed that debate, and I know that that has been a wide-ranging debate, and that is one of the reasons why, when I sat down with this bill, I came to the debate wanting to support what the Government may have come up with—I know there has been wide-ranging discussion about it. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed because the bill reinforces the worst aspects of what we are doing now, and the one future-focused thing that the bill has in it is so far out there and so far based on no evidence at all that it is almost impossible to support in its current incarnation.

But let me begin at the beginning with the education system objectives and priorities and the associated changes with school planning and reporting that this bill necessitates. The current Government—and this, in my view, reinforces one of the worst aspects of the current Government’s policy approach—has taken the view that the only learning that matters is the learning that can be assessed, that the only assessment that matters is the assessment that leads to the accumulation of standards or credits, and that the only credits that matter are those that contribute directly to a qualification.

I think that the education system needs to embrace a much wider definition of learning and of student success than that very narrow one that is being now locked in in this bill. That is why the planning and reporting requirements—the very bureaucratic planning and reporting requirements—being imposed by this bill could be very damaging to the education system. We know that despite the focus on qualification attainment and standards attainment that the Government has had in recent times, kids are still leaving school without the basic literacy and numeracy requirements that they need to succeed after they leave school. How do we know that? Because Bill English, the Deputy Prime Minister, told us that when he described young New Zealanders as “pretty damned hopeless.”

I think that we have got to be better than that, and we have got to have an education system that is better than that. We know that kids are not getting the literacy and numeracy skills they require, because when international, objective studies are done, like the Programme for International Student Assessment study, we find that our rankings are going backwards, not just in terms of where we sit relative to other countries but where we sit in terms of our own performance. Comparing ourselves against our past performance, we are going backwards. Constantly testing kids, which is what this bill focuses on and locks into the education system, is not going to improve student learning.

Then we come to the communities of learning proposal. I passionately believe that greater collaboration and cooperation between schools and educators will be good for kids’ education, but the communities of learning system imposed by this bill is heavy-handed, it is bureaucratic, it is managerial, and it is not in any way focused—to the extent that it needs to be—on quality teaching and learning. It is also not fair. Go back to July this year when I got data from the Ministry of Education that showed that 32 percent of all of the funding that has gone into communities of learning thus far has gone into decile 10 schools whilst only 1 percent has gone into decile 1 schools. The communities of learning proposal, therefore, is reinforcing inequality in the education system rather than tackling it, and that has to be one of our key objectives.

The bill introduces a new proposal that allows students to start school in cohorts closest to their fifth birthday. I am open to the debate around that, and I am looking forward to the evidence that kids starting in cohorts are going to be better off than if they simply start on or nearest to their fifth birthday. I absolutely do not support a proposal that would allow kids to start school earlier than that. If it is a matter of weeks either side of their fifth birthday, then I am open to a debate about that, but if it goes earlier than that, then that is something for which I have yet to see any evidence to suggest that that is going to be good for kids’ education.

I am also interested in the debate around the establishment of a competence authority, and I will very much look forward to hearing what the profession has to say about that, but it is a problem when the body that is going to oversee the teacher competence authority is completely appointed by the Minister. If this is a self-governing profession, then surely teachers should have the ability to elect their own representatives. At the moment, this Government will not allow them to do that. They pay the full cost of the Education Council through their registration fees, and yet they do not have any say in how that council is run or what it says on their behalf. At least allow them an election for some of the members on the council so that they have a say in how it is administered.

Then we come to the proposal that has perhaps resulted in the most debate, and that is the establishment of communities of online learning (COOLS) which could, of course, see students sitting at home with a computer, doing all of their learning at home without the peer-to-peer interaction that they get at school and without the face-to-face interaction with a teacher. It completely ignores all of the research that says that even in an online learning environment the quality of the teacher and the quality of the interaction with the teacher is still going to be the thing that has the biggest impact on student learning. This bill does not take that into account in any way.

Kids learn a lot outside the classroom too, which is not purely academic but actually contributes a lot to what they can achieve later in life. This bill does not in any way accommodate that. It does not look at research that is coming from other countries. Look at the United States, where they do have fully online, private charter schools. An evaluation carried out in the United States—and it was a pro - charter school foundation that conducted this research—found that students attending these schools lost an average of about 72 days of learning in reading and 180 days of learning in maths during the course of a 180-day school year. That basically meant they lost all of their maths, and they lost roughly half of their learning. That is simply not a good basis on which we should be experimenting with kids’ education in New Zealand.

There is no real evidence base to support what the Government is doing around COOLs. There is no doubt that online learning within schools is taking off in New Zealand in a good way and in a positive way. The idea that schools can be sharing teachers and sharing resources using online learning is good, and it has already been embraced by the education system without the need for legislative change. This bill goes much, much further than that.

I have a couple of other points to raise before I conclude, because we are going to have plenty of opportunity to get into the details of this bill when it gets to the select committee. I am interested in the proposal that the Minister has put forward to bring the legislation concerning integrated schools into the primary Act—the Education Act—and we are very much looking forward to hearing what the integrated schools have to say about that, because they are the ones who will be most affected by that.

We support the changes that the Government has made around the provision of career services and the disestablishment of Careers New Zealand, because we certainly need to do a much better job of careers advice in schools. At the moment the system is not working the way it should. This is one step. We need to go much, much further. The Labour Party has already set out a pretty concrete proposal to significantly improve the quality of careers advice in schools, and we certainly welcome the opportunity, as this bill progresses, to debate how we can further build on that and do that even better.

So, overall, there is much in this bill that is worthy of debate, that is worthy of scrutiny, and that will lead, I think, to some improvements to our education system, but there is more in the bill that is backward-looking, that is overly bureaucratic, and that locks in some of the worst aspects of what we are doing now. Unfortunately, those negative aspects of the bill make it impossible for us to support at this stage.

We will continue to engage with this bill as it goes through the select committee. We will improve it if we can. We will look to the submitters for their very practical suggestions. We will look to the Government for evidence to support the proposals it is putting forward. The Government has yet to put forward robust evidence for many of the proposals that are contained in this bill, and, of course, we will keep an open mind as that process continues to unfold. But at the moment, as the bill is drafted now, in an overall way, it is not going to be good for teaching and learning, and that is the thing that is going to have the biggest impact on student achievement and on what students end up leaving school with. As a result, the Labour Party will not be supporting the bill’s first reading.

The previous speaker, Chris Hipkins, mentioned that there were some good points and good ideas in the Education (Update) Amendment Bill, and this side of the House will engage with the member and with members on the other side during the committee stage to further strengthen the bill.

The Education Act 1989 is 27 years old and needs to be updated. The Act focuses on how the education system or schools are run, instead of on student achievement. We want to shift the focus of the Act from its concentration on schooling and compliance, to raising student achievement. We believe that the Act should clearly say what is expected of boards, and allow the Government to set out a statement of national priorities. We believe that the education system needs to be more flexible, innovative, and responsive, to cater to the needs of students, who are not currently well served. We need to encourage more cooperation between schools, early learning, and tertiary providers.

It has been said before in this Chamber that education is a huge responsibility for any Government. Students are our future citizens and future workers. In that sense, they are the future of the country. National is focusing on improving performance in the schooling system, to ensure every child has the opportunity to succeed. The National-led Government has not only invested heavily in education since it came into Government in 2008; it has also made a huge effort to ensure we have a modern education system that reflects New Zealand, now and in the future.

This is the most significant update to New Zealand education in nearly 30 years. It is about enabling schools and early childhood centres to provide a flexible 21st century education, focused on the achievement of every young New Zealander. The current Education Act is focused on administration and compliance with schools. It is not conducive for schools to make innovative changes to suit a 21st century education. We do not think that is right, so that is why we are making changes.

For the first time, early childhood education providers and schools will have clear objectives, with clear accountabilities. The bill will support the creation of a more flexible and innovative education system. In terms of encouraging cooperation between schools across the country, more than 1,200 schools and 18 early childhood education centres have now formed communities of learning and will work together to raise student achievement. More than half of our schools are now supporting more than 410,000 Kiwi kids. This bill allows members of communities of learning to formalise agreements.

This bill also increases the accountability and reporting in the education system. We want boards to know what is expected and required of them, and for them to be focused on making sure their schools deliver the best teaching opportunities and outcomes for their students.

A key proposal that will affect parents is the option for schools to enrol children in the term nearest their fifth birthday. The previous speaker mentioned that if it was too early, he might not support it. But this one is just up to 8 weeks. Some schools have told us that they think it would be less disruptive for all students and would enable a smoother transition for new students to have new entrants able to start each term, instead of on their birthday. Under this bill, the earliest that children could start school is up to 8 weeks before they turn 5, although parents can still delay their child starting school until their sixth birthday.

I commend the bill to the House.

Once again I am going to issue a comment on the reading of speeches. That member, Dr Yang, is now quite an experienced member and should be beyond the period where the inexperienced member exemption applies. The member did have some figures in his speech, and it would have been appropriate to refer to them, but he gave himself away when he regularly looked at his speech, for just about every line, and then shuffled his pages as he finished one and moved to another. I am watching now, quite carefully, all members and applying the Speaker’s rulings, as agreed at the Standing Orders Committee at the end of the last Parliament.

Thank you for the opportunity to debate the Education (Update) Amendment Bill. I also will try not to read my speech, as much as possible. Labour wants to be supportive of a bill like this. It has been 27 to 30 years, and this is a huge undertaking that the Government has taken in rewriting the Education Act. However, there are so many things in this bill that we just do not agree with, unfortunately.

The first is the communities of online learning. When this proposal was first debated in the House, what I know from the coverage, both in the media and just from listening to a lot of interviews after it was first proposed by the honourable Minister, is that even though this bill has been consulted on for over 18 months, the communities of online learning, however, was not one of those proposals that was taken out to those in the sector, to ask them for their opinion about whether or not it was a good idea. Right now we already allow, via charter schools, the privatisation of education. The Government already allows charter schools to hire teachers who are not registered. But with the communities of online learning it goes even further than that. So not only are we saying, if this bill passes, that schools do not even have to have a registered teacher, what the communities of online learning will allow for, because the change in the law will allow it, is that you do not even need a teacher. That is something I am fundamentally opposed to.

I am a person who went through all of her schooling having been led by a teacher. From preschool, primary school, intermediate, and right through to university I had a teacher of some kind. Just knowing and seeing a lot of the schools in my area in South Auckland, seeing how the students interact with their teachers, I say that having teachers is a crucial thing. I quote the vice-chancellor of Massey University, the Hon Steve Maharey, who once observed: “Technology is merely a delivery mechanism. On its own it changes nothing.” I agree. Technology is a good thing to have, and, yes, we are going through a revolution in technology—automation; technology is a way of life. However, one of the other reasons why communities of online learning just will not work for all of our students is that we know that not all of our kids actually have access to a digital device. There are some schools, a few schools—

💬 Hon Member: It’s called infrastructure.

Oh, infrastructure; that is right. There are some schools, via Manaiakalani, where parents can, by paying $3 or $4 or $5 a week, access a digital device. However, not all of our schools have access to Manaiakalani. So my question is: does this Education (Update) Amendment Bill allow for ensuring there is equal access for all of our children? The answer to that is no—not when there is something like a community of online learning that allows a whole school to be registered.

We are told by the Minister of Education that there will be a rigorous process that a private entity will have to go through, a school will have to go through, and even a tertiary education provider will have to go through before it can become a community of online learning. But my question is: will it be more rigorous, or will it be just as rigorous as when this current Government chose Serco? We know how that panned out, when we allowed a private provider like Serco to run our prison systems.

The other assumption that communities of online learning have us questioning—because it is definitely privatisation of education; it is the market model—is whether it is a market model that says to us, in terms of education, that the competitive market is what will deliver better educational results. Has it delivered better educational results? If we just look at the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) results internally here in New Zealand, the honourable Minister will probably say: “Yes, it has delivered.” But what do those NCEA results actually mean when we have so many of our students graduating from high school with NCEA level 2, and some of them with NCEA level 3, but they still do not have a job? There are still over 87,000 who are not in education, training, or employment.

Do those NCEA results actually mean that our students are more successful now? When we are not filling our own jobs here, when we are going overseas, hiring people from overseas to fill in the huge skills gap that we have in this country, are we actually successful in our educational system? Not for all of our students, and I say that this education bill does not actually make sure that all of our students are going to be equally successful. This current Government has taken the attitude that the only learning that seems to matter is the one that can easily be measured. However, it also says that the only measurements that matter are the national standards and NCEA, and I do not agree that those are the most crucial of learnings for our students.

The other thing that this bill proposes is that our students can start school as early as 4 years old. Labour is open to the debate of whether or not we allow kids to start school as early as 4 years old. However, we would like to see the evidence and research to back that up.

The other question I would like to pose this Government is: what about those poor, vulnerable students—the young students who are not currently enrolled anywhere, the ones who are living in cars, garages, or tents? We know from Te Puea Marae that of the families with young kids that they served, about 50 percent of them were not actually enrolled in any formal education, whether it be preschool, primary school, or high school. Why? Those parents told us that they were moving so often that they did not quite see why they would actually enrol their children when they would just have to move them. So my question to this Government is: will this bill deliver for our most vulnerable and poor children? I am not so sure.

In terms of State integrated schools, we welcome the move to consolidate education legislation by moving the law so that it allows for integrated schools as well. There are some really good, well-integrated schools in my electorate over in Manukau East. Many of them are Catholic integrated schools. They deliver really good results for our students, and so we welcome the move to include State integrated schools.

The provision under this bill that we agree with is the fact that Careers New Zealand is going to be disestablished and moved into tertiary education. We know, just from the consultation that we have had with the Future of Work Commission—a lot of people have told us that the career services advice at the moment needs to be really looked at and needs to be addressed. We, of course, have our own proposal, which our leader has announced. We believe that it is the best way forward to professionalise careers advice. It is not something that I have seen in this particular bill, and so that is something that Labour will do. Thank you very much.

A few weeks ago I had the great privilege of going to the United States and viewing the two conventions. One of the things that struck me when I was over there was how intensely divided that country was, and as I reflected on the cause of that division, it was clear that there is a significant portion of that country that is anti-establishment, is anti-globalisation, and has sensed that the world is changing at such a fast pace that they cannot see how they can find a way forward for themselves and their families. For those people—and you see that not only in America but in other parts of the world as well—their natural reaction to that pace of change and globalisation is to put their hands up and to say “No, let’s just stick with the status quo.” or, even more nostalgically, “Let’s just see if we can return to 20 or 30 years ago.”

That is why I am so supportive of this piece of legislation. What this piece of legislation does is talk to this Government’s fundamental view that we best prepare our children by giving them the tools to embrace change, because the change will be the constant in their lives and we need to ensure that we have an education system that is fit for purpose and can evolve with the trends that are happening around the world. When you look at what we have put in this document, where we emphasise the importance of collaboration, where we emphasise the importance of getting careers advice—which we all know, in this House, needs to be tuned to the reality of today’s and particularly tomorrow’s job environment.

The other area for me that is of particular interest is our thinking in respect of communities of online learning. We cannot, as members of this House, be absolutely sure that all the future permutations can be captured in this bill, and that is what I would like to spend a few moments on, particularly directing my comments to my fellow Education and Science Committee members who are from the other side. Let us see if we can have a conversation in respect of what is in this bill that actually leaves some of the historical legacy ideology at the door. Let us not reference this document through the debates of the 1980s and 1990s, where all change needs to be resisted, where the only difference between today and success is more money—that the structure does not need to change. Let us leave that at the door. Let us also try not to focus simply on the shadows that, through your own particular perspectives, you think this legislation might cast, and actually look at it through the lens of opportunity.

This is what this legislation is doing—it is putting on the table how we intend to frame our education sector and delivery for the next 10 and 15 years, and it actually needs us to be open-minded, as opposed to closed-minded. In particular, I would like to ask all of the select committee, but, again, particularly my colleagues from the other side—let us not be caught in having to imagine every permutation and variation that might come through changing a piece of legislation as substantive as this. There seems to be a desire from some quarters that whenever change of a structural nature is proposed, every permutation, choice, and consequence needs to be codified and noted down, and any change to a delivery, therefore, needs to be negotiated to that granular degree. With respect, I believe it misses the point.

My challenge to the select committee is that we take in good faith the purposes that are listed in this bill and debate a structure of education that can enable our children to achieve, for learning to be delivered, and for the system to breathe and be as flexible as it needs to be in the 2020s. If we do that well, we deliver for our children and, in time, our children’s children. But a yesterday view simply will not suffice and that is why I am so keen to be able to support this legislation and look forward to the conversation in the select committee. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I will just follow on from the member who last spoke, Todd Muller. There is a debate in the media at the moment around whether we have hit post-politics in terms of Trump and everything else. We heard a new phrase here, which is “post-history”. According to that member, we should put aside 30 years of history and the debates, the big challenges we have faced, and the opportunities that have arisen from history. Let us put them all aside and let us “embrace the lens of opportunity”. This sounds like something out of The Thick of It, the British TV show. It sounds like something that has come out of the brainstorming message room and been intensively polled by David Farrar. The “lens of opportunity” is how we are going to talk about it in the future.

We have to take history into account because it is important, but also it is something Minister Hekia Parata referenced in her speech and in all the media around this bill. She is describing this legislation as the biggest update to education in nearly 30 years. You could also call it one of the biggest risks to, and biggest experiments on, our children’s education in 30 years. You would not know it, though, from the Minister’s speech, as she read it in her bland monotone. It was no doubt written by advisers. She did not have any passion in her presentation. If this is the biggest change in 30 years, I want to see some passion from the Minister. I want to see a sense that there is a vision, because what we heard from that last speaker, Mr Muller, is that change is coming globally, and it was an argument for change for change’s sake. How about change that is based on international best-practice literature, change that looks at the trends around the world and brings in the best and discards the worst? The fear with this bill is that we are bringing in the worst and discarding some of the best of our current system.

As a dad to two kids currently going through the State education system, I want to start this contribution by saying what a fantastic job our teachers, our principals, our boards, and our schools do. We have a tremendous education system. Collectively, we should be incredibly proud. Just last Friday night I got an email from my child’s teacher—in the evening, just a short update about what had happened. I cannot say how proud I was of our education system, how impressed and how good I felt as a parent to have that level of teacher interaction—updating me on what I care most about, which is my kids and their future. I thought it was a fantastic example of our education system. We have got a great start, but let us make sure that we are delivering for all New Zealand students and that we are building an even better education system.

In this contribution I want to touch on three areas of this legislation, which are the communities of online learning, the so-called COOLs; secondly, Te Reo and the Treaty of Waitangi; and, thirdly, the careers advice.

The Green Party is opposing this bill because of the huge risk to our children from these so-called COOLs, which I do not think are particularly cool at all. There are some good parts and some neutral parts to this legislation. It is a big change to the Education Act. But it is these COOLs, these communities of online learning, that are quite worrying, as a parent and as a member of this Parliament. When you look at what the headlines and what the experts in the sector are saying, you see words such as “gobsmacked”, “incredulous”, “Principals hot under the collar”, “out of line: principals”, “Education reforms half-cooked and not so cool”, and “The risk of harming learning”. This is what our educational experts are telling us. We saw the president of Tai Tokerau Principals’ Association say: “I would abhor the day when a computer and programme could replace the teacher—the importance of socialisation hasn’t been considered. The really rich holistic parts of education cannot be learned from a computer, but from interacting with people.”

The risk is that through this legislation we are, basically, opening up online charter schools. It is socialisation that is so important to children’s development and so important to the educational experience and those educational outcomes.

Minister Parata says that the guidelines and eligibility criteria around these COOLs are going to be rigorous. I have got no confidence, when we saw those exact same words applied to the likes of Serco and applied to the likes of Novopay—I have no confidence we are going to see it. This is the Government that has delivered charter schools and private profit to the education system, and now it is trying to do the same thing via the online environment to more of our kids.

When you look around the world, this approach has failed in the US and it has been tried in the UK to a large scale. There is a huge risk that what we are doing is simply opening up our educational system to these private, for-profit companies, and I think you have got to ask the question why. I think Angela Roberts put it quite well when she said what the assumptions behind online learning were: “One is that online learning can substitute for face-to-face, and the other is that a more competitive market in education is going to lead to better results. Both of these fly in the face of all the evidence.” Let us not have change for change’s sake because we know that change is coming; let us have change based on the evidence. Pound for pound and page for page of the international reports, you will see the risks of going down this approach.

The Minister said that COOLs are about embracing online digital fluency. This is something the Green Party takes seriously, something it has advanced in Parliament for many years. We have got a great opportunity to not only build a more digitally fluent country and society but also have a better educational experience for our kids. The problem is that just teaching them online is not digital fluency. That is not teaching them—that is focusing on the means of delivery, the mechanism, and the technology, which is not digital fluency. I would point out—and I know this from my own experience—some excellent programs such as Reading Eggs and Mathletics, which my kids really enjoy, where the appropriate technology is used as a tool to further enhance existing learning and stuff that they have done in class. When you just put a kid on an iPad or in front of a screen, that is not teaching digital fluency. Our schools are doing that at the moment—there are no barriers to it at the moment. It is simply a way to open up classrooms to private providers of online education.

If we did want to have a debate about digital fluency—which is something I am always up for and think this Parliament needs to spend more time on and take more seriously—let us also look at the way the Government has recently decided, after 7 years of consultation, multiple meetings, and rounds and rounds of consultation, to just make digital technology on a par with sewing and woodwork and metalwork. It is just making it another vocational side thing. Digital technology is something that our tech industry, which is crying out for workers and is seeing the largest growth as a percentage of GDP of any OECD country since between 2002 and 2013, wants to see as a stand-alone subject. If we were really going to be focused on digital fluency, that is what we would be doing—not just putting kids in front of a screen and letting overseas for-profit providers teach regular classrooms.

So we have got some very big concerns. We note the concern that, although there was considerable consultation about these changes—I believe there were some 1,800 submissions and 120 meetings—online learning, the most controversial and the most far-reaching provision in this bill, was not one of those topics that was consulted on. That is a worry, but I am sure those 1,800-plus people will no doubt be making a submission to the select committee, and we welcome that. We look forward to getting into the detail.

I have run out of time to talk about the other issues, but it is good to see the Treaty of Waitangi in this legislation. We want to work out through the select committee what that means exactly and what the actual outcomes are going to be.

When it comes to Te Reo, our vision is that every New Zealander has the opportunity to learn what is a taonga—something that is unique and exists only in Aotearoa New Zealand—but, unfortunately, in the way this bill has done it, it is basically up to parents to choose whether they want Te Reo. The fact is that when you look at the status quo, it has not really worked out, and we see so few speakers.

When it comes to careers advice, I think there is consensus in this House that we are not doing it as well as we should be. It needs to be modernised. A key thing that we need to be doing is professionalising it—taking it much more seriously. I want to make sure that every kid in New Zealand gets the best, high-quality, most in-touch advice, from someone who is taking it seriously, who is a professional, and who is up to date with best practice so that they are giving the best advice. A concern with putting it through the Tertiary Education Commission is that we are simply going to get more of a focus on some of the STEM subjects: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The arts are incredibly important. A general educational background and critical thinking are so important. In fact, that is what people tell me in the tech sector, as well. It is one thing being able to code; it is another thing being able to code and explain what you are doing, to a customer or to someone else.

So there is a mixed bag in this bill. The reason we are voting against it, primarily, is because of these not-cool COOLs. We cannot be gambling with our kids. We are using digital technology; we could be doing it better, but let us have that conversation in a select committee. Thank you very much. Kia ora.

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to oppose the Education (Update) Amendment Bill. Can I start by saying how much I miss Nikki Kaye as the chair of the Education and Science Committee. There was a woman who actually knew collaboration. There was a woman who should have been the Minister of Education, because she knew how to listen. She knew how to work with the sector. She knew how to actually be a visionary and take people with her.

Mr Muller’s contribution was condescending and paternalistic. Basically, it laid out the way that the Education and Science Committee is working at the moment after what the Government did with regard to the Education Legislation Bill and after what happened at the select committee. The Government made sure it loaded that select committee so that regardless of the conversation that took place, regardless of the openmindedness of the Opposition and the attempts to work across it, the Government has the numbers, and the Government knows it. I also want to say how much I miss Cam Calder. He was a gentleman who was the chair of the Education and Science Committee, and he also knew how to reach out to Opposition parties, to politely and respectfully have discussions about something that is incredibly important to our nation, and that is the education of our young people.

If we get back to this bill, I just make a couple of things clear. It has been mentioned this evening that one of the things this bill does is allow cohorts of 5-year-olds, or children 8 weeks before they turn 5, to enter the school system. They have always, for the last 27 years, been able to do it. Every board of trustees has had the opportunity to make that decision for its community. This bill does not do that, I say to Government members. What this bill does do means that if a school decides to have cohorts begin at the beginning of a term, then once those children are signed into the school they must attend every single day or they will be part of the truancy problem. So be clear, please, Government members, with what it is that you are actually talking about. Go and read the 13 regulatory impact statements before we end up in the Education and Science Committee and the Opposition has to explain it to you, and then you condescendingly just vote past it.

Secondly, the Minister of Education has mentioned—and other members have taken her at her word—that consultation took place and 1,800 people submitted. I was part of that consultation process as the chair of the board of Mahurangi College. Let me describe it to you. It was a 1-hour consultation meeting called at regular places around the country. The first 30 minutes was when the Ministry of Education official explained to us what the Minister wanted and what was out of scope—governance was out of scope, other things were out of scope. Once they had finished, they broke us into small groups of three or four people with the bullet points that the Minister had given us and we had 20 minutes to write it on a large A3 sheet of paper before they were collected up. Then it was: “Thank you very much. There’s a scone over there, and off you go.” So it is all very well and good to say that there were 1,800 people who participated and that there were 120 meetings throughout the country, but it is the quality of consultation that actually makes the difference, not the fact that you have marked it off on a book or ticked it off on some sort of check sheet.

This bill is the largest update to the Education Act 1989 in 27 years, and it is a terrible one. It is one of the most terrible updates that could have happened to education in this country, and New Zealand First will fight it every step of the way. We want to make sure that not only the public understand what is going on here but that the members of the Government understand—maybe; just maybe—even though Mr Muller has already outlined the fact that if the Opposition objects it is, apparently, because we are closed-minded. So Mr Muller—or Mueller; I am not quite sure of the pronunciation—has already decided and already laid out the fact that if the Opposition objects, then apparently the Opposition is closed-minded.

Let us also be a little bit clear that online learning is not blended learning. This bill makes it 100 percent clear that you can replace face-to-face or blended learning with 100 percent online learning for 5-year-olds through to 18-year-olds. Let us be very, very clear. This is not home schooling. Home schooling will still remain. This is not blended learning, which we currently have going on in our school system. This is 100 percent online learning, and it opens the door up to bodies corporate and corporates. This is why you need to know your history. Where did this come from? In the last Parliament there was a digital literacy inquiry that Google and Microsoft presented at. Read their submissions. Go back and look at your history and see where this came from. The Khan Academy, for example, also presented.

💬 David Seymour: Oh, no.

Oh, yes. Mr Seymour knows all about it because Mr Seymour works for those corporates. Mr Seymour understands those corporates. Mr Seymour is confident that those corporates will get his vote. He believes that business is everything. He has absolutely no regard for the young people involved here. And even with regard to the parents of children with special needs he has basically said: “Vote with your feet. If you don’t like this school, we’ll give you a voucher and vote with your feet.” He has complete disregard for the communities of learning that actually take place. But let us be clear that that is where this came from—from the digital literacy inquiry in the last Parliament.

One of the other things that this bill does is it repeals the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act 1975. Why have we not heard anything about this from the integrated schools? Has anybody actually read the regulatory impact statement? Are they aware of what this does with regard to the taxpayers’ property dollar for those private assets? Has anybody over the other side of the House read it? No—right. So that is what it does. It repeals the Act and it gives more taxpayers’ money away and it ties the hand of any future Government with regard to any amendment to how education will be delivered. It will have to pay the integrated school providers for their private assets from the taxpayer fund. But did anybody read that regulatory impact statement? It does not appear to be so.

The other thing that we have got going on here is “strengthening collaborative governance”. What this does is actually set out a process by which boards of trustees, somehow, can sell their services to other schools, other corporates, other trusts, and goodness knows whom. These are individual people who have got elected on to school boards of trustees—there is nothing to stop them now, individually, contracting out their skills, but this creates the opportunity for a board of trustees to sell its services, except that if you keep the principal on those boards of trustees and the staff trustee on the boards of trustees, they become too big and unwieldy. So the suggestion is that when you have an amalgamation of a couple of school boards, or whatever, you remove the staff trustee and you remove the principal because they are too unwieldy. So, let us take the voice of those people away, amalgamate some boards of trustees and allow them to sell their services, but make sure that the principals’ and the staff’s voices are not inside that process. Interesting, is it not? Did anybody read that?

There are another 11 regulatory impact statements and each one of them does something very, very, very interesting, but the Government is hoping that you will be distracted by the communities of online learning (COOLs). The Government is hoping that everybody else will be distracted by the COOLs. The fact that the COOLs do not go anywhere near actually providing the digital literacy or the digital understanding, comprehension, and coding background that we require of our 21st century students appears to have been lost.

The Government has given Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu (Te Kura) as the reason why we must have these online learning facilities, these COOLs. It is because, apparently, Te Kura has become too unmanageable. It is too big. There are too many students in it—23,000 students. Can we just make sure that we know the data here—11,000 of those 23,000 students are currently in New Zealand schools, usually taking around one subject, and the problem is that the Government cannot charge for it, because they are in a State school. This is about money. Do not make any mistake. This is about the ability to set fees and charge.

The other thing is that there are 7,400 young adults who are over 16-years and adult learners. Why are we putting through legislation to change everything inside the State system when those 7,400 young people could be with private providers somewhere else under a different system? There are 800 early childhood education students who are actually part of Te Kura. How about we just fund playcentres? How about we just fund playcentres, or kindergartens, or playgroups, or something like that, rather than changing the whole of the education system to allow privatisation? So New Zealand First will oppose and continue to oppose this bill. That is the start. There are another 11 regulatory impact statements for further speeches. Kia ora.

It is Chinese Language Week, and I would like to first of all greet everyone in the House: Da Jia Hao [Hello everyone] ni hao, ni hao.

Earlier, the Assistant Speaker made a comment to some members, criticising their so-called reading of their speeches, and I would just like to make a comment that for some of us who actually speak English as a second language, it does take a little time to process the written word sometimes, and sometimes we do need the visual aid to actually get the thinking process done. Sometimes it is, in fact, a requirement for us to actually read some documents, because what we think in our language and what we say out loud are not necessarily the same language, and there is a process that happens. So I just want to seek the Deputy Speaker’s indulgence if we do, in fact, refer to our notes occasionally. Also, some members—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Reference is fine.

I would just like to acknowledge Tracey Martin, who spoke passionately about this bill. Sometimes she speaks so passionately that she does it at such a speed that we have the same problem—we need to process that information, and it just sounds like noise sometimes, so she needs to slow down a little bit. So—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: So back to the bill.

Back to the bill. This bill is part of the Government’s work to provide the best education service for our children. As members said earlier, our children are, in fact, the future of this country. We need to provide them with the best possible education system, and this update—the first update in 27 years—has been a long time coming. When you think about 27 years, it is almost as long as I have actually lived in this country. New Zealand—

💬 Hon Member: As long as Todd has.

Oh, that is true, Mr—

💬 Stuart Smith: It’s longer.

It might be slightly longer than Todd Barclay has been alive, actually. But, you know, if you think about the changes that this country has gone through in that time, I remember mobile technology being introduced. Mobile phones were not that—

💬 David Seymour: Are you that old?

They were very expensive, Mr Seymour, back then. They were not as cheap or as easily accessible. I am talking about the lovely cuisines, the variety of cuisines that currently exist, which did not exist back then either.

So times have moved on. Education needs to move on, as well, to make sure that we provide the right education system for the time. Mr Deputy Speaker, I know you actually said bring it back to the education system. I just want to say this legislation will update the Education Act 1989 to be more relevant to modern schools. It will deal with the areas in law that are now obsolete, out of date, or insufficient for the needs of 21st century learning, and it will put better practices into place. The current rules do not actually work effectively for our children. I think this is a great bill, and I look forward to the submissions during the select committee process. Thank you.

A 5-minute call on behalf of the Green Party—Jan Logie.

I rise to take a short call on behalf of the Green Party on the Education (Update) Amendment Bill to register, again, our opposition to this bill. This is yet another omnibus education bill that has some reasonable clauses in it and quite a few more that represent significant harm to our world-class education system.

I have to acknowledge up front that I am not the Greens’ education spokesperson and this is not a usual area for me to be speaking on. But I am aware of our particular concerns about online learning, and the way that the Government has been representing it as getting up-to-date digital learning, yet when you understand some of the content of the bill, you realise that it actually has nothing to do with digital literacy at all, but is, apparently, just opening up and creating a new market for education. This for us is a real concern, particularly the provisions, as mentioned by others, that this will enable full-time, online learning for children from the age of 5, when, you know, connecting to other people, learning how to interact in the world, learning how to ask questions, and clarifying information from other people and learning how to do that in a way that people will respond to are core life lessons that are learnt seamlessly in our education system at the moment through the interaction with other students and the teacher. This bill potentially removes that from children’s educational journey and puts the primary relationship of those students as being with a screen. It is hard to see how that is going to enhance their learning, let alone their skills for life. I do not think the goal of opening up a new market in education is really one that overrides the welfare and the educational integrity of the system for our children—it really does not, for us.

I was paying particular attention to the speech previously from New Zealand First’s Tracey Martin and to some of the other concerns that she raised on reading the regulatory impact statement about the potential removal of staff and principals from boards of trustees in the situation of amalgamations, and the boards of trustees selling off services. Again, it does seem to be about the money and not the kids, and not the strengthening of our education system.

I also note in here that it will enable private schools to be able to get more money from the taxpayer, when we have had this diverse educational system for quite a long time. I remember one of the first things that this Government did when it came into power was to take money away from adult education and to open it up for the equivalent amount of money to go into private schools. At the time, I had a real problem with that, because we have this great State sector, which is world leading, that needs some love—that really does need some extra resource in there to support those schools to be able to help the kids who are coming into the classroom with a lot of disadvantage, which could be ameliorated in the classroom context if more resource was put in. This seems to be, again, removing that money and that opportunity for us to get around those kids and support their learning, and it is putting that resource instead into the private sector, which does not sit with our values and I do not think sits with the values of most New Zealanders, who care deeply about all of our kids having a good education and all the opportunities in life. Thank you.

A 5-minute call on behalf of the ACT Party—David Seymour.

I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of this bill. One of the reasons that I support it goes back to a high school student I spoke to a couple of years ago, who made the observation that he had greater access to information with his phone, on the school bus, than he had in the classroom.

Fundamentally, what this bill is about is—there are several aspects, but the most important is opening up access and competition within the digital learning space. We have heard all of the conspiracy theories about how it is terrible that the Khan Academy might get more involved in New Zealand education or Google might get more involved in New Zealand education. They used to say in Russia that Americans do not have real problems, so they have to invent them. I say to the Opposition, if your biggest problem is the idea that world-leading, innovative organisations might get more involved in education, then I envy the smallness of your problems.

The question that teachers face with a diverse range of students is: which student, exactly, is the average? How do teachers time their lessons so that they are progressing at the correct rate, in the correct subjects, and with the correct material for every single student? We are enormously fortunate in this country to have some of the most outstanding teachers in the world, who do a very good job of balancing that out, but online learning has the ability to further tailor and customise the learning for each student.

Online learning can allow individualised, customised tuition, with real-time tracking of learning. It can allow students to access a broader range of subjects, no matter what school they are attending. As we heard from the Prime Minister in this House a couple of weeks ago, students on Stewart Island, 26 of them, are learning Chinese.

💬 Todd Barclay: That’s right.

And there is the member for Clutha-Southland; he knows. What a great story to tell in the week of Chinese Language Week: students on Stewart Island are able to learn Chinese online.

Online learning can connect students with innovative new subject experts—no matter where they live. It can empower students by giving them some control over what, when, where, and how quickly they learn. It can provide one-on-one tuition. It can help students who are struggling and extend students who are bored. Online learning is using the technology that has revolutionised so many sectors to get the best results for every individual student.

What are the objections that we hear from the Opposition? Apart from its philosophical allergy, which I have touched on, to any kind of successful organisation that is not from New Zealand, they are absolutely paranoid that if parents and teachers in New Zealand were given choices, they might take those choices. We heard it from Tracey Martin, droning on about “What if a particular student was to choose totally online learning?”. We heard the Green Party complaining “What if people were to start learning from a screen?”. Well, I regret to say that the public gallery in this House today is nearly empty, so anybody who is lucky enough to be watching this speech is watching it on a screen, and only the Green Party can be so out of touch with reality that it complains about screens while being watched upon a screen.

The reality is that parents and children in New Zealand have the right to make choices. Our education system should be giving them choices that include the best of modern technology available in 2016. Archaic, inflexible arrangements that do not allow students to access the best technology is not just negligent; it is actually withholding our young people from accessing the best of the 21st century.

For provisions for communities of online learning alone, this bill is more than worthy of support. Is it not a teachable moment when we see that the Opposition’s greatest fear is that one day, just one day, maybe that student I spoke to will be able to access the best technology in the world, and access just as much information in the classroom as he can access on his phone, on his bus, on the way to that school? Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Marama Fox—a 5-minute call on behalf of the Māori Party.

Well, the time has arrived when we drag the education system, kicking and screaming, into the new digital age, and it is about time. It is about time, because if I think back to when I was at school and I did ICT, I had a flashing neon light on a black screen, and I spent 3 weeks writing code into that little computer to get an outline of a house with a roof and a chimney—mine was pretty flash, because it had smoke. We have come such a long way that, in fact, I have a child, who is now 5 years old, who at 18 months old was learning to speak Spanish, because I put a Spanish-speaking app on my phone. She was watching—oh my goodness, that was a foreign language that she was learning through the reality of online digital technology.

I am so pleased to be able to support this bill. Why? Because one shoe does not fit all feet. I know that might be a revelation to some people, but, in fact, it is true. One shoe does not fit all feet; we need alternative models. Why? Because for far too long young Māori and Pasifika in this country have been left behind by teachers in the classroom, and systems in the schooling system, and education that forgets who they are—language, culture, and identity. It forgets that they might want to look at the world through a different world view. Where is that information held? Well, you can access a whole lot of it online—funny that.

When I was in the wharekura o Wairarapa, we wanted to access pūtaiao. What about that—a science curriculum in Te Reo Māori. Could we find a teacher who had the skills to do that? Well, we tried long and hard, and we could not. We tried a whole lot of alternative methods of trying to educate our tamariki in a way that supported their language, culture, and identity. We went across the road to the local high school. We tried The Correspondence School. We tried a raft of different methods, and, in the end, do you know what we found? We found a group of wharekura around the country, connected through the Virtual Learning Network, so our tamariki could access pūtaiao by one teacher who taught from Hicks Bay—that is right, from Hicks Bay—connected to the rest of the world through digital technologies.

We must be able to provide for the alternative forms of education that our country needs, so that if you live rurally you can access, through an online portal, the education that will help you, so that if you want to home school your children in your own town you can access greater mediums of support through online technology, and so that if you are a Māori-medium kura with limited resources, you can access online technologies and information through that online portal.

I have no fear whatsoever in supporting this bill, this update, which is going to bring us forward into the future and provide a suite of alternative methods, because the traditional ones for too long did not work—did not work. Less than 3 years ago, the pass rate at the National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 for Māori in education was 48 percent—48 percent. So you could stand up in front of any school, at any time, and look at them and say: “Half of you are going to fail. If you’re Māori or Pasifika, half of you are going to fail.” We cannot do that today, because we have dragged our system, kicking and screaming, into the future through the aid and the addition of online learning and a raft of alternative models of education that support—that is right—alternative ideals and mindsets and ways of thinking.

💬 David Seymour: Uh, oh!

Oh my goodness—I know it is a struggle! I know it is difficult, but there it is. That is what we have dragged ourselves into, and I have no problem in supporting this.

Lastly, I just want to say one thing: to those teachers who are out there in the classroom and who need support—they know that you know that they know that they can find that support through the net, and the internet has now become the new human right.

Stuart Smith—5-minute call on behalf of the National Party.

When I came down to the House to speak on this bill, I did not expect the passion that would come into this Education (Update) Amendment Bill. It is a great bill. Education is important to all of us, and it is important to our country—there is no doubt about that, and I do not want to minimise that, but some of the passion, I think, is being driven by fear.

Change is always difficult, I understand, for some to accept, but I think we really do need to drag this Education Act 1989 into a modern age. It has been amended many times over the 27 years, in a piecemeal way, as the Minister of Education said, and those things have to be sorted out into a logical form for the modern education system.

I think we just heard a very good example from the Māori Party speaker Marama Fox of the benefits that can come from this bill. This bill puts achievement and learning at the centre of the Education Act, and is that not, after all, what schools are about? It is about achievement; it is about learning. Unfortunately, in the old Act it is about the schools and the management of them, rather than what goes on there, so it is time for a change.

There is a fantastic community of learning (COL) in Marlborough. It is working really well. Those communities of learning really recognise what all the evidence shows: that the quality of teaching and the leadership of schools is what makes schools and is what drives achievement and learning. And the COLs are a—

💬 Hon David Cunliffe: Actually, the decile area is the biggest driver.

💬 Tracey Martin: And you’re going to remove them with COLs.

Well, I really find it quite strange. Again, you see the fear coming through from people afraid of change, and that is a shame, but, you know, we have to accept that. Perhaps through the select committee stage some of those members may actually learn what the change offers and what it could bring to our students, and, hopefully, they will see the benefit of it.

The communities of online learning seem to be a real touch-point for them, but I think, as Marama Fox pointed out, it is a fantastic way for some students to learn. It is not the way for everybody to learn; I accept that and it is not part of it.

It is not compulsory that everybody does take part in a community of online learning. But diversity drives innovation, and that is what we should all remember. Out of those innovations there will be some fantastic learning styles and disciplines that will come through. We will get a far better outcome for our students, and that is what it is all about. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

A split call for the Labour Party—the Hon David Cunliffe.

I think one thing we can all agree on is that there is nothing more important than our children’s education. From an economic point of view, that is what is going to drive productivity growth, innovation, and high incomes for all New Zealanders in the future. From a social equity point of view, there is nothing more powerful to allow people to make the very best of their talents and achieve whatever they want to achieve than a good, sound education system that is future-focused, that is quality for every single New Zealand child. We welcome the opportunity to debate this bill. We are, however, opposing the bill based on what we see in front of us, because we think it has the balance wrong, between excessive compliance to one-size-fits-all standards and dangerous liberalisation and creeping privatisation of the education system, which undermines the core principle that education must be a right and of high quality for every New Zealand child.

But before I get on to that, may I quickly dispose of some of what have to be called straw man arguments from members opposite. The first is that members on this side of the House somehow have not discovered the internet. Well, you know, I was the Minister for Communications and Information Technology for 5 years, and I think our side really upheld its mandate of driving competition, innovation, and investment to get faster, cheaper broadband and internet access for all New Zealanders. That has been continued by the current Government—and good on it—and it is going to continue under the Labour-led Government that starts next year. We like progress, we like the internet, and we stand for approaching the future.

Secondly, is the argument that Labour and other parties on this side of the House just like opposing things for their own sake. That is nonsense. There is plenty of stuff in this bill that we are perfectly happy with. We like, for example, the idea of a teacher competence authority, provided it is democratic. We like the opportunity to have communities of learning. We like the fact that there is support and better legal codification of the rights and responsibilities of school boards.

There is a lot in this bill, and much of it is useful. However, there are several fatal flaws. Before I quickly outline them, let me just say that education in New Zealand is in a crisis, and I measure that by the feedback that I get from our local principals in west Auckland. I met with them a couple of weeks ago—the representatives of our principals’ associations. In my 18 years in politics, apart from the last time that National tried to introduce bulk funding, I have never heard them so aggrieved and worried about the state of the system. They have not had enough money in their operations grants, they are getting fleeced in terms of property funding, and they are desperately worried about creeping privatisation through charter schools, etc., etc. Special education is being gutted by the Government.

In this bill—and I know it is only one part of it—communities of online learning, so-called COOLS, are not cool, because they take away the obligation for high-quality teaching and face time. Let us not put up any false dichotomies here, because, of course, we all want access to the internet to assist student learning. Heck, we went to the last election underwriting a digital device for every New Zealand student, and we are going to make sure that they have the very best of digital learning. But that is not the same thing as gutting and filleting the State school system, which is the pillar, the bedrock of our education system, by privatising it and opening it up to people who can do what, frankly, too many cheap, shoddy private trading establishments (PTEs) are doing in the tertiary sector—having a sham online learning environment with massive drop-out rates and false student numbers. I think we have seen, allegedly, an institution in the media this week—an Auckland-based PTE called the International Academy of New Zealand—has come a gutzer because it has been doing things, allegedly, like that.

We have got to avoid making the same mistakes again in the compulsory education sector. We want education that is modern, that is world-class, that is available to every single New Zealand child, and that is there for the public good, not the private profit of a few mates of the Government. This is, potentially, the thin edge of a wedge. Yes, we will hear it out at the Education and Science Committee, but we are laying down a warning today that this bill should not proceed.

Adrian Rurawhe—5 minutes.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I stand opposed to the Education (Update) Amendment Bill. I want to start off by reflecting on the last 27 years, because it was 27 years ago that the Tomorrow’s Schools kaupapa came out and the new Education Act, as it was then. That was visionary. That has stood the test of time, and that was a key policy at that time for the then Labour Government.

In reflecting on what became self-managed schools and everything that went with Tomorrow’s Schools, I want to say that this education update legislation does not really go where it should be going in terms of this Education Act. I support my colleague David Cunliffe, who has spoken and who has just resumed his seat—for example, on communities of learning. I was a member of a school board of trustees for 13 years. I chaired Te Kura o Rātana School’s board of trustees for that time, and I can tell you that a community of learning for a kaupapa Māori - based kura looks very different to the communities of learning outlined in this bill.

Here is one feature that it ought to look like. It ought to be naturally cooperative among schools. It should not be forced, it should not be over-managed, and it should not be bureaucratic. It should be done in a way that has its clear focus on supporting each other, as we would say in a kaupapa Māori way. I do not believe that this bill will achieve that.

There are other issues, like communities of online learning. Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Te Atihaunui-a-Paparangi in Wanganui, in my electorate, were chosen and did a project there called He kura tukutuku, he kura tangotango [A providing school, a releasing school]. That was about providing lessons for their students, and others in other schools, online in Te Reo Māori—Māori medium. It was still teacher-directed, teacher-assisted. One of the key parts of that project was upskilling teachers to be able to use that technology to also be able to add to that programme—that application—so that they could insert locally relevant lessons into that computer program and then assist the children at school in front of a computer.

This community of online learning is a long way from that. Where is the teacher direction? Where is the support? Where is the consultation with parents—do they actually want their children to be staying home in front of a computer screen? I am not against computer screens, not at all. What I am raising is: where is the evidence to support that this will work? I have seen evidence to say that it does not work. The experience of others, particularly in the US, provides information that evidence does not exist to say that that type of learning will actually work.

The other issues are social issues. Everyday conversations, everyday interaction with other children and with their peers—how are we going to make Te Reo Māori a transactional language in our country, if a student is at home sitting at a keyboard? I cannot see how that is going to be helpful in making Te Reo Māori a transactional language. I understand that that might be helpful for some students, but for the majority of students, particularly the ones whom I represent, it will not help at all. Kia ora.

It is a privilege to be able to speak in support of the Education (Update) Amendment Bill, which is currently in its first reading. I think this is a real opportunity for us to futureproof the education system going forward, for the next 30 years. The Minister of Education has already remarked that over the last 30 years we have seen a number of amendments to the Education Act 1989, which has been a solid piece of governing guidelines, regulations, and laws guiding the system for the administration and the learnings of our 2,500 schools, our 64,000 teachers, and our over 40,000 support staff across the education sector.

But we need to be looking forward into the future. What this legislation does is it provides us with the next step in the next transition of education. I want to positively remark on the contribution that the Hon Hekia Parata has made to education over the last 6 years. I had the privilege of working for her for a couple of those years. I think that the sector has played a huge role in education transformation over the last 6 years. If you look at the Education Council transformation, if you look at the Canterbury earthquake-affected schools—the reformation there—and if you look at the performance mechanisms across all aspects of the education sector, the amount of contribution that the sector has had in that, through the Ministerial Cross-Sector Forum on Raising Achievement, has really demonstrated a new way of developing education policy in this country.

The Education Act and the funding review that is also going on are the next steps in that. It has really been sector-led and sector-driven, and I think it is a credit to what this Government has done, in terms of education. We have got a new way of looking at education going forward. This legislation will be good for our sector, it will be good for future learners in education in New Zealand, and I really look forward to seeing it progress through the House. Thank you.