Education Legislation Bill

When we were last considering this bill we were debating clauses 1 and 2. Chris Hipkins had the call, and if he wishes he has 15 seconds.

I do indeed, because I was robbed. The clock was wrong when I was last contributing, so I hope that the Chair will view me kindly and give me an additional 5 minutes to talk on the Education Legislation Bill, as I fill the role that I occupied prior to Shane Jones’ valedictory—helping to fill in the time until the Hon Phil Goff has the opportunity to do his valedictory, somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes from now.

The Education Legislation Bill is somewhat of a disappointment of a bill, as we get into the concluding parts of this debate around the title and commencement. It contains a number of provisions that are uncontroversial and really could be included in a statutes amendment bill without taking up any of the Committee’s time, and then it includes some that are a little more controversial. We have been through those in detail, but to sum up some of the more controversial changes, the bill does allow for charter schools to be operated by tertiary education institutions—in particular, polytechs and universities. The universities universally said they did not want to do that; the polytechs, of course, are the ones that have indicated that they want to do that. For some of them there are serious concerns about their ability to manage their existing business without having to take on the responsibility of a charter school.

The bill allows schools to change their opening hours in consultation with their community, and, of course, that creates some issues for parents where they may have different kids going to different schools with different opening hours and the logistical nightmare that that could be. The bill allows principals to run more than one school. Throughout the Committee stage we put a number of questions to Hekia Parata about how that would actually work, and the Government was unable to answer any questions about the ultimate accountability of a school principal who is managing more than one school. The bill extends out-of-school care provision to home-based early childhood education providers. I want to say at the outset here that we made a number of changes to these provisions at the Education and Science Committee to ensure that there were adequate adult to child ratios, and we certainly welcomed the Government’s pragmatism on those, although we do still have some quality concerns about how out-of-school care for older kids will be managed by those providers whose primary duty is to manage early childhood education kids.

There are some other things that the bill does, but perhaps the most controversial is the establishment of a new beginning teacher position, which was not thoroughly debated by the select committee because it was tabled only a few weeks before the select committee was due to be reporting the bill back to the House. Those amendments were incorporated by a majority. They create a new teacher position called a trainee teacher. They allow the Ministry of Education, or the Minister through the Ministry of Education, to impose that on a school, and that was incredibly controversial. It deals with some of the issues that were canvassed around the Teach First NZ programme, but actually goes much wider than that. We had the opportunity to debate that, but the Minister of Education was unable to provide reassurance around how that position might be used and whether that position would be over and above the existing staffing entitlement for schools, and, as a result of that, the Labour Party still cannot support that particular amendment.

We certainly cannot support the provisions that allow for charter schools to be operated by tertiary education providers. We have concerns about principals running more than one school, and about schools being able to change their opening hours. With those factors in mind, we will be voting against the bill, although I would say some of those other minor amendments and updating amendments—particularly the amendments in Part 2—are supported by the Labour members of the House. We have voted in favour of those, but the totality of the changes means that we cannot support the bill as a whole. Thank you.

Tēnā koe e Te Heamana o Te W’are nei. I would like to begin by suggesting some titles for this bill, and my titles are derived from a quote that I read in the other parts of the Committee stage. It is from the New Zealand Principals’ Federation, and, taking from what it said, this bill could easily be called the “Altering the Shape of Our Education System Bill”. It could also be the “Changing Our Education System Without an Openly Expressed Rationale Bill”.

I refer to comments that I made in the first reading. I believe that this bill is really about preparing our education system for privatisation. That is what underpins this particular bill. The Education Legislation Bill makes several changes that do not really make any sense except if you were preparing the education system for a different pathway. I suggest to the Committee that the comments in the submission from the New Zealand Principals’ Federation—namely, that “On the surface, they might be described as a collection of ill-conceived baseless changes which lack any intelligent rationale.”—are pretty strong words, and they are strong words that I think that this Committee should take note of.

An organisation like the New Zealand Principals’ Federation is a very important part of the New Zealand education system, and that is why I stand here and say that those changes to charter schools—which we will never agree with on this side of the House—and the changes to how schools are managed are making a more corporate model for self-governing schools. If we go back to 1989, the whole notion of self-managed schools was in the legislation that was put up in 1989, and we need to examine this new legislation very closely for what it really does.

I say to the Committee today that I do not agree with this particular piece of legislation. I believe that the title ought to be something quite different—more descriptive about what it actually does. So my contribution on this day, albeit a very exciting day, may be that I think, in all seriousness, that those particular clauses that make significant changes all add up to exactly what I said—preparing the education system for privatisation.

In terms of the other part, Part 2 of the bill, I thought several of those issues within Part 2 ought to have been in a separate bill altogether. For example, the changes that are made to the Ngarimu VC and 28th (Maori) Battalion Memorial Scholarship Fund, I think, are parts of the bill that I do actually support. But Part 1 I think ought to be renamed the “Altering the Shape of Our Education System Without Any Expressed Rationale Bill”, and the expressed rationale that ought to be in there is “privatising our education system”. Thank you very much.

In accordance with the Speaker’s decision I will now report progress.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported progress on the Education Legislation Bill, no progress on the Building (Pools) Amendment Bill, and no progress on the Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill.

Report adopted.