Education (Update) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Education (Update) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. This bill amends the Education Act 1989 by putting the achievement and learning of children and young people at the centre of early childhood education and compulsory schooling, ensuring there is strong accountability throughout the education system, enhancing collaboration between education providers, making improvements to the areas where the law needs modernising or more flexibility, strengthening the legal framework for managing teacher competence issues, establishing a future-focused legal framework for online learning, and improving the way the Government provides careers services.

I would like to thank the chair and members of the Education and Science Committee for their diligent consideration of the bill. I also want to thank the many organisations and individuals who made submissions on the bill, who took the opportunity to have their say and have their voices heard on the biggest update to education legislation in nearly 30 years. The committee received a large and diverse range of submissions with submitters particularly commenting on amendments relating to communities of online learning (COOLs), cohort entry, enduring objectives for the education system, a statement of national education and learning priorities, and improvements to school planning and reporting.

The committee has recommended a number of amendments to the bill. The most significant of these prohibit the use of seclusion in schools, early childhood services, and ngā kōhanga reo, and regulates the use of physical restraint. This bill gives us the opportunity to ensure that the Education Act 1989 is updated to best serve the needs of our children and young people. This includes making sure schools, early childhood services, and ngā kōhanga reo know how to deal with challenging behaviour in a safe way. We want parents and whānau to be confident that schools and our early learning services are safe places for their children. We want staff to prevent and be able to de-escalate potentially dangerous situations in ways that minimise the risk of hurting a student or of being hurt themselves.

I am pleased that the committee has agreed to make these amendments as this sends a clear signal to educators that in today’s world there is no situation where it is acceptable for children and young people to be held in seclusion. The bill will also make clear the limited situations that physical restraint can be used on children and young people by teachers and authorised staff members. This will mean that, in cases of violent or extremely disruptive behaviour, students and teachers will be protected from harm and learning can continue to happen.

I would like to express my thanks, once again, to the committee for seeking further submissions on Supplementary Order Paper 250. Thanks also to those who submitted on these important changes, some of whom shared very personal experiences with the committee. The committee, by majority, has recommended a number of other changes be made to the bill. These changes are not major, but they do address a number of details that will result in a more efficient and effective bill. I would now like to draw the House’s attention to some of the more noteworthy.

In response to concerns from submitters, the committee has recommended a change to the provisions around planning and reporting to make sure that the strategic document that schools will be required to prepare reflect their communities’ needs and aspirations. The Government is keen to ensure that the aspirations, vision, and values of communities are incorporated into their schools’ strategic planning. In fact, this bill reinstates a requirement to consult with the school community, which was removed from the requirements for the charter in 2001. The amendment recommended by the committee means boards of trustees will also be able to consult on their draft strategic plans with any other person, group, or organisation that they think they should consult with. This will allow boards to consult with parties that fall outside of the parameters initially set out in the bill such as the proprietor of a State integrated school. I am also pleased the committee has recommended a similar change to the provisions around combined boards with the Minister of Education now required to consult with the proprietor of a State integrated school before combining the boards of State integrated schools.

The committee has recommended some changes to the provisions that have been incorporated into the Education Act 1989 from the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act 1975. In particular, submitters were concerned that in some instances modernising the language and style of the transferred provisions had unintentionally changed their meaning. The instances where this has happened have been rectified. An example of this is a new section 422(1)(d) set out in clause 144 where the words “instruction and observances” were intended to cover the original wording of “practices, rights, and doctrines”. In making these changes, schools with a philosophical special character were unintentionally excluded. Part of what makes our education system unique and distinctive is the recognition of different abilities, religious beliefs, ethnic groups, income levels, and ideas about teaching and learning. The bill has been amended to ensure that schools can continue to teach according to their own special character.

We are keen to provide innovative and high-quality digital options to engage students, grow their digital fluency, and connect them even more to 21st century learning opportunities. COOLs offer that. The committee has also recommended a number of technical changes to the provisions around COOLs. One of the biggest changes is moving the commencement date out from 31 December 2017 to 31 December 2019. Moving the commencement date better aligns with the planned introduction of a new funding system for schools and early learning providers. It also provides more time to develop a robust accreditation and accountability regime to ensure COOLs meet the needs of our learners. The bill creates two types of COOLs, full and supplementary, which will provide tuition in different ways. A key change the committee has recommended is replacing the term “full COOL” with “enrolling COOL”. This will better reflect the fact that enrolling COOLs are the only ones that can enrol students as well as avoiding confusion with the term “fully accredited COOL”, which is also used in the bill.

The last set of recommendations from the committee that I would like to draw the House’s attention to is around cohort entry. A number of submitters wanted to change the consultation requirements for boards wanting to introduce cohort entry, including broadening the categories of those who must be consulted, and requiring their general acceptance. Boards will need to consult with school staff, parents of current and prospective students, and local early learning services before introducing cohort entry. There is nothing stopping them from consulting their wider community or community of learning (kāhui ako), or consulting more frequently if they so choose. The committee has recommended specifying in the bill that, when developing and seeking views on a proposed cohort entry policy, a board must also consider whether the policy is generally acceptable to those consulted. The committee has also recommended a 3 July 2017 commencement date for cohort entry. This will enable the system changes to be made and allow good guidance to be developed for effective transitions.

We are an ambitious Government determined to ensure the achievement of children and young people is at the heart of the education system, and we are putting in place the flexibility to respond to their current and future needs. We know that a good education is a passport to the future and that is why we are spending over $11 billion in education to make sure all our young people have the opportunity to secure that future. This year we have seen record rates in NCEA and we have seen record rates and participation in early learning. We are committed to modernising our education system to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

The changes recommended by the committee, some of which I have just discussed, will result in a safer learning environment and a more efficient and effective bill. Ultimately, this will ensure that the legislation provides an effective platform for lifting the achievement of all young New Zealanders. I am pleased that the committee has recommended, by majority, that the Education (Update) Amendment Bill be passed with these amendments. Once again, I would like to thank the chair and the members of the committee for their diligence and their work. I now commend the Education (Update) Amendment Bill to the House.

This is a sad day for education in New Zealand, as the National Government continues to dismantle our public education system, continues to treat learning as if it is a commodity to be bought and sold on a privatised open market, and continues to narrow the focus away from what is our world-leading curriculum and towards a narrow set of targets that can be manipulated and gamed. That is the narrowness of its vision, and it is continuing to reinforce a very low-trust approach to teaching New Zealand’s young people.

The Children’s Commissioner was absolutely right in his submission on this bill. This bill needs to be started again, from the very beginning. If this bill is designed to give purpose to our education system, if it is designed to put young people at the heart of the education system, then why have their voices not been more included in its development? If this is really about gearing up our education system for the needs of future generations, why are they being shut out of this debate?

We had, I think, a handful of young people submitting to the Education and Science Committee, and that was a great tragedy. But what was more concerning was that they were not involved in the development of the bill up until that point. They were not involved in the policy. Their voices were not present and were not heard. What a wasted opportunity. I think the Children’s Commissioner was right when he said we should start this again.

In her contribution, Hekia Parata said that she wanted to put students front and centre. I think those were the words that she used, and yet they have not been consulted. They have not been engaged in the development of any of these policies. Of course, sadly, they are not alone, because the voices of pretty much everybody who submitted to the Education and Science Committee have also been ignored. Time and time again, when sensible contributions were put forward by people working in education, the response came back “It is not Government policy to do this.”, and, therefore, simply—that was the response.

The select committee for this piece of legislation, I am sad to say, was more or less a waste of time. I sat through all of those submissions, and I was frustrated that, by majority, the vast bulk of amendments that could have arisen, if those submitters had been listened to, were blocked. This was a complete farce of a process. There were useful contributions from people who wanted to improve the legislation, who actually supported parts of the legislation that I do not, and they were ignored as well because the Government took the attitude that “We’ve got the numbers. We’re going to ram it through, and we’re not actually going to listen to the contributions from people who might have to implement it.” I think that is a great tragedy.

On the issue of seclusion—I want to deal with that one first because that is an area where I do agree with the Government. I think it is useful to get this part of the law clarified. We have certainly supported including that in the bill. However, the Minister said, in her contribution, that she wanted to “prevent and de-escalate dangerous situations”. I wrote that down because I wanted to remember those words—“prevent and de-escalate dangerous situations”—and yet last week she was in the House saying that schools that had violent pupils should immediately call the police. That is not de-escalation. I am not entirely sure on what planet calling the police on a 6-year-old could be described as de-escalating the situation. If schools are going to have to deal with children with challenging behaviours, and they do—all day, every day—then they need to be given the resourcing and the support. Those schools that are saying they have got a crisis when it comes to dealing with students with behavioural needs deserve to be listened to, and yet they are not.

So now I want to turn my attention to some of the more specific provisions in this education bill. The first is the goal in the bill to establish a clear set of purposes for education in New Zealand. I think that is a desirable and noble act. I think the Education Act would be improved by having a clear purpose clause—a purpose statement—within it. But what we heard from educators and what we hear around the country when it comes to debates on education is that people are worried that this will simply be used as a mechanism to, once again, narrow down the focus of the education system on a narrow band of targets.

The current Government has the attitude that the only learning that matters is learning that can be easily measured and plotted on a graph, and that the only measurements that matter are national standards and the National Certificate of Educational Achievement. The Government is absolutely wrong. It is not measuring student progress. It is not measuring students’ overall well-being and development. The Government is trying to narrow the focus of the whole system on to a very narrow range of schools, and all to meet these narrow targets that it has set.

So when this bill gives the Government the ability to establish a statement of national education and learning priorities, whilst at the same time establishing a set of national performance measures, we can understand why people in the education community are so nervous about that. I think a statement of national education and learning priorities could be a very valuable thing. It could be a powerful discussion for the education community to be engaged with, to play a role in agreeing what that might be, as it did with the development of The New Zealand Curriculum, which is so broadly embraced. And yet the consultation provision in that simply says the Minister has to consult with the people whom the Minister wants to consult with. There is no guarantee the Minister even has to consult with the people who are going to have to implement this national statement of education and learning priorities, so it is no wonder people are worried.

Education can be such an engaging and rewarding experience, and yet the current generation going through the education system now is being robbed of so many opportunities because schools, early childhood centres, and tertiary education providers are being told to focus their energies on this very narrow range of targets so that the Minister of Education, the Prime Minister, and whoever else in the Government can stand up and say: “Aren’t we great? We’re making progress on these measures.”

The reality is they are not making progress on what matters, which is giving kids a rich, deep, varied education that will allow them to achieve to their potential and that recognises that all children are different, with different strengths and weaknesses and abilities and passions. The education system needs to cater for all of that, and yet it is being told it has to focus on this narrow range of targets.

On communities of learning—everyone in the education system says they want to collaborate. Collaboration is something that they want to do, and what have we got from the Government? A heavy-handed, bureaucratic, managerial—

💬 Todd Barclay: My schools love it.

—model called the communities of learning. They do not love it. Schools hate it, and yet they are doing it because it is the only way they can get their hands on the extra money. I will tell you, if it was so popular, why it is that of the $360 million that the Government has put into it, only about $20 million of that has been spent. It is because people do not like it and they do not want it.

But let us then turn to cohort entry. I am open to a debate about cohort entry, and yet the only justification put forward at the select committee for it was administrative efficiency. If it is better for kids’ education, let us have that debate. But no educational research was produced to demonstrate that cohort entry is the way to go. I am utterly opposed to the idea that 4-year-olds should be starting primary school. At 5 we already have one of the lowest school starting ages in the OECD. We do not need to go any lower than that.

But then, of course, we get to one of the really meaty issues in the debate on this bill, which is the establishment of communities of online learning, or COOLs, which is a privatisation by stealth method by the current Government, and, also, it is totally and utterly ill-defined and misguided. Very little detail has been provided by the Government about how this is actually going to work, and yet there is a plethora of international evidence, and evidence from in New Zealand, that if the Government gets this wrong, it will have hugely damaging impacts on the kids who will be involved.

A private pro-charter foundation in the United States—a group whose job it is to promote charter schools and promote these types of learning arrangements—did its own research. It found that students attending those schools—the online private charter 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. In other words, they did not learn any maths at all, and they lost roughly half of their literacy learning as well. That is just wrong. Yet the Government wants to implement this model without working through and without defining how it is going to work.

“Just trust us.”, it says, “We’ll make it up as we go along.” I do not think that we should give the Government that level of flexibility when kids’ futures are at stake. I actually think it should front up and explain how it thinks this new model of COOLs is going to work.

I think there are provisions in the bill that the Labour Party would support, but nobody on this side of the House trusts that the National Government would do a good job of implementing them. As a result of that, and for all of the other reasons that we will debate during the Committee of the whole House stage, the Labour Party will be vehemently opposing this legislation.

The world has changed dramatically in the past 30 years. Accordingly, we have made numerous legal changes relating to various parts of the Government, business, society, etc. But, in terms of New Zealand education, we have not made substantial updates or changes in the past 30 years. It is against this background that we are now considering the Education (Update) Amendment Bill. This is the most significant and substantial bill that will have a fundamental impact on our education system.

The 1989 Education Act focuses on how we run schools, and this bill will enable schools and early childhood education centres to provide a more flexible, 21st century education that focuses on the achievement of every young New Zealander. The Minister of Education, the Hon Hekia Parata, just announced that we now have 197 communities of learning, covering well over half a million young people, and that is great news. It is recognised that teaching and learning would benefit from the collaboration of education providers. Such collaboration would benefit the students, would help students to transition, and would also be good for their well-being. Teaching will also benefit from such collaboration because teachers will be able to share good ideas, good practice, professional development, and even resources. This bill will provide for new statutory mechanisms relating to communities of learning. In that sense, this bill will enhance collaboration between education providers.

One major challenge to today’s education is the advance of technology. These days people can learn anywhere at any time, through a wide range of delivery modes that specifically meet their education needs. It is now very common for schools to provide some kind of online learning, and that is common in traditional face-to-face schools. The 1989 Education Act is outdated because it did not expect the growth of online learning. This bill aims to address some restrictions in that 1989 Education Act that might well limit the potential of best and new innovative practices. This bill will try to set up a future-focused regulatory system.

One concern that was often raised in the hearings was the quality control of the communities of online learning, or COOLs. That concern is understandable. However, we have a very robust accreditation system, or process, also there will be ongoing monitoring from the Ministry of Education, and all COOLs will be reviewed by the Education Review Office. The National-led Government is committed to modernising our education system into one that will meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Thank you for this call on the Education (Update) Amendment Bill. This is a deeply concerning bill to us. This legislation would, amongst other things, see the sci-fi scenario of Kiwi children as young as 4 years old plonked in front of the computer screens, alone, for all of their learning. It was bad enough allowing charter schools to be established with no involvement of registered qualified teachers, but this legislation will take it one step further. It will allow our children as young as 4 years of age to be taught not by human beings and not by fully qualified registered teachers, but it will allow our children to be taught without any teachers whatsoever.

I am sure many of us, as members of this House, would probably think back and remember that some of the most influential people in our lives have been teachers—most of them registered qualified teachers. Another of the concerns that we have—Labour, New Zealand First, and the Greens—is that we sat through the Education and Science Committee hearings and heard hundreds of submissions from a lot of key leaders—from teachers, from professionals, from the Children’s Commissioner, and from principals. A lot of these submissions, though—hardly any of them have been taken into account. When you look at the bill now and you read this current bill that we have in front of us—after the select committee it has hardly changed, and it certainly has not taken a lot of those submissions into account.

The Education (Update) Amendment Bill refines the education system. We have a world-class education system. It was well suited, though, for the 20th century. We had a lot of hopes for this Education (Update) Amendment Bill. We had hoped that it would bring our education system into the 21st century, but the bill that we have in front of us does little to bring the education system into the 21st century.

We believe that the Government should be focused on ensuring that every child, that every student, in Aotearoa New Zealand attends a school, a great school, preferably their local school, and that every student achieves to the best of their ability—that they can actually realise their full potential. Unfortunately, this is not currently happening right now in Aotearoa New Zealand. I can tell you that what this new system that we have would mean, especially if the bill is to be passed and we indeed see a lot more of our students from age 4 upwards not even needing a teacher, is that a lot of our students would need to know how to read. They should be able to read so that they can learn themselves when they are looking at these computer screens.

Can I tell you just a very short story from South Auckland. One of the things I do when I go around my local schools is I talk to principals, I talk to teachers, and I ask many of them the same question: when 5-year-olds enter your school, what kinds of skills do they bring in with them? The consistent answer I hear from our teachers and our principals is that many of these students that come do not know what their colours are. They do not know A to Z, most of them—many of them—and many of them do not even have vocabulary.

But what really hits home for me is when they tell me that many of these kids do not even know how to speak one language. What I mean is if these kids are Tongan, born here, many of them come into school and they do not speak Tongan fluently and they do not speak English fluently—similarly if they are Samoan and similarly if they are Māori or Cook Islanders. For a lot of our Indian kids, unfortunately, it is the same thing. What the teachers tell us is that it makes it so much more challenging for them to teach these young 5-year-olds when they do not have a core language to teach from. Our kids need to be literate. If we are to expect our children to be able to teach themselves from computers, as this legislation would allow, with the COOL—community of online learning—how are we going to expect many of our kids who do not even speak one whole language to be able to succeed like other 5-year-olds?

Cohort learning—having our children start school as early as age 4 was one of the issues that teachers and parents said they did not agree with. When we look at other developed countries, many of them do not even start school until kids are 6 years old or 7 years old, and yet New Zealand is proposing that we should allow our children to start as early as 4 years old. When we asked the officials to please explain why it is that we are looking at allowing our children to start that early, it seemed to us on the committee that the explanation was that it would be a cost-saving measure. Saving costs and cutting costs should not be a good enough reason for having our children start school as early as 4 years of age.

Another of the issues that came up was from rural communities. Teachers from the rural communities, as well as Rural Women New Zealand—what they told us was that they are “very disappointed that there is no mention in this [Education (Update) Amendment Bill that it will be] addressing inequalities in the current education system and the issues … facing low decile rural schools.” in rural communities. They asked why we do not address those issues first, before we go addressing allowing communities of online learning to be a feature of the future. They also told us that when online learning schools were allowed, they saw them—rural schools—being affected. They told us that in the last 15 years, so many of the schools in rural communities have already closed, and they saw that communities of online learning would affect them, because when you actually have a decrease of 20 students per school, that is one whole teacher whom they see going. They see even more of the rural schools being closed down because of the availability of these communities of online learning.

As I said earlier on, the Labour Party, New Zealand First, and the Greens, as well as hundreds of our parents and our teachers, and our community leaders and educational experts and advisers, are very concerned about the passage of this education bill. Labour strongly opposes this bill. I know that the Minister of Education, the Hon Hekia Parata, is about to leave in the next few weeks, but that should not be the reason why we are rushing through the passing of this legislation.

Similar to what my colleague Chris Hipkins said earlier on, when the Children’s Commissioner came to present to us, he actually put up a stop sign—a red stop sign. He said to the Education and Science Committee that we should stop this education amendment bill, and what we should do is go and consult with the people whom it would affect the most—meaning the children. It is our children who will be affected the most by this education amendment bill. We have not even had a full consultation with our children to ask them for their opinion on how this education amendment bill is going to influence and affect them in the long term. We are strongly, strongly opposed to this education amendment bill. Thank you so much.

It is a pleasure to rise in support of this bill. I think we need to not lose sight of the fact that New Zealand has a world-performing, top-class education system. We are among the top performers in the OECD, and what this bill sets out to achieve is to make us even better and even more futureproofed.

This is the biggest update in nearly 30 years. The Education and Science Committee ran a robust process, and I had the privilege of joining it about halfway through. Before that process was run by the committee, where there were hundreds of people who came in to provide submissions, right from the unions to sector professionals and to other interested parties, the Ministry of Education did a phenomenal job of collating all of the submissions and providing advice and feedback to our committee on them, not to mention the amount of work that the Minister of Education has put in through the Ministerial Cross-Sector Forum on Raising Achievement and her individual engagements, working across schools and with other sector representatives across a large number of years. So for the Labour Party to suggest that this is some form of rushed job that has been ill-thought-out, that could not be further from the truth.

I want to acknowledge the Minister for all the work that she has put in over the last 6 years in the role. I am pleased that we can be debating this bill in her final months as Minister of Education.

Schools are complex and, at times, challenging environments, but they are also unique and innovative environments. They are also largely driven on success that is born out of strong relationships. I think a fundamental flaw—and it was not a flaw at the time it was written in 1989, but it is certainly a flaw that we are noticing now in the 21st century—was that the Education Act 1989 was largely written in a prescriptive manner targeted around how schools are administered and how they are run, whereas they need to be much more nimble and much more accommodating to the individual requests of the 2,529 schools across New Zealand and the unique nuances of how they operate and the unique nuances of how their staff and parent community operates within the school as well—the individual attributes that the parent community and the community associated with these schools want to see brought forward through its school.

That is one of the things that this Government is focused on. We are focused on ensuring that every kid gets the best possible opportunities in our education system. The needs of every child and young person are very much at the centre of that—not the needs of how a system is run but the needs of the individual children. That is why it is a pleasure to be able to support this bill, and I look forward to progressing the debate.

Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora koutou katoa. Tonight we examine a bill that I looked at and thought: “Oh, this can’t be the one that they talked about being about re-examining the purpose of education—the one where there was going to be the conversation, the one where we really look deeply into the meaning of education for our country’s future.” I thought I must have just mistaken this update bill—this is just a minor mishmash of confused endeavours, as we have seen throughout the last 8 years I have been on the Education and Science Committee—because we have been sold a pup. We were told that this was going to be a magnificent discussion of purpose, but it actually exemplifies everything that we are losing: the narrowing, the technocratic, and the testing, testing, testing, which is not 21st century; it is actually 20th or maybe even 19th century learning. I have had the privilege of talking to some fantastic modern educators, and none of them—including the Singaporeans—believes that testing, testing, testing is the answer any more. So, as usual, the Government is lagging behind and is trying to enforce a failed idea.

The Green Party, in terms of this bill and the seclusion rooms—I was very active in bringing this issue to Parliament, because I have been working very hard with families whose children have been experiencing some of the failures of a broken system. We support the end to the legal right to use those rooms, but, as the families told us, what will change if there is not serious professional development and funding support for schools? Just closing the rooms does not solve the problem. The problem is that schools do not know what to do with children with high needs. Some schools do, but very few reach the standards that I have seen in the best of schools—and those are not the “best” schools: the rich schools, the private schools, and all of that; they are the schools where inclusion is deeply understood. I am talking about places like Berhampore, where the school is very, very shabby on one level and a stellar environment on another. That is why we need to do more than ban a practice; we need to replace that practice with a genuine and deep support for teachers, who have one of the hardest jobs in the world—that of dealing with the diversity of student needs. Just banning the seclusion room is not enough.

However, back to the rest of the bill. Hmm, hmm, hmm! Just imagine if we had really done it, if we had really had that conversation—that brilliant, deep, cross-sectoral conversation about education. If we had done it, we would be like other countries where they have been able to develop real consensus and actually make genuine progress. But we did not do it. This is not it. This bill is just another little mishmash of privatisation, anomalous and confused in ideas, many of which have got no policy behind them and no developmental work—so I actually think it is a lazy bill.

The Government put up calls and things, with no justification. There was no evidence presented at the select committee on many of the changes. We were supposed to take it all on faith, and the submitters did not. We had extraordinary submissions. The Ombudsman was very, very clear that we had actually created enormous risk for children, who could be dumped in communities of learning (COLs) because it is the easier place to put them than to have them in schools. How serious is that? The Ombudsman said to us: “I never come before you lightly. I come before you with a deep concern.” The Children’s Commissioner came and said we were in breach of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, because we had ignored the requirement of a modern legislative framework to consult with children.

Again, the bill should have stopped right there and we should have done the work properly. But no, the Government was not interested in that, because it is not about the rights of the child, it is not about children, it is not about education; it is about playing with some ideas that, actually, there is no great demand for. We heard that clearly, especially with COLs. We heard from the blended learners that this was not what they wanted. They actually just wanted to be able to work with schools, not instead of them—in an unregulated market place with no proper pastoral care.

The National Education and Learning Priorities—this could have been a wonderful conversation about creating equity, vision, and lifelong learning. We could have stepped up to the Greens’ great policy on universal core curriculum Te Reo in schools. There were so many things that could have been in the conversation. Fundamental to that conversation, and at the heart of my most profound objection, which is supported by the Children’s Commissioner and others, like UNICEF—what would they know about children, UNICEF and the Children’s Commissioner—is that we have failed in this bill to acknowledge what other countries do. That is, to put instruments such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the rights for gender equity, the New Zealand Disability Strategy—all of those things should be at the heart of this legislation, so that we have an Education Act against which people can test whether the system is actually delivering on its promise to protect our children’s right to a quality education.

But there was no interest in that. There was no interest from the Government in protecting those rights in a modern, convention-based piece of law that would provide for everybody, let alone provide an opportunity to appeal when the system breaks down and fails your children. Time and time again submitters came, and they talked, again—it was like going through the whole inquiry into dyslexia and dyspraxia and autism again, because so many families came back and said: “No, this is not it. Please protect our children’s right. Make inclusion real. Do the hard work, and put it into law so that there is somewhere to test it.” But no, the Government just flatly refused to do that. It just flatly refused to listen to the Ombudsman, the Children’s Commissioner, UNICEF, the endless families who gave evidence, and the organisations that specialise in education.

It is hard to sit on the committee, after 8 years and in my last term of Parliament, and not feel a sense of shame that every time the people come before us with detailed, passionate expertise and human stories, we are not interested in either of those. We are not interested in the human story or the legal conventions that our country is signed up to, to protect our children’s right to a quality education. All that the bill talks about is COLs and targets and achievement data, which are outdated and fail to create a holistic and effective education system. It is very disappointing.

And then you can talk about all the small, weird stuff. The cohort entry—no one wanted it. The teachers did not think it would be more efficient. The parents did not want it. It was not about a demand. Efficiency is what you do with widgets, not what you do with children, because—read my lips—they all learn at a different rate and they all are ready at a different time, and their birthday is enough. We need to listen to what we were told on that issue.

The COLs—you know, people are struggling with the COLs, and in this law they are going to struggle more because the Government, the Minister, will now have power to sign off their learning agreements. The COLs were sold to the schools as being able to identify in their groups their learning priorities, but this bill says: “No, the Minister has to sign off your priorities.” That is a shift. That is not how the communities of learning were told they would be able to operate. It was going to be responsive. It was going to be “The schools will decide.” If we really believe in the capability of our educators and our education communities, what is wrong with that? Why cannot the schools decide? That could have been visionary.

There are things that are so deeply disappointing about this piece of legislation. It is really sad. The purpose of education is not advanced by this bill. The opportunity for child consultation, the opportunity to create a set of learning priorities that are modern, holistic, and genuine around inclusion and equity and fairness and rights—completely ignored. We have been told that a few bad ideas, such as the COLs, will work. But I met a young woman, who came and talked to us. She said: “I would have loved a COL. I could have then hidden away for the rest of my life in my room. But it was a school that saved my life. Do not allow young people like myself to hide away in our rooms, playing on our computers, avoiding the world because that is easier. Support our schools to support us.” She was a passionate young woman to whom I wish the Government was prepared to listen.

There will be some Supplementary Order Papers, there will be some challenges on this bill, because it is not what it was promised to be. We have got some great educators and some wonderful ideas, and there are international educators who share with us modern practice. But this is another small, privatising, minimalist, disappointing, and actually quite abusive piece of legislation for what it fails to do. It could have been something great, it could have been the chance to come together, and it could have been about education, but, regrettably, it is not. We cannot support it. Kia ora.

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. Hekia Parata should thank the chair and the majority of the Education and Science Committee. When I came to this Parliament in the last term of Parliament, one of the things I was most proud of was that the first delegation from overseas that came here was from the United Kingdom, and it came here to look at our select committee process because it provided the voice of the people inside legislation. It provided real-life examples of what may be wrong or what could right about legislation that we wrote here. The chair of the Education and Science Committee at that time was Nikki Kaye, followed by Cam Calder. The Education and Science Committee was balanced, with members of the Government and members of the Opposition, and so real legislation, with real conversation and real negotiation, took place to provide legislation that has stood the test of time.

This is not what is happening now. I agree with Catherine Delahunty. I am ashamed to have to stand before the community and the public of New Zealand and try to tell them that it is still worthwhile to come to the Education and Science Committee, because the Government has a majority and in the last year we have become a dumping ground for ex-Ministers who have followed the Minister’s decisions, regardless of any information that has come from the sector or from any member of the public. It is an embarrassment to the New Zealand public what is going on at the Education and Science Committee, and this bill is an example of it. So certainly the Minister should stand up and thank the chair of the Education and Science Committee and the majority, and I want to make it very, very clear that it is the National Government that holds a majority on the Education and Science Committee.

I encourage people to go and read the minority views that are there, because the Opposition certainly does not agree with the Government on this bill. The Opposition certainly heard and listened to the people who submitted on this bill, and I say to them please do not give up on democracy. Please do not give up on putting your voice into the select committee process, because it is now on the record. When this Government goes on 23 September of this year, we will be able to take the evidence and the submissions that you gave us and we will be able to create legislation—particularly for education—that will be for the benefit of New Zealand, not for the benefit of a few who will make money.

Catherine Delahunty is right. The national education and learning priorities were an opportunity to have a nationwide conversation and decide what success looks like for Kiwi kids in New Zealand—not what it looks like in the UK and not what it looks like in America, but what it looks like here. The national education and learning priorities could have been a conversation for New Zealand to set a 30-year direction that would have got politicians out of the classroom. Our job is to fund education, not to deliver education, but this bill is the last piece in Hekia Parata’s puzzle that actually ties up schools from what they were originally supposed to do under Tomorrow’s Schools—that is, to represent their communities and deliver the New Zealand Curriculum.

Dr Jian Yang seems to not know that the New Zealand Curriculum, which was developed with this sector with massive conversation across this country and is world recognised, was developed in 2008, not 1989. It is that sort of ignorance that frustrates the members of the Opposition when we talk about education. How dare people who do not upskill themselves decide that they will put this thing upon our children and upon our future.

Let us talk about the communities of online learning. The reality is that e-learning has been taking part across New Zealand for the last 20 years. Schools are so far ahead of this Government that it is not worth talking about; what they did not have was the funding. The only thing that stands in the way of e-learning—so, therefore, students in a face-to-face school being able to Skype out into courses that cannot be delivered inside that school environment due to low numbers or lack of a skilled teacher—is funding. It is not necessary to create bodies corporate to deliver it.

The virtual learning network and other e-networks across the country already take place; it is just that schools have to take it from their operations grant or from their staffing. If only the Government members had listened at the select committee, instead of shutting themselves down and delivering what the Minister had decided was right. These members are intelligent members. It is such a shame that in the final days of this National Government they have decided to not participate.

The cohort entry—that is a diversion. Schools have been able to do cohort entry since 1989. Any board of trustees can consult with their community and decide that they will participate in a cohort entry for their students; the thing was that it was after the age of five. What is so important about the age of 4 years, 8 months? Here we go—in the briefing papers to Cabinet the ministry modelled the cost of all schools operating a cohort entry. In that case there would be an overall reduction of funding to early childhood education (ECE) of $11.2 million. This is what 4 years, 10 months is about—$11.2 million a year. It is nothing to do with the education of students. So why, why, did the Government members not accept that we could just change the wording to a cohort entry “after your fifth birthday”, as opposed to “before your fifth birthday”—4 years, 10 months?

Perhaps one of the members from the Government benches could stand up and justify it, but they will not. They will not because they do not know why, because at no stage have they been able to articulate why these changes should take place. They have accepted them, along with their salaries, on face value, rather than looking into the real reasons and the real effect of what this is going to do.

So cohort entry is not new. What is new is the fact that 5-year-olds, or 4-year-and-10-month-olds, can now be placed in the truancy process. That is what is new. Now, if a child—and let us remember the pressure is on, with the Government subsidising ECE for only 20 hours, and then those parents who are in 30 hours to 40 hours of employment have got to pay the rest of that money and can see an opportunity here to actually place their children in school and pay for no ECE. If their child, once it has been enrolled in a school, in a cohort entry at 4 years, 10 months—if it is not actually working out for the child, too bad. If you do not show up to school, you will be placed with the truancy service. That is what is different here.

I really wish that the media and people would get their heads around it. It is not cohort entry; it is truancy for 4-year-and-10-month-olds—all right? Let us get real as to what is actually happening here.

The Minister stood up and said that changing from having national education and learning priorities to having charters has introduced a situation whereby boards of trustees now need to consult with their communities, because she made a statement that they have not had to do so since 2002. I was elected to the board of trustees of Warkworth Primary School in 2004, and every 3 years it was a requirement to consult with your community on the charter that was taking place in that school. So I would be interested to hear from the School Trustees Association—which I guarantee will be listening—who is right. Is the Minister correct, or are all schools that have been consulting their communities on the charters correct?

The difference is—with the national education and learning priorities to the strategic plan that the Minister now wants—that it is not the communities’ vision that is going to inform the strategic plan; it is the Minister’s. Once upon a time we had a Department of Education, which was here to service schools. Now we have a Ministry of Education, which is here to service the Minister. This has gone too far down the track.

I will be introducing a raft of Supplementary Order Papers to this bill in the Committee stage. There are so many things wrong with this bill. It is the last nail in the coffin of New Zealand education.

Thank goodness there is an election on 23 September. Thank goodness that none of this can be implemented except by a signature of the Minister of Education, and I hope—I believe—that there will be a different Minister of Education who will not sign a damned thing that is in this bill, and then we have got an opportunity to turn it back. Kia ora.

It gives me great pleasure to rise and take a short call on the Education (Update) Amendment Bill. If there is one thing that I can agree with Tracey Martin, it is that what she has done in the last 10 minutes is given voice to the clear gulf of perspectives that has existed around this bill from the moment that it has been introduced into the House and into the select committee.

Where we on this side see the opportunity through this legislation to modernise the sector, members in Opposition see change to be resisted at every turn. When we argue, as I think we have very coherently through this entire bill that we put children at the centre of our thinking and of our approach in education, they see it in terms of us having an obsession in testing and achievement data—as if somehow that is something to be avoided. The world is changing fast. We put forward the communities of online learning as part of this bill; they see it as somehow forcing schools to go down a path. They have never appreciated that there is flexibility implicit in this piece of legislation. When we talk about national education learning priorities objectives, they somehow think this is going to morph into aggressive targets.

At the core of this legislation is a philosophical belief on this side that if you put children at the centre of your legislative framework, if you bake into the system the ability to breathe and be flexible—because the reality is we are part of a world that is changing very dynamically and we have to ensure that our children are fit for purpose, and we need a framework that can breathe, that is not caught in an historical lens. All we have heard over the last half an hour—and no doubt we will hear in the next half an hour—is more echoing of the same tired, lost-in-the-past rhetoric. I look forward to the Committee of the whole House debate, where we can debate those philosophical positions, as I am sure we will. Thank you very much.

Gareth Hughes—a 5-minute call on behalf of the Green Party.

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora. Look, as a father, I take offence to that. My kids are not “fit for purpose”. Nobody’s kids in New Zealand are “fit for purpose”. What a horrible way to talk about our kids and our education system. I want to stand here in Parliament and congratulate our teachers, congratulate our principals, congratulate our schools, congratulate the boards of trustees, and congratulate the thousands of Kiwis who are putting thousands of hours in for a great education system.

The fact is that when the Government was introducing this legislation it described it as the biggest update to education in New Zealand in 30 years. I would call it the biggest risk and experimentation with our education sector in 30 years. Firstly, when we look at the changes to careers advice, putting the responsibility on to the Tertiary Education Commission, you see the ideology where you see slogans such as “fit for purpose” and “flexibility” being used.

Everyone in this Parliament and, I believe, every party agrees that we need to modernise our careers advice, but my fear is that this mantra of “flexibility” and “fit for purpose” is going to suit one particular part of New Zealand, which is a small section of employers who want to get the skills they want, and that is exactly what the New Zealand University Students Association has told the committee. I think we could have actually had a bipartisan process that modernised and improved our careers advice.

But let us talk about the substantive part of this legislation, which is the so-called COOL slogan—the communities of online learning. As a father to two young kids in the current public education sector, I want to point out that I am a great supporter of seeing technology in our classrooms. I think that in the right place at the right time it can be an incredibly powerful tool. I see it at home, with homework, and I see it when my kids come back with reports from school. I would also point out that the Post Primary Teachers’ Association president, Angela Roberts, says that learning online is already here. Ask any parent with children at school. What this legislation does is, essentially, take it one step further from charter schools.

The Government that brought us charter schools is now bringing us online charter schools with these communities of online learning. Look, I cannot put it much better, more forcefully or comprehensively, than Catherine Delahunty and Tracey Martin, who gave incredibly powerful speeches. This is terrible legislation. We saw an absolute flood of submissions in opposition to this in the Education and Science Committee.

In my three terms in the House I have never come across the Ombudsmen making a submission to a select committee. The fact that they were joined by the Children’s Commissioner as well should be an incredible warning to the Government not to gamble, not to take risks, and not to experiment with our kids’ future learning.

Let us support our State sector. Let us support those great teachers already using those great online tools. Let us work together, the parties in this House, to build cross-party, bipartisan support for modernising careers advice. Look, I am really proud to oppose this legislation, as a Green MP, but, more importantly, as a father.

Colleagues who spoke before me have outlined the major points of objection to this bill. There are two main concerns I feel very strongly about, which are, first of all, the low-trust, compliance-based mentality that is doing so much damage to the current education system, and, secondly, that it appears that the current Government has taken the attitude that the only learning that matters is the learning that can be easily measured or rated. That reminds me of the everlasting debate among Chinese scholars, Chinese parents, and, most importantly, Chinese teachers that asks, rather cruelly, whether the Chinese education system is a poison or remedy.

I am not sure when it got started, but it seems that is an accepted norm in China now that the most efficient way to manage the delivery of education, or, as a matter of fact, the management of school children in China, is by testing, measuring, categorising, and grading them. As a result, the Chinese education system is becoming, essentially, a test-based, elite education system. Students who excel in school are awarded with praise and encouragements, but struggling students are eventually abandoned, because everyone is struggling for measuring and grading. Creativity and critical thinking have been gradually ignored. The Chinese education system has become one that produces millions of test-taking experts. What would otherwise be happy schooling has been replaced with a daily routine that puts students to tests and fits them with the so-called correct answers, whereas schools compete against each other for higher ratings, and so on and so forth.

Do we need that in New Zealand? Many Chinese parents have no choice but to send their kids to be educated in New Zealand, but in New Zealand, which direction should we take in terms of how to manage the delivery of education for the 21st century? Do we want to abandon extracurricular activities in order to devote more time to tests, exams, and all sorts of different kinds of measurements? What this bill will do is make that kind of measurement a new normal. If that becomes a reality, New Zealand schools will certainly follow what is happening in China—default to testing as a reliable indicator of competence.

I am not against testing or measurements per se. What we are concerned about is that this National Government is narrowing the focus of the education system, focusing on a small set of measurable targets to the exclusion of a broad and balanced curriculum. That is not working. New Zealand’s international rankings are going backwards under this National Government. New Zealand’s Programme for International Student Assessment results for reading, maths, and science have all declined in recent years. Thank you.

It is an absolute pleasure to rise in support of the Education (Update) Amendment Bill. I am astounded, actually, that a previous speaker in this debate does not seem to know the difference between a system that is fit for purpose and the idea of a person who is fit for purpose. The reason we want a system that is fit for purpose is that I actually believe that all members around the House want the very best education outcomes for our children.

We know that education is the bedrock of their future success. The world changes around us, and it is a good thing it does, and the best thing we can do, not only as legislators but, for many of us, as parents, is to help our children to prepare for the world that they will grow into and will work in. This bill is all about doing just that. It is about ensuring that the education system—the curriculum, the content, the things that our children will experience in the education system—and the things they will learn are preparing them for the workforce that they will enter. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Te Māngai o Te Whare, otirā, tēnā tātau katoa e huitahi nei i tēnei pō.

[My appreciation to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and, at the same time, my acknowledgments to all of us assembled here together this evening.]

I stand in opposition to this bill. I asked myself whether this bill transforms education in New Zealand, and I say no, it does not. I support the contributions from colleagues on this side of the House on that. I too want comment on the comment that was made by one of the members opposite, Todd Muller, about children being fit for purpose. Well, it is not the child who needs to be fit for purpose; it is this bill that ought to be fit for purpose, and I can tell you, it is not. It is, in fact, a missed opportunity. It is a missed opportunity to have had the voice of rangatahi, of tamariki, heard on this bill. They are supposedly front and centre on this bill, and yet their voice is virtually lost.

I am thankful that a year 9 student made this submission. “I am a year 9 student. I am diagnosed as being on the Autism spectrum as well as having tested as academically gifted and am working above my year level. I am fluent in te reo Māori and English. However I have not experienced success in school …”. That is the voice that we need to be listening to, but was his voice heard in what we have in front of us on this table? No, it was not heard. That is the voice, along with others, that I am sure the Children’s Commissioner was speaking about. He was right to put up a stop sign to say “Stop. You’ve got this process wrong.”, and I stand in support of what he said, as well as what this young man who took the time to make a submission said, knowing full well that this bill is not for him.

I also want to mention another group of rangatahi, who are part of a group called Te Mata Rangatira, which means “the face of leadership”. They came to the Education and Science Committee and they not only presented to the select committee, they also sang for us, actually. Their voice, fortunately, was heard by the select committee, but again, really, the select committee has not taken notice by voting in majority for the things that they wanted changed in the bill. They talked mainly about communities of online learning. They were terribly disappointed by what they thought were the goals of that policy. They had real concerns about how it would impact on Māori and Pasifika students in particular. This was a group of Māori rangatahi who took the time to come to the select committee and have their voices heard. I commend them for taking that time. I am disappointed that their voices are not going to be heard.

I also want to refer to another submission—and before I do I want to thank all of those who made submissions. This particular submission is from Dr Mere Skerrett and Associate Professor Jenny Ritchie. They were disappointed and, again, it is a lost opportunity, or a missed opportunity, because they pointed out and wanted a change to Part 1AA, clause 1A(3)(c). They felt that—well, I will read exactly what they said. They said that that particular part falls short “of the recognition needed … We recommend an additional point in section 3 to promote the learning and through Te Reo for each child and young person.” That was a missed opportunity. That does not actually say that Te Reo Māori should be compulsory in schools, but it is certainly a level above the statement that is actually made in this bill. Those kinds of statements become quite meaningless.

I will read that statement out to the House. In the submission, it says: “Te Reo Māori within the objectives should be strengthened.” Instead, it has got in the bill: “to instil in each child and young person an appreciation of the importance of … the Treaty of Waitangi and te reo Māori.”—an appreciation of the importance of the Treaty and Te Reo. That is not a high enough level to give the importance that Te Reo Māori deserves. This House and this Parliament passed the Māori Language Bill. Is this statement consistent with that Act, which the House has already passed? No, it is not. It definitely is not. That is one where—without saying that Te Reo Māori will be compulsory in schools—if the wording of that clause was changed slightly it would elevate the importance of both the Treaty and Te Reo Māori. What is wrong with that? I do not understand why the Education and Science Committee would not agree to that. I do not understand why this House would not agree to that. I believe that we should support what Dr Mere Skerrett and Associate Professor Jenny Ritchie have said.

I endorse the words around the communities of learning. From my perspective, and particularly for all of those kura kaupapa—kura Māori—who operate under a kaupapa Māori base, a community of learning should also be kaupapa Māori - based, and yet, under this legislation, it will not necessarily be the case. I think it is a far better thing that we have a cooperative model, a model that is not forced upon schools—to interact with other schools, rather than developing their own relationships. I think that would be a better model.

Regarding the communities of online learning, again, I want to thank the submitters who provided a lot of information—valuable information—that, in the end, was not taken up by the select committee, and, in particular, the evidence provided by Dr Michael Barbour, who provided a 16-page submission that went into some depth around what the issues were with communities of online learning. I worry about our tamariki who are not achieving in schools now, let alone, in some instances—because I am not convinced that students are not going to be forced into enrolling in online schools. That is not a good model for our tamariki, and it is not a good model for the future of education in New Zealand. I think, again, this has been a missed opportunity.

I think back to when the last major change in education was made through the policy known as Tomorrow’s Schools. It has endured to now. Does this transform education in the way that that policy did? No, it does not. Thank you.

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