Education (Update) Amendment Bill

Members, we come to the first debate, on the principles and central management. This comprises clauses 4 to 37, 39 to 71, and schedule 1. Just to make it clear to members, this is about the statement of National Education and Learning Priorities. It is about enrolment, it is about cohort entry, and it is about exclusion. I would not expect any debate on topics other than those during this theme.

Thank you for the opportunity to be the first speaker in this debate on the Education (Update) Amendment Bill. Can I thank all members of the House for agreeing to trial this new approach to the Committee stage. I hope that this will result in a more logical debate and some better scrutiny of the legislation put before the House. I look forward to some interchange with the Minister during this debate as well.

The first contribution that I want to make is with regard to the statement of National Education and Learning Priorities and the setting out in the law of some objectives for our early childhood and compulsory education systems. Can I say from the outset that these are provisions being inserted into the Act that I welcome. I have some issues around how they are worded, but the idea of putting some clear objectives for our early childhood and schooling system into the Act is something that has been broadly welcomed by people within the education system. The idea that we would have a clearer statement of priorities is also something that I think the sector could come to embrace, depending on how that statement of priorities is established and how much consensus is built around that.

First up, in section 1A(2)(d) in new Part 1AA, inserted by clause 4, it states that the statement of National Education and Learning Priorities would be for a period of 5 years. So the first question that I have for the Government is why it chose the period of 5 years, because, actually, 5 years in the lifespan of our education system is very short. Children are in the compulsory part of the education system—the school part—for 13 years and they are normally in the early childhood part of the system for at least 2 years prior to that. So, all up, 15 years is sort of roughly what we would expect. Some children are in the system for much longer than that.

There is a real desire, I think, by people working in education to see a degree of consensus around priorities that lasts beyond a parliamentary term, a 3-year term, or even a 5-year term. So my first question for the Government is: why 5 years? Why not a longer-term horizon for this statement of National Education and Learning Priorities? I think there is a real craving from people who work in education to see a bit more stability in some of these things.

In terms of the objectives—and they are set out in new Part 1AA, section 1A(3)—it sets out the objectives for the early childhood and compulsory schooling sector. Again, I will be very clear that I think this is a welcome addition to the Act, having that clear statement that will guide future Governments in terms of the setting of priorities for the education system.

But the real question that I have for the Government is why it did not follow more closely the objectives set out in The New Zealand Curriculum. The curriculum has been broadly supported by all of the stakeholders in the education system—parents, employers, students, teachers, principals, school boards. There is a broad degree of support for our curriculum and the objectives contained within it, and yet the objectives in this Act are narrower than the ones in that curriculum.

In particular, I have put forward a Supplementary Order Paper—it is sitting on the Table now—that suggests some amendments to this section, around the objectives for the system. In particular, it inserts the notion of lifelong learning being one of the objectives of the system. We have got to get used to the idea now that people are going to come back into the education system throughout their life, and to the idea that a linear education—you start with early childhood, you go through school, and you do tertiary, and then you are off into the workforce or wherever, and that is that—is over now. People are going to constantly be coming back through the education system, including people who left the school system early on in the piece. They may be coming back into the school system, not necessarily into the tertiary education system, through their adult life, and we need to embrace that. So the principle of lifelong learning, I think, is something that we should be putting in there.

I have made a suggestion to change some of the wording of these clauses, to align with The New Zealand Curriculum. The curriculum does not just talk about participation in community life; it also talks about building a strong and just New Zealand, socially, culturally, economically, and environmentally. Those are in the curriculum now, and they are broadly supported. So why would we not take this opportunity to incorporate in the law something around which there is already a great degree of consensus?

I want to acknowledge the National Opposition, through the term of the last Labour Government, for its engagement in the development of The New Zealand Curriculum. I think one of the reasons that that remains an enduring document is that there was a bit more engagement on both sides of the House in its development, and there has been more support for it.

The last objective here for the system, in the first part, is preparedness for work. I have put forward a suggestion that would extend this significantly, into promoting the development of knowledge, values, and skills, to enable students to succeed in further education and to live full and satisfying lives, both personally and in the world of work.

I think it is important that we do not narrow down the focus of our education system to simply preparing children for the world of work. Actually, it is much more than that. It is about preparing people for life, including the unpaid work that people will do throughout their lives. I think that that is important. I would like to see those priorities changed to reflect the curriculum, and also to have a broader vision for our education system. So I guess I would be interested in the Minister’s comment on that.

Then I move to section 1A(4) in new Part 1AA, where it talks about the consultation requirements. At the moment, when issuing a statement of National Education and Learning Priorities, in the bill as drafted, the Minister only needs to consult with stakeholders whom he or she considers ought to be consulted. I do not think that is good enough for a primary piece of legislation. I actually think we need to be more specific than that. Members will find, on my Supplementary Order Paper, that I have spelt out in more detail some of the stakeholders who must be consulted in the development of this. Children must be there. The Children’s Commissioner gave a very passionate contribution to the select committee, saying that in the development of this bill and in these priorities, children have not been at the heart of that process. They have not had their voices heard enough, and we should go back and start again.

I think that we should ensure that children are consulted in the next part, in the statement of National Education and Learning Priorities. I think teachers, principals, school boards, early childhood educators, and parents should all be included. That is set out on my Supplementary Order Paper, and I would very much welcome the Government’s support for that.

I have a few other points to make on this statement, the first of which is that minor changes can be made without consultation, and yet there is a real lack of definition around what a minor change would be. I have put in some more definition in my amendments around what a minor change would be. I think it is important that the Minister of Education is able to make genuinely minor changes, such as updates in wording and the fixing of typos and stuff, but in the legislation it says that a minor change does not include something that constitutes “a withdrawal or replacement of the statement being changed.” That does not preclude the Minister from adding things to the statement of National Education and Learning Priorities as a minor change. I think adding new material makes it more than a minor change, and yet, under the definition of the legislation, that would be allowed. So I would welcome the Minister’s comment on further clarity around the consultation requirements, because I think that that will be very important.

Finally, I would like the Minister’s comments around how the statement of National Education and Learning Priorities is actually going to be developed, because, as I said in the very beginning of my contribution, I think there is an appetite within the education community for this, but there is also a great deal of trepidation, if you like, around how this might be developed and where it might go. Further down the bill, in the part that we are debating now, there is a provision that allows the Minister to set national performance measures. I think what a lot of people will be very concerned about is that those two things will become intricately linked and whatever is in the statement of National Education and Learning Priorities will actually be undermined by an unrelenting focus on simply the performance measures. We see that already in the focus on national standards and NCEA level 2, to the detriment of the wider objectives in The New Zealand Curriculum. So my question for the Minister is how the current Government would avoid that happening. If we are setting performance measures, how will it ensure that that does not undermine the broader objectives in the statement of National Education and Learning Priorities?

The final point that I will make—I have got only 40 seconds left in this contribution—is on how the current Government would go about achieving a greater degree of political consensus around this, because I see this as an opportunity to reach out across the aisle and get some greater stability in our National Education and Learning Priorities. That is a commitment that I would make: that if, after September, I am sitting where the Minister is sitting, I will actually be trying to get all of the parties in Parliament engaged in this discussion, because I think it is too important, actually, to not at least attempt to achieve a greater degree of political consensus around the statement of National Education and Learning Priorities. There will always be bits in that that we disagree on, but we can at least try to get a high-level agreement, like we did with the curriculum.

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Mōrena koutou katoa. It is a great opportunity to talk about education, and we will be putting up quite a few Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) because it is also an opportunity missed in this bill. The opportunity was there to have a national conversation, but it did not happen. But we want to be pretty clear and pretty focused today about what is actually in the bill and how it should be changed.

I do have some questions on the initial theme around the principle issues around educational priorities, and I have got some very, very serious concerns, as has been mentioned already, that we were presented with by the Ombudsman and the Children’s Commissioner and the United Nations’ UNICEF organisation about this bill, on this core part—on this core theme—not having any child voice there. That is seen as backward and deleterious by the Education and Science Committee. It does not look good that we did not talk with children. In the Victorian era, children had no say over their education, but this is the 21st century and there are well-established, sophisticated, meaningful, quality opportunities to develop relationships with children and young people on education. I myself have been involved in those, which this bill, with its importance—we believe it is important; very important—did not do.

My question to the Minister in the chair, Hekia Parata, would be: when there were issues raised, why did we not stop and do something about them? The second question is around the National Education and Learning Priorities (NELPs)—there are a lot of things we would like to talk about today, but we will just start with them being based on something that allows students and parents to test the intent of them and, indeed, the intent of the rest of the Act. I have an SOP about clause 4 that talks about the United Nations conventions and the New Zealand Disability Strategy, because most other countries, if they are reviewing their fundamental piece of education legislation, will talk about this, and other countries have introduced a child rights approach based on the conventions that that country has signed up to.

I guess I would like to know why the Government was not prepared to at least put UNCROC, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, into the bill and why the Government was not prepared to at least put in the New Zealand Disability Strategy, which is a test, and given what we went through with the inquiry, there are a huge number of issues around disability and how it has been implemented to empower children with learning differences in schools. I would like to know why there is no mention in this part of the legislation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and why there is no mention of UNDRIP, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, because our children are in all of these categories. CEDAW, the Convention On The Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women—the importance of gender in the education system. This country goes through these laborious international processes so that national domestic law can be informed by our overarching commitment, and education—one of the most important sectors in terms of laying out what we expect for our children and the future of the country—should have included those.

We will be talking more about other aspects of the learning priorities, but I just want to start by saying that this is an opportunity lost, and it was noted by submitters that we have failed to enshrine child rights. We have failed to enshrine them. This amendment of the Education Act was the perfect opportunity to do that.

We have other issues around the National Education and Learning Priorities. They are framed very much in terms of what will be instilled into the child. That is interesting framing—the idea that we are there to instil things into children. I think that it is probably well intentioned in that we want our children to share values that are important, and there are some good values in the National Education and Learning Priorities that I do not disagree with, but the way it is framed is that it is very much about the individual child.

The education system is a collective experience of socialisation and learning, and the more we focus on the individual child being instilled, without looking at the collective context of education, the more we go down a dead end. I feel as if, if we had had the national conversation, this is what would have come through, because parents, students, teachers, teachers’ organisations, and professionals are very much aware of the social aspect of education rather than the commodification, the idea that it is a consumer product that each child needs to either be instilled with or be satisfied with as a customer.

We also believe that the National Education and Learning Priorities could have some things added to them, and one of them, which I am also suggesting in SOP 301, is around the concept of equity, the concept that education systems that really succeed have a clear national learning priority of a system, not of a child—actually a system that is committed to the equity of all children, creating equity. The Finns, who are often lauded, for good reason—the goal of their education system, their national priority, is equity.

When equity is your goal, rather than achievement, however that is defined, the result is that the resources and the approaches are very much focused on making sure that every child gets what they need—not to be equal but to be equitable, because children have different needs. So, in the end, the individual child’s learning outcomes succeed better with equity as a goal than when it is about performance measures. That is just a profound opportunity lost as well in this bill—that equity does not get a look in. Yet the greatest challenge we face at the moment, not only in the education system but across our whole social framework, is inequality. This is why, in the National Educational and Learning Priorities, we would be very keen to see equity.

I have also put forward an SOP around adult and community education (ACE)—around adult and community learning—as a national education and learning priority. The ACE sector has said to us many times—I have sat on 8 years of panels where it has said to us: “If you are amending the Education Act, can you please put in something around the importance of lifelong learning?”. At the moment, this is about early childhood through the compulsory sector and the tertiary sector, but lifelong learning goes well beyond that. It would be well placed within the National Education and Learning Priorities. It takes it out of a small vision into a broader vision, because lifelong learning is actually the human experience. But it is not mentioned here.

That is why equity and adult and community education—intergenerational learning—is really, really important. It can take so many forms outside the formal learning structure, but we do not mention it in the Act—it is not referred to in this theme. The ACE community has really asked us to step up on this so many times. That is why in the NELPs—the National Education and Learning Priorities—it would be easy to just add this in. It is not going to hurt anybody and it is not going to undermine any of the other objectives the Government might have, but it will give the sector, which works often with second-time learners for whom the system did not work, the status and the value and the recognition and the opportunity to say that informal learning is incredibly important.

We have another SOP in this section, which I am aware will be controversial and probably unpopular, but I am really proud of it. It is the Greens’ policy that if we wish to instil—as the NELPs say—the importance of learning and valuing Te Reo, we actually need Te Reo to be there. It is not colours and numbers in your school and a few waiata—and I will talk about this later—we need Te Reo Māori to be a core part of the curriculum. It is time.

I applaud the Minister of Education for putting it in the National Education and Learning Priorities—both Te Tiriti and Te Reo—but we need to make sure that that is actually possible. Just to talk about it with no additional mechanism to actually move this whole debate to where it needs to be is another opportunity missed. Some young people from my rohe, some of the few who actually attended the select committee, Te Mata Rangatira—a wonderful group of rangatahi—came and they said: “We just want to learn Te Reo. We want to learn it at school. Our parents missed out, and we want to learn this as part of our core curriculum.”

Before I call Tracey Martin, there are a couple of points that I should make, just to make it absolutely clear about the way this debate works—that is, that all of the questions will be put at the end, including all of the amendments, all of the Supplementary Order Papers. The expectation is that people will speak to the amendments on the particular themes as we work our way through.

I will just put one other thing out there, which might be more hopeful than realistic, and that is that one of the hopes that we had was that people would not feel an obligation to use all of their 5 minutes—that they would ask their questions and they would sit down, or make their points and sit down—because they have an opportunity to get back up again to interrogate the Minister in the chair some more or to reinforce their points. So we get a bit more of an interchange.

Kia ora, thank you very much for the clarification, Mr Chair. I think we appreciate that, and, particularly from the Opposition’s perspective, we are setting the stage, and then we definitely hope to interact with the Minister of Education more. I stand to talk about clauses 4 to 37 and 39 to 71. There are approximately 10 Supplementary Order Papers around those particular themes—those clauses that we are talking to today.

First of all, can I support some of the statements by my colleagues Chris Hipkins, from the Labour Party, and Catherine Delahunty, from the Green Party. This is an opportunity. The National Education and Learning Priorities are an opportunity—there is no doubt about it. I think that the opportunity is not lost. I think that, should this bill pass, it is how they are developed that creates the next opportunity. Mr Hipkins said that Parliament has an opportunity here to set a vision for New Zealand education that would go longer than 5 years. And I would reiterate Mr Hipkins’ question to the Minister: why 5 years? Where did 5 years come from? Because, as he quite rightly pointed out, the educational journey of our children is much longer than that.

We certainly understand the need to have flexibility and oversight. If something is going wrong, you cannot just leave a generation to suffer the consequences of that, and, obviously, they are always transitioning through. But it would be a wonderful thing, if this bill passes, if the conversation afterwards around the educational learning priorities was a much wider discussion. Let us actually participate together and set a vision for education; let us say “for 30 years” and have review dates set in place—markers that we all can agree on and all can participate in—and widen that conversation.

Education has become an incredibly contentious issue, and it is not fair on the children who are involved in it. So there is an opportunity here, I believe, to actually move this from the aggressive place that education has been in for some time into a place of collegiality—that is a word you hear only in education. It would be really nice to think that after this bill passes—because, obviously, the Government has the numbers—this will not be the end of a journey and that we will have an opportunity to participate.

I want to speak to just two of the 10 Supplementary Order Papers that are currently on the Table around these particular clauses. The first one I want to pick up on is Chris Hipkins’ Supplementary Order Paper 304, which is to try to align the National Education and Learning Priorities more closely to what is actually in The New Zealand Curriculum. The New Zealand Curriculum document was developed in a way that should be a blueprint for how the National Education and Learning Priorities could be developed. I would remark that inside that Supplementary Order Paper there is not the voice of business, and there should be. We could say that business people are on boards of trustees and business people are parents, but when they come as parents and when they come as board of trustees members, they come with that hat on. There is a place for industry inside the conversation around what we need from our educational facilities for our future, because all of us want—and we do not agree with the fit for purpose comments that were made last night by a member of the Government—our young people to be able to participate and feel involved and contributing to our society. That may not be in paid employment. There is a variety of skills that our country needs, and some of it does not get paid for. But we want all of our young people, all of our community, to feel that they are valued and have a place and can contribute.

In the list, under the amendment to insert new subsection (4A) into new section 1A, suggested in Supplementary Order Paper 304, I would just suggest that there is a gap there, around industry’s voice, to do with workforce planning and what is happening inside the world, really. The requirement of the skills, the vocational skills—the Minister quite rightly pointed out the vocational pathways that have been developed over the last few years. That has changed the New Zealand education system for the better. There is an opportunity now, certainly, to continue to evolve with the holistic education that tomorrow’s schools and the New Zealand education system should pride itself on, using the vocational pathways and the vocational skills to predict what the skills are—not the job requirements; the skills—for young people in New Zealand. We can develop those.

I also want to just touch on my Supplementary Order Paper 292. It is putting in a requirement—it would amend clause 4 with new section 1A(4)—that the Minister would need to “undertake a full and transparent nationwide consultation with the public of New Zealand”. So I suppose I am just going one step further with regard to the consultation and the development of the National Education and Learning Priorities to let us make it a countrywide conversation.

I also do not believe that just academics and those inside the sector have all the answers. We are somehow cocooned, often, inside this House and we look at things from an academic or a theoretical perspective, and I think that is one of the problems when we create legislation based only upon the advice of officials. They stay in a certain place they are at. One of the ways that officials describe things is that this is “high-level thinking”. We must know how that will translate down on the ground. So there are members of our society who should have a voice inside this vision for our country, and that is the purpose of Supplementary Order Paper 292. So it would be interesting to hear from the Minister: why the 5 years? Is there an opportunity, does she see an opportunity, to expand the consultation to not only those whom she or he deems—and remember we are setting up rules in this legislation for whoever is the Minister of Education.

This is definitely not personalised to the current Minister of Education. This is an opportunity, and any restrictions or rules or barriers or boundaries or parameters that we put in place will have to be followed by anybody who comes after the current Minister of Education, whether it be with a National-led Government, a New Zealand First - led Government, or a Labour-led Government. We know what we are doing, but we have an opportunity for real collegiality here, so it would be interesting, Minister—why 5 years? What is the Minister’s view on Supplementary Order Paper 292 and Supplementary Order Paper 304 at this stage? We know where the Opposition stands on these things, but it would it be interesting to get the Government’s perspective on those two alone at this stage. Kia ora.

I just wanted to take the opportunity to answer some common questions that have been raised by the first three speakers and, perhaps, to clarify the difference between the National Education and Learning Priorities (NELP) and the objectives.

First of all, the objectives are enduring, and NELP provides a medium-term set of priorities that are directed to achieving those objectives. In respect of whether issues of equity or commitment to lifelong learning should be made explicit, it is my view that the objectives speak to each of those themes but in different ways. So, in terms of equity, objective one focuses on helping each child and young person to achieve their educational aspirations and the best of their potential. Objective two already expects the education system to develop in each child their abilities, their attributes, their social skills, to form relationships and to participate in community life, and their resilience. Objective four is certainly about kids leaving the system prepared for the world of work, which is a very big part of adult life.

The question has also been asked by Mr Hipkins and Ms Delahunty and Ms Martin as to why the statement would remain in effect for 5 years. I do not think there is a perfect time line, but what we do know is that the current National Administration Guidelines (NAGs) and the National Education Guidelines (NEGs) have no time horizon. They go on and on. We wanted a 5-year period that was not matched to a political cycle. We wanted one that was sufficiently medium term and that responded to the sector’s own consistent aspiration for there to be greater predictability, certainty, and stability in what was being required of them at a high level, and that is why the 5 years has been settled upon.

Some members have also said: “Why doesn’t the NELP and why don’t the objectives simply follow the curriculum?”. The answer there is that the curriculum is separate and distinct, and there were actually quite significant concerns that we did not simply appropriate the curriculum into legislation but that we complemented it through the high-level statement. So it is not one or the other; it is how they speak and cross-reference each other to create a context within which the sector operates.

There have been concerns about consultation. What is set out in the bill is the minimum—it is the minimum. Members will know that, in the articulation of both the NEGs and the NAGs, no consultation has been required, and it has been up to different Ministers how much might have occurred. But, in the Act, we are saying that there is a minimum of consultation. In the time that we live in now, there is high expectation that consultation will occur, and Ms Martin questioned why there was no explicit provision for business, for instance. Well, we have now established a national cross-sector forum, which not only has business present but Pacific Island churches, iwi leader forums, mayors, and police district commanders. The forum meets three to four times a year, and then we have 40 regional cross-sector forums, so we have put in place actual mechanisms that do require consultation beyond simply education.

In terms of preparation of the legislation, officials are reflecting over a 2-year period of different kinds of consultation that we have had with the sector, and then specifically, through November and December of 2015, submissions—there were over 1,800 of those—were received from the sector and from the public. Those included submissions from children. Members were concerned about children’s voices. Well, first of all, we did get submissions on those. Second of all, every board of trustees is required to have a student voice on it. Thirdly, I actively invited all schools to consider running an inquiry approach to studying this legislation and to consider making submissions to the select committee, which, of course, the committee was free to do also.

Thank you so much for this opportunity to make a contribution on the Education (Update) Amendment Bill. I would like to make a contribution that focuses initially on clause 4, inserting new section 1A(4) in the Education Act 1989, which continues on from the honourable Minister of Education’s comments on consultation.

New section 1A(4) states that “Before issuing a statement under this section, the Minister must consult with those stakeholders in the early childhood and compulsory education sectors that he or she considers ought to be consulted.” One of the strongest, most persuasive submissions that the Education and Science Committee heard was from the Children’s Commissioner, Andrew Becroft, and what he told us was that children have not been consulted on this legislation. He stated: “The education system exists for children.” Submissions on this particular bill—he said that the most important stakeholders that this bill will affect are our children. Therefore, they should be consulted, and the best interests of our children should be taken into account.

He came with a submission that included this “STOP” sign. He told us that, as a select committee, we should stop with this bill, consult our children, and then come back to ensure that the voices of the children are heard. I heard what the honourable Minister Hekia Parata said—that there were one or two student representatives on boards—but there was no direct consultation with actual children, otherwise the Children’s Commissioner would have told us that the children’s voices had actually been consulted.

The Post Primary Teachers’ Association and many other submitters also told us that the children’s voices are not heard even within this. Kaylene Macnee and Main Road School also made submissions along these lines. One of the submitters, whose name is Joanna Fissenden, said that particular groups should be mandatory—before we go implementing changes to the Education Act, we should consult with particular groups, including children and young people, children with disabilities, Māori and Pasifika children, parents and whānau, and proprietors of State integrated schools. These folks were not consulted. But the point that I am trying to make is that the voices of our children are not even being heard before we go about making the largest changes to this legislation in over 30 years.

Some of the submitters also told us that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which we as a country have signed up to, is not even considered in this bill. The United Kingdom and the United States both include the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as well as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in their education legislation. We do not even do that in this particular bill. The joint submission from YouthLaw Aotearoa, IHC, and Action for Children and Youth Aotearoa told us that we should include a separate purpose statement in this bill that will provide all of us with useful guidance. We know that we have signed up to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, but late last year, the UN committee—pursuant to article 12 of the convention—made repeated calls for us to uphold the rights of our children, especially our children who are marginalised. It also named Māori and Pacific children amongst those.

When we do not include the rights of all children, we should really question what we are doing here in passing legislation in haste that does not actually address all of our children. I put it to the Minister that she has the Education Council. In my opinion, the Minister has not listened to the majority of the 216 submissions, because when we look at the legislation that we have in front of us and compare it with the form of the legislation before it went through the select committee, there are some changes, but very few changes.

I will give an example. When you look at what the Education Council recommended to the honourable Minister, it said that the Minister should include this: “to provide learning experiences which support children and young people to reach their potential and a system which aims to achieve equitable outcomes for all;”. The Minister just explained that we do not necessarily need to have equitable outcomes—or, indeed, all children—in the legislation, but why not? Why do we not ensure that there is an equitable outcome for all of our children? Why not?

This Government would have us believe that when it puts aside a measly $92 per student, per year, to follow the most at-risk kids, apparently that deals with equity and makes it so that all children across all of New Zealand should have equity of outcome. Inequality is an issue that has not been addressed under this Government. In fact, it has gotten worse. When we look at, say, students in areas like South Auckland, which I represent, we know that the majority of the schools in South Auckland are low decile—decile 1 to decile 3, in fact. The majority of Pacific students—close to 70 percent of Pacific students—attend decile 1 to decile 3 schools. To me, it is a bit of a farce that this Government would say that putting aside $92 per student, per year, is somehow going to make outcomes more equal for all students—$92 does not even buy the whole set of a uniform.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am just looking at the themes for the member. Equity funding is not part of this, so can you just concentrate on the theme.

Thank you, Mr Chairman. I will move on to new section 1A(3), inserted by clause 4. It sets out the objectives of the education system. A lot of the submissions said that the achievement and learning of children and young people should be central in this particular bill.

The City of Manukau Education Trust in Auckland proposed that we should have a fourth objective. I do not see this fourth objective in the new bill. It recommended that we “work towards equity of outcomes across ethnicities, genders and socio-economic groups, at all levels of the system for education and learning.” This is not currently covered. The New Zealand Educational Institute stated in its submission that the objectives should also include equity. I heard the Minister say earlier on that equity is not included, but again I ask why not. Why is equity not included in the wording of the bill? It should be. Thank you.

I want to take an opportunity to address two issues that have come up, which I have responded to, but I just want to be really emphatic about this. The consultation period in preparation for this bill was 2 years. It involved forums and workshops, and provided opportunities for submissions and regional collaborations. It specifically involved my repeated invitation to schools to involve their young people in the process. May I say that the select committee was never precluded from inviting submissions from children.

Secondly, in terms of the international declarations and commitments that members have been commending, those are the overarching documents and commitments that our Government and all Governments observe. In terms of the rights of the child, which are the specific concerns that have been articulated, sections 3 and 8 in the principal legislation speak to the rights of all people to have education, and clearly that includes children.

Firstly, can I thank the Minister Hekia Parata for her answers to some of the earlier questions. I do want to go back to the Minister’s conversation around the lack of need to actually put in the word “equity”. I think she is referring to Catherine Delahunty’s Supplementary Order Paper 301, which Catherine Delahunty referred to in her earlier contribution. I accept what the Minister said with regard to the objective bullet points, and I thank her for it. However, it would be our view that in the bullet points she is talking to, “equity” is the recognition of difference as a different starting point, shall we say? I think the Minister has to address it right now with regard to decile funding. The original situation with regard to decile funding was to address different starting points with regard to resources. That is what I think Catherine Delahunty is attempting to address specifically in the particular objectives that the Minister drew out.

New Zealand First will be supporting that particular Supplementary Order Paper, Supplementary Order Paper 301, because, in our view, they are slightly different. It is around making sure that we have recognition, that there are different starting points, and that those starting points must be addressed to at least get our students to the same place before the objectives start to kick in. Possibly the Minister might just take that on for a second and consider that.

Perhaps I should declare a conflict of interest. I was one of the members of a board of trustees that participated in the consultation that took place for the 2-year period.

I would like to suggest that the Minister make public the consultation documents put together by her officials. That may actually fill a hole—that silence that always means somebody else is going to put a conversation into. When I participated in that consultation process, I observed that many things were off the table that have appeared inside this bill. They are in later clauses—for example, the ability to appoint a trustee to the board of trustees and make that person the presiding trustee or the chair. We will get on to that later because it is in a different section and a different Supplementary Order Paper.

Just to be clear, New Zealand First will be supporting Supplementary Order Paper 292 and Chris Hipkins’ Supplementary Order Paper 304. Catherine Delahunty’s Supplementary Order Paper 301, on the inclusion of “and to focus on equity as a key goal for the education system”—I would suggest that there is no harm in including equity as a key goal of the education system, Minister. I believe it is something we all want to achieve. We want to make sure that every single one of our young people has the best opportunity, and I hear the Minister articulate that all the time. So “Why not?” would be the question, and I understand the Minister is pointing to the objectives, but perhaps we could go a bit further.

With regard to Catherine Delahunty’s Supplementary Order Paper 303, the Minister also addressed this, and we thank her for that. It is about that commitment of our education system to lifelong, intergenerational learning. It would appear somewhat odd, considering that all of us have had slogans during election years and have had continual—this piece of language, “lifelong learning”, is a continual statement inside all educational conversations, whether they be political or whether they be with NGOs, and so on and so forth. So New Zealand First will be supporting Supplementary Order Paper 303 merely to make it clear that there is no end to this, and the State does have a responsibility to make sure that all its citizens can continue to advance, can continue to upskill, and can continue to change.

Does that mean we go back to Moroccan cooking classes? No, I do not think it does, and, let us be clear, that was never funded by the State to start with. But what it does mean is that we have people continuing to evolve, and the State has a responsibility: if we do not want people to fall off the employment pathway, we need to keep them on the educational pathway. So we will also be supporting Supplementary Order Paper 303.

As I say, there is a minimum of 10 Supplementary Order Papers. I would like to talk about Supplementary Order Paper 302. Again, this is in the name of Catherine Delahunty, and I apologise to my colleague, but we cannot support this Supplementary Order Paper. We have a concern about capacity, actually, more than we have a concern about anything else, and we also take on board some of the Minister’s comments that she has made leading up to this point.

There is a Te Reo Māori curriculum, and it will be interesting once the National Education and Learning Priorities and the objectives all get fleshed out to see where the place of the Te Reo Māori curriculum for English-medium schools and Māori-medium schools is. Where is that? Where is that going to be placed in those educational learning priorities? The reality is that when things are placed in the learning priorities, there will need to be budgetary items downstream from that, and they will need to be funded by the State. That is a natural progression. So if the Te Reo Māori curriculum is finally given some higher status in the learning priorities alongside The New Zealand Curriculum, then budget will need to be attached to that.

So we would be interested in having downstream conversations about that, in terms of how that can be given greater status and how teachers of Māori can be better resourced to deliver support to mainstream English-medium teachers to do what they should be doing, which is interweaving Te Reo Māori through everyday classrooms. I know that we talked last night about the code of conduct being developed by the Education Council and how there must be support for our mainstream teaching staff to be able to pronounce children’s names. I do not meet many teachers—actually, I do not meet any teachers—who deliberately go out of their way to do that. Others may be able to speak to that, but I do not. But the teachers whom I do meet are those who are too frightened of getting it wrong and who want some support. While we cannot support Supplementary Order Paper 302, we do believe—we hope—that as the National Education and Learning Priorities get fleshed out, the Te Reo Māori curriculum will perhaps be elevated into those themes.

I will talk now about Supplementary Order Paper 293, and it is going to be the last one I am going to get to in this contribution. It is my Supplementary Order Paper, and it is around shifting the cohort entry age to being after the fifth birthday. I am struggling to understand, Minister, and I hope you can provide me with some enlightenment on why it is 4 years, 10 months. I mean, again, a void has been there. We were unable to get any explanation of that from the officials at the select committee. We have got a piece of paper where Treasury showed that there would be a predicted $11.3 million saving out of the early childhood education spend. We hesitate to think that that is the driver behind setting an age that is actually lowering the school entry age, Minister. We were not provided with any evidence that it was educationally better for students to actually go into school at 4 years, 10 months.

I recognise, and you and I both know, Minister, that cohort entry had been around for a long time. Boards of trustees have been able to do it. What this is about is it has actually made it so that cohort entry could be made for 4 years, 10 months. Previously, it had to be after the fifth birthday. It was never written anywhere, but children did not start school until after 5, and this now actually implements the truancy process, should those children then start to not attend school on a regular basis.

So if the Minister could just address that with the question of Supplementary Order Paper 293—would the Minister support making an amendment so that, for the cohort entry, all other things would remain the same except that the child must enter the cohort after their fifth birthday, not at the closest cohort entry at 2 months before their fifth birthday? Thank you.

I would really like to answer as comprehensively as possible the issue of equity that is being raised, quite properly, by members of the House, and that is to say that when the objectives provide for each and every child reaching his or her potential, that is the equitable outcome that we are focused on.

I agree with the member Ms Martin that children start at different points, but the whole point of this objective is that regardless of where children start from, there must be equitable outcomes for each and every one of them. That is further buttressed in the bill by the references to what boards will be required. It is in new schedule 6, which says that a board’s objectives in governing a school include that the board must ensure that the school is inclusive of, and caters for, students with differing needs. So, in different ways throughout the legislation, there is the explicit requirement to get each child what they need for them to be successful, and that is the definition of equity that I am looking for—that they get the best results possible for themselves.

On the matter of cohort entry, just recently raised by Ms Martin, first of all I want to repeat that this is completely voluntary. Schools are not required to adopt cohort entry, but for those schools that wish to, they must consult, and after consultation, they can introduce it.

Secondly, parents choosing to have cohort entry are not required to start their child at the age closest to their fifth birthday but before it. They can choose exactly what the member is commending—after 5, or closest to their child turning 6, but certainly before they turn 6. So nothing about cohort entry is compulsive or prescriptive, but the evidence that we have for new entrant teachers is that it is, in their view, more effective for kids to start with a group and begin their transition from early learning and progress through their first and second terms together.

The third point I would make is that New Zealand is alone in the countries we compare ourselves with, in having continuous entry. Thank you.

I too want to talk about cohort entry, and I have got a number of questions for the Minister in the chair on that. I just want to make one sort of concluding remark on consultation around the process. This folder that I have here, entitled “Education Act Review”, summarises, I think, some of the consultation that went on before the bill was introduced in the House, and I do want to acknowledge the process that the Minister and the ministry engaged with. I think people enjoyed the opportunity to discuss the Act. I think that where the concern arises is that there were a number of elements that drew together at the end of that consultation process that are not reflected in the bill, or regarding which the Government has taken a different view. I think that that is where you get the comment from people around the statement of National Education and Learning Priorities that “Even if there is consultation, we might not get what we want.” I think that is where some of the anxiety arises.

But moving on to cohort entry—I noted the Minister’s contribution around the fact that we are one of the outliers in the OECD in terms of having kids starting whenever their parents want after the age of 5. I want to question a bit more the educational research that underpins the Government’s decision to move to a cohort entry system, because the Education Review Office did a review of our existing transitions from early childhood education through to schooling, and it actually found that that was one of the strengths of the New Zealand system. Because kids are starting school individually, the schools are able to put together a more individualised, if you like, wraparound package for the kids when they start school. The Education Review Office actually found that, internationally, we are one of the best countries at doing that—at supporting that transition from early childhood education through to schooling. I guess what I would like to ask the Minister in that regard is: how are we going to ensure that we do not lose something that is internationally recognised now as a strength of our system, when we move to cohort entry?

The second part—these are all fairly rapid-fire questions on cohort entry—is the impact on early childhood education centres. The Early Childhood Council has estimated that $12 million will go out of the early childhood sector as a result of the cohort entry policy. I would be interested in what work the Minister has done around the impact on early childhood services and whether cohort entry will have an effect on the financial viability of any of them.

It was also noted by officials during the process that school is free but early childhood education is not, so therefore it creates a financial incentive for parents to enrol kids at school as soon as they can, rather than it being an educational incentive. What I would be interested in, from the Minister’s view, is how the Government will ensure that it is educational decision-making driving that decision rather than cost.

Around the 4-year-olds being allowed to enrol, I am interested in why the Government chose to allow the 4 years and 10 months rather than the first cohort after the fifth birthday. In response to the Minister’s comment around “Well, it’s not compulsory.”, the issue is that it is compulsory once they are enrolled. This is one of the changes that is being made—that is, once a 4-year-old, if they are 4 years and 10 months, is enrolled in school, it then becomes compulsory. I understand why this frustrates schools, because if a 5-year-old was enrolled, it was not compulsory for them to attend until they turned the age of 6, and this bill changes that quite a lot. So I guess the element of compulsion that comes in here is what we do in the situation where a 4-year-old starts school at 4 years and 10 months and then the parent decides: “Actually, maybe that was too soon. Maybe this isn’t quite the right decision for that child. Maybe we should be going back to an early childhood setting for a few months.” Where does that leave the parents? Because, at the moment, the change that this bill makes is that once a child starts school, that is it; it is compulsory for them to then attend.

The next part that I want to probe, I guess, is how to ensure that schools make decisions around cohort entry based on educational practice and the best transitions rather than what is going to be the most administratively efficient. This bill devolves that decision to the schools, but, actually, we want the schools, if they are going to have that autonomy around that—how do we make sure that they are making the decision for the right reasons rather than because it is the most administratively efficient?

The next question I have is around 6-year-olds, because cohort entry does not actually apply to 6-year-olds. If a child has not enrolled in a school up until their sixth birthday, they simply go to school the day after their sixth birthday, regardless of whether that is as part of a cohort or not. I am interested in why the Government chose to exclude those 6-year-olds from the cohort entry policy.

The final question that I have is around some advice that the ministry provided in its supplementary advice to the Education and Science Committee. The ministry talked about rejecting the alternative approach—some of which I have just canvassed—on page 3 of the supplementary questions we gave. It stated, and this is a direct quote: “These alternative approaches will result in additional fiscal costs for the Crown. More children would stay in ECE longer, resulting in additional ECE costs for the Government. There is no offsetting reduction in schooling costs,”. For me, that rang an alarm bell, because—I am open to cohort entry; I genuinely am open to cohort entry if there is a good educational reason for it—I just want to be sure that we are doing this in the best interests of the child’s education rather than because it is the most administratively efficient or generates the most cost savings.

I am happy to leave it at that. I mean, I think there are plenty of questions in there for the Minister to address at some point.

I would just like to say that I really appreciate the process where we are having a direct dialogue and talking about these things together, because we do not get much opportunity.

Just briefly, on cohort entry, I was originally quite open to this idea as well, not for administrative efficiency but because of the social aspects of children joining a group when they start school and staying with that group and building up friendships, etc. But I just want to say that I am supporting Tracey Martin’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) because of the submissions. We did not hear, at the Education and Science Committee, from early childhood teachers or teachers in the year 1 and 2 classes of schools that this was a good idea. I was quite surprised. I thought maybe the schools would be in favour of it and that it was something that had currency, but we did not hear that. We actually had no one say to us that it is a great idea, that I can remember. All we heard from early childhood teachers and infant teachers—I am sure they are not called that any more—was that it was not such a good idea and that they did not think it was justified in educational terms. That did actually shift my thinking, so I am pleased to support the SOP.

The other aspect of it, I guess, that has perhaps not been covered is that I think the educational leaders of the country need to see the bottom line, because parents are under enormous pressure all the time to go to work. They need to survive. So any pressure that increases the idea that your children should be in school earlier than at 5 years, I do not think we should reinforce. I think that we should reinforce the idea that 5 years is the bare minimum for when kids are ready to go into the formal education system, because there is a big difference between Te Whāriki and being in year 1 at school. As a grandmother, I have just sort of lived through those changes with my mokopuna, and I can see there is a big difference between how you are at 4 years and 10 months and how you are after 5 years, and when you are ready. I just do not want us reinforcing that. So although I was initially open to it, I have come around to the view, after hearing the submitters, that it is not the right thing to do in this legislation.

On a couple of other points that the Minister of Education raised—and I really appreciate hearing from her about this—I think, however, we are missing the point around conventions not being in the Act. My SOP on the conventions issue and my SOP on adult and community education are there because I know that it is obvious to those who are familiar with the sector that this is implied, but the point about law is that it is not about implication; it is about the ability for people to use a law when things are not going so well for them. So if it is not spelt out, they cannot use the legislation. The reason that the disability sector and parents—particularly Education for All and all the groups that are advocating for children for whom the system is not working—wanted this in there is that they want the test. They really want to be able to go to the Education Act and say to a school that has actually excluded their child for reasons that become very, very fraught—and I am dealing with a number of those cases, and I know that the ministry is, and I know how tough it is for everybody—that section 8 actually is not enough, because there are behavioural dimensions in section 8 of the existing Act, which means that children can be excluded on behavioural grounds when they have major learning support needs. I have lived these issues, and our inquiry lived these issues. We need a test that is stronger than that in the law, so that the law can be used.

It is the same with adult and community education. I do not doubt for a minute that the Minister and others have a deep understanding of intergenerational lifelong learning. That is not the problem. The problem is that the sector asked us to put it into the law as a national objective so that when it comes to their negotiations around funding, their negotiations around their status, and for the opportunity to develop adult and community education, they could say it is in the law that it is a priority. So what we see is very different from what the people in the community, trying to work with the Education Act and trying to lift the status of their part of the Act, see. If it is not there for them, then it is not there.

So that is why I have been arguing very strongly that these issues are about not just what is implicit but what is explicit, and some of this debate is about that. That is where I would like to leave it for now. Thanks.

Tēnā koe, e Te Heamana. I too want to speak to the National Education and Learning Priorities statement, in new Part 1AA inserted by clause 4, and, in particular, give voice to some of the submissions on new section 1A(3)(c)(iv) “the Treaty of Waitangi and te reo Māori.”, and also to speak to Supplementary Order Paper 302. The Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) felt that that line ought to be rephrased in line with the submission from the Education Council, which said that it should be rephrased to: “the Treaty of Waitangi … and having knowledge of tikanga and te reo Māori.” So that was the suggested change from them.

I also wanted to talk about the submission from Dr Mere Skerrett and Associate Professor Jenny Ritchie, who felt that it did not go far enough and that there should be—and I was really pleased to hear the Minister of Education say that these were minimum requirements. So we have the PPTA and the Education Council that want that minimum to be raised a bit higher. Dr Skerrett and Associate Professor Ritchie want to move it up to even another level, and they are saying that it ought to be rephrased as: “promote the learning of and through Te Reo”, so, in other words, let the Reo be the basis for implementing what it says in the bill as it stands here. So I stand in support of Supplementary Order Paper 302 in the name of Catherine Delahunty.

I want to acknowledge Tracey Martin’s contribution, in the sense of whether we have the capacity to implement that straight away. But my position is that we need to take note of the changing environment that we live in, and only recently Auckland University of Technology published on its website yet another survey it has done, with nearly 6,000 participants, which shows consistency with others that have been published: that there is a rising number of people who support this very thing—the teaching of Te Reo Māori as a core subject in the national curriculum up to year 10, in the case of this Supplementary Order Paper.

So in the spirit of the new nature of this debate, I am going to leave it there, and I hope to have a response. Kia ora.

If I could just answer the further specific questions around the cohort entry age that have been asked—in particular, what kind of research has been done on this? The problem is that it has been very difficult to do research on it, because New Zealand is such an outlier. There is significant research on cohort entry and on groups travelling through, but comparable research—next to nothing.

Secondly, there was a further question around concern about ensuring that the smoother transitions from early childhood to new entrants are not compromised by cohort entry, which is a concern I share with Mr Hipkins. We have made it very clear that, as part of the operational effectiveness of the new communities of learning and kāhui ako, one of the explicit and specific expectations is to ensure that that happens between all early childhood education services and schools, rather than at the moment, where it happens around the country. So, yes, we share your concern.

To respond to Ms Delahunty, yesterday we in fact launched, on its 21st birthday, a refresh of Te Whāriki and of making sure that the curriculum objectives there are very much up to date with supporting young people and their transitions. So I think that is another indication of how serious we are as a Government to invest into that space.

Then, of course, a question was asked—I am not sure now which member it was now; I think it might have been Mr Hipkins—about what happens if a parent exercises the flexibility to send their child in an early cohort and then finds that that, actually, is just not working for their child, particularly since we are compelling them, once enrolled, to stay. The bill enables a flexible plan and a review for that particular age group. Speaking to the compulsion part, what we do know from evidence is that too many parents are starting their child in the continuous entry way by taking them in and out of school until they are 6, and that is extremely disruptive.

Finally, we are asked “What support is there for this?”, because there were not a lot of submitters at the Education and Science Committee. I can tell you there was significant support. First of all, the Advisory Group on Early Learning, which met right through to the middle of 2015, formally recommended that this should occur. When the ministry consulted, we received support—80 percent from teachers, 68 percent from boards, and 76 percent from parents. So there was widespread support, and I do not know whether Committee members would agree, but sometimes you will get more representation from those opposed than from those who do agree. Thank you.

It is my view that it is now reasonable to move to the next theme.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. There are still five other Supplementary Order Papers that have not been addressed in these clauses, because we have not had the opportunity to actually address them.

I say to the member that she has had four calls, during that time, to canvass the Supplementary Order Papers and the amendments that are on the Table. The Business Committee has made the determination that if the Chairperson at the time believes that the views have been put forward—and the Minister, in this case, has answered those questions posed to her—then it is reasonable to move to the next theme on the—[Interruption] No, look, I have explained the position. The members will sit. I have explained the position. This is a determination of the Business Committee that the Chairperson has the discretion as to whether we move to the next theme, and I am exercising that discretion.

💬 Tracey Martin: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): If you are relitigating what I have already ruled on, Ms Martin, then that is out of order. Is this a new point of order?

💬 Tracey Martin: Yes, Mr Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Tracey Martin—a new point of order.

Mr Chairperson, if you are going to close off the conversation around these particular clauses, based on the Business Committee’s decisions, knowing that there are Supplementary Order Papers that have not been addressed, I would like to recall the Speaker. [Interruption]

Order! The Speaker cannot be recalled, because this is a determination of the Business Committee, and the determination of the Business Committee is that when the Chairperson believes that there has been a reasonable debate and there has been a dialogue—and, in this case, the Minister has been posed questions and has answered those questions—we will move on to the next theme within the debate, and that is what I intend to do now. So there is no further debate.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. While I am not questioning the determination of the Business Committee in providing you with the ability to exercise discretion, if the discretion is based on the number of calls sought and had by members, I sought the call twice and was rejected from having the opportunity to take a call.

No, it is not. I hear what the member is saying. It is not based on that at all. I keep a record of the calls. I am more interested—this is a themed debate. This is the first time we are doing a themed debate as opposed to a part-by-part debate, so I am interested in the dialogue that has gone on and in the debate and the speeches that have been made in terms of the content of what has happened within a particular theme. I am satisfied that it has been well canvassed, and I am also satisfied that the Minister has taken advantage of the opportunity to answer those questions posed of her. So we are now moving to the next theme. Members, we now move to the debate on communities of online learning, and this comprises clauses 38, 72, and 145(3).

Clauses 38, 72, and 145(3)