Education (Update) Amendment Bill

Just with regard to Supplementary Order Paper 306, which is actually about clause 38, which is inside the previous sections there, it does deal with communities of online learning. There is a Supplementary Order Paper there in my name that makes some wording changes around new section 35ZJ(3).

That is because at the moment the way the bill reads is that the Minister may make grants to communities of online learning, and they may be made unconditionally. We find that interesting. That is in new section 35ZJ, inserted by clause 38. We find it very interesting that public money would be able to be granted by a Minister—any Minister—unconditionally, so there would be no conditions and no accountability on that money. Supplementary Order Paper 306 actually seeks to amend that wording so that there is accountability for any grant made by a Minister to a community of learning inside this piece of legislation.

If I can move on to Supplementary Order Paper 298, I ask the Minister whether she would take a call around what I have sought to do here, which is to delete from new section 78LD, inserted by clause 60, the words “and the Minister may also appoint that trustee as the presiding trustee.” New Zealand First has no objection at all with regard to the Minister’s capacity to, as an earlier intervention, appoint a trustee to a board of trustees. Many boards of trustees, particularly those that find it difficult to get to the School Trustees Association training, do need some support from an educational professional or somebody who understands the governance of schools.

But we ask Minister Parata why she feels the need to actually designate this person the presiding trustee—the chair. On a board of trustees the chair has no more power than anybody else. They merely coordinate the meeting. They are an equal trustee and have one vote, like anybody else on the board of trustees. The difference is that the chair of the board has two major roles. One is the relationship with the principal, and so we are interested in why the Minister would need the power to create the presiding trustee and thereby immediately affect that relationship with the principal. It gives us cause for concern, and the School Trustees Association also articulated this concern—that this could have a chilling effect on the relationship between the board of trustees and the principal.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the member. We are actually on theme 2, not theme 3. According to my advice, it is communities of online learning. So the boards of trustees that you are mentioning come into theme 3, specifically mentioned as boards of trustees and management of schools. So we are actually on theme 2—all right?

Sorry, thank you. So we are talking clauses 38 to 72 and clause 145(3)—thank you very much, Mr Chair.

So let us switch over to a conversation with regard to Supplementary Order Paper 309. This is in the name of Catherine Delahunty. I would ask the Minister whether she could indicate whether the Government will support this Supplementary Order Paper. It would create a parental advocacy council. This is something that the Ombudsman supported. The Ombudsman supported it because, as the Minister will have heard and as those who have been on boards of trustees will know, particularly with discipline hearings, often there are situations where a child is excluded or expelled, and the only avenue of conversation that a parent has after that is actually with the Ombudsman. This can take a very long time—particularly currently, with the Ombudsman’s workload.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I will just interrupt the member again. This is communities of online learning, so what you are talking about there is outside the scope of the theme. When we are dealing with themes, it is a bit difficult to do it part by part. This is actually a themed debate. I will just ask the member to come back—it is about communities of online learning, and specifically covers, as I mentioned right at the beginning, clauses 38, 72, and 145(3).

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. If you have a look at Supplementary Order Paper 309, it inserts a new clause 38A. So if we are discussing clauses 38, 72, and 145(3), this directly impacts this section, which is why I am speaking to it. I will leave it there, but it creates a new clause 38A inside this area of concern.

So if we want to talk about communities of learning, clause 38, let us do that. We have two Supplementary Order Papers on the Table, Supplementary Order Papers 295 and 296 in my name. These will amend new sections 35T and 35T(1), inserted by clause 38, to remove the opportunity for a body corporate to be created to actually run a community of online learning. While we certainly understand and support what is currently going on inside of New Zealand schools, which is the e-learning and the online content that is being delivered—it has been delivered for some time—one of the two reasons that have been given, and the Minister could comment further, for creating communities of online learning is that Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu is overloaded. It is well outside the parameters of what was originally intended for Te Kura, The Correspondence School, so the community of online learning has been suggested.

E-learning inside of mainstream face-to-face schools has also been taking place, but it has been taking place at a cost on the operations grants and/or transitioning teacher time. What the sector really needs is not to have to compete with bodies corporate, or private providers or online charters, as some might refer to them, as would be created under clause 38. What they need are the parameters by which inside the schooling sector, inside the education sector, they can formalise communities of online learning. You might put them through the communities of—what are they called now? COOLs, COLs—

💬 Catherine Delahunty: COLs.

So you might use those to create a community of online learning and put some funding around it. So what they are looking for is some structure. Interestingly enough, schools had some funding for their e-learning platforms up until around about 2010. Then this was removed, and they have had to use, as I said, operations grants and staffing time.

I do not have high expectations that the Minister will support my Supplementary Order Papers 295 and 296, but I would ask the Minister to address those three Supplementary Order Papers. What is the Government’s view on the creation of a parental advocacy council, which could also mediate between parents and schools rather than elevating to too high up into the Ministry of Education or to the Ombudsman, who is incredibly overloaded? I will also ask the Minister to comment on Supplementary Order Papers 295 and 296. Why not, with the first stage of communities of online learning, restrict those to being delivered only by registered schools, and Te Kura is a registered school underneath the criteria at the moment, and also by current tertiary providers that are State tertiary providers—e.g., New Zealand universities and polytechs—rather than opening it up to private providers at this stage? I would appreciate the Minister’s comments.

I am just going to make a comment here on Supplementary Order Paper 309, which the member referred to, in the name of Catherine Delahunty. This is the parent advocacy council, inserting new Part 6. This comes under miscellaneous provisions, so is not a part of these themes that we are on at the moment.

I am very happy to take a call on communities of online learning. It is perhaps a far more controversial part of the bill than the earlier provisions that we were debating, although there was some controversy in those as well.

I want to canvass some of the concerns that have been raised about communities of online learning and put some of the questions to the Minister of Education about how the Government proposes to address them. The first point that I would note is that there are still a lot of questions to be answered about how communities of online learning—basically, online schools—would operate.

The regulatory framework as set by legislation for these schools is so much sketchier, compared with every other school in the country. Many of the other provisions that we are debating here over an education Act that spans hundreds of pages relate to changing provisions around existing schooling. There are hundreds and hundreds of pages of primary law that relate to how schools should operate, and now we are establishing a new category of school in this bill that has only a couple of pages relating to it.

The primary legislation relating to communities of online learning is very, very sketchy when compared with the legislation that governs the operation of other schools, so my first question to the Government is why was all the work on how these would operate not done before the legislation was brought to the House. It seems to me that the Parliament is being asked by the Government to “Just trust us that we will do this by regulation.”, when, actually, the House has not just trusted the Government to determine how other schools will operate. We have got primary legislation that governs that.

In terms of some of the specific concerns that were raised by submitters to the Education and Science Committee, the first really deals with people with disabilities and at-risk learners. There was a general concern raised by submitters that online learning would be seen as a dumping ground for the most difficult students and the most at-risk students in the education system—those who are behaviourally difficult to manage within schools, or whose additional learning needs makes them more challenging for a school to provide education for. So the first question to the Minister on this particular topic is to ask how the Government is going to ensure that that does not happen—that online learning provision is not seen as the de facto alternative for kids who do not necessarily easily fit the kind of standard mould of the school system. I think that that is a particularly important one.

The Ombudsman raised concerns about that, along with many of the disability groups, during the select committee process, and many submitters also noted that through the United Nations conventions that we have signed up to, we have signed up to an inclusive education system, and online learning providers will need to adhere to the principles of those international conventions. So how will the Government ensure that all of our commitments around equal opportunities in education and support for people with disabilities will be met by the online learning providers? Certainly, the primary law around that is less specific.

The next set of questions, really, is around the value of having kids attend a school, and the social interactions that come with that. If a child is sitting at home—or wherever they might be—engaging on a laptop, how will they be exposed to the types of social interactions that are actually an integral part of the educational process?

Education is about learning to read and write, do maths, and all of those other things. But if we go back to the debate we had in the last theme that we were addressing, when we talked about why we have a public education system and the things that we want kids to develop—we want them to have resilience, good interpersonal skills, and all of those things that we have now inserted into the legislation as being desirable—how will the Government ensure that the kids who are not in a school but who are engaging through an online provider are still getting that level of exposure to other people and to other kids, which is also an integral part of their educational journey? Actually, some of the kids who might be drawn naturally to online learning provision are often the kids who benefit most from being in an environment that sometimes takes them a little bit outside their comfort zone and forces them to interact with other kids, so I would hate to see them being shut out from the educational experiences there.

I think the third question I have for the Minister is around kids in isolated and rural communities, and how the Government will ensure that, again, this is not seen as the de facto option for those children. We have got a number of very, very small schools in New Zealand, and I can see the member opposite, Todd Barclay, nodding. He has got a number of them in his electorate.

💬 Todd Barclay: 69.

Yes. But they are very small schools. Some of them have got only half a dozen kids at them, and they are the most expensive for the Government to operate. I know that this is something that successive Ministers of Education have looked at, and the conclusion they have reached is that, actually, we can continue to provide those very small schools and fund them because that is the way we ensure quality educational opportunities for those kids.

One of the anxieties that was raised during the process was that online learning could be seen as an alternative to the ongoing provision of very small educational providers—small schools—in rural and isolated areas. So I would like some reassurance from the current Government that it will not be seeing this as an alternative. In fact, how will it ensure that this does not become the alternative in those areas?

We were presented with some very good evidence at the select committee of the online learning experiences from overseas—the United States, in particular—where online charter schools have been in existence for significantly longer than anything equivalent to them on this side of the world. It highlighted some successes—there were some successes—but the failures were greater than the successes. That is not to say that we should not pick and up learn from the success stories, because there certainly were some, but we should also learn from the failures.

I was particularly interested in the research by Michael Barbour from Touro University, who gave a very detailed summary of the international studies that have been done on online learning provision, particularly in the United States. It found that when online learning is done badly, it is done very badly, and the effect on those children is huge. It found that—I have not got the numbers right in front of me, but in terms of their literacy progression, the kids who were doing bad online learning provision were behind by about 73 days, I think, or 78 days out of 180 days in their learning, and in maths, they were 180 days behind out of 180 days of their learning. In other words, their numeracy did not progress at all through online learning provision, and their literacy, relative to the expectations, was significantly below.

That was from the bad providers, but one of our jobs as parliamentarians is to ensure that we do not end up with bad providers as a result of this legislative change. So I am interested in knowing how the Government will ensure that that does not happen, because I think that that is important.

Then we come to the regulatory impact statement, in terms of what is driving this. The regulatory impact statement states “The Act discourages other providers from entering the market” and the Government uses that as the justification for changing this, and yet if we go back to why the original Education Act in New Zealand was passed, in 1877, the principle behind passing it was that the public has a right—a fundamental legal right—to a public education. It is not a market place; it is a right. So why the competition?

What is the driver behind wanting more competition in this space? If it is simply to modernise The Correspondence School, that is something that I can sign up to—no problem. I think the correspondence school legislation is absolutely in need of updating. The correspondence school legislation was passed in the days when the school used to post out workbooks, and they would be posted back. Now, of course, most of the correspondence school provision is online, and of course the law needs to be updated to reflect that.

I did correspondence. I did correspondence through my local school because that correspondence provision was an alternative—so you could have a wider range of subjects. The school did not have the resources to offer all the subjects, so I did history and French. My French was not very good—do not ask me to speak anything—but I did do history successfully through correspondence, because my school was unable to offer it. Now kids are doing that online at their local school. That is great.

If this is about extending the range of options available to schools in terms of online learning provisions so that the kids still get that social interaction with their peers and the pastoral care that comes with going to school, that is something that I can sign up to as well, because I think that that would be great. I think that schools are already doing some really good things in that space, with sharing teachers through online provision and so on. So I want to know what the driver is behind the legislative change, because there is already stuff that is happening.

It is not just about modernising The Correspondence School. This bill goes far wider than that, and there are real pitfalls in it.

I would like to address questions that have been asked both by Ms Martin and, just recently, by Mr Hipkins. The overriding interest in establishing in the legislation the provision for communities of online learning (COOLs) is not one thing or the other; it is not about either modernising Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu or providing for there to be more providers, but it is absolutely about being realistic about what the future looks like for our young people. That is why the Government has, for instance, invested so much to make sure that all schools are connected and that they do get 24/7 ultra-fast, high-quality data. But it also recognises that there are diverse providers of education, and we see that through our system now.

To speak to the specific questions, this is not because te kura is overloaded. Te kura welcomes the introduction of this legislation, and I will quote shortly from its submission. The legislation includes a two-stage approval process, with an Education Review Office review prior to full accreditation. An interventions regime will apply to COOLs to measure that they are delivering what they propose they are delivering. It includes an ability to set additional conditions.

Members have properly expressed concerns about whether this is going to be a place that is the only recourse for the mainstream system, which finds it difficult to deal with some kids. Again the answer to that is no. We have been very emphatic with the education system and we have seen that stand downs and exclusions and early-leaving exemptions have all trended down, because we are clear that we want to maintain the very high standard we have around inclusion. So no, that is not what is intended here. The same kinds of disciplines will be provided to communities of learning.

If I could refer members to clause 38 of the bill, they will see that prospective COOLs must satisfy criteria to be accredited by the Minister, and these will include providing a safe and secure learning environment, providing an appropriate curriculum and tuition standard, having the capacity to meet its pastoral care and student well-being responsibilities—and I want to emphasise that—and having equipment that is suitable for the curriculum and mode of online education delivery. The enrolling entity, be it a school or a COOL, will be responsible for a full learning programme of children.

So I just want to quickly quote te kura, whose board of trustees submitted that it was a myth that students do not develop social skills in online learning settings. The board noted that done well, online learning involves social interaction and team work, through both communications technologies and face-to-face activities. This Government—and the member invited me to give a commitment on behalf of this Government, although this legislation we intend to be enduring—is committed to ensuring that those safeguards and the full well-rounded education that New Zealanders are entitled to have will be required whether the medium is a face-to-face, full-time mainstream school or a community of online learning.

I appreciate the explanations. Just to note that Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu, when it came to the select committee—the board supported the bill and the teaching staff opposed it. So that was a very interesting experience—that we did not actually hear from the teachers that this is what they wanted. The board might have supported it, but the teachers did not want it, and they are the practitioners. I found that very interesting.

On some of these points around pastoral care, we can write the words “pastoral care” into the bill, but the select committee, including the National members—none of us were particularly confident about what that meant. We did have a big discussion about pastoral care, and I am really still not convinced. Early childhood education, which has got home-based care, which is a slightly parallel situation—their oversight issues are ongoing. Their quality issues are highly debated. The need for review continues. I think that we are setting ourselves up here to talk about pastoral care, without really describing a sufficiently robust monitoring system. I did not hear about a sufficiently robust monitoring system.

On the issue of disability rights and the Ombudsman, the Ombudsman came and said to us that he hardly ever presented to a select committee, but the communities of online learning (COOLs) issue was of such concern to him that he felt it was necessary because of the risk to children with learning support needs being dumped into COOLs. And this is a fact, because it goes through my office every day. There are a number of children for whom the schools are insufficiently skilled, they do not understand inclusion, and they do not have the resources for those children—9-year-olds, 7-year-olds—who have been expelled or suspended or excluded, whatever you want to call it, from up to four schools. So if COOLs are available for primary schools—and remember that this is also for primary, not just secondary—his concern was that those children can be ticked off as not truant and not excluded, because they are in a COOL. But the reality is that for primary schoolchildren and for the early adolescents, who is going to make sure those kids are doing their thing at home? Who is going to be home with them, if the parents have to go to work?

One of the things that parents of children with high needs who have been excluded have said to me is that they will lose their jobs over this. They cannot work because their child is not in school. Primary school children need permanent 24-hour-a-day supervision. I just cannot get my head around it. Just to give one example of an older young person who came and talked to us about this—she was one of the few young people who came before the select committee, and I was there for all the submissions. She came with the Southern Health School. She said that the problem with COOLs is: “I would have grabbed that. I would have jumped at it.” She said: “I was deeply traumatised during my adolescence, and if someone had given a ‘get out of jail free’ card I would have gone: ‘No, I’m never going to a school ever again. I’m going to stay at home in my room.’ ”

She said: “My parents were so desperate and worried about my mental health that they would have agreed to that. It’s not in my interests, and it isn’t a good idea for me to be out of school all the time and online.” She said: “Living online is not living.”, and now, thanks to the assistance of the Southern Health School, she is able to go back into society and become a fully functioning member of society. She is studying in tertiary education. It is a real success story because the schools worked with her.

This is what we heard, over and over again, with COOLs—that there is nothing wrong with online learning. There is nothing wrong with blended learning. There is nothing wrong with a digital dimension to our lives, which are enriched so much by education. But when it is separated from the school situation and it is not part of that world, and when it is a privatised function for franchises to enrol people—and I also met with Gary Miron when he toured here, and he showed me the research. It is so patchy that you would expect this bill to be a lot more rigorous.

So on those issues, pastoral care, how do we actually ensure that children who have been excluded because they are supposedly the problem—schools will jump at that opportunity. Some of them are desperate about this. It costs them a lot more money to include, at the moment, especially if they have not got the skills. So that is why the Ombudsman really challenged us, and that is why I am challenging the Minister. How will we make sure that there cannot be the dumping of children with high needs into this environment? How will we? It is not here in the bill. Thanks very much.

The member Ms Delahunty actually makes exactly the point of this. It is not one size fits all. So in the example the member just described, it clearly would not have been an option for her. But I can tell the member that I received emails from other people who said that if this option had been available when they were at school, they would have got their first-chance education, rather than now funding a second- or third-chance education.

The second point I would make is that it is not compulsory. It is a choice for parents. Whether to enrol in a community of online learning (COOL) is a choice for parents. Schools cannot direct children to a COOL. It is the parents who make that choice, and in making that choice, as they do now, they will be able to see what the requirements are for those particular communities of online learning. It is not the type of school; it is the quality of it and the fit of it for the particular students and their families.

As for, again, Ms Delahunty’s comment that it was the board of Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu that favoured this but not teachers, I am advised that the New Zealand Educational Institute teachers are completely in favour of it and have invited further discussion. So I guess it was other members of the teaching workforce at te kura. But I can comment to the member that I have found it impossible to get an absolute consensus on everything, from all teachers across New Zealand, so it does not surprise me that it is not possible to get consensus completely in one school.

Te kura already runs an early childhood programme, and so it has already demonstrated that it is possible to provide online learning. The member, quite properly, asks for reassurance about how we protect for these pastoral care issues. I am assuring the member that the regulations as I have outlined them in the bill will be rigorously applied. None of us have an interest in this not being successful.

Finally, I make the point that primary schoolchildren, by law, cannot be left at home alone under the age of 14 years. This would not attempt to contravene that law.

I will just pick up on some of the answers that the Minister in the chair, Hekia Parata, just gave—thank you very much—around 14-year-olds. That is absolutely right—no child can be left at home. When a sibling is at the age of 14, they are considered a responsible adult. I do not believe that members of this House believe that having a 14-year-old supervise a 5-year-old or a 6-year-old in online learning is appropriate. I do not believe it. If the Minister believes that is appropriate, then she can stand up and say so, but I do not believe that that is appropriate. And therein lies the question: why primary school children? Again, Minister, we have not been given a real reason, and that is all we are asking for.

What one can hear across this Chamber is a consensus that online learning is real, it is here, it is now, and it needs to be supported. It came out of the digital literacy inquiry that I sat on with Nikki Kaye. There is no argument here about online learning. It is about the private providers inside that environment, and again, Minister, all we need to know is: why open it up to private providers? We have the Network for Learning, which could be amended and could become a conduit for programmes that have been certified and approved. We have got the Virtual Learning Network and other things that came out that the sector had to create because there was not this capacity inside the sector. All that is being suggested is that we actually keep it inside the sector for now.

With regard to the comments around Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu, that was in the regulatory impact statement. That was one of the justifications for communities of online learning in the regulatory impact statement from her officials—that te kura was overloaded, because it is at 24,000, or something, students. I mean, 16,000 of them are over 16 years old—something like that. So they could actually be other learners. There is no need for them to be in te kura. This Government has put in many other opportunities for 16-year-old-plus learners to be inside an education system, and they could be 100 percent online through a tertiary institution, a polytech, or a university.

So what is this actually about? Let us keep it within the sector. That is all that the Opposition is suggesting. We are not arguing that this is not the future, we are not arguing the fact that—and those were the Minister’s words, out of the report she read: “Done well, this is a plus.” Absolutely. At Mahurangi College we have something like 17 students at year 13 currently Skyping out into other courses because we are a semi-rural school and we cannot provide art history or Greek or whatever. We want to widen the capacity that our students can study. We have no argument with the concept of online learning, but why primary school students, why 100 percent online learning for primary school students, and why open it up for private providers?

I want to touch on what Catherine Delahunty talked about, and it is the crisis of anxiety that is going on in our schools. The Minister will know, because I am sure she is talking to the sector and to the counsellors who are inside our school sector, that we have a crisis of anxiety—students who are too anxious to come to school. There is a huge variety of reasons for that, and often it is not that the school is the issue; it is what is going on at home. If we add to that their capacity to opt out of a face-to-face schooling environment, would they take it? Yes, they would, and that is what the health schools and the young woman and others who came to testify said. The young woman said: “My parents would’ve done anything to stop the pain that I was in when I had to go to school, because of my anxiety.” She thanked the health school, for one. That was a choice. It is part of the flexibility of the system that we applaud. That health school was able to step in and support that young woman with her education at the same time as she was under medical care and medical attention. She then transitioned back into mainstream school and she has transitioned back into the real world. She said of communities of online learning: “If I had had this option, I would never have come out of my room.”

The Minister says that there is no compulsion. People cannot be excluded because, quite rightly, there is reporting around expulsions and exclusions, and it will be watched if mainstream schools try to do this. But the Minister knows, just as I know, that people are strongly encouraged. When your child, when your student, comes home constantly upset because they are running into ructions with the school, and a school principal or a school counsellor or careers adviser or somebody suggests to you that there is another pathway that would make this easier, then you might just take that pathway.

So those are our concerns, and all we are saying is: let us keep it inside the sector, let us not open it up for private provision, and let us look at widening the scope of Network for Learning, now that we know that we have got the portal there for all these other things. That is one of the things that Network for Learning did, now that broadband is out and fibre is through to all our schools. Let us widen its capacity to start to certify and start to organise these online programmes so that our schools, through that portal, can go straight there and start to deliver out wider. Let us look at the schools, instead of using the current percentage of their staffing that they give to their e-learning networks, actually creating digital mentor teachers.

One of the side effects of what is happening is that those students who are doing online learning inside our schools are having to fit with the current timetable. That means they are often having to go to the library and study alone. There is quite a high drop-out rate, or quite a high fail rate, among those students. You must be very focused, very literate, and very self-driven. So instead of having our schools use their staffing percentage right now to try to fund the e-learning networks they have got, let us get the Network for Learning to do that, and let us use that component of staffing to create digital mentor teachers inside our schools. There is a way to deliver this that is better than actually just deciding it will go private.

Before I sit down, I am going to ask the Minister directly: will her Government support Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 293, SOP 297, SOP 298, SOP 306, SOP 296, and SOP 295? Will the Minister, and will the Government, support those SOPs? If we could just have a yes or no—and if not, why not—that would be great. Thank you.

I have got some rapid-fire questions for the Minister of Education, and I want to thank her for her engagement in this. The first is around the Official Information Act (OIA) and the Ombudsmen Act and why the Government has made the decision not to extend the provision of those pieces of legislation to communities of online learning (COOLs). I would note that they are receiving their funding from the Government, they are dealing with young people, and they are operating, effectively, on behalf of the State in fulfilling its obligations to provide young people with an education. Therefore, I am interested to know why the Government does not think they should be covered by the OIA and the Ombudsmen Act.

I would just make the quick observation that the Ombudsmen Act and the role of the Ombudsman has provided a vital safeguard in the case of systemic failure of the education agencies in at least one case that I am aware of, and that was the case at Hutt Valley High School where every education agency and the school failed some students who were the subjects of sexual abuse. It was the Office of the Ombudsmen that finally got to the bottom of that. Given the risks involved in opening out the provision of education in the way the Government is with communities of online learning, I would like to know why they are not being covered by it as well.

The Office of the Ombudsmen, in particular, raised a concern about the Minister having absolute discretion to accredit a community of online learning, and whether that was designed to avoid judicial review. I would like the Minister’s comment on that to ensure that any decisions made to accredit a particular provider are still subject to judicial review if appropriate process has not been followed. Volcanics eLearning Community suggested an amendment to specifically enable existing communities or networks of schools to seek accreditation collectively. The Government says that it would like to have more cooperation and collaboration amongst schools, and I would like to know whether the Government would entertain the ability of schools to collectively apply to become a COOL, because it seems to me that actually fits the definition of what it is talking about, which is communities of online learning. Why can communities of online learning that genuinely include a number of different schools not apply to be accredited? Why do they have to have, for example, a lead school applying for the accreditation?

NetNZ expressed concern about the ambiguity around the ability of a COOL to charge fees, and I share that concern. School education in New Zealand is, by law, supposed to be free, so we would be departing significantly from that fundamental tenet of our education system if we allow those enrolling in a community of online learning to be charged a fee. It means that they will no longer be receiving the free school education that they are guaranteed by law. So my question to the Minister is: why allow them that flexibility? Why not say that if they are receiving Government subsidies for their provision of education, as schools do—why should they not be precluded and prevented from charging a fee, as schools are prevented from charging a fee? I think that that is certainly something that the Labour Party is absolutely committed to.

The Government policy allows for COOLs to teach something other than the curriculum. The argument put forward by the Government is that this allows more flexibility to the COOLs, but The New Zealand Curriculum is already incredibly flexible, and it sets out our expectations for the types of skills and knowledge that young people will be taught. It is incredibly enabling, in terms of what it allows schools to do, so why would a COOL not be required to teach to The New Zealand Curriculum? The Minister will be given the discretion, through regulation, to determine how many, if any, registered teachers are required to teach.

There are two aspects to this that I would like the Minister to comment on, the first of which is how the Government will ensure that those who are providing education online through a COOL actually have the teaching skills necessary to impart that knowledge. The second is around safety, and student safety in particular. Through the accreditation process and the practising certificate process we ensure that teachers are police-vetted. We ensure that they are the appropriate people to be dealing with young people. I think it is worth noting that one of the big risks of the online environment for young people is that it is used as a grooming ground by people who would do young New Zealanders harm. So if they are not registered teachers, how will the Government ensure that those who are working with young people through the online learning environment are fit and appropriate people to be dealing with young New Zealanders? Their safety has to be paramount in these considerations. I personally think it would be much more beneficial for the Government to require that teachers are engaged in this process.

Then we come to comments that were raised during the Education and Science Committee process around the risk of an adverse impact on the schooling network. I come back to my question earlier on small rural schools. Let us say there is a small rural school in an area that has seven kids, and four of them decide to enrol in a community of online learning, leaving only three at the school. What guarantee can the Minister give that that will not then be used as the catalyst to say those other three kids should all then go to an online learning provider as well? How can the Government ensure that there is still a robust network of actual physical schooling provision around the country?

Finally, I would like just a bit more comment from the Minister. I mentioned one of the online safety requirements, and that is around ensuring the fit and proper persons criteria are fulfilled for those working with young people through an online COOL. But the second is the wider issues of online safety and how the Government will regulate to ensure that those who are providing education through a COOL are providing a safe learning environment. Online learning has a huge array of potential pitfalls, in terms of student safety, and I would like some further clarification from the Minister around how those issues are going to be addressed in the regulations that come forth next.

Perhaps if I just start with that last question first, since the member had quite a catalogue of questions. In terms of safety, this is something that we are focused on all the time, even for the very connectedness of the face-to-face schools. So a number of protocols and supervisory expectations are already applied to schools now, and I would expect that in the regulatory regime for communities of online learning those will also be applied.

In terms of safety of kids, the Vulnerable Children Act requires all those working with children to be vetted for safety and that would be applied here. In terms of the question around registered teachers, State and private schools that establish communities of learning will all be required to have registered teachers, as is the case now. For those that are not, the regime they are currently established under will pertain in that case. In terms of registered teachers, just as occurs now for partnership schools, the Minister can specify a minimum percentage of teachers who must be registered.

Coming to a couple of questions—well, actually, an observation that Ms Martin made, where she was recommending a particular approach to online learning but defining it as confined to within the sector. I think it just comes to a point that I do not agree that there is not value to be gained from drawing from the widest pool available. I know now, in fact, that not only New Zealand schools but schools worldwide regularly access the Khan Academy, and that is a private provider. In New Zealand the Mind Lab or the coding club or many others are not within the sector but, nevertheless, provide really good-quality learning. I do not see why we would confine the scope of our interest for New Zealand children simply within the sector. I think that applying a tough regime of selection will ensure that the best quality is achieved for our young people.

To go back to Mr Hipkins’ questions about the Official Information Act and the Ombudsman: the approach we are taking here is that those accountabilities that currently apply to different categories of schools will consistently apply. So for those where businesses may be involved and they are not caught by those provisions, and they are approved because they meet the regime, then the accountabilities relative to them will be applied.

The member may have misapprehended the law in New Zealand, but there is no protection from being judicially reviewed, and so a Minister of Education—and an experience I have become regrettably somewhat familiar with. The public can be assured that they will retain the right to review a decision of a Minister of Education, or, indeed, any Minister. That is as it should be.

Blah-blah—oh, fees.

💬 Chris Hipkins: Not blah-blah at all. They were good questions.

Sorry, I beg your pardon. Ha, ha! I beg your pardon. It is just that some of you have asked similar questions, and I have answered. I apologise to the Committee.

So, coming to fees: regulations will be set out for these about what can be charged. For example, Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu can currently charge some students, and does. Private providers will also be able to do that, but, again, that will be something that is contested in the setting of the regime and in the accreditation.

Finally, I will repeat—no, not finally. The member was also concerned about going outside The New Zealand Curriculum. Well, we already have the case in New Zealand where schools offer the University of Cambridge International Examinations or they offer the International Baccalaureate, and those are outside The New Zealand Curriculum. We also have kura that offer Te Aho Matua, which is not exactly Te Marautanga o Aotearoa, but it is outside in some regards.

💬 Chris Hipkins: It’s additional to, rather than instead of.

It is additional to, that is right. We are not suggesting that, you know, we are looking to actively find outside the curriculum. But I just want to remind the member that that diversity already exists in the system, and by introducing communities of online learning we are not introducing a new dimension that is not already at play.

And then one penultimate—parents choose. Nothing in this bill is saying a parent must use this type of school or that type of school. Parents know their children best, and will pick the best option and the best mix of options for them.

Rural schools: this is a challenge to us, whether we have communities of online learning or not. When the shepherd leaves with her four kids, you know, that could take two-thirds of the kids from a school. One of the best solutions we have found for this, or that we are putting in place, is not only to be able to connect in by broadband and so forth but it is also the communities of learning, so that they are part of a much bigger critical mass that gives them greater likelihood of being able to survive. So it is an ongoing challenge, and none of us have yet hit on exactly the right recipe to resolve that. Thank you.

This is just going to be a very brief response, because—I just cannot let it go. So I came to Parliament to stand up for people who do not have a choice—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Well, I just want to—[Interruption] Sorry. Order! Whether or not the member can let it go is not necessarily completely over to her. The member will be aware of the constraints of this debate and repetition, and I have noted in some speeches that we are going round in circles, even within the same call, and being repetitive. So I will just warn her against that.

OK—thank you very much, Mr Chair. If we are going to say that parents have choices, can the Minister of Education please explain to me about the choices of people whose children are excluded from school or get only 1 hour a week because they are hard to teach. Can we just have an explanation, as nothing in the existing Act protects them. How are we going to make sure that communities of online learning (COOLs) do not make things worse for them? Because they do not have the choice to say no when they have been excluded, and then parents are threatened with truancy if their child is not enrolled in a school. That is how they could end up in a COOL, and that is why I want an explanation as to how we are going to make sure that does not happen. Thank you.

I can only repeat for the member, Catherine Delahunty, that it is not schools that get to direct students to communities of online learning. Secondly, the issue of exclusion or stand down—there are natural justice provisions. Thirdly, the introduction of the idea of communities of online learning is not introducing that new unacceptable behaviour—and it is a behaviour of some schools that the ministry is working hard to deal with. We take great pride in our approach to special education and learning support, and where we are aware that is occurring we take action. Thank you.

We have a world-class public education system in Aotearoa New Zealand already. Most of our schools have Bring Your Own Device. Blended learning is already happening in most of our schools. So why is there a need for communities of online learning (COOL) schools? Some of the submitters told us that we have too many schools. We have a shortage of teachers, however. Young people, they need interaction with each other in terms of building up their social skills and interrelationships with adults, including teachers. That is something that they cannot learn from a computer.

The Hon Hekia Parata’s communities of online learning proposal will see students sitting at home, probably in their bedrooms, in front of a laptop, receiving their instructions directly from a computer—most likely from a private corporation, probably an overseas private corporation. That is what this legislation will allow.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Order! I just want to draw to the member’s attention—she may not have been here through the whole debate, but the points she is making now have already been made several times by several speakers, and it sounds much more like a first, second, or third reading speech rather than a Committee stage. In the Committee stage we are looking at submissions that were made before the select committee and the discussion around that, we are looking at discussion of Supplementary Order Papers that are on the Table, and questions to the Minister. I invite the member to move to new material, please.

So I would like now to comment on a submission to the Education and Science Committee by Bronwyn Cross, someone with over 40 years of experience as a secondary teacher, a parent, and a member of a board of trustees. What she told us in the select committee is that the communities of online learning are not about learning. I quote her: “New Zealand schools already use online learning to expand options for students but they do it in the context of a learning relationship which includes face-to-face support within a wide range of other collaborative school experiences”. COOLs, as it is currently being proposed, will take away the emotional content, students being able to learn how to have better working relationships with each other as peers and with their teachers. What it does is it will reduce the content transaction. She said: “It is a factory model designed to enable private, probably international, companies to make maximum profits from our children at the lowest possible cost.” That is directly from Bronwyn Cross.

She went further. She said that communities of online learning give parents options. She said that it gives them choice—at least that is what the ministry and the Minister will have us believe—but we are not giving parents a choice of different flavours of ice cream here; this is more about privatisation. She said that this COOL model has been plucked from the United States, plucked and plonked here in New Zealand, but it is a failed model from overseas—her words, not mine.

Another submission was made to us from Rural Women New Zealand. They told us that they have strong concerns about this proposal for communities of online learning in this legislation because it will allow the Government to give accreditation for online, private charter schools. Their concern was that they will be so affected, especially rural schools. Already they are facing closure of many of their schools, and they see that communities of online learning have the effect of closing even more of the rural schools. Another submitter told us, in her words, of communities of online learning, that “This is the death knell for rural secondary schools.”

There were a lot of concerns. The majority of the submitters who came to us in the select committee were against communities of online learning, and we should not be rushing through with such a proposal as this—something that is untested, something that we know from overseas countries has failed. Why are we rushing through with implementing it in the Education (Update) Amendment Bill? Thank you.

I will be repeating some things that, clearly, the member Jenny Salesa was not here to hear, but to assure and quell her anxiety that there is no interest on my part or that of my Government in delivering some kind of broken model for New Zealand students. What we have done, and what Governments through time have traditionally done, is looked overseas, looked at the research, and said: “What can we learn from that?”. And what we can learn from the US experience is that we need to cap numbers, we need to have more regulation, and we are proposing to do that.

If I can refer the member to clause 38, we are requiring that prospective communities of online learning must satisfy criteria that will include providing a safe and secure learning environment, providing an appropriate curriculum and tuition standard, having the capacity to meet pastoral care and student well-being responsibilities, and having equipment that is suitable for the curriculum that is being taught. New Zealand’s model of online learning learns from other jurisdictions and proposes to do it better. To give the submitter her full credentials, Ms Bronwyn Cross was also for many, many years the executive officer of the Post Primary Teachers’ Association. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Chair. Firstly, can I thank the Minister for her answers to my last questions. It is absolutely an acceptable answer for the Minister to say at the end of the day: “We disagree.” It is really nice to have that as an answer on the table rather than the dance that we sometimes do around here. That is fine. That is what this place is about. It is about people disagreeing in debate, fighting ideas. At the end of the day, I do not agree with the Minister but she is in the chair at the moment, they are in Government at the moment, and this is what we are dealing with. So thank you for the honesty, Minister. I really appreciate it. This has been a really great process so far. It has probably been the most respectful you and I have been to each other for a long time.

Can I just ask a couple of things, though, Minister. I do want to go back to section 35ZJ, in clause 38. First of all, I want to say that the Minister made a point about why we could not take the Opposition’s perspective, which is actually to not open this up to private businesses, by using the Mind Lab as an example, and the Khan Academy. Can I just point out to the Minister that the Mind Lab and the coding school that she was referring to deliver subjects. So they deliver subjects—right? They are not delivering the full curriculum. Absolutely that is what we need to bring inside our schools—coding particularly. Let us bring real-life coding experts inside our schools to work with our senior students—and all examples given are senior students. So again the question stands: why primary students? And we are already doing it; let us just frame up what we have got before we go another step. But, as the Minister said, and well within her rights, we just disagree.

Just with regard to section 35ZJ(3): “A grant may be made unconditionally or subject to conditions determined by the Minister.” Can I ask the Minister why she feels the need, or why the Government or her officials feel the need for that grant to be made unconditionally—if she would not mind just answering that question.

I have a really quick question for the Minister. In a submission from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association, it pointed out that Treasury had noted that the option of online providers for students who are at risk of disengagement from school could be a route out of the formal education system, which is significant. I just wanted to ask the Minister whether she felt there was any need to provide further assistance to those students who are on that route into communities of online learning and whether or not they would need additional support to ensure that the nature of the risk of disengagement does not apply to them—or to help them, in this instance?

In building on that point and having listened very carefully to the Minister Hekia Parata’s contribution, the question that I have is around children who have potentially disengaged and are part of an alternative education programme. If I am reading these clauses correctly, they imply that schools are accredited as communities of online learning. So it is possible that young people who are currently in alternative education could be part of a community of online learning. Whether or not the learning environment is conducive to what is generally the case in alternative education, we are trying to get these young people back into the education system and, more importantly, into the classroom environment.

My question really amplifies the comments made by Adrian Rurawhe. If alternative education students are part of a community of online learning environment, what further assessments are done to ensure that learning solely through technology actually improves the social and educational objectives and the broader aspirations of that young person? Also, is it possible for a young person to be excluded if we accept that the potential for alternative education is to provide communities of online learning to these particular students? Is there a possibility of exclusion, and then what is the next step for this group of students? I would hate to think that the communities of online learning may further disenfranchise already challenged learners within the education system, with no ability for them to pathway into a more appropriate learning environment. If the Minister can clarify that, that would be very helpful.

The other aspect is in relation to exclusions. Do the same exclusion criteria apply to those students who are vulnerable and potentially part of a community of online learning environment? What other remedy may there be or what obligation does the school or the community of online learning have to ensure that they have another pathway to continue to be engaged in another environment of learning that is more suited to them?

It certainly appears from the responses of the Minister that there is an ability to review the effectiveness of the communities of online learning. I can only take it from that that this provides the opportunity to improve the arrangements or the criteria that apply in this area. If that is the case, is the way in which the communities of online learning are reviewed going to be systematically assessed in such a way that you are streamlining the improvements to ensure that the best learning environment can occur through the utilisation of technology?

Lastly, given that the Minister has been thorough in responding to questions, is it the intention to include early childhood centres because of access issues in terms of providing communities of online learning, or is it for some other reason? It is not apparent to me. I was not on the select committee and I did not hear the submissions, but it appears that they can be included as a community of online learning, so I am asking what the purpose is. Kia ora.

Both the Hon Nanaia Mahuta and Adrian Rurawhe make good points. We are concerned about this in the mainstream system, let alone in the introduction of communities of online learning. I would say to the members that rather than it necessarily being a negative experience, we may find that the opportunity to have online learning actually produces a better experience than has otherwise been the case. I have certainly had that recounted to me by students who were excluded or who were in alternative education and emailed me to say, more or less, “Hallelujah. If this had been around when I was going through my compulsory years of schooling, this would have been far better for me”. I think that makes the point that it is not a case of one-size-fits-all, and that the one size that does fit a student may include a blend. It might include both the alternative education option and some supplementary online learning.

The second thing to note is that any organisation can apply to become a community of online learning. It would have to go through the same rigorous requirements, including how it will serve the particular age group that it is proposing to serve.

In terms of whether or not these communities of online learning will be monitored, yes, they will be monitored. Sorry, I am just choking up at the possibilities. They will obviously be subjected to a regime of scrutiny because our purpose in adding this to the diversity of choices is to try to find the pathways that will work for every child. It is not every pathway; it is multiple pathways. And so yes, we will ensure that they are monitored.

Members, it is my view that it is now reasonable to move on to the next theme. Therefore, we shall move on to the debate on boards of trustees and management of schools, comprising clauses 73 to 97, clause 147, and schedule 2.

Clauses 73 to 97, clause 147, and schedule 2