Education (Update) Amendment Bill

Thank you, members. I think we have had questions asked and answered, and I think it is reasonable we move on to the next debate, which is on Miscellaneous provisions: new clause 38A, Part 2, clauses 117 to 143 and 145(1) and (2), and schedule 3. Is there anyone who wants to speak to those?

I am very excited about this because I get to talk about my remaining Supplementary Order Paper (SOP). I am actually not sure what number it is, because I have got the earlier draft, but it inserts new clause 130A, which, in effect, would give—

💬 Tracey Martin: 305.

SOP 305, is it? Thank you very much. In effect, it would give the teaching community the ability to elect membership of the Education Council. This is something that has come very much to the fore in the last week or two, following the Education Council’s decision to release its draft fee structure for the coming years.

The Education Council has a mixed history in terms of the debate around its establishment. I am not going to rehash all of that now. That would certainly prolong the debate extensively, and I do not want to do that, but I want to say that the council is off to a good start and I do want to give the new Education Council credit for that. It is doing a good job of winning the support and respect of the teaching profession, and I want to acknowledge that.

But there has been a bit of heat around its proposal to significantly increase—more than double—the fees that teachers pay for their practising certificates each year. That has generated some resentment from the teaching community, not necessarily because it is not willing to pay that fee but because if it objects to it, it has no real ability to change the council. There is no election to the membership of the council, and I believe in that basic principle of no taxation without representation. So if the council is going to have the power to tax members of the teaching community, which it does, then the teaching community should have the ability to elect representatives on that council, and that is what my Supplementary Order Paper does.

So just to run through the main provisions of it, it would still allow the Minister to appoint six of the 13 members of the council—so not quite the majority, but the balance of the members—and that would ensure that there can still be a good diversity and a good representative spread amongst the membership, but the majority of the members would be elected by the profession. So the seven elected members would be drawn first from the early childhood sector—elected by early childhood teachers—then from the primary sector, and then the secondary sector. One teacher educator would be elected from teacher education providers.

One of the things the Education Council does now is regulate the standards for initial teacher education, so having teacher educators represented on the council makes a lot of sense. There would be a principal representing the primary sector, a principal representing the secondary sector—and the intermediates would have to decide which of those they wanted to be included under—and there would be a head teacher, senior teacher, or supervisor representing early childhood education. So it ensures that those three parts of the system—early childhood, primary, and secondary schools—all have representatives both at the practising level, or the teaching level, and at the leadership level, and it then gives the Minister the power to appoint the balance of members to ensure a good diversity and spread on the council. I support the SOP I have put forward, naturally, and I commend it to the Committee.

The other part of this provision that I would like to address at this stage is the disestablishment of Careers New Zealand. I sat on the Government Administration Committee and the Education and Science Committee, and I cannot remember which one Careers New Zealand reported to. I think it was the Education and Science Committee. But, effectively, where some of its most recent presentations got to was that it has departed a long way from the remit it had when it was first set up and, effectively, now it runs a very good website. But the question is whether we need a separate statutory body to run a website. I am not convinced that we do, so I support the disestablishment of Careers New Zealand. If what it is doing is running a website, then, actually, that can be done by any number of other Government departments, and probably much more efficiently.

The second fundamental question to ask is where careers advice is best delivered. I think the best careers advice is advice that is intricately linked with the individual student’s programme of study. Therefore, it is actually best delivered within the institutions, both tertiary and secondary, that young people—and older people—are studying within. I take the example of a year 9 student beginning secondary school, for example. The careers advice that is going to be best for them is advice around how they design their NCEA programme of study as they progress through secondary school.

We are speaking on clauses 117 to 143, 145(1) and (2), and schedule 3—miscellaneous—which includes Part 2. There are six Supplementary Order Papers on the Table on these particular clauses, and I hope we get the opportunity to traverse all of them.

Can I first of all start with clause 140, which inserts new section 410AA, “Competence Authority”. This is a good move. This is a good move, and one of the reasons why New Zealand First believes that this is a good move is that it will finally, we hope, put out there into the public the very intensive appraisal and competency process that our teachers already participate in. But it is relatively behind closed doors. So to raise the status of the profession, there must be trust by the general society that what is actually already happening—the really intense appraisal of our teachers and the competency to do this when it needs to be questioned—has a body to allow this. We believe that that will go directly to raising the status of the profession.

Just with regard to Chis Hipkins’ Supplementary Order Paper 305, New Zealand First will be supporting this. We believe—and we have always said—it is appropriate for teachers to have the right to elect their representatives on to the body. This was a major conversation during the creation of the Education Council, and the Education Council came to the select committee recently—and it is doing a fabulous job, actually. It is doing a fabulous job. Its members are well chosen. They are highly qualified people who have, strangely enough, actually been elected to the top of their profession—most of them. So we take that on board—and the Minister is nodding—and we give a pat on the back where it is deserved. They are doing a really, really wonderful job. However, the problem is that it is at the whim of Ministers. And, again, can I just point out that some of us may be those things in the future, so we understand that when we criticise the current circumstances and suggest different parameters, some of us may have to live with them in the future. It is about the vulnerability of being at the whim of a Minister in the future.

I move on to Supplementary Order Paper 297. This is just a small, niggly little change of language. In clause 49, new section 77(ab) refers to “form 1”. There is no such thing as form 1 any more. It is year 7, and if we are going to modernise the Education Act 1989, then let us actually use the language that is used inside our education system.

I then go on to Supplementary Order Paper 307. Unfortunately, we cannot agree with the Labour Party or with the National Government with regard to the absorption/disestablishment of Careers New Zealand. We do not see this as a time when there should not be an independent body outside the education system. It should be expanded and should be working more closely with industry. It should be doing more workforce planning, and it should be part of those that then inform the Tertiary Education Commission through the vocational pathway skills that are required. So we do not—we cannot—support the Labour Party perspective with regard to the abolishment of Careers New Zealand and its absorption under clauses 119, 120, 122, and 128 in this area.

There are now three other Supplementary Order Papers still on the Table. I go to Supplementary Order Paper 299, which is also in my name. This would delete clause 131A. This is around the chief executive of Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu no longer being required to be a registered teacher. We feel that that is a move that is a step too far. Te kura is a registered school, and therefore its leader should be somebody from the education profession who understands education, as opposed to opening the door once again for a business professional to be at the head of an educational facility. So we would request the support of the Committee for Supplementary Order Paper 299.

Supplementary Order Paper 291, again in the name of Chris Hipkins, is around some of the dates. It goes to clause 2, and it goes to the dates on which the Governor-General, by Order in Council, would be able to implement this Act. We will be supporting Mr Hipkins’ Supplementary Order Paper 291. It also inserts, in clause 38, new section 35X(3), around communities of learning. It says that a community of learning must teach the New Zealand Curriculum and be able to demonstrate an understanding of all these other Acts. It is interesting that the purpose of this is to provide a new, creative legislative framework for communities of online learning, and this Supplementary Order Paper would delay its implementation so that we could have a more thorough analysis of policy proposals that have been suggested in it.

I go to the final Supplementary Order Paper on this particular section, and that is Supplementary Order Paper 309 in the name of Catherine Delahunty. This would insert new clause 38A, which would create a parent advocacy council. We will be supporting this Supplementary Order Paper because we feel that, as I was mentioning before, if in the disciplinary hearing process a student is excluded or expelled from school, at this time—under current legislation—the Ombudsman is the only port of call for parents if they want to argue that issue. A parent advocacy council was supported by the Ombudsman because they know what their workload is. They know the delay. They know how long that student is outside the education system when the parent is unable to get any other mediation or advocacy service apart from their own.

Probably the fact that it is just called an advocacy council may be a bit misleading. We think that there should be a mediation role of this council. Strangely enough—

💬 Catherine Delahunty: It’s in the bill.

—thank you, Ms Delahunty—it is inside the explanatory note. That is great. So we would strongly recommend, and we would hope that the Government would support, this particular Supplementary Order Paper in order to give parents somewhere else to go.

Often what we heard was that it was predominantly the special needs students who had to fight and fight and fight—children with autism and Tourette’s and so on and so forth—and who needed to have this service available to them. They do not want to take schools to court. They do not want to go through the process of waiting 12 months for the Ombudsman’s office because it is so overwhelmed by work at the moment and so under-resourced. They want an opportunity to go to a body that will mediate between them and the school, that will advocate on behalf of their children, and that will gain them access to services that the Minister and the ministry say are there, but, unfortunately, they are known to very few people. That was the answer that the Minister and the ministry gave around the inquiry into students with dyslexia, dyspraxia, and autism spectrum disorders—that the services are all there, but there is a lack of understanding. So perhaps the parental advocacy body could be the body that would keep that information in play, and people would know what it was. Thank you.

💬 Catherine Delahunty: Mr Chair.

I have got a dilemma now, because I looked to Catherine Delahunty earlier and she chose not to take a call—[Interruption] Well, the effect of that appears to me to be pretty unfair because what it means is that if I give Catherine Delahunty a call when she had not previously sought one, it means that we will not finish when we would have otherwise finished. I think I will err on the side of being generous to the minor party and give her a call, but I want to remind members that if they want a call—especially at the end points of a debate when we are discussing relatively narrow areas—they should ask for it.

I seek leave for the Committee to continue until 1.10 p.m. or until the completion of the Committee stage, whichever comes sooner.

Is there any objection to that? There is objection. OK, we will move to the votes.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I understood that before the point of order from Mr Macindoe, you had awarded a call to Catherine Delahunty.

Did I actually call Catherine Delahunty? I think I indicated that I was going to. Did I?

💬 Hon Members: Yes, you did.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I apologise.

I will keep it short. I understand this is a new process, and the reason I did not take the call was so that the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that my colleague was talking about could be finished. I am not trying to spin out the debate.

Tracey Martin has actually talked quite a bit about SOP 309. It has got some history around the lack of opportunity for parents to appeal. The courts are not always the best place. We have suggested the Ministry of Justice because of discussions that we have had with the Children’s Commissioner. You would have thought it may not be the best place for it, but this really is just about setting up a parents’ advocacy function to advise the Government, to be the mediator and arbiter. So it does have quasi-legal functions, and we would like to see a parent voice, because at the moment the boards of trustees cannot deal with some of the issues. Parents are left with nowhere to go.

This is not necessarily the final solution or the best model, but this is what we wanted to put up so that people could start considering how we might get the parent voice at a national level—when the systems are failing—to be part of the Education Act 1989, because right now we do not have anything. So I just want to put that on the table. I think it is important. Thanks.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

No, we have had sufficient debate—

💬 Tracey Martin: It’s not about a call.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): What are you trying to do?

💬 Tracey Martin: I am just actually asking for clarification on why you are mentioning that we have to tie this up. There is nothing in the determination from the Business Committee—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): No, there is no obligation, but my view was—and my view is—that we have had some major parts where there was longer debate than was expected, remembering that normally the debate on Part 1—on the substantive thing—would probably have been about an hour and a half, or 2 hours. We have had a debate that is quite a lot longer than that. It has been a high-quality debate. There is no obligation to finish, but my view is that the member has had a couple of calls, Mr Hipkins has had a call, Ms Delahunty has had a call, and we have dealt with the matter, so I am now going to move to the votes.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Hekia Parata to clause 2 be agreed to:

in subclause (6), replace “28 April 2017” with “19 May 2017”.

Amendment agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 292 in the name of Tracey Martin to clause 4 be agreed to.

I seek leave for all of the amendments on the three Supplementary Order Papers in my name to be put as one question.

Can I just make a process suggestion here, and it is that we move through the amendments as they are on the Order Paper, but I will listen to the votes and if the votes are the same, we will not go through the business of everyone having to tell the Clerk. I will just declare the result. Are people happy with that? OK. If there is no objection, we will take Mr Hipkins’ three Supplementary Order Papers together.

A party vote was called for on the question that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Papers 291, 304, and 305 in the name of Chris Hipkins be agreed to.

A party vote is called for. The Ayes are 58, the Noes are—

💬 Tim Macindoe: So you’re casting a party vote—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I listened really carefully, and I am convinced that the Ayes are 58 and the Noes are 61, and Mr Hipkins’ three amendments are lost.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Papers 291, 304, and 305 in the name of Chris Hipkins be agreed to.

Would you be able to use the actual number of the Supplementary Order Paper?

The trouble is that some of them are on the same—I will. I will, as well.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 303 in the name of Catherine Delahunty to clause 4, new section 1A(3)(c), be agreed to.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I apologise. On the vote on Supplementary Order Paper 302, can I please request that the New Zealand First vote should have been recorded as opposed to Supplementary Order Paper 302?

I seek the leave of the Committee to adjust the voting record for that Supplementary Order Paper accordingly. I do not think we need to go back and work out the numbers. All right? We will leave that to the discretion of the Clerk to put in the record. Any objection? There appears to be none.

House resumed.

Bill reported with amendment.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 1.07 p.m. (Thursday)