Education (Update) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Education (Update) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. This bill represents the biggest update to education in nearly 30 years and is representative of the incredible vision and hard work of the previous Minister of Education, Hekia Parata. I want to acknowledge her in this House and acknowledge the huge amount of work that she has done. It is my view, and I have said it before, that history will look kindly on her for the huge amount that she has done, particularly in terms of this bill.

I would also like to mention that this is part of a wider programme by this Government to reform our education system to ensure we continue to lift achievement and improve the quality of our teachers. My predecessor led considerable increases in achievement, including investing the most ever in early childhood, primary, and secondary education this year, which shows the budget went to $11 billion. That is a 35 percent increase since our time in Government. Since 2011 the rate of children starting school having previously attended early childhood education has increased several percentage points—that is thousands more children in early childhood education.

We introduced a $359 million Investing in Educational Success initiative, which helps to create career paths for teachers, helps them share best practice across schools, and helps provide expert skills to raise student achievement. There are now more than 190 communities of learning, involving more than 1,500 schools across the country. Also, while in my previous role as Associate Minister, under our Government we have invested about $5 billion upgrading and fixing old, cold schools left as a legacy from the last Labour Government.

I would like to thank the individuals and organisations who took the time to make a submission on this bill. I would also like to thank the Education and Science Committee for its diligent consideration. To all the members from across the House, thank you very much for the hard work and the hours that you put into this legislation.

There are a number of elements in this bill that reflect the policy intent of our Government. Firstly, it is putting the achievement of our children and young people at the heart of our education system. Secondly, it is ensuring stronger accountability throughout the education system. Thirdly, it is modernising our education system to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It is also about enhancing collaboration between education providers and ensuring greater choice for parents. You can see these policy imperatives in the provisions within this bill.

This bill also reflects the fact that the world is changing, and our students and the flexibilities that we need to provide them must continue to improve so that they can meet the challenges of an ever-changing world. The Government has invested more than $700 million to ensure schools can access the digital world and take advantage of the immense opportunities it offers for learning. This investment has funded projects to provide schools with digital infrastructure such as cabling and wireless technology. It also includes more than $200 million towards the Network for Learning, which is providing schools—in fact, I think it is about 98 percent of schools—with Crown-funded, uncapped, high-speed broadband. This means we now have the platform in place to support the range of initiatives currently under way to achieve our vision of New Zealand as a world leader in digital education. We also announced last year that we would be making digital technology part of the curriculum, to enable all young people to become digitally fluent.

In terms of this piece of legislation, it is also important that we are enabling for the first time a clear and visible strategic direction for the education system, through the newly established objectives for education and a new stand-alone document for the Government to specify its priorities for education: the statement of National Education and Learning Priorities, or NELP. The purpose of the NELP is to move the education system from delivering education to raising achievement, with clearer accountabilities for early childhood education centres in schools.

I do want to touch on some provisions in this bill on which I know there has been significant debate: communities of online learning (COOLs). As I have already mentioned, we have invested more per child than many other Governments across the world around a digital platform. One of the provisions in this bill is to modernise online learning through establishing communities of online learning, or COOLs. The widespread availability of digital technologies is changing the way that our students learn. Now more and more of our children and young people are learning anywhere, any time, and from a variety of sources and places. This enables us to reduce disadvantage, because those young people who may have never had access to books may now have access to more quality online learning opportunities.

To reflect the impact of digital technology on the delivery of education, the bill creates a new regulatory framework for online learning. This will enable, potentially, schools, tertiary education providers, or bodies corporate to be accredited as COOLs. I do want to stress that there will be significant consultation around the regulations, but I am disappointed that we have not been able to get some cross-party support on this. Every parent knows more young people are learning online—and I just want to acknowledge, actually, Rachel from the Virtual Learning Network (VLN) in the gallery, which is unusual in a third reading speech. There are many organisations like VLN that do a great job in New Zealand, and this is about recognising them and raising the quality of learning that is occurring online.

I want to mention, as well, in terms of communities of learning, that as they grow they are beginning to take on wider responsibilities that require more formal arrangements between the members. This bill provides for this by creating two new statutory mechanisms designed to support the growing collaboration. The first is that a community of learning can now be approved by the Minister of Education. Once approved, it can enter into an agreement with the Secretary for Education to carry out a particular project. This will provide greater legal certainty and protection for members as their activities expand. The second is that school boards of trustees that are members of communities of learning can now do work for other educational services or social services that benefit the community of learning’s members or students—for example, offering back officers’ services to an early childhood service in its community of learning or engaging a community liaison officer to work across families in the community of learning.

Taking up these new community of learning options is not compulsory. They simply create new opportunities for those communities of learning that want to formalise their arrangements. It is a decision for individual communities of learning to make if they decide they want to enhance the education they provide.

I want to mention the seclusion and physical restraint issues that have come through the select committee, and the legislative amendments in this area. As we all know, student and staff safety and well-being are central to the provisions prohibiting seclusion in schools and early childhood services, and it is important that we have created a legal framework for the appropriate use of physical restraint in schools. Making this legislative change sends a clear signal to educators that in today’s world there is no situation where it is acceptable for children and young people to be secluded. It also makes clear the limited situations where physical restraint can be used on children and young people by teachers and authorised staff members. When a student is exhibiting inappropriate or dangerous behaviour, it is important that other students and teachers are protected from harm and that learning can continue to happen.

We want parents, families, and whānau to be confident that schools and early childhood services are safe places for children, young people, and staff and that they provide inclusive learning environments. We have also recently announced $40 million in the area, with $34 million around additional services for those young people with severe behavioural issues. So it is not just about the legislation; it is investing in these programmes.

In terms of this bill, there has been a bit of discussion around cohort entry. The bill provides flexibility of choice for parents and opportunities for providers by enabling schools to introduce a cohort entry policy, where new entrants can start only at the beginning of each term. While most children start school on their fifth birthday or soon after, some schools are encouraging children to start as part of a cohort on set days during the year. These schools believe cohort entry enables them to support better transitions to schools, simplifies school and classroom planning, and minimises disruption for existing students.

There have been some concerns raised that schools will be starting children too early, but the important part of the enabling legislation is that it ensures parents have the choice about the right time for their child to start school. The youngest a child would be able to start school will be 4 years and 10 months, and that is only a practical consideration to ensure that children with a birthday close to the start of the term do not have to wait a whole term to start. This is pragmatic, good policy to better support the well-being of young people.

In conclusion, the whole purpose of this bill is about creating a platform for achieving educational success. It is about putting the achievement of our children and young people at the heart of the education system and giving us the flexibility to respond to their current and future needs. I think this bill does this admirably. I now commend the bill to the House.

Lest anybody in the House thinks that my lack of volume in this contribution is a reflection of some kind of acquiescence to this bill, it is simply a reflection of the fact that I have a cold. I have several other speeches to get through this afternoon and I am having to ration my vocal chords.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: I’ll make up for it.

Carmel Sepuloni will, I am sure, fill in the blanks. I would like to thank the Minister for her acknowledgment of the work of the Education and Science Committee. It was, by and large, a collegial process. It was a shame, however, that it was a complete waste of time because the Government, by majority, rejected almost every substantive amendment that was proposed by those who took the time to submit to the select committee. Their voices may have been heard, but they were not listened to, and as a result we have got a bill that does not in any way really reflect the voices of the people who took the time to submit, and I think that is a shame.

This bill is a disappointing bill, and I do not say that just because I am an Opposition member of Parliament. I have followed the genesis of this bill very closely from the beginning, including the consultation hui that were held around the country when the previous Minister of Education, Hekia Parata, announced her intention to review the Education Act 1989, and I know that there were some incredibly useful and positive discussions that came out of that consultation process.

I also know that there was some enthusiasm for some of the initial proposals that were incorporated into this legislation. For example, there was widespread support for the notion that the Education Act should have a purpose clause. It seems rather odd that we have this very substantive piece of legislation that does not actually have a defined purpose. People working in education welcomed the notion that there would be a purpose clause and, I think, engaged with that very closely during the submissions process and made some very practical suggestions for how that purpose clause could be inclusive and all-encompassing and genuinely reflective of the needs of students of today and of tomorrow. Again, they had all of that very constructive feedback that they provided through the select committee process ignored.

I will not hesitate to support Government policy where it is based on sound research and evidence and where it has been thoroughly worked through, and there are examples of that in this legislation. I think, for example, of the changes to the statutory interventions process, which had been called for by schools, which are sensible, and which will provide new levels of intervention that are less Draconian than those currently in the law, and I think that that is a very welcome development. But there are also examples where that is not the case—where the evidence has not been presented, where the details have not been worked through, and where there are significant risks.

Cohort entry has been well canvassed over the past week, and I am certainly open to the debate around cohort entry. I do not have a philosophical opposition to it. I think that any decision that we make around cohort entry must be driven by what is in the best interests of the child, not by what is most administratively efficient or is most financially beneficial to the Crown.

So I asked the Ministry of Education for the literature that it had based its decision on in recommending cohort entry, and the advice the select committee was given back was that allowing children to start in a cohort after their fifth birthday, rather than this 4 years, 10 months situation that we have in the bill—the only advice that it could present to the committee was that it would cost more because it would mean that kids stayed in early childhood education for longer, which is more expensive than primary schooling, and that they would end up staying longer at the other end of primary schooling because of the later start. That was the only argument it could produce against having children start in a cohort after their fifth birthday. It could not produce any evidence that it was better for the child to start at 4 years and 10 months.

But the evidence that we did get was from the Education Review Office, which found that in terms of the way we support the transition from early childhood education into primary schooling, we are among the best in the OECD. We do it very, very well. Schools take a real pride in supporting each individual child in their transition from early childhood to schooling. So what is the mischief that we are trying to fix here if it is not simply an administrative or a financial driver that is behind this?

The communities of online learning (COOLs) puzzle me somewhat, because the details simply are not there about how they will operate. You look at other parts of the Education Act, which prescribe in great detail how every part of the sector will operate, and yet with the communities of online learning, it is pretty much “We’re going to set it up. We’re going to allow for it. Just trust us—we’ll sort the details out later.” And yet we have seen enormous amounts of evidence at the Education and Science Committee of the risks of that approach and the risks of online learning.

The COOLs, as defined in the legislation, seem to be starting from a blank page, and yet there are things happening in our education system at the moment that should be embraced. I think of the Virtual Learning Network, which is well embraced by schools around the country. I think it has got something like 40 schools around the country at the moment that are in the Virtual Learning Network, and yet they may become COOLs, but it seems that the learning and the evidence that has been generated through that process has not been considered when the COOLs were developed.

I am all for modernising Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu, or The Correspondence School—I think that is long overdue, in fact. But there was some interesting research put forward by it, including research that shows that its online learning—the online learning that it is already delivering—is not delivering as good results as the traditional correspondence learning that it has been providing. That was Te Kura’s own advice to the committee. So I thought that was interesting. It is the main provider of distance schooling at the moment, and yet it is finding that the online learning that it is delivering is not delivering as good results as the traditional correspondence learning.

Then we have seen evidence from overseas that the people that the Ministry of Education engaged to provide advice produced a summary of international research and highlighted all of the risks. One of the studies that we were alerted to was produced in the United States by a pro - charter school foundation. So these were people who were pro - charter schools and pro - online charter schools, and their evidence found that those students attending those schools lost an average of about 72 days of learning and reading and 180 days of learning and maths during the course of a 180-day school year. In other words, they made about half the progress they were expected to in literacy, and they made no progress in their numeracy. That is the risk of getting this wrong, which is why I think it is reasonable for the House to expect more detail from the Government around how COOLs are going to work, before we rush ahead and put them into legislation.

On the statement of National Education and Learning Priorities, I think that this could be a very welcome development. I think that this could be a very powerful thing for the education community, for students, for parents, for teachers, for principals, for school administrators, and for school trustees. I think having a clear vision statement, which is what, I think, the statement of National Education and Learning Priorities could be, could be a very positive thing. But there is a huge amount of trepidation within the education community about how this might look, because the current Government’s focus is very much on the measurables and not on the broader vision. So the measurables are national standards and NCEA level 2, and yet we know that those are not good measures of the students’ overall progress within the education system. There is so much more to what goes on in schools and early childhood centres than simply literacy and numeracy, which is what the current Government’s targets are all about.

So if we have a statement of National Education and Learning Priorities that is well developed and is broadly embraced by people, it could be very powerful. If we have a statement of National Education and Learning Priorities that reinforces the narrowing down of the focus of the system, it could actually be very powerful but very damaging. And so if it is powerfully positive, that is good. If it is powerfully negative, I think it could be disastrous. So there is a reasonable degree of trepidation about how this is going to pan out.

I do not agree with the Minister of Education’s boasting about the current Government’s track record when it comes to education. Let us look at some realities. On every one of the major Programme for International Student Assessment measures—that is an objective international study—New Zealand has gone backwards during the term of the current Government. The number of people leaving school who then go on to be not in education, training, or employment has increased. The per-child funding in early childhood education and the per-student funding in schools is going backwards. Early childhood education participation is up, but the quality is declining. Parents are paying more than ever before for their kids’ education, and kids are feeling more measured, analysed, poked, and prodded than ever before and they are not being given the chance to be kids and grow at their own rate and to develop their own strengths.

I think we need an education system that is about drawing out the very best in young New Zealanders—and older New Zealanders who are re-engaging with education—rather than trying to stuff things into them. And, unfortunately, that is the process that this current Government seems hell-bent on—stuffing things into young people and making them conform and be standardised as if schools and early childhood centres are factories, rather than a creative, diverse, vibrant school and early childhood system, which is what we really need if we are to ensure that every New Zealander has the opportunity to reach their individual and unique potential.

This Government has been focusing on the delivery of Better Public Services over the past 8 or 9 years. Education has always been a priority for this Government, and for that reason we have been trying very hard to increase the participation of our young New Zealanders in education, and also to enhance the achievement of our young New Zealanders. We have increased our investment continually over the past 8 or 9 years. At the same time we have been trying to modernise our education system. It is important to note that this bill is just one other effort for us to modernise our education system. Just a couple of days ago the Hon Paul Goldsmith introduced his education bill regarding tertiary education, and this one is focused on early childhood education and secondary education.

The Education Act 1989 focuses largely on the running of schools. This one attempts to focus on the provision of 21st century, flexible education. So that is the difference. We are trying to make the achievement and learning of our young New Zealanders an essential part of our education system. How do we do that? We are, basically, trying to enhance or strengthen the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of our education providers and also to increase or strengthen the collaboration among our education providers. We are also going to establish a future-focused online learning legal framework for our online learning. All these elements are interrelated. To enhance the collaboration among our education providers means that we are able to strengthen the efficiency and the effectiveness and also have more accountability.

This bill will provide for new statutory mechanisms for communities of learning. We all know now that we have 197 communities of learning, involving well over half a million young New Zealanders and, also, over 1,500 schools and 95 early childhood education centres.

Another important part, as I mentioned earlier, is how to establish a future-focused legislative framework for online learning. It is important to understand that online learning has become increasingly important because of the advancement of our technology. More and more traditional face-to-face schools are now trying to use online learning for their teaching. People can learn anywhere, anytime, through a variety of delivery methods, including online learning.

The current Education Act 1989 did not expect such strong growth in online learning and therefore is unable, really, to somehow cope with the growth of online learning today. That is why we need to update the bill to make sure that we are able to deliver better and, also, to regulate online learning better.

One other thing that I will mention is that this bill also attempts to provide more options to parents. It is important to understand that we are trying very hard to give options to parents, schools, and even to teachers, and this bill is another effort to provide more options to our schools and parents. The cohort entry is a good example. So, overall, this bill will be able to enable us to provide better education systems to our young New Zealanders. Thank you.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare, otirā, tēnā tātou katoa. I stand in opposition to this bill, the Education (Update) Amendment Bill. The Minister has said that children and young people should be at the heart of education, and I agree with that. I totally agree with that. It is, in fact, the manner in which you give effect to that that really counts. I quote the Children’s Commissioner, who told the Education and Science Committee that we had got the process wrong; that the voice of young people was not being considered. I will give you an example. I went through all of the submissions. I found two from Māori—one from a year 9 student who had been diagnosed on the autism spectrum, who told the select committee that he had seen no success in education in New Zealand, and yet he was fluent in Te Reo Māori, which I think is probably at least some success for him.

We heard from Te Mata Rangatira, a young group of Hauraki rangatahi, and I want to mention them because I thought they had a very valuable contribution to make. They were heard but not listened to. That is a shame for this piece of legislation, because to make the claim that children and young people are at the heart of education requires that the voices of rangatahi, of tamariki, need to be heard in that context. So I stand in support of my colleague Chris Hipkins and his contribution to this discussion.

I want to take that a little bit further, because there are particular elements within this legislation that impact on Māori. We also heard a submission from Dr Mere Skerett, who made a suggestion around a new part in this bill, which basically says that when talking about the objectives of the system of education that we “instil in each child and young person an appreciation of the importance of the following:”, and the fourth thing is “the Treaty of Waitangi and te reo Māori.” I think that that just does not go far enough—anywhere near far enough—to instil an appreciation of the Treaty of Waitangi and Te Reo Māori. I ask members opposite, who seem to be consumed with wanting to meet certain standards: is that a high enough standard? That is not a high enough standard for New Zealand in 2017.

I also quote from the Auditor-General, a report called Summary of our Education for Māori reports. In here are statistics that say that by 2030, Māori will make up 30 percent of students at school. We need to be far more future-focused around this particular bill and the impact on the next generation, because that is only 13 years away. I would expect that a bill like this, if it were transformational, would go a lot further than just instilling an appreciation. That is not good enough.

What is more, Professor Skerrett recommended a rephrasing of that to “to promote the learning of and through Te Reo …”. Now, that does not make Te Reo Māori compulsory but it does lift it up a level. I cannot understand why Parliament could not agree to at least make that small step for the next generation. This Education (Update) Amendment Bill is going to impact on those students in the next generation—in the next 13 to 20 years—who are going to need a better level than just to instil an appreciation of Te Reo. I commend and, if I can, briefly recognise my colleague Catherine Delahunty for her proposals on this issue, as well. They were not accepted—and I know the rules; I should not really be talking too much about that, but in the context of what we do have in front of us I just want to acknowledge that attempts were made to address that.

I also want to go on to talk about the communities of online learning. I mentioned the Auditor-General’s report. I thought that it made some really good conclusions. Of course, one of the things it concluded was that it urged the education sector to continue to support the growth of better relationships between schools and whānau. I actually absolutely agree with that. I do not believe that what is in this bill is actually going to help too much in improving and continuing to improve those relationships. But I do send out my acknowledgment to all of those schools, no matter what kinds of schools they are, that actually are making a difference in those relationships. I believe it is not because of this new structure and this new approach; I believe it is actually because of the people involved. It is really important that those people—and perhaps that is where the focus should have been a little bit more, around raising the capacity of those schools to be able to engage with whānau.

I mentioned Te Mata Rangatira earlier. One of its major concerns was around communities of online learning. I thought it made some really good points. These were young people—well versed in using the technology of today. They were all Māori and they actually recognised the real importance of the way in which Māori see the world and the way in which Māori best learn. They could not see the benefit of being stuck in front of a computer screen, pretty much in isolation from the social interaction that good learning requires, from a Māori world view. I really take my hat off to those young people—who by the way expressed it in a way that was very relevant to who they are; they actually sang us a song. At the time I thought that we need more of this kind of interaction to get better legislation.

So my final mihi, in summing up my contribution, is to acknowledge those young people who did take the time and had the ability to make a contribution. Nō reira, taku kupu whakamutunga: e kī ana te kōrero, kia mau ki tō Reo e Te Iwi, ka nui te ngaro haere o tēnei āhuatanga. Nā tō Reo hoki ka mōhiotia ai koe he Māori; ka kūware koe ki tō Reo ka meinga koe nō ngā whenua noa atu. Kia ora.

[So my final statement: the talk says retain your language, people, the gradual loss of this attribute has become huge. Through your language, as well, you will be recognised as a Māori; should you become ignorant of your language, you will be deemed to have come from lands elsewhere. Thank you.]

I rise to take a short call to speak in favour of the Education (Update) Amendment Bill. There are three areas that I would like to just step through: the National Education and Learning Priorities, the communities of online learning, and the cohort entry changes. I am very supportive of this legislation, as you would expect, and have been as we have run through the process—but I have been struck by the debate on those three issues.

Firstly, there are the National Education and Learning Priorities. For me, I think it is absolutely appropriate that we require our boards of trustees to now take these priorities into account in their teaching and learning programme. I have not been swayed by the view that we heard through the select committee process that somehow having a set of priorities for learning for our children is going to so skew the delivery of the curriculum that the holistic approach that has underpinned our curriculum over the last few years is somehow going to be lost. I fundamentally have a much greater aspiration for our children and expectation of our teachers than that view and outlook and philosophy. I think these things are not mutually exclusive and, indeed, can be quite empowering when applied together.

Secondly, there is the debate that we heard on communities of online learning. It is quite an extraordinary framework, in my opinion, allowing our education system to breathe and evolve as technology changes—which every one of us agrees is changing in an extraordinary, rapid, transformational, and fundamental way. So we need a legislative framework that enables online learning to be able to grow with that.

Of course, as part of that, there is the potential for that to be entirely online, with all the protections that you would expect around pastoral care and quality of delivery. But, again, those protections were never referenced by nearly all of the submitters who had this as a core issue for them. I actually found the resistance quite astounding. It appeared to me that for some, because it cannot be imagined, it needs to be barred for all—because it cannot be imagined by them, in terms of how this could work in an operational sense, it must be barred for all. I think that that is too narrow a view when reflecting on the opportunity that online learning will provide.

Finally, I would like to make a few comments in respect of the views around the change of cohort entry and the fact that this may enable kids who are 4 years and 44 weeks old to start school if the parent agrees, if the board of trustees agrees, and if the school genuinely thinks that that is a sensible way forward. It is not compulsory—we made that point a number of times—but, again, the resistance was driven by the view that because nearly 5 is too young for some, then it must be denied for all. In my opinion, that, again, is too restrictive an interpretation of how this will work. This is not a Government that says that if your child is 4 years and 44 weeks old he or she must go to school. It is providing the flexibility for boards of trustees, for parents, and for those who are so focused on the success of education in this country, in a real community sense, to be accountable for making those decisions. That, in my view, is how it should be—children at the centre of legislation. That is what this legislation does, and that is why I am so proud to support it here this afternoon. Thank you.

I really do have to take issue with the comments about the rights of the child—of course, rights were not mentioned—about putting children at the heart. There are no rights of the child if this House does not stand up in legislation and make sure that we protect our smallest community members. This bill fails so many tests, and one of them is the rights of the child. We had the most important officers in the land—the Children’s Commissioner, around rights, and the Ombudsman—saying that the bill had failed to consult with children, and now we defend parts of the bill that would make children more vulnerable by saying they should be at school when they are 4 years old, and that it is all about choice.

Well, I tell you what this bill reminds me of: shopping and online shopping. What it has done, this Government, is it has pitched education as a product, as something that education providers—because we do not use the word “teachers”—are providing to the consumer, so the parent, as consumer, can shop for their choice. Now, in this bill, one can shop online as well. It is easy; just buy the product! The whole thing is about a product, it is about the mantra of choice, and the mantra of choice is the politics of distraction, if there is any understanding of what is actually going on in the education system today.

It does not matter how many COOLs and COLs and acronyms you invent. Education is a powerful liberating process that requires face-to-face interaction with human beings, plus digital learning, enhanced by a relationship with a school. That is what the learning providers who are experienced in using digital technology tell us. So if we are speaking about communities of online learning (COOLs)—which is one of the more controversial aspects of the bill—people such as Professor John Hattie, who are controversial for many reasons but are also established educators, are casting doubt on the efficacy of online learning in isolation, in terms of achievement. Many of the submitters from the learning networks—and we had great submitters—made submissions saying that the evidence was very shaky when you separate the school from the online learning provider, yet that is the point of the COOLs provisions.

Pastoral care has not been addressed. We are prepared to abandon our children and our young people in primary and secondary school to the market. It is consistent, because the market is God! However, we have privatised early childhood to the point that it is making a lot of young children participate in vulnerable education. We sacrificed tertiary education to the market a long time ago; the whole thing is an international franchise. But the compulsory sector, which the members of the committee—many of us on the Opposition—have tried to defend, is also under the gun through this legislation.

It is also weird, this legislation, because it is contradictory. It tries to suggest that the communities of learning will actually break down the fiefdoms of Tomorrow’s Schools at the same time as it is increasing the privatisation opportunity under the choice mantra. The Government cannot make up its mind whether we are a community or a shopping opportunity, and it has confused the two. Really, Government members do not know what education is actually about, because they never talk about learning; they talk only about results.

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study said that 15-year-olds in Aotearoa New Zealand are highly vulnerable to anxiety now because of the obsession with assessment. This is from a well-being report attached to the PISA study. I do not think PISA is the be-all and end-all, but the well-being of our kids—that made me wake up. Our young people, at 15, are highly anxious because the obsession is with targeting and assessment.

This bill does nothing to enhance the holistic view of learning. If you look at NELPs, the National Education and Learning Priorities, they were not formed from an in-depth conversation with the sector. The sector is bewildered and disappointed, just as are Opposition politicians and many in the community. We did not decide this stuff. It is not that some of the learning priorities are bad; it is just about what is missing that we would have put in.

What about the children in our education system who learn differently? Yes, this bill takes the seclusion room Supplementary Order Paper and makes it law to stop seclusion rooms, but in exchange for what? How are these children and these young people who learn differently going to be protected? We have banned this tool that needed to be banned—it was an outrage and a disgrace, and the Government has to wear the fact that it was not listening or it would have known about it. It was a dirty little secret, and there is no alternative to support teachers unless you give them professional development.

I was in James Cook High School the other day with a wonderful group of teachers, school support staff, and students. The stress levels are through the roof because children and young people are dealing with issues that the school system was never designed to fix, and all the Government can do in response is come up with a whole lot of rhetoric. Honestly, if I hear any more about 21st century, flexible modernisation, learning priorities—it is meaningless, people. You will never meet a group more passionate about innovation than the committed teaching profession. You will never meet a group of people more interested in creative innovation than young people.

I would like to thank Adrian Rurawhe MP for mentioning Te Mata Rangatira. The young people whom I encouraged to come to the Education and Science Committee from my rohe—these people are passionate about their self-determination and learning, and they said: “We don’t want digital learning unless it’s linked to a school and we have real support.” They have tried it, and it is tough. They still want—read my lips, people—to talk to somebody face to face, in the flesh, who understands how their minds work, as well as take the opportunities that the digital world offers our young people.

But we do not need to talk all this rubbish about modern, flexible rubbish. Let us get real about the actual situation that we face in schools. We need a collaborative environment. I do not disagree with that, but, unfortunately, the COOLs are now being limited through this bill—the Minister will decide the priority challenge that they adopt. So we have actually lost ground on communities of learning. We have created a monster, without pastoral care and controls, to privatise online learning. We have failed in this bill—not we; the Government has failed in this bill—to recognise many issues that could have been successfully addressed. So it is extremely disappointing to stand here, after this was supposed to be the bill to end all bills for education, and a real purpose statement was supposed to come out of it, and find that we are no further ahead. In fact, we have gone backwards. It is extremely disappointing.

I would like to tautoko the comments of my colleague from Labour, Adrian Rurawhe, about Te Reo and the Treaty in the National Education and Learning Priorities. Appreciation, instil—language is power. Language has meaning. You do not instil appreciation through tokenism; you actually have to do something to educate and uphold in the education system about Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and with Te Reo Māori. Appreciation of a language is not sitting watching it; appreciation of a language is learning it. Appreciating Te Reo—we can all appreciate it, but we do not understand because we have not learnt it, and we are not prepared to teach it to our kids. This bill does not allow that to develop. It still makes it completely voluntary and completely random, and there is enough “voluntary and random” in our education system.

Lastly, I want to just talk again about our kids. Our young people whom I have met, many of whom are cooking for their dad because their mum has passed away, or they are living in three or four different houses, or they are trying to do homework in the back of a car—I talked to these young people, and they said: “We do want to be at school, but we are really stressed.” A forward-looking and passionate Government would try to listen to what teachers are saying, what school support staff are saying, and what young people are saying about the real pressures, and try to embrace a participatory educational model that is brave, courageous, and public. This bill does not do that. It is incredibly disappointing, because our young people are worth it.

We all use the rhetoric of fulfilling potential, but the young people whom I have met—they do not have the same shot as the privileged, and this bill will not help them fulfil their potential. If they are dumped into COOLs because the school system cannot cope with them, we have failed them yet again. We need to embrace our young people. We do not need to isolate them and put them into privatised franchises; we need to teach them face to face, with the modern tools available to us, in a way that works for them. That is what it really means to be an educator. Kia ora koutou katoa.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. In the last term of Parliament, I sat on the Education and Science Committee for the digital literacy inquiry, and that is where the genus of the communities of online learning came from, really. I sat on there with a member of the National Government by the name of Simon Bridges. He has gone a little bit further than I have at the moment. However, it was interesting, when we were discussing the concept of 100 percent online learning, Mr Bridges, who has some small children, shook his head when we were listening to the evidence and he said—because it was about providing choice. The Khan Academy came to present to us, people from companies like Google came to present to us, and they told us “This is an opportunity you need to give to your young people. This is an amazing opportunity. Yes, our company will get a whole lot of downstream benefits from that, but that is not our interest here. Our interest is 100 percent child-focused.”

Now, Mr Bridges at that time shook his head, on that select committee, and he said “I’m struggling to understand how you say that parents will be able to make a choice or students will be able to make a choice when they don’t know what they don’t know.” What Mr Bridges was trying to say—because, in that moment, he was right. He has been somewhat wrong since, but he was right in that moment. What he was trying to explain or trying to understand—and we were trying to get his peers to understand it as that—is that choice is only truly available to people who are fully informed. Education is a complicated business.

I want to pick up on—Mr Brett Hudson was saying things quietly during Ms Delahunty’s contribution, and one of the things he said was that children are consumers. I think that, in a nutshell, epitomises how the National Government looks at education: that it is a consumer body, that children are consumers, and, therefore, it will place a business lens over the top of it. So what is wrong with charter schools making a profit from the public purse? What is wrong with communities of learning with private providers who can make a profit from our 5-year-olds through to our 18-year-olds? Somewhere in there the Government has convinced itself that our parental body and our student body is so fully informed about the pedagogical way that learning takes place that they have choice.

The other thing that is actually required for choice is, often, income. Let us go back to why the schools—and what the greatest challenge is for the Opposition on the Education and Science Committee in this term of Parliament is the unfortunate ignorance of the members of the Government side of that select committee. And you can hear it in the conversations that they have. Let us take, for example, the contribution by the member who resumed his seat before Ms Delahunty. He talked about this wonderful opportunity, through communities of online learning, for our young people to embrace the digital environment—and so on, and so forth. What that shows is a complete lack of understanding of the decade or more in which our schools have already been working with Virtual Learning Networks, actually doing e-learning and blended learning inside their schools. The reason why the piece of legislation needed to change was that a few years ago this Government removed the funding for the current State schools to be supported to belong to those Virtual Learning Networks. Now they have to use part of their operations grant and part of their teacher time to supplement that ability for their students to Skype out into other courses.

The Opposition at no time opposed the concept of Virtual Learning Networks. At no time—at no time—did we actually oppose communities of online learning. What we opposed was expanding it into the private sector. That is what we opposed. What we opposed was taking Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu—and having been under this Government in the last decade, this Government has allowed Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu to expand to the point where it now has 24,000 students. It has more students than any other school in this country. It is the largest education provider in the compulsory sector. Let us just make a point of Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu. Last year, it put NCEA level 1 100 percent online. It has had a significant drop in achievement from placing NCEA level 1 100 percent online. That has been reported in the press and in other statements, but has this Government taken it into account before it decided to open this industry up to the private sector? No, it has not, because it has been blinded by the opportunity of money.

I say that, Mr Hudson, and you scoff, not knowing what you are talking about—but you scoff. One of the other pieces of this bill is to allow boards of trustees—

💬 Brett Hudson: Providers don’t pay the Government.

—no, listen, Mr Hudson, you might learn something. This other part in this bill allows boards of trustees to sell their services—

💬 Brett Hudson: They can vote for the Opposition because they’re getting too much funding.

Mr Hudson. Mr Hudson—over here. Why would boards of trustees need to sell their services, Mr Hudson? Is it because they are underfunded and this is another way to take pressure off the Government, which says it is, with its $11 billion, supporting education more than before? Most of that is being spent on leaky buildings, which I think was actually created—I think one needs to go and talk with Mr Maurice Williamson about how we ended up in the leaky building situation. But let us be clear: it is not being spent on students—these dollars.

Let us just touch on cohorts, because that is also about money. Cohort entry, which schools have been able to do since Tomorrow’s Schools was introduced—boards of trustees have always had the capacity to do it. It has been identified in the regulatory impact statement that cohort entry will save the Government a predicted $11.3 million in early childhood education funding. Please do not tell me that that is not important to this Government, because it seems to know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

The other thing that is really interesting is that cohort entry, which we are talking about, now aligns to the quarterly funding returns that schools have to put in. I am not sure whether the National Government members are aware that their Government put in quarterly funding returns, but this is the driver: cohort entry is connected to quarterly funding returns for the schools, so it is actually about money and administration. If it was not, why did this Government not allow the Supplementary Order Paper to go through that said you can go into school in the cohort, because the Opposition has not opposed cohorts. The Opposition put in a Supplementary Order Paper, and all it said was that we are going to change the word to say you can go into a cohort entry—the closest one—after you turn 5. So why did the Government decide—and this is the difference between this Education and Science Committee and the last Education and Science Committee.

When Nikki Kaye was actually the chair of the last Education and Science Committee, she would invite us into her office to say “What are the sticking points? Where can we collegially organise and come to a place for the benefit of the country?”. Cam Calder did the same thing. Cam Calder would reach out to members of the Opposition. We would meet, we would discuss it, and we would say “Sorry Cam, we can’t go on that.”, and he would say “That’s fine, but I think we can work out some stuff here.” We created legislation in that Education and Science Committee that has stood the test of time. None of us has tried to overturn it.

💬 Brett Hudson: You’ve been in Opposition.

That is not—Mr Hudson, please stop interrupting. You know nothing about what you are talking about.

That is—and has been—the strength of the select committee process in this Parliament that other people around the world come to see. Unfortunately, it is being destroyed by the arrogance of the National Government. Just because it has the majority numbers its members think they do not have to listen to the submitters. Some of them think they do not even have to be polite to the submitters. They do not even have to look up from their iPad or their phone to engage with the submitters. That is unfortunate, because we should be proud of the select committee process. It is because these backbenchers have decided that they will just follow the party line, and even Ms Parata—finally—at the Committee stage of this bill finally stood up and said “At the end of the day we just disagree.” That is OK. It is the respectful way one interacts. National members heard but they did not listen to the people of New Zealand.

This is not a start; this is the end of a piece of puzzle for that Government. But the start of a complete rework—the Opposition, when it is sitting on the Government benches after 23 September, will reach back out to the sector. We will fix it. We will make it so that we do actually put our children first, and we take this whole financial concept that the National Government has placed into education out of it.

I rise to speak on this debate of the Education (Update) Amendment Bill. I do so—and I am going to stray off what I had planned to say, because I need to lay on the record how disappointed I am in the previous speaker, Tracey Martin, how disappointed I am to be subjected to a lecture. As a member of the Education and Science Committee, I take offence at the assertions that this is blind ideology. No, we leave that to the Opposition. We leave that to the Opposition, which is not interested in future-proofing the education system and which is not interested in efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability in the education system. I also wish to strongly disagree that this Government does not listen to the parents whose children are in the education system.

It was interesting, also, during this diatribe about everyone being against this bill, to read, while I was waiting for my turn, the regular newsletter Principal Matters, written by Whetu Cormick, who writes this afternoon that he feels certain there will be engagement with the new Minister, having met her, on any issues of concern. Interestingly, nowhere on that page did I see anything about this bill. Maybe it has been in previous newsletters.

However, what I do want to say is that the Education Act needed modernising, and this Government had the guts to get on and do it. There is still more to be done, but putting children at the centre, instead of administration at the centre, is surely pretty relevant right now. That is where the Government is.

I want to add that the members on this side of the House have regular visits to schools too, Ms Martin. We listen to principals, and we listen to teachers. So do not think, in your holier-than-thou way, that you are the only person who ever talks to principals and teachers. I am deeply disappointed in that. And so I bring to a close my thoughts on this bill. [Interruption]

Order! The next call is a split call. Gareth Hughes—5 minutes.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I cannot believe what I just heard from that member, Jo Goodhew. She is someone who has just hopped on the Education and Science Committee only a couple of months ago, and all of a sudden she is an expert in how this committee has operated for—as Catherine Delahunty tells me—8 years. She has the audacity to come down to this House, not talk about the Education (Update) Amendment Bill whatsoever, but pass all these judgments on other members and call other members “holier-than-thou”. What we did not hear, though, was a contribution about this bill.

What we know from the educational experts and what we know from the parents is that they are worried it is just another experiment with New Zealand children. We have seen the first experiment, with charter schools, and now we are seeing, through the so-called online charter schools, a second experiment. As any member of this House knows, I am a big supporter of technology. I am a big supporter of the potentials of IT in the educational sector. I remember sitting on a more than year-long select committee inquiry into how we can improve it—basic things, such as making sure our trainee teachers are given the expertise to use technology. What we never heard once on that committee, from all the international and domestic experts, was that just putting a kid in front of technology was the answer. What it was all about was the potential for technology to change and support existing teaching methods. What we did not hear was that just chucking kids in front of a screen was the answer, and that is the fear with this bill establishing these so-called online charter schools.

The third great experiment with New Zealand’s children that we have seen under this Government is the idea that somehow the market is going to solve everything—as if everything in the world, including our children, can be quantified, put in a basket, given a number, given a price, and then the competitive market is going to fix what ails us. It is just not on. What we know is that it is going to be an experiment with our children. I do not think we should be experimenting with our children. I think we should have more robust evidence put before us. In fact, we should be listening to the experts before we race off with these decisions.

I guess, just to keep the experiment theme going, the second part of this bill, which is passing today, is looking at careers advice—moving it from Careers New Zealand to the Tertiary Education Commission. We have heard both sides of the debate. I think it is a reasonable debate. Again, it is going to be an experiment. We are going to be following how it goes and how it actually rolls out. The fear, of course, is that it is simply another bureaucratic change-around, which is not going to fundamentally change the systemic problem we have in New Zealand, which is that kids—or young adults, as I should probably say—are not getting adequate modern advice from professional sources of expertise in school so that they can go on and have prosperous, productive careers. It will be interesting to see how it goes.

But because of the three big experiments we are seeing with our children—charter schools, online charter schools, and a market approach—we cannot support this bill, despite some of the good and reasoned points in it. I am proud to be opposing the bill in its third reading.

I call Aupito William Sio—5 minutes.

From a Pacific perspective, when we look at education we look at it as being the key to success. That terminology is truer today, if not more so, than at any other time. When we say it in that way, we also mean that we have got to invest in our young people and look at our young people, not for their childish behaviours but for the potential that they have to be the people that they must become if they are to replace us in the years to come.

Most working people want the best for their children, and that is why they value education. It is also why people allow that we pay our fair taxation, so that every child in our communities is able to go to school, as well as the children in our neighbourhoods.

I just want to say, in terms of the context to this bill, that working communities such as Māngere have put in so much effort to make sure that participation in early childhood education has increased, to make sure that our high school kids achieve level 1 and level 2 NCEA. They have done that despite the challenges that this Government has put up in their faces, despite poverty, despite the housing crisis, despite low incomes, and despite unemployment.

I want to reflect on a few things that have been presented by submitters to the Education and Science Committee. I note that “The Government has ignored children, parents, teachers and other education experts by only making minor and technical changes to the … Bill. This is not a good way to create legislation, and is a lost opportunity to take proactive steps to improve schools and education for New Zealand’s young people … ‘Parents don’t want their children treated like products to be sold to the highest bidder. Every child is an individual with their own hopes and dreams, and you need skilled teaching professionals who care about the welfare of each child to bring out their unique strengths.’ ”

Another submitter made this comment: “That’s never going to happen by plonking children in front of a computer screen or by turning our kids’ education into a money-making scheme for business.” Another submitter made this comment: “For the minister of education not to seek the advice of the education sector in the first place and to then ignore the evidence of hundreds of submitters is a cavalier approach to making law, to say the least.” Another submitter said that we should be legislating the right for every child or young person to an inclusive education: “Legislating for an enforceable right to inclusive education is the very least the Government should be doing if they are going to start taking our obligations to the well-being and rights of children and young people with disabilities seriously. The current situation is a shamble and a disgrace.” Another: “The government is failing to invest in inclusive education and support the rights of disabled New Zealanders to education. The result is teachers locking vulnerable children in rooms, early childhood centres and schools refusing to enrol local children with disabilities, families paying to provide or top up support staff for their children, and children missing out on school camps, sporting …”.

The final submitter I want to quote is Judge Andrew Becroft, the Children’s Commissioner, who told MPs at the Education and Science Committee that “children should be consulted about major changes proposed in the Bill that might deny them their fundamental rights. He called for the Bill to be stopped while proper consultation on the Bill occurred, adding the Bill may be in breach of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.”

I quote these submitters because these are not only parents and the teaching fraternity but experts in the field of education whose views, I would have thought, would be valuable in ensuring that the change in the 1989 legislation would achieve what we all want: the best out of our children. But, alas, that is not what this bill is about.

Finally, the comment I want to end with is the proposal for children starting school at 4 years old. This is what my community has had to say: our children are not cogs in a machine in a factory. They are not factors of production. Our children are human beings with potential, whom we want to be leaders. Sending them off to school smacks of the idea that it is as if that is all they are good for. Young people should not be forced into education at such an early age. They are simply children who need to be nurtured, who need to be supported by their parents.

It is a great pleasure to rise and take a short call on the third reading of the Education (Update) Amendment Bill. Firstly, can I acknowledge the work of the outgoing Minister of Education, the Hon Hekia Parata. I think she has done an outstanding job over her time in this portfolio and will probably go down in history as a forward-thinking person who actually had the educational needs of our young people at heart. While there are some people on the other side of the House who may disagree with this, I have got a feeling that they are going to be proved wrong in the time to come.

I also want to acknowledge Nikki Kaye, who has done outstanding work in the Associate Minister role over the last little while. I am sure she is going to continue this forward-thinking, innovative-thinking approach to actually delivering better educational outcomes for the children and young people of New Zealand.

A fair amount of conversation has already happened throughout this debate and throughout the whole process, but I just want to focus very quickly on one particular part of this legislation, which was picked up on briefly by the previous speaker, Aupito William Sio. The previous speaker said that we were going to be forcing 4-year-olds off to school. That is not what is occurring. What is happening is allowing for cohort entry for children at the beginning of a term, at the time closest to their fifth birthday. Some of them will be 5, some of them will be 4, and some of them may be closer to 6. It is going to be a choice that parents will have as to exactly when they want to do it. But what I can say is that we are going to see some benefits using this cohort system. New entrants’ teachers are incredible people, and if we can make their lives a little bit simpler by having new entrants coming in in cohorts, then I think that is going to deliver a better outcome for all.

This is a good bill, and I commend it to the House.

I am not on the select committee that considered this bill, the Education and Science Committee, but, like many of the people in the House, I have been kept abreast of what has been happening by our spokesperson and by our members who are on the select committee. I do want to acknowledge the select committee. I particularly want to acknowledge my colleagues Chris Hipkins and Adrian Rurawhe, who made really valuable contributions to this debate in the third reading and the whole way through. It is really disappointing to hear from Adrian—we were just chatting about this—that very little advice was taken on by the National members of the select committee, and very little room for negotiation existed around this particular bill with the Government members. When we are talking about something as serious as the education of our children, then you would think there would be some compromise, negotiation, and listening to advice, but, unfortunately, that is not the way the National Government operates.

We heard every member stand up in the House and talk about the contribution that the Minister Hekia Parata has made. Actually, I am going to disagree with the National members who have pushed that as their No. 1 key line in the delivery of their speeches. I think she will be remembered for being the Minister who had the absolute worst relationship with the education sector ever, the Minister who refused to listen to the educational experts at every turn, and the Minister who was responsible for seeing our international ratings in things like maths, science, reading, and writing plummet. Those are the things that that Minister will be remembered for. So I just need to put that on the record.

We are opposing this bill, and mostly that is because the case has not been made for many of the changes that have been proposed. The majority of feedback that was given by the 216 submissions received on the bill was largely ignored by the National Government. Whilst many submitters welcomed the bill’s intention, as we did, to modernise the education legislation and provide a more coherent framework for the delivery of education, they also expressed concern that a bill purporting to place the child at the centre of the education system was being progressed through a process in which the voices of those children have barely been heard.

We shared that concern. “The Education (Update) Amendment Bill refines an education system that was well suited for the 20th century, and does little to bring the system into the 21st. The overwhelming focus continues to be on standardisation and accountability, rather than diversity and creativity. We believe that the Government should be focused on ensuring that every school in New Zealand is a great school, and that every student has access to a broad education that allows them to fulfil their individual potential and even discover potential they did not know they had. We are concerned that the Government is narrowing the focus of the education system, focusing on a small set of measurable targets to the exclusion of a broad and balanced curriculum.”

I want to give a local example of where I found the Government really difficult to work with on a local issue to do with the education system. It really is an issue that affects whether or not we do and can and whether or not families believe they have great schools in their local area. That is the issue that we face in parts of Auckland, and I am going to refer specifically to west Auckland where we have 4,500 children every day leaving west Auckland to attend schools elsewhere. I, at one point, wrote a letter to the Minister Hekia Parata and also to the Associate Minister Nikki Kaye on behalf of the principals association in west Auckland asking the Minister to contemplate the idea or to consider the idea of surveying parents to find out why they were sending their kids elsewhere. It is really important that we do not make assumptions about why they are doing that but actually that we research that properly, because we want our local kids to be staying in our local schools.

We see in many of our west Auckland schools where there is a decline in the role the impact that that has on property maintenance, let alone development. We see the impact that that has on perception within the community and it becomes a downward spiral. So we do need our local parents to have faith in their local schools. Actually, when you talk about the downward spiral—and the National Government members like to talk about choice—as a parent in west Auckland, I was disappointed when looking at my local school that because of the fact that it has had a decline in roll, the options available to my child were going to be fewer than they would be in a central Auckland school because of the fact that the roll had declined so much and, therefore, the teachers on staff were fewer. So you can see the impact and the flow-on effect that that has.

So it is disappointing, when you raise serious issues like that and you suggest very rational and reasonable suggestions to Minsters like Hekia Parata and Nikki Kaye, that they are ignored and you get a response back saying “No, we will not do that, because it’s about choice.” Well, it is about choice, yes, I understand that, but what choice do you have as a parent when you do not have the means to send your child elsewhere and all you want, really, is to have the commitment from any Government that your local school will be the best school? National has not done that at all. It has been about competition and it is absolutely supportive of the idea that those who have money can move their children where they like. So that is a local issue that was ignored, and I just wanted to use that as an example of where the Government has not been about creating great schools in every local community, and it has been very disappointing to see that that has been the case.

We cannot support this bill for the reasons that I mentioned earlier. It does not do what the Government purports it does and we are disappointed with not only the outcome in terms of the bill that we have in front of us now, but the process in which the Government members have engaged when considering this bill and developing it, as well as just their overall approach to the education system and to our children.

It is the last call of this debate from the Government speakers, and it is up to me to acknowledge the Hon Hekia Parata for all the work that she has done in the educational space, and also the Hon Nikki Kaye, who has taken up the mantle now as our education Minister. I also would like to acknowledge Jian Yang, a person who has done well in the role of Education and Science Committee chair. I know he has facilitated this bill going through the select committee process very well, and that that is why we have ended up with the bill in this state. To all those who submitted during the legislative process, I would like to thank them for their time as well. I would also like to thank all the speakers today in this debate, and commend this bill to the House. Thank you.