Education Amendment Bill

I call Jamie Strange—a five-minute call.

Mr Assistant Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak on this bill. I’d like to acknowledge our Minister of Education, the Hon Chris Hipkins, for the excellent work he’s been doing. This Government will listen to our teaching professionals. The education sector breathed a collective sigh of relief when this Government was elected. How do I know that? Because I was involved in the education sector for many years. I’ve got a number of friends in the sector, and they’re very excited that they have a Government who will actually listen.

There’s two aspects that I want to talk about in this bill—and they have been covered already, so I’m going to just add my thoughts to it—and that’s charter schools and national standards. So, firstly, on the aspect of charter schools, I’ve personally spoken with two principals of charter schools, one in Auckland and one in Hamilton, and both of them are looking forward to the opportunity to apply to become schools of designated character. In fact, they feel that the funding for the charter schools has not been administrated in a fair manner. They are in the third tranche, and hence they missed out on extra money, so they’re actually very excited to become designated character schools.

I’d just like pick up on a couple of points here, the first one for the Hon Tim Macindoe: sir, I appreciate your passion for the education system, and I say that genuinely. I’d like to assure you that alternative education can and will still take place within the context of a designated special character school. I think there’s a little bit of fear around this that with charter schools transitioning into designated character schools, the alternative aspects that many of them do provide will be lost, but that’s not the case.

In my personal opinion, I believe that charter schools are part of a wider agenda I’d like to call a privatisation agenda, and it’s around privatising the education system so it becomes more like an American model. However, this Government are defenders of a strong public education system focused on equal opportunity, and that’s where the key difference lies. A question for the member David Seymour—he may address it in his speech when he speaks—I’d like to know: what can a child learn in a charter school that cannot be learnt in a designated character school, within the context of our public education system? I look forward to hearing that answer when the member speaks.

In my last couple of minutes, I’d like to speak about national standards. Now, I believe national standards were never about performance; it was never about assessing to parents; it was about performance pay. I believe the previous Government wanted to rank teachers and they wanted to pay teachers different levels. The teachers didn’t want that, because the teachers knew that a system like that would not work in an education system—it would not benefit our young learners. So in order to hang performance pay on something, the previous Government brought in national standards. However, because of the strength of the teacher voice, they weren’t able to progress to performance pay. Who knows—if they had another term, they may have rammed it through. So, fortunately for us, we didn’t get to that stage.

My wife and I also have four children, like the member opposite, and we regularly meet with the children’s teachers. We meet twice a year. We sit down with the teacher, the teacher pulls out a piece of paper and shows us quite clearly what level of the curriculum our children are at in each of the subjects, and that satisfies us in terms of where they are on the level. We know that we might be able to provide some more support as parents in certain areas, but we don’t need the extra judgment, which is not accurate in many cases, of a national standard. There are a number of reasons why national standards will not work: they narrow the curriculum, they promote dishonesty, they’re not holistic, they foster low self-esteem, and they limit creativity. So I’m very excited, particularly around those two aspects of the bill—the transition of charter schools and the removal of national standards. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I wish to rise to take a call to highlight two purposes of the bill today. They’re not highlights, but here I go anyway: one is the removal of provisions relating to national standards so that national standards cannot be reinstated in the future, and the other is the repeal of the charter school provisions.

On the removal of national standards, the bill states that it “paves the way for work with experts and stakeholders to develop a new system.” Well, nothing in the legislation actually starts this process or even creates a framework for that process. The Secretary for Education—and those who are on the select committee with me across the way will know she said this—confirmed it this week: they have not designed a system. Once again, this is an ideologically driven reversal of a past National Government policy with nothing to replace it. Every time I debate in this House, it seems to be the common theme from the new Government: scrap it and leave it blank. They’ve scrapped the $50 million East-West Link process—where’s the big idea to solve congestion? They’ve scrapped pay equity legislation—no easy process to negotiate now for women. Where’s the big idea there? They’ve scrapped targets to keep the Public Service accountable—nothing to replace that, either.

In this House, we get technical, we get legal, and we get detailed, but today we’re getting personal. My daughters were in primary school when national standards came in. I went on the school board that year. My reports from my daughters were arbitrary and they were casual, and then, with national standards, they went to uniform, consistent, and comparative. As parents, we know that we wanted—and we still do today—both overall teacher judgment but also cohesive, nationwide content direction. That’s what parents want.

And what of deleting the charter school model? The State school system works, but it is inevitable that some kids will slip through. They’re struggling. What of them? Who will catch them, nurture them? Who will give a damn and show them a different way of being successful and achieving? So what’s the real reason that Labour are closing them? Have Labour not seen the results from these schools? Pass rates, turn-around school attendance, new-found respect—the list goes on, but listen to actual parents, and I quote: “My son was changed from academically directionless to successful.”; “an absolute lifesaver for my daughter. She thought she wasn’t smart and that she wouldn’t have a future and that she wasn’t good enough. It was a miracle.”

The bill also provides “transitional” arrangements to allow time for negotiations about the future of these schools that are already operating. Well, you only have to do a small amount of research, really skim the surface, to see that this is more of a stick than a carrot approach. The Minister of Education released a press release when he introduced the bill that said, “My preferred option is to explore early termination of contracts by mutual agreement.” There’s no ambiguity in that statement. It is clear what the Minister’s intentions are, and we shouldn’t fall for the charade that the Government will give these schools, the same ones that are helping give so much value to students failed by the State, any alternative option other than shutting down. It all ends the same way. The press release also said, “I am reserving my right to issue a notice of ‘termination for convenience’ ”. What interesting and appalling language to use. Convenient for who—students or the Minister?

When it comes to charter schools, it’s really quite simple: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. These schools work; they just don’t work for the unions. Thank you.

A five-minute call—I call Marja Lubeck.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Education Amendment Bill 2018. This bill amends the Education Act 1989, and, unlike the member of the Green Party who spoke previously, I remember that year vividly, as it was the year I came to New Zealand and was lucky enough to make a new home—but back to the bill. These changes regarding national standards and charter schools have been well traversed, and the members on this side of the House have eloquently pointed out that this Government’s focus is actually on students’ progress across the curriculum, rather than that very narrow focus on literacy and numeracy that doesn’t give us an accurate understanding of how our kids are doing. In fact, as a mother of a young boy at college, I’ve never needed national standards to be briefed on how my boy was doing. I completely agree with the Minister of Education’s statements with regard to less testing, more teaching, which is in the best interests of our kids and our teachers.

I’d just like to mention one point that is also in this bill that is really important and hasn’t been mentioned a lot as yet. It is restoring guaranteed places for staff and students on the councils of their tertiary education providers. By doing so, it restores trust in democracy. It is very much like the changes we’re making through the other bill, the Education (Teaching Council of Aotearoa) Amendment Bill. That gives teachers the right to choose their own representatives from amongst their peers, and this bill does exactly the same. It guarantees one elected member of permanent staff and one elected student on the council. So once again this Government is righting the wrongs of the previous Government, because the previous changes were made when all universities were completely against those changes.

This is a Government that actually respects people’s democratic rights, sets our children up for success in school and in life, and is not afraid to make changes to reflect that. I support this bill and commend it to the House.

I call David Seymour—a five-minute call.

Well, thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. The question that people should be asking themselves at home is: why is this Government closing charter schools? And there is no question that they are being closed by this legislation. You see, I used to be the under-secretary responsible for this policy. Let me tell you just how it works. These schools have six-year contracts that are all due to be renewed sometime between 2019 and 2023. If you are enrolling your kid at one of these schools now, you’re enrolling them for a minimum of three years, and you want to know that the school’s going to be there in three years’ time. You might be enrolling them for six or even eight years, in some cases. So this legislation, by removing the legitimacy of renewing the contracts, ensures that there will be no schools at the end of this contract term, and therefore no real possibility of confident enrolment by students in the schools now. That’s why this legislation is a gun to the head of partnership schools kura hourua; I hope that the members opposite can at least understand that.

But coming back to the question of why—why? Is there a problem to be solved? Well, the regulatory impact statement is very interesting. It has a page on problem definition and objectives. Now, we might hope that this Government was trying to solve problems out in the community, problems real people have that perhaps legislation could improve for them. But, no, there’s no such problem described in the regulatory impact statement. It simply says, “This intervention proposes to implement the Government’s commitments”. That’s all it is. It is ideological utu and union payback, because there are no problems in the schools. Most of them are oversubscribed. Most of the partnership schools are turning people away and have waiting lists, because the kids going there like them, the parents who send their children to the schools like them, and the people who teach at them are not forced at gunpoint, in the way this Government treats the schools, to teach at the schools; they like them because they’re there voluntarily. Nobody has been forced to be part of a partnership school and no taxpayer has been forced to fund a partnership school a dollar more or a dollar less than they would be forced to fund a State school. They do not get a dollar more or a dollar less than a State school. Nobody has been forced to do anything.

There is no problem. There are no complaints from anyone who’s directly affected by a partnership school. But wait: there is a problem. This Labour Party and, in particular, this Minister of Education are donkey deep in union culture. They are agents of the teacher unions and they are there to try to eliminate the competition for the union thugs. That’s what this bill is about. It is union thuggery, but it has wider implications for this country. You wonder why there are so many people out marching, protesting, calling talkback, complaining about this Government’s actions? Well, this has some wider implications, and the more thoughtful members on the Government benches might want to just think about them.

First of all, what does it say about this Government’s approach to constructive policy-making when it simply says, “For no other reason than the fact we can, we are going to insist one size fits all and take away these children’s opportunity.”? Because I can tell you fellas, people in middle New Zealand react to that. There’s one more thing that they might like to think about, and it’s this: how can people seeking to do business in New Zealand be confident of the rule of law being upheld by this Government when they find themselves witnessing one Minister going and talking to that school, making some backroom assurances—this is all going to be very interesting when it comes out in court, fellas. This is going to be about this Government’s commitment to the rule of law, and that’s a bigger, deeper issue than perhaps anyone in this Government has thought about so far.

The ACT Party opposes this bill on the partnership school clause alone. There is no problem to be solved, there is no problem with partnership schools, but the first serious mistake that this Government’s made, which will fill the political backpack that eventually weighs down all politicians, is this reckless, immature, stupid legislation that takes away the opportunities of 1,200-plus kids who are getting the best educational opportunity they’ve ever had and undermines the rule of law in this country.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to speak on the Education Amendment Bill—in opposition, of course. Mr Hipkins has spent nine long years in the cold winter of Opposition—plenty of time to think about policy, about education policy. And one of the first bits of education policy that we get is this—a bill that takes away things, a bill that repeals things, a bill that takes away national standards and gets rid of charter schools.

Let’s have a think about why charter schools were introduced in the first place. Why were they introduced? They were there to offer something different. They were there to be flexible, to offer parents choice—something different for their children who are failing in mainstream schools. I have been to charter schools. I have one very successful charter school in my electorate and that is Vanguard Military School, and I have spent many, many days there talking with their students, unlike Mr Davis.

And can I tell you that when I talked to those students they told me things that broke my heart. They told me about the fact that they failed in mainstream schools—not only that they failed but that they were miserable, that they were involved with drugs and gangs. They did not go to school, they were self-harming, but the worst thing that they told me was that they didn’t believe in their own abilities. They didn’t have any confidence in their ability to succeed. They didn’t think they had a future. They didn’t think that they were smart. They told me themselves in their own words that they thought they were dumb. That is what charter schools were introduced to address.

Vanguard Military School has those students’ lives around. One of the students that I met there has lost 56 kilos and believes in himself because he is now passing NCEA level 1, NCEA level 2, and NCEA level 3. I went to their graduation last year and I watched those students and their families. I watched the students cross the stage, and every single one of them, as they went across the stage to get their certificates, hugged their teachers. They were crying, they were emotional, and so were their parents, because they never believed in themselves until they got to this school. This school offered them something different, and what this bill does is take that away. It doesn’t offer any solutions. In fact, do you know what it does, Mr Assistant Speaker? It pushes them right back from whence they came—from those schools that were failing them.

To say it’s all going to be roses and honey and rainbows sending them back to special character schools, which have existed since 1989—those students have tried those schools. Those students have tried the mainstream, they’ve tried alternative, and they didn’t work. But what is working for those students is Vanguard Military School. I have sat down and spoken to those kids who now believe that they have a future. These are kids from troubled backgrounds who have a multitude of issues and challenges in their lives. These are the kids that our Prime Minister keeps talking about wanting to help, with all her speeches of “Won’t somebody please think of the children?” Well, this bill is the opposite of that. There’s no action in this bill to address those kids’ needs. That’s what charter schools do and, as Mr Seymour just said, there’s nothing wrong with that. They’re working for these children.

Have Labour not seen the results from these schools? Vanguard’s result last year for NCEA level 2 was 89 percent, compared to the national average of 77 percent. For their Māori students, who make up 50 percent of the school, it was 90 percent, compared to the national average of 72 percent. At level 3 for those same Māori students, it was 95 percent, compared to the national average of 55 percent. How can you argue with that? Those kids, who were failing in the mainstream, go to this charter school and achieve beyond their wildest dreams and now have futures, and this bill takes that away.

Vanguard, this year, took 25 students who had previously been excluded from other schools—students who had nowhere else to go, who were failing in the mainstream, and who have now found somewhere where they can achieve. I met some of those students on a march. It, admittedly, was like some weird alternative reality because David Seymour was leading it and I was on it, but I was there, along with—

💬 David Seymour: I was halfway between Chlöe Swarbrick and Penny Bright!

Ha, ha! My first march, with David Seymour. Who would’ve thought it?

I was on that march with students from Vanguard Military School. Some of them had been at the school for only 2½ weeks, and they were there on a Sunday, in the rain, in their immaculate uniforms, so proud of their charter school because they knew that it offered them a future. They did a haka, which they’d practised only four times, and they were so proud of their haka, their school, and their future, which this bill takes away.

What we are doing with this bill is forcing those students that were on that march to go back to a system that failed them. Or, as this Government says, “We’ll transition them into this model that we’ve had since 1989.”, which has been failing them. I think they miss the point. That model has been failing them. This model is working for them, and yet here we are repealing it.

What I’d like to also talk about is truancy. Tracey Martin got up in this House a number of weeks ago and, in answer to a verbal question at question time, said that she was so concerned about truancy rates because they had fallen from nearly 70 percent in 2015 to 67 percent last year. Well, can I tell you that last year, the truancy rate for Vanguard Military School, in my electorate, was 1.8 percent. Now, these kids come from as far away as Waiuku. They get up at 5.30 in the morning, they get a train, and they get two buses to get to a school that is so far from where they live, because they believe in their futures, and their truancy rate is 1.8 percent. What does that tell you about the success of the charter schools that this bill is getting rid of? If Tracey Martin was so concerned about truancy rates, she wouldn’t be backing this bill to get rid of charter schools.

So if the results from these schools are so good, what are the real reasons that Labour are closing these charter schools? The cold, hard truth, as Denise Lee pointed out, is that these schools work, but they don’t work for the unions. These schools are bulk funded, they can pay the teachers whatever they like, and that is the cold, hard reality. The unions don’t like them, and that is why Mr Hipkins is trying to get rid of them. The evidence is clear: they work for the students and they work for the parents, but they just don’t work for the unions.

The other problem is that, you know, this Government thinks they know best when it comes to education. All they know is that students must be in their system. How could a student possibly achieve in any other system? Well, they are achieving, and they’re achieving at charter schools.

Let me take my final minute just to talk about Mr Davis. Mr Kelvin Davis, who has stood up for the charter schools in his electorate, those Māori charter schools—the two of them in Whangarei that he said that he would resign over if they closed. Well, I find it really interesting that he mentions only those two, and he only ever has—the two schools that he has an interest in in Whangarei—because there are two other schools in his electorate that have been in his electorate for the last three years, which he’s never bothered to visit. Vanguard is one of them, and there are no excuses, because Mr Davis has been invited to Vanguard. The only piece of correspondence that Mr Davis has ever sent that school was a decline letter saying, “No, I’m sorry. I can’t make your graduation.” He never contacted them at all, even though 50 percent of those students are Māori students, even though that school is in his electorate. But let’s not forget, he is standing up for those two other schools in his electorate.

Can I just finish by saying that charter schools offer young, vulnerable students a future, and all this bill does is take that away.

This is a great day for public education. For quality public education in this country, this is the best day, because today we are righting an attack that was made on our public education system, which started with a false crisis in education that was constructed by the previous Government to bring in their ideological policies back in 2008.

Why, when we were one of the most high-performing systems in the world, were we then landed with problems—and they were problems to those of us that worked in the sector—such as national standards? But then, when we got charter schools—you know what? I think it was about the distraction, the politics of distraction. One of the previous Government’s greatest educationalists, who they quoted a lot, Professor John Hattie, talks about the politics of distraction. “Distraction #1: appease the parents”, and that’s what we’ve heard here a lot in the House today—appeasing the parents. But they weren’t my parents. My parents in my school hated national standards. They couldn’t stand them. They didn’t understand them. Even when we would have sessions on them, they didn’t cope with them. The previous Government listened to their parents, who are their voting base. John Hattie says parents have the power for the Government that’s in charge at the time, because they, not the students, are the voters. They were being reactionary to their voters.

To charter schools, that was his “Distraction #4: fix the schools”. “It is ironic that a popular solution to claims about ‘failing schools’ is to invent new forms of schools”—to privatise. This was a way to break down the public education system. This wasn’t about a good education decision; this was about breaking down that education system, and that simply isn’t good enough. That is why this is such a great day in education, because we are restoring public education once again in this country, and it is very exciting. So on that note, I commend this bill to the House.