Education (Tertiary Education and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

When the House was last considering this bill, Jamie Strange was speaking and, if he wishes, has one minute and 20 seconds to speak.

I certainly do wish to speak on this bill. It’s another excellent bill the Government’s brought in around the area of education, which, as I’ve said before, is certainly something that is very dear to my heart having just finished my masters in educational leadership—graduating next month, so very excited about that.

💬 Hon Dr David Clark: Congratulations.

Thank you very much. Now, I believe I’ve probably got about one minute to go so, this is actually my third—I’ve got the full 10 minutes?

💬 SPEAKER: No, less than a minute.

Oh, heck. So this is actually the third time I’ve tried to finish this speech. I’ve been cut off twice, so fingers crossed for this time.

There’s just a key focus I’d like to bring out in this bill, and that’s the focus—

💬 Hon David Parker: The name of the bill.

The Education (Tertiary Education and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. But the focus is on public education. So if there’s one thing this Government is absolutely committed to, it is funding public education, because it’s about all Kiwi young people, middle-aged, and also seniors having the opportunity to study, because, as we know, education provides opportunity.

Well, thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Education (Tertiary Education and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Hopefully, I can get through my speech on the first round and don’t have to wait three times as the member opposite Jamie Strange had to. But let me just congratulate him on his upcoming, pending graduation as well. It’s a lot of work and effort that you’ve gone in to doing your Master’s. I hope you have a fantastic celebration.

So I’d just like to make a couple of comments on this bill, another good National Party piece of legislation which we’re progressing through in this Parliament. It’s great to see that the Government is spending a lot of Parliament’s time continuing to progress the agenda which we had progressed through our last three years in our third term in Government.

I would just like to make a couple of comments in relation to the bill. It’s a piece of legislation which improves the accountability for the tertiary sector, improves monitoring, and improves outcomes. We have to remember that this is our fourth-biggest industry in New Zealand, bringing in $4.28 billion into the economy. So it is important that we ensure we are marketing a product to the world which people can know and have trust and faith in.

But I would just like to point out that the Government has made one change to this piece of legislation. And they have not supported the Hon Paul Goldsmith’s Supplementary Order Paper 17, which was to ensure that private and public sector both receive the same funding in the tertiary space. Even the Minister Chris Hipkins has publicly stated that the private sector often can do better. So I don’t see why we have to pass legislation which continues to put in place a situation where the private sector is seen differently.

But we do support this bill. It’s a good piece of legislation, and we will add that to our long list of things that we will do and fix up when we get back in to Government very soon. Thank you very much.

I am delighted to be the final speaker here in the third reading of the Education (Tertiary Education and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Like my colleague Jamie Strange, I’ve been waiting a long time to have my chance to speak. I congratulate you finally there, Jamie, and finally getting through on the third time through that speech.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank the select committees in what they’ve done in this bill, and getting it to this stage, getting it to the third reading. Because even though we’ve heard very little from our Opposition benches we’ve heard a lot about it being a Government bill. But actually this bill is so much stronger because we have made this bill so much better. We have made this bill so much better through the select committee process because we’ve removed the original proposal to insert a principle of equal funding treatment of public and private providers into the Education Act. This, today, is a good move for quality public education in this country. It’s a great move because we’re seeing it in the tertiary sector. So we are saying that quality public education goes right from birth, right through a learner’s life, and it’s exciting that we’ve done that. So while we hear that this is a previous Government’s bill, this bill is fantastic. I’m delighted to be here and speaking about it. I’m delighted that we’re having the opportunity to put this bill through in the strongest form that it possibly could be.

I’m really, also, disappointed though that we haven’t heard a lot in the House from the Opposition on this bill. It makes me wonder how much—and I’ve heard this time and time again on any of the education bills that have come up—they actually put in store for education. I would actually argue with them that they are letting their public and their voters down by not having a say in the House on these bills. I have been contacted by a number of people who have been watching these debates, contacted about how they have really appreciated the understanding of what this bill actually entails. One of the areas that they have spoken to me about is the part of this bill that talks about protection of our international students in the secondary schools. This is an incredibly important part of this bill. This shouldn’t be minimised. And the fact that we’ve got people laughing in the House does tell me that those people aren’t putting any value on our education system. This is really, really important—really, really important. What a shame that they could not articulate that so that the people of New Zealand could actually understand it.

This bill allows schools to—[Interruption]

💬 SPEAKER: Order! I’ll just ask the member to resume her seat. I know there’s been a certain amount of celebration going on, but it is getting too noisy now.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill allows schools to more effectively manage our international students. It allows schools to manage the misconduct and to also put a great deal of care and thought into the pastoral care of those students. It is really, really important that schools maintain responsibility for the international students outside of school. We’ve got to ensure that it’s not just about the discipline of those students, though, in the school setting when they get into a situation where they misbehave.

This bill, through its outlining and defining of the enrolment contract, enables schools to remove students from the school setting, even if they haven’t misbehaved when they’ve been at the school. It allows schools to actually deal with them if they have not disclosed issues that they have had before they have enrolled at the school. This is a really good move because it protects schools and it also protects students so that they don’t get into a situation that they can’t handle.

This is really, really important to the schools. It’s those people who have contacted me and said how much they appreciate hearing this debate in the House, because since then they have seen that we are putting a great deal of value on our international students.

Schools have got into trouble, and this is where this bill came into being in the first place. They were using the original code of conduct as their guidance to help them with the discipline of international students. Unfortunately, that was not enough. It was tested through the court processes and put both the schools and the students in a very unsafe position. So this outlining of the enrolment contract now actually helps that situation. We know that for all those schools that have international students this is a much better situation for them to be in. It keeps the schools safe.

It’s also great for the New Zealand economy. It gives surety. It gives surety to those people that are wanting to send their children, their students, to New Zealand to study that their children and the students coming over here will be safe, and so they’ve got more sense that they will put those children into this country, meaning more into our economy.

Also, a really strong part of this bill—there’s lots of different parts to it—was about the offences around the provisions for falsely awarding credits towards a qualification. This was really important to our tertiary sector because it puts trust in the tertiary sector. I’m linking this back to the international education. We even heard earlier this evening, in Mr Joyce’s valedictory speech, about how important the international sector and international education is to our economy. The over $1 billion that that particular sector puts back into our economy is incredibly important.

We’ve had cases in this country where we haven’t always been able to trust the qualifications that have come from some institutions—thankfully, not very many. But this bill actually puts things in place now that will strengthen the provisions in the Act so that our overseas people again will have far greater trust in those qualifications and will appreciate the fact that the New Zealand education system is strong, as I’ve said, right from early childhood through to tertiary and can be completely trusted.

The increase in penalties will be from $10,000 to $50,000, as it will be a strong deterrent towards any institution—public or private—putting these qualifications in and falsifying these qualifications. So I’m really grateful for that part of the bill that we’ve got there, and again I’ve been contacted by a number of institutions around this. Recently I was contacted also by a local wānanga in the Bay of Plenty. They didn’t contact me, actually. They were at a meeting and they just said to me that they were really appreciative of the part of this bill when they’ve been reading it, of allowing a wānanga to apply to use a protected term, such as university. They felt that that was a really good idea. They felt that it again highlights the fact that the overseas people that they’re trying to attract into their wānanga don’t understand that term “wānanga”. Their courses that they are putting in place, if they’re deemed to be equivalent, like a Bachelor’s degree or a postgraduate degree, then they should be able to apply to use the term such as university. I’m very pleased, when we’re reading that part of the bill too, that you can actually see from there that it’s not just a matter of them saying, “I want to use the term university.” They can actually then go to the Minister, and it will go through a whole lot of different tests, to make sure that that’s OK.

In conclusion, I believe that this bill is really important. I believe that the most important part, for me, is around the fact that the international education parts of this bill are really, really strong. But I also believe that this is a great day, that we’re about to pass this bill now, and I believe that this shows that quality public education is incredibly strong in this country. I am very, very proud to commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a third time.