Education Amendment Bill (No 2)

I move, That the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time.

This bill amends the Education Act of 1989, the Education Act of 1964, and the Education (Update) Amendment Act of 2017. It builds upon the Government’s work programme for a quality education system that puts all of the learners at the centre.

To recap briefly what the bill does: the bill ensures that school boards cannot adopt a cohort entry policy that enables children to begin school as part of a cohort before they turn five; it requires private schools to be safe places for students; it ensures that the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand’s decisions relating to the teaching profession are made within the context of Government policy; and it removes provisions due to come into force on 31 December this year that would enable communities of online learning to be established in order to protect New Zealand’s quality public education system.

I’d like to thank the chair and the members of the Education and Workforce Committee for their consideration of the bill. I would like to thank the 18 people who took the time to make a submission on it.

I want to talk through in more detail the provisions of the bill and the changes that this effects. Firstly, turning to cohort entry, the bill changes the settings for cohort entry so that only children who have turned five can attend school. It is Government policy that children under five should not attend school, and that was the view of the 2015 Advisory Group on Early Learning, that this is too young an age to start. The Government has listened to them. We already have one of the youngest school starting ages around the globe. Many other countries are starting at six or seven. Our starting age of five already puts us amongst the youngest for those who are starting school. Moving into four-year-olds starting school is a step too far for this Government.

The bill also increases the number of entry points for schools that have adopted cohort entry from four times a year to eight times a year. So under the existing cohort entry policy the child would start school at the beginning of the term nearest to their fifth birthday, even if they were four years old. As we’ve indicated, if a school is adopting cohort entry the child can only start at the next cohort entry point after their fifth birthday. If we left that until the next term a child turning five, say, on the second day of term would have had to wait an entire term before they can start. So having a mid-term entry point, and eight cohort entry points through the year, means that they will not have to wait as long. So it gives parents more flexibility around when their child will start school. Schools with high enrolment numbers will have more manageable cohort sizes, and that is important for the individual teacher-to-student attention, which we know is vitally important in those early first years. It does reduce the costs for parents around early childhood education.

The Education and Workforce Committee has recommended two technical changes to the bill in relation to cohort entry. The first is to replace reference to students attending school with a reference to students being enrolled in school. The other change removes the reference to four-year-olds attending school. The Government certainly supports those changes.

The next major set of changes is around private schools’ registration criteria. This provision brings the safety requirements for private schools into line with what is already required for State and State integrated schools. I welcome the support of the private schools for these changes.

Currently the Secretary for Education cannot consider student safety when registering a private school. The bill adds an additional registration criteria for private schools that requires them to be physically and emotionally safe places for students. This will help to ensure that all of our students, regardless of the type of school they attend, are able to learn in a safe environment. Adding a new registration criteria will allow the Secretary for Education to consider the physical and emotional safety of the students when assessing a private school’s application for registration. Importantly it will also allow the secretary to intervene in a private school if he or she has concerns about the safety of students. Those interventions can include issuing the school with a notice to comply with safety requirements, requiring the school to inform parents that there is a safety concern, and in some cases cancelling the school’s registration if the secretary and the school cannot agree on how to resolve those concerns. The Education Review Office will also be able to review the private school’s safety policies and procedures. As I indicated, this simply brings private schools into line with the requirements on the majority of schools which are public or State integrated.

The bill ensures that the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand’s decisions on matters relating to the teaching profession are made within the context of Government policy. The Government, in keeping with the promise made to New Zealanders prior to the last election, has restored the right for teachers to elect the majority of representatives to their professional body. The council’s got many important functions including setting the criteria for teacher registration and the standards for qualification that lead to teacher registration. We need to make sure that the public interest in those processes is protected.

The bill requires the council to consult with the Minister of Education before making changes to the criteria for teacher registration and the standards for the qualifications that lead to teacher registration. It still leaves those decisions with the council. It gives the Minister the ability to issue a Government policy statement regarding one or more of the council’s functions, which the council must have regard to when performing its functions. The Government is responsible for supporting an adequate supply of teachers for the policy that puts children’s learning at the centre and for maintaining the quality of our public education system. There must be a mechanism for the Government to ensure that its direction is being followed.

The committee has made five changes relating to these provisions, and I’ll talk through them briefly. The first of these changes amends clause 12 of the bill, requiring the council to consult with the Minister when reviewing and then subsequently changing the criteria for teacher registration or the standards for qualifications. In the original drafting, the council’s ability to maintain the criteria and standards without consulting the Minister was removed. That was a mistake, and the committee has corrected that so that if the council is keeping the standards as they are, they do not have to consult with the Minister.

The committee has also made two changes relating to the power in the bill for the Minister to issue a Government policy direction. First, they’ve recommended that any Government policy direction be presented to the House of Representatives and published in the Gazette. The Government supports this change. Secondly, the committee has recommended changing the name of the Government policy direction to a “statement of Government policy”. This is an important change because it follows concerns that a direction implies the council would be required to follow it. That’s never been the case and was never the Government’s intention. The Government supports this recommendation so that it’s clear that while the council must have regard to the statement of Government policy, it remains an independent entity.

The committee also recommended two other technical changes: changing all references to the Education Council to the Teaching Council—which, of course, has been Government policy for some time—and amending the commencement date for the Teaching Council provisions so that they come into force the day after the bill receives Royal assent, and I support those.

Finally, the major section that I want to talk about is the repeal of the provisions around communities of online learning. The bill repeals the provisions in the Education (Update) Amendment Act 2017 that would have enabled communities of online learning—or COOL—to be established. These provisions were due to come into force at the end of this year.

Under the legislation enacted by the previous Government, had it been implemented—which was, of course, implemented with very little consultation—it would have opened the door for children with additional learning needs to be shuffled away from schools to private providers. It would have allowed private sector bodies who are not education bodies to become accredited as COOLs. Tertiary and other private sector bodies would not be required to teach to the national curriculum or employ registered teachers. Online learning could become an option for any student that chose it, even if it was not the best option for them. In this form, COOLs were not innovative or collaborative and they could potentially become a way for schools to off-ramp students with additional learning needs, and that is something that this Government is not willing to tolerate. Existing online providers such as Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu will not be affected by this change, and they’ll be able to continue to offer online learning on the same basis that they do now. The committee has by majority not recommended any changes to these provisions of the bill.

In summary, this bill strengthens New Zealand’s quality public education system. It gives parents confidence that when they enrol their children, they’ll be starting school after the age of five, and it ensures that if they’re enrolling in a private school, their parents can have confidence that their children will be learning in a safe environment.

Look, I’m actually not pleased to have to rise and oppose this legislation in the House. I’m just on the back of, actually, about 70 meetings across New Zealand, and the message from New Zealanders is “Let’s hear a Parliament that puts children at the centre of decisions that are made.” Tonight, this evening, we have a bill that is incredibly ideological. The reality is, we know, that for the first year-and-a-half of this Government a large part of the agenda has been dismantling everything that National did rather than putting children at the heart of it. Let’s look at each aspect of this bill and ask that fundamental question.

Let’s start with cohort entry. The reality is it is the parent that comes up to me that wants flexible work, that was looking at—potentially days or weeks before their child’s fifth birthday—enabling their child to be able to have the benefit of forming greater relationships with other children in cohort entry, literally at a maximum of eight weeks. When you did the modelling, for many children maybe a week or two. That is the reality. And why are we here? We’re here because of ideology.

Now we have a fundamental shift. It is a principled shift in New Zealand, a country that enabled children to start their children at the age of five. That no longer exists for those schools in the future that adopt cohort entry, because under this legislation—and I do take the point in terms of mid-point, and we have more cohort entry now that is available—there will be some children that will not have that right under the bill that this Minister has put through the House. That is the reality.

The other point that I want to make is, again, the reality is there are a lot of working parents for which what they’ve argued for is a recognition that for some children—not for every child; it might be a small number of children—it makes sense for them to start a few days or a few weeks before their fifth birthday, and National supported them. It’s sad that we’re in a situation and we’re literally having to pass legislation because the Minister doesn’t want those parents to be able to have their fundamental rights upheld in this House.

The other core ideological aspect of this bill is around the Education Council. I’ll tell you what, doing 70 meetings across New Zealand, I heard the passionate pleas by principals, by teachers, who said “Nikki, please do not let us be overtaken by these hubs. We don’t want our independence as professionals to be dictated by officials.” So we had the Minister, who stood up and made passionate speeches in Opposition about how he was going to deliver independence for the profession, and then we had this proposal creeping along outside of this Government that is arguing to take over the profession. Then he has the gall to pass some legislation before this that goes on about how much we’re going to give the profession all of this independence, and then whammy: he puts this bill in the House that says “We’re going to tell you what to do.” That’s the reality—that’s the reality.

They can talk all they want about the composition of the profession and the council; this little clause that slipped into this bill, and I know because I’ve spoken to the teachers, I’ve spoken to the unions—they were not expecting that and what occurred in this bill. The reality is this is a Government that talks a big talk around the autonomy of principals and teachers, but it walks a completely opposite line. We see that in this bill around the provisions in terms of the Education Council, and we see it in the Tomorrow’s Schools proposals that are currently on the table with the independent task force.

There have been some improvements in the Education and Workforce Committee. I want to acknowledge that, and I want to thank all of the members of the select committee who contributed to that. One of the core aspects of the improvements in the bill is actually to say to the Government “There has to be transparency.” It is correct that some of the members of the select committee said “We don’t agree with the level of State control that this Government is trying to put on teachers, but if you’re going to do it, then, actually, you need to be transparent and put it through the House of Representatives.”

Another aspect of this bill, again, where we see the Government is not focused on not only the future of our education system but actually what’s right for a group of young people that have been disadvantaged for a long period of time—and I can see Minister Martin looking at me. I want to pay tribute to an extraordinary New Zealander. I want to pay tribute to Rachel Whalley. I want to pay tribute to her from the Virtual Learning Network. For years she’s fought with a group of other principals and teachers, and I want to acknowledge—and the Minister Tracey Martin is doing a hand signal to me which is about money. But you know what? In a scheme of $100,000 or $300,000, that is not the future of the Virtual Learning Network.

The reality is, if this bill, which gets rid of and scraps communities of online learning, had a replacement system in place for the thousands of kids—whether I am visiting rural communities, whether I’m visiting isolated islands that don’t have access to certain subject areas—then maybe this Government would be able to take a decent moral stand on the future of learning for kids in isolated areas. But the reality is because it is so intensely ideological it chose not to put up an alternative regime. I understand the concerns that have been raised about ensuring that we have quality providers, ensuring that we get that balance right in terms of flexibility and whether it’s accredited providers in the tertiary area, whether it’s other subject specialists—we understand that balance. But why didn’t we have a replacement system?

I tell you what people are saying to me: they’re saying “This Government doesn’t have any ideas. They’re a year and a half in. They can’t put forward a decent policy to enable disadvantaged communities, particularly in some rural communities, to have access to the learning that they deserve”. When National put in a $200 million investment to connect every school in New Zealand to ultrafast uncapped data—the reality is you have to have some models that enable the spreading of that learning. This Government has ripped it up with nothing to replace it with, and I’ll tell you what the sector is saying to me: “That’s a mistake. They might not have agreed with this regime but that is a fundamental mistake.” I want to acknowledge, as I said before, the Virtual Learning Network.

The final other provision in this bill does relate to private schools. Now, I do want to acknowledge—could anyone in this House agree with the fact that we need to, as fundamental parliamentarians or people in society, ensure that where there is a risk to the emotional, physical, mental well-being of students we can close down the school? Of course, but what does the regulatory impact statement say? It doesn’t say there’s any evidence that we need to change the law in fact, there’s costs as a result of that. But let’s put that aside and let’s actually just agree that while there might be no evidence of this actually occurring, at a principled level we are supportive of having a change that says, potentially, if there needs to be greater mechanisms to deal with a situation where you have real risk to physical, emotional, and mental well-being of students—that’s fine.

But the lack of detail—and my colleague Simeon Brown will talk about that tomorrow in the committee stage of the House—is important, because when you look at the backdrop of this bill, when you look at the fact that I’ve got integrated schools who I’ve been meeting with across New Zealand who are freaked out with what is happening in terms of Tomorrow’s Schools, they think that actually there is a real threat to those schools, whether they’re partnership schools—which, obviously, the Government has gotten rid of—whether they’re integrated schools, or private schools, that this is a Government that does not believe in choice. That comes to the heart of it.

I tell you what Minister Tracey Martin: when I sit down with the many parents, and the kids who have additional learning needs, they do want some choice actually. So the reality is, on this side of the House, we are a party that thinks about what is best for children rather than ideology. On the other side of the House, we have a range of areas that are going through this legislation, not because they are the best thing for children but because this is a Government that is more focused on dismantling the previous National Government’s policies—rather than ensuring that the child who was in a rural area gets access to distant distance learning, that the child whose parents want to take up a job—that child who is emotionally ready for school can start a couple of weeks or a couple of days before their fifth birthday. We actually know that there is a huge value in having independence of the profession, but this is a Government that is ideological and won’t do the best for children.

Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure for me to rise and fully support the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). I’d like to begin by thanking the Minister of Education for all of his work in ensuring that this work is done. The Ministry of Education, as well, has done quite a lot of work behind the scenes, and I’d like to thank the Education and Workforce Committee who have sat through and have had a considered approach to looking at our education system.

The bill before us, the Education Amendment Bill (No 2), deals, in part, with the health and well-being of our students. On that note, I’d like to acknowledge that today is World Asthma Day, the first Tuesday in May. Also that a lot of our schools, many of our schools play a role in supporting and ensuring that our students are safe and that those who need asthma medication, those who need Ventolin inhalers, that their inhalers are up to date. So I commend and I thank all of those schools.

The Minister of Education, in his speech, covered in detail—outlined the importance of the measures that the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) proposes to do and how it will strengthen our education system. Just in response to the former Minister of Education, the Hon Nikki Kaye, one of the things that she stated was that in the previous Government there was a focus on learners. We in this Government are also focused on ensuring that the learners are at the centre. She also discussed how she’s been out there, talked with lots of people, had very many, many consultations across the country. The education conversation, Kōrero Mātauranga, was also a process where the Ministry of Education and us on this side of the House connected with everyday folks. We connected with young people, as young as five some of them. I myself actually hosted 34 fono with Pacific folks, as well as ethnic communities. I went right across the country, traversing to ensure that we get their views.

One of the things that we’re proposing is that we ensure that the key Education Council—the decisions that they are making are made in the context of Government policy. So as we finalise Government policy, we do ensure that we also hear from the public. One of the things that came through loud and clear from these consultations—and I’ve got to say, with the online survey that the Ministry of Education also had, this is probably one of the largest collaboration of people’s input into the education system, over 50,000. I can say from the conversations that I heard directly from our people right across Aotearoa that they were saying things like, “We need to address and ensure that our students, when they go to school, that they are safe, that they are safe culturally”. They were saying things to us along the lines of that they feel they are addressed in a racially biased way; that our schooling system should also address, and have a focus on, ensuring that racism at all levels is addressed. Just earlier on tonight, across the hall, there was a multicultural event for New Zealand. We had three students—they all presented on their experience of racism in schools. These are our own high school students.

This Education Amendment Bill (No 2) says that we need to ensure that our students are safe in school. Yes, we need to ensure that the private schools provide a safe place for our students. What is currently proposed means that private schools are indeed safe and that if our students are experiencing emotional harm, if our students are experiencing physical harm—currently the legislation right now does not allow or give the power to the Secretary for Education to be able to ensure that that it is actually enforced. As the select committee heard, the presentations from folks that came through to the select committee—of the seven oral submissions that were received on this bill, five were in favour of ensuring that the new registration criterion for private schools actually addressed this, moving forward. Only two were in opposition to this, so not everyone agreed on how we move forward in this area. But I think we all agree, in this House, that our students when they attend school—be they private schools, or State sector schools, or State integrated schools—they need to be safe.

The current provisions of the Education Act 1989 do not allow the Secretary for Education to consider student safety when considering private school registration applications, so the proposals in this amendment bill will ensure that this is addressed moving forward.

If I could just go back to the discussion in terms of ensuring that our students feel safe emotionally as well, we know that in Aotearoa New Zealand we have one of the highest rates of suicide, which is not something that any of us are proud of. There are many initiatives that are in schools; many of our schools have school nurses, many have counsellors, but some of our students don’t even seek out that assistance. Ensuring that our students feel emotionally safe is definitely something we should address.

Repealing the provisions for communities of online learning: one of the things that came through in the select committee process is the fact that when this particular legislation and policy from the previous Government came through, a lot of our folks actually did not have much of a say on communities of online learning before it was brought in as a policy. The Education (Update) Amendment Act 2017—it created this regime of online learning, which includes distance learning, and, yes, in the future we will need a whole lot more provision of online learning and distance learning, but this legislation will ensure that the kind of learning that our students actually have in schools is something that all learners can actually access. I’ll give you an example: over in South Auckland, online learning is something that is encouraged, yes. But so many of our students in South Auckland, they don’t even have access to the internet at home, let alone have a tablet that they can actually work from. So online learning, for some of our students, is but a distant dream.

So as we look through and ensure that the system of education that we have is for the future, I also just want to remind us all that the education system we have right now was brought in under a Labour Government; 30 years ago, under a Labour Government, we brought in Tomorrow’s Schools. The question is, is it still fit for purpose? The answer to that is yes, for some of our students, because we do have an education system that is one of the best in the world, which is fantastic, but for some of our learners, Māori and Pacific students in particular, the educational outcomes for Māori and Pacific students are ones that we—especially when we look forward into who will make up the majority of our learners in schools, it will be Māori young students, it’ll be Pacific, as well as ethnic communities; they will make up about 50 percent of all of our learners. So it is important that we ensure the education system is one that is fit for purpose for everyone, not just for some of our learners, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’m taking this call to oppose this bill, the Education Amendment Bill (No 2), in its second reading. But before I go into the detail of this bill, I want to, as the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, thank all the submitters. We received 18 submissions. There were 16 unique submissions, because two submitters submitted twice, so in total there were 18 submissions. So I want to thank them for their contribution and the time that they put into this legislation.

As we know, there are four main objectives in this legislation, and the name of this bill is the Education Amendment Bill (No 2), because there was another education bill before this. One of the provisions, one of the objectives in this legislation is related to that previous education amendment bill, and that has to do with the changes to the Education Council. So we were given the impression by the Government that the Government wants to change the structure of the Education Council because they want to make the Education Council independent of Government. But then, in this legislation, what we saw is that the Education Council is required to work within the context of the Government policy. There was a big discussion in the select committee process on the words “regard to Government policy”, that the Education Council will be required to give regard to the Government policy. This point, actually, was picked up by one of the submitters, and I want to thank them for picking that up, and then we got to elaborate on this to understand what this actually means.

So this term has already caused confusion to people, especially in the education sector. We received submissions on both sides, but a couple of submissions that were against this provision made their view very, very clear, and one of them was from the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers Association. They were really clear, and said that this will mean that the Minister will be able to intervene in the Education Council’s work and operation. That was the impression that was given to everybody, and that is one of the reasons why I oppose this legislation, because we don’t want Government to have the ability to intervene in the Education Council’s work.

The second submitter, the New Zealand Institute of Education, said that this provision will undermine the Education Council’s independence—exactly the point that we are making, and we don’t want this Government to have the ability to undermine the Education Council’s ability to perform independently, because that is the impression we were given in the first round when the structure of the Education Council will change, that it’s going to be completely independent. So these points were made very, very clear in the select committee process and they should be taken into consideration.

The second objective of this bill is to repeal provisions for communities of online learning. So the provisions for communities of online learning were put in place by the previous National Government, because we are futuristic, we can see what is needed, and we want to provide choice. So what we have seen is that this Government actually doesn’t believe in providing choice to people. They just want everybody to turn up to classrooms and have, you know, physically, teachers teaching them. Why do they want that? Yes, of course we want to know why they want that, and one of the reasons we know is that if there are more teachers, then they can have more union members. If there is more virtual learning, they won’t have that many union members, and that is the only reason they want to repeal this provision.

One of the submitters very clearly said that this was about providing access to rural communities to education—

💬 Hon Members: Delivering for the unions.

Delivering for unions, yes, and this is about providing opportunity to all that cannot come to a classroom to learn. Even in classrooms, teachers let students go online and do their learning depending on the kind of project that they’re doing. Yep—universities, they put their lectures online so that students, if they want to go back and see those lectures again, they can do that. But this Government is saying, “No, online learning is not a good thing”. We just heard from the Minister the Hon Jenny Salesa. She said some students may not have iPads, but this is about providing that choice. So that doesn’t mean that you take away this choice, and we haven’t heard from this Government what is going to be put in place instead of this provision that was put in place by the previous National Government. So everybody wants to go online, we want to see more people being able to work online, more people able to study online, but this Government actually believes that no study should be done online and everybody should be coming to a classroom.

Third, a provision in this bill is about cohort entry. Yes, we know that before, children could start school as they turned five, and we changed this to say that if children are to reach their fifth birthday and there are only eight weeks left and it’s the start of the school term, they should be able to start school. But this Government is so adamant, saying that children should not be able to start school before they are five, and we’re just talking about eight weeks before their fifth birthday. We heard from a submitter, who said that this is going to put children behind, and children, actually, at that age are so eager to start school, but this Government doesn’t want them to start school at that age. They want them to wait, and it could be up to six weeks after their fifth birthday, which could create some financial implications for some parents, as one of the submitters said, because then they will have to make these additional day-care arrangements for these children. But does the Government care? They don’t.

The final point that I want to make—

💬 Andrew Bayly: Uncaring Government, eh?

—uncaring Government, exactly—is about private schools’ registration criteria, and, of course, nobody wants to see any kind of harm happening to any student in any kind of school, but here we haven’t seen the basis of this, and the approach that has been taken by this Government; we do not understand why this approach has been taken. So we are quite disappointed to see that this Government is not moving forward, not making the education sector move forward, but is actually bringing the education sector backwards. So we oppose this bill.

I’ll be honest with you, I wasn’t sure what I was going to contribute until I came down to this House, and now I have so much material I’m not quite sure whether I’m going to get to do it in 10 minutes.

Let’s just start with the Hon Nikki Kaye and the conversation about cohort entry—let’s just start there. The Hon Nikki Kaye, quite rightly, identified that this Government is rolling back some of the changes that the previous Government did, but not all of them—just the stupid ones. What I found really interesting was the juxtaposition between the start of the Hon Nikki Kaye’s speech and the end of the Hon Nikki Kaye’s speech. At the end of the Hon Nikki Kaye’s speech, she said that this Government just doesn’t put children first, but at the start she said that it was really unfortunate that parents who wanted to go to work couldn’t put their kids into school earlier to save themselves some money. That was the start of her contribution.

Now, let’s get this clear. This bill has had 18 submissions, 16 unique submissions—two that were, apparently, submitted twice—the bill that introduced this had hundreds of submissions against it, masses of submissions against it, yet only 18 when we’re trying to unravel the dumb ideas. What this was about was that the reality was boards of trustees can still, and always have been since the introduction of Tomorrow’s Schools, bring in cohort entry. All they had to do was consult with their communities. That’s all they had to do. The previous Government did not create cohort entry—no, it didn’t. It dictated when you could do it, so it limited the choice for boards of trustees by when you could do cohort entry, and this Government has expanded on that choice for boards of trustees now.

But what the previous Government did do was it decided to save itself money, and that is what the regulatory impact statement in the previous legislation clearly identified. This was about saving the State early childhood education (ECE) dollars, because the faster they could get kids out of ECE and into school, they could save the supplementary cash that they had been paying into ECE.

💬 Mark Patterson: So it wasn’t about the kids?

It wasn’t about the kids; it’s never been about the kids. So it was either about—let’s just take what the Hon Nikki Kaye said—people going to work faster, it was about parents saving money, and it was about the State saving money, because that’s what the previous regulatory impact statement said. So this Government is going to undo that capacity. Children need to be children for as long as possible.

The other thing that I found fascinating was the change of statement. The other reason why the Hon Nikki Kaye said that this was about students—she said “students that were capable”. Now, let’s suggest that they’re gifted students, shall we? Let’s suggest that the Hon Nikki Kaye is saying that the previous Government put in “four years and eight-month-old’s ability to start school” just in case your child was gifted. The same Government that removed “well above” from national standards? The same Government that removed all funding from gifted students? Do we really, really think that was the reason why this Government decided that four-year-olds and four years and eight-month-olds could go to school? I don’t think so. We are undoing that. It was submitted on by many, many people when it was introduced; only 16 unique submissions when we’re removing it—we’re removing it.

Then we have the Teaching Council—a fascinating contribution by the last speaker, Parmjeet Parmar, around the Teaching Council and how the previous Government supposedly wanted it to be independent. It took away all democracy—took away all democracy—from the Teaching Council; no ability for teachers or the profession to actually elect their own members. Apparently, that’s really independent, where you are beholden upon the Minister for your very job. But no, apparently that’s how the National Party sees an independent body. So what has this Government done? We have put back in the ability for at least the majority of the Teaching Council to be elected by the profession.

But here’s the trick: it is compulsory for students to go to school. Every single New Zealander is invested in the education system. So, therefore, the Teaching Council, which has the ability to create the criteria for teacher registration—there is a responsibility on the Government to make sure that initial teacher training is appropriate, and it is initial teacher training that is required, the criteria that is required, to make sure that teachers meet teacher registration. It is absolutely appropriate for the State to say that the Teaching Council must work with the Government when making sure that they set that criteria. Why the Post Primary Teachers Association would be surprised by it, I have no idea. I’d be interested to have a look at their actual submission and the conversation they’ve had. But I find it very interesting that suddenly the party that decided to do away with all independence around the appointment of those on the Teaching Council now is very worried that there is going to be no independence.

Let’s get to the new registration criteria for private schools. The current provisions of the Education Act 1989 do not enable the Secretary for Education to consider student safety when considering private school registration applications. Oh my goodness! The Hon Nikki Kaye, in a strange way, even almost argued against that—even almost argued against that—by saying that integrated schools and private schools were freaking out because they might now actually have to be safe places for kids. Right? All they have to do is meet the same criteria as every other school.

💬 Simeon Brown: They already are—they already are.

And who’s checking on them, Mr Brown? Because there’s no criteria right now by which to check on them. So Mr Brown, apparently, is quite happy for students to wander off, and we’ll just trust some people.

Now, let’s talk about communities of online learning (COOL) and the Virtual Learning Network, raised by the Hon Nikki Kaye. Anybody would think that the Virtual Learning Network did not exist before the National Government created a piece of legislation and put COOLs into it. The Virtual Learning Network has been around for years. NorthNet has been around for years. HarbourNet has been around for years. For goodness’ sake! They didn’t invent it. What the COOLs that that party put in place did was allow five-year-olds to stay at home all day, every day and learn online. That is what that piece of legislation that they put through this House did. This Government happens to want to listen to the mental health experts, happens to want to talk to the science advisers that say that belonging—a sense of community, being able to interact, making sure that young children are not isolated—is an important part of growing up in a community and being able to interact, for your long-term well-being. Communities of online learning already existed before the last lot decided they would open it up to privatisation, ultimately.

The previous contributor said, “We’ve removed it but there’s nothing to replace it.” Actually, they hadn’t even started yet. That’s the first thing. Secondly, they’d already existed, they’re already in place, and they’re already in schools. Students who have the capacity now go into and start to do, either with Te Kura or any of those other networks—they still are able to do it. This does not remove the capacity that they already have to deliver online learning to students, and so therefore there is no need for the drama that is coming from the other side.

What there is, however, is a need to plan the appropriate way to expand online learning for the future. We will be able to maintain a level of quality, and we will be able to deliver it across different communities in New Zealand. The conversation from the other side around rural communities who are able to access online learning makes it sound like we don’t need any teachers in rural classrooms. That sounds incredibly dangerous, that the other side has this image of “If you’re in a rural area, we’re not going to actually even put any teachers in there; we’re just going to leave you with some computers.” That is not what this side of the House is prepared to accept.

Communities of online learning already existed before they were placed into the legislation; we are removing the privatisation of them. We are removing the capacity of five-year-olds to be able to stay at home—from five-year-olds through to 16-year-olds to be able to stay at home. Some of the most moving submissions I had on making sure that this criteria inside the legislation was removed were actually from the health schools and clients of theirs who said “My parents would have done anything to make me happy, to stop me feeling anxious. They would’ve let me stay at home, because they would’ve allowed anything to happen to try and keep me safe, but I needed to go to school, I needed to participate, and I needed to get better.”, and that is why this was inappropriate. We need a safe way to do online learning. We are and we will expand it, but we will not privatise it. Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. OMG! That was an interesting speech, wasn’t it? Well, I found that contribution by the Hon Tracey Martin to be quite interesting—

💬 Hon Member: Insufferable.

Yeah, potentially a bit insufferable, but I would never say anything like that to the Hon Tracey Martin, because I do quite like her for the chocolate fish she gave me last year, and I still do remember that. But let me just rebut a couple of the points that she mentioned there. She talked about the Teaching Council—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: It’s like giving candy to a baby.

Yes, I’ve got a baby, thank you so much, Duncan. That’s very much appreciated, Duncan Webb. Thank you very much. That’s very kind of you.

She mentioned the fact that she was very interested in what the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) said, because apparently they opposed the Government’s bill. Yes, they do oppose it, and I’ve got a copy of the submission here. I’m happy to table it. Actually, it should be available to the Minister to read. It says that in the build-up to the introduction of the Education (Teaching Council of Aotearoa) Amendment Bill the Government went to great lengths to point out that it wanted to retain the Teaching Council as an independent body. And guess what? The unions bought that message. And now the PPTA has turned up and said the PPTA believes that the changing of the Act, thus requiring the council to have regard to Government policy, actually undermines the Teaching Council’s independent status.

So I would encourage the member to actually go and read the PPTA’s submission, because what this bill does is it does undermine the status of the Teaching Council, the status which they as a Government said they wanted to make sure was independent. And this bill undermines that.

Look, I’d like to also just quickly touch on the new criterion for private schools to include physical and emotional well-being in their criteria for registration. And we heard again Tracey Martin talk about the fact that, you know, this is about ensuring that our private schools are kept safe. Well, I’d encourage the Minister to go in and visit some of the private schools and ask the question: are they actually not safe already?

💬 Hon Tracey Martin: You don’t know, because there’s no criteria.

I go and visit Saint Kentigern College, in my electorate, which is just right beside my electorate office—so I do know. It is a very safe school, and there is no evidence—there is no evidence—to show that this will have any impact at all to improve the emotional and physical well-being of our students at our private schools.

Yes, of course we want our schools to be emotionally and physically safe, but including this as a registration criterion will have no impact. I challenge the member over there to actually look at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research survey, which showed that there is significant bullying in our schools up and down New Zealand and, actually, to look inside our State schools and not to say this is the only solution to improving emotional and physical well-being in our schools.

The National Party does oppose this piece of legislation. It’s ideologically driven by this Government. We oppose it. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. E Te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. It is a pleasure to stand and take a call on this, the Education Amendment Bill (No 2), so aptly named. There’s been a lot of quite fascinating and rather controversial and rather polarised points raised throughout this debate, but I guess it’s all the more worthwhile to kind of bring attention to a few of them, given that I’ve jotted down a few notes, particularly from the speaker who has just taken his seat, Simeon Brown, who I’d like to congratulate on the new arrival to his family and also for his use of the terminology “OMG”, which I think does perhaps demonstrate the importance of the work that we have been doing in the Education Conversation to bring it into the 21st century and to make sure that it is fit for purpose and indeed culturally appropriate.

But what this piece of legislation does—it’s multifaceted. The first point is around ensuring that the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand’s decisions on matters relating to the teaching profession are made within the context of Government policy. This, of course, numerous National Party members have spoken in opposition to, because they believe that there is the importance of maintaining the independence of the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand.

They say this despite having removed, arguably, the independence of the Teaching Council by removing elected members and only placing on the Teaching Council ministerial appointments. Those appointments could come from wherever the Minister in charge of education would like them to come from. So it was indeed actually the National Party who took away democracy and autonomy and independence originally from the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand.

What we are doing—and actually with the previous piece of legislation restoring that democracy and autonomy by ensuring that there will be at least a majority of elected members to it—is also ensuring that those decisions that they are making comply with Government policy. It is simply a matter of ensuring that really important decisions that are being made around teacher training are appropriate and fit for purpose, because there is currently no form of public accountability to the Teaching Council beyond the election of those to the Teaching Council from the teaching profession. So it is an insight for the general public into that work programme and what they can expect.

The second point was around requiring private schools to be safe places for students. The speaker before me, Simeon Brown, said that these places are safe already and asked about the risk. The fact of the matter is that we simply just think that there should be a common-sense baseline that all schools, whether they are public or private or otherwise, should be held to. I think that’s pretty straightforward and common sense because whilst that standard doesn’t apply across the spectrum, there is that risk that a school that is private dips below it. And you’d think that the National Party would be in favour of common sense.

So too, there is the removal of provision for communities of online learning. At the time that the former National Government decided to rush these changes across the line, they were noted by a number of different stakeholders as hastily developed, which is why it’s crucially important that we have had the Government-led Education Conversation under way, which I’d note we’re trying to make as sustainable as possible, because the National Party MPs who hold education portfolios have been invited to engage in it, and I think it’s really crucial that they do engage in that conversation ongoing. As was said by the Associate Minister of Education, Tracey Martin, communities of online learning and online learning itself existed well before the National Party decided to implement this rushed change to the legislation.

And, finally, we ensure that school boards cannot adopt a cohort entry policy that enables children to begin school as part of a cohort before five years of age. This is something which all three parties in Government are on the record for, time and again backing up as our position, as has been the call from those who are actually engaged in the teaching profession, those people who Dr Parmjeet Parmar, the chair of my Education and Workforce Committee, calls “The unions!”—yes, those unions that represent our teaching profession by and large. I’m not sure who the National Party intends to be getting onside, especially when they’re asking for a decrease in the ratio in our classrooms and they’re seeking to get alongside teachers despite underpaying them for the past 10 years, when they are positioning them as an other—“The unions!”

So too, Dr Parmjeet Parmar said that this Government doesn’t believe that people want or deserve choice. I just find that to be quite a bizarre statement, given that what we have done through the process initiated under the Education Conversation is ensure that there is a huge amount of input from the public, from every sector of society that is impacted by education, and, again, by the National Party as well to feed into that process to ensure that we have a sustainable pathway forward that is depoliticised for education in this country.

Coming to the heart of it, those on this side of this House fundamentally believe that the purpose of education is about creating citizens—those who are creatively thinking, those who critically analyse, and, instead of just those who are educated to compete and to solely be workers, those who are able to come together and develop a new pathway forward. The Green Party is incredibly proud to be commending this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for a chance to speak on what is, basically, a crude dismantling of previous National Party reforms. The Government didn’t even try to mask the raw ideological grab at important educational institutions and systems. The messy hodgepodge includes, ironically, considering the previous bill—I guess you could call it the No. 1 bill, this being the No. 2 bill—reducing independence of the Education Council, deliberately burdening private schools, annoying and confusing parents as to when their kids can start school, and, finally, scrapping communities of online learning. On that last note, as a demonstration of how ill-disciplined, ill-advised, and ill-inducing this bill is, they’re scrapping communities of online learning without a replacement. Go figure.

The Virtual Learning Network, which the Minister previously referred to—that group of educators told us at the Education and Workforce Committee that online learning, if done right, is perfect for students who are not engaging or have diverse needs. Very fascinating to hear a Cabinet Minister just earlier refer to what sounded to me like implied lazy five-year-olds with lots of screen time—extraordinary comments. The good folks from the Virtual Learning Network told us—and this is a real kicker, here—that no one had talked to them. Again, I repeat: no one had talked to them. That’s what they said when they turned up for their submission, and I and many members here in the Chamber were there in person. Very reasonably, the Virtual Learning Network simply want the following: a regulatory framework to be clarified. That’s not asking for much. It’s not rocket science. That does sound reasonable. But, folks, don’t hold your breath.

So this is a split call. I call Jan Tinetti.

Madam Deputy Speaker, thank you. I’m delighted to be here speaking on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). Something that I’m quite passionate about is what I’m going to discuss in my time here this evening, which is cohort entry. Now, we heard from the previous speaker, Denise Lee, that this would give parents confusion about when they start school. Actually, this tidies up that confusion. If you want confusion, I suggest that the previous speaker goes and looks at the current website now that explains how the current cohort entry works. That actually takes quite a bit of time to get one’s mind around.

Now, the reason that I’m quite passionate about this is because, actually, it was under the previous Government’s policies that they had the advisory group for early learning. They talked about cohort entry in that particular group. The then Minister, Hekia Parata, brought together a fantastic group of early childhood educators, academics, and schooling representatives. At the time, in December 2014, it was stated in their press release that Minister Parata “has appointed an advisory group to help children get the best possible start to their early learning and schooling.” Academics were appointed to that group, such incredible, amazing, gifted, and talented people such as Dr Joce Nuttall, Dame Iritana Tāwhiwhirangi, Dr Jeanette Clarkin-Phillips, Dr Lesley Rameka, Ali Glasgow, Carol Hartley, Brenda Soutar, Jan Taouma, and the two schooling reps, Adelle Broadmore and one Jan Tinetti.

In that group there was actually a willingness to look at cohort entry. We absolutely talked about how that could be beneficial to children and to schools. But that group, who the Minister at the time said were some of the cleverest people involved in the early childhood sector, said under no circumstance should children ever start school before the age of five years old. So why was it that the then Government could listen to some of the recommendations from that advisory group but not a critical and key recommendation that said that those children shouldn’t start school?

Now, where did that come from, that recommendation? Evidence—strong evidence that I sat and had to read through as part of that group. Evidence, worldwide evidence and New Zealand evidence, that said that, actually, at that time, a few weeks could mean a lot to those particular children because, as we all know, child development changes a lot at that particular age, and it was most important that we kept our children in the early childhood settings. So those academics were absolutely adamant, and when this was changed and the cohort entry allowed for sometimes up to eight weeks before the age of the fifth birthday, this particular advisory group, led by Dr Joce Nuttall, wrote to the then Government suggesting that they’d made a mistake in allowing early cohort entry to happen.

This is why I’m so passionate, because in this bill we are able to put this right. We are putting our children at the centre. We’re not using some ideological basis to do that; we are using evidence. We’re not putting other people at the centre. We are putting those children right at the centre of our policies and our legislation, and that is the most important and strongest thing that we can be doing for these children. That’s why I am so proud of this bill and proud to be putting a very big wrong right.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am going to take a short call on this bill tonight. I’d like to acknowledge my colleagues who’ve made extraordinarily good contributions and have covered much of the material, and who were indeed in the select committee, as I was not. What I would like to talk about, briefly, is cohort entry, and just really take a look at what we’ve heard so far from the other side of the House and deal with some rebuttal, you could say.

Firstly, just briefly dealing with Jan Tinetti—I’m not sure that we actually should be changing legislation because of something Jan Tinetti didn’t understand on the internet. If that was the case, we would potentially be here a long time and be rather busy.

But what I want to do is actually base my contribution tonight on what Tracey Martin said, because, actually, there are a few of us mothers on this side of the House tonight who were listening to her contribution and our blood was boiling. Tracey Martin has henceforth come to this House tonight and decreed that if you send your kid to school before they’re five years old, you are a terrible mother. That is classic left-wing politics: we know best. We will dictate to you what is best for your family and for your child, because we know best. You can’t possibly know what’s best for your child and your family. We know what’s best. I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker.

It’s so wrong on so many levels, because parental choice is about the ability to know what is best for the individual child. Some families hold their child back until they’re six to send them to school. Others want to start them slightly earlier. It’s for a variety of reasons: maybe the child is ready, maybe they’ve got an older sibling at the school, and maybe—yes, maybe that mother wants to go back to work, and that is not the bad, negative, terrible thing that Tracey Martin seems to think it is. Actually, mothers make choices to go back to work most often in the best interests of their family and of their child, because it takes some of the pressure off the family. Maybe it’s a financial pressure; maybe it’s an emotional pressure of the mother. There are many reasons—maybe they want all of their children going to the same place at the same time. There are a number of reasons, but Tracey Martin is going to dictate to you that you are a terrible mother and it’s bad for your child because she knows best.

How would she feel, I wonder, if I told her that I sent my son to day care when he was 10 months old? She’s probably reeling over there. What an awful parent I am. I know. The guilt of the mothers out there listening to her dictate what’s best for their child—how absolutely appalling. It is such a destructive attitude. We are standing for choice and backing parents and mothers to know what is best for their family and for their kid and not making them feel guilty for making that decision. Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Thanks, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s always a pleasure to take a call and talk from the position of an evidence base, which, actually, is a place of strength. This bill, the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) probably isn’t going to make the front page of the paper. You never know—it might get Judith Collins baking. Judith Collins and I used to have baking competitions when we sat on the former Commerce Committee. But I tell you what it is about: it is about protecting the integrity of our education system—I mean, clearly, something that the Opposition doesn’t get and certainly doesn’t care about.

There’s a lot of important policy work being done on this side of the House in education, and what this bill is doing is attempting to right some wrongs. It’s actually about protecting the integrity of this thing we call the “education system”, which, I would hope, all New Zealanders really give a stuff about, because it’s actually something that we can feel really proud of. But, oh no, apparently the ability for parents to send their children to school before they’re five years old is more important, and dismantling our education system systematically, which is what they did over the nine years that they were in Government, is actually more important—certainly not listening to evidence: the evidence of experts, as my colleague Jan Tinetti has just spelled out. I’m proud, actually, to associate myself with a colleague who sat on the 2015 advisory group on early learning, which found, and had an evidence base to say, that going to school before you are five is too young.

At the same time they were dismantling that, they were also undermining and eroding our early childhood education sector and, again, were turning that into—I note they’ve all gone very quiet—a glorified babysitting service while they were introducing national standards in charter schools, which was, essentially, a privatisation by stealth of our world-class education system. What this bill does is dismantle some of those things. What Nikki Kaye described as “ideology” and “State control” is actually ensuring that Government policy and Government intent is taken some note of in our education system and the way that it’s being run, and that our children should not be attending school before they’re five years old. I described it as “protecting the integrity of our education system” but I think it also shows some real philosophical differences between that side of the House and this side of the House when it comes to the way that education is delivered.

I was reading the National Party’s minority view, and the thing that really stood out for me—because, I mean, other people have spelt out the key parts of this bill—is where they talk about student safety and the new criteria for registration of private schools: that a school “is a physically and emotionally safe place for students”. Well, gee, it’s actually a bit hard to argue against that, don’t you think? And they didn’t do a very good job in their minority report of arguing against it, even though they did argue against it. They said, “While we support any reasonable and logical legislation that improves student safety, there is a lack of detail around this aspect of the bill,”—so therefore it’s OK not to have a requirement for registration of private schools to be physically and emotionally safe places for students, because, apparently, there’s some detail that’s missing around what that actually means! I found that to be extraordinary.

Then there were the communities of online learning, which I think Nikki Kaye, in her contribution, revealed as being, essentially, an alternative means of providing schooling to children who didn’t fit in and which submitters—and I note that there weren’t that many submitters on this bill. There seemed to be pretty strong—not unanimous; I agree with that—objection to the communities of online learning being set up as an alternative, essentially, without the work that should have been done. I’ll just refer to NZEI Te Riu Roa’s submission, which said that the Government should definitely consider any online learning as part of a broader discussion about a longer-term vision for education. Then they gave a whole lot of detail around what that should look like and that there had not been anywhere near the amount of work that needed to be done to establish what the previous Government set up as the communities of online learning—and thank goodness this side of the House has made the decision to say, “No, we don’t want to do that, because it’s ill-thought-out, it’s an alternative to the education system that we should feel proud of, and it’s actually not going to deliver the outcomes that we need in our education system, which is world class and which we should feel proud of.” This side of the House is standing up for that.

Ultimately, unfortunately, the ideology that has been claimed by the Opposition is actually just exactly what they had proposed and they put in place, and what this bill does is undo that. I commend it to the House.

I was going to use this contribution on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) to talk about communities of online learning and the opportunity they provided for choice. I was going to talk about the Teachers Council and a Minister who is introducing directives barely a few weeks after he said he wanted a more independent council, but instead I listened to the contribution of Tracey Martin and I felt absolutely compelled this evening to speak on behalf of the tens of thousands of parents up and down this country who struggle with making the choices about how they will balance their paid work with their children, about how they will balance their desire to give their children the very best in life—to give them their care, to give them their love, to provide them with opportunities and choices for the future—and about how they will balance that with the very real need they have to go to work each day and earn a crust.

I raise this tonight because what we have had in this debate is the spectre of Nikki Kaye suggesting, very fairly, that up till this point New Zealanders have expected that every five-year-old would have the right, on their fifth birthday, to attend school, and, yes, what that meant when cohort entry was introduced was that some children would start school a few weeks before they turned five—just a few weeks before they turned five—in order to hit the cohort entry. What Nikki Kaye suggested was that, actually, some parents might make that choice because they believe it best suits their child and their family circumstances—that it would best allow them to manage their family’s life—and what a very good point that is. But what did the “Minister for Telling Parents what is Best for their Children”—Minister Tracey Martin—say? She said that parents who made that choice—the parents who chose to let their children start school just a few weeks before their fifth birthday—weren’t putting their children’s needs first. Oh no, they weren’t; what they were doing was putting their desire to return to work first.

Well, Minister Tracey Martin, on behalf of New Zealand parents, I say: how dare you bring that attitude into this House? And to the parents of New Zealand who struggle with these choices, who try to do what’s best for their kids, I say to you, well, actually, I understand that you are doing what is best for your children, and I reject the notion that you get from Ministers like Minister Tracey Martin that somehow you are not putting your children’s needs first, because those parents are, and the last thing they need is another person laying another layer of guilt on them, telling them that the Government knows best what’s best for their children and their family. This Government doesn’t know what’s best for individual parents and their circumstances, and it smacks of the ideology of Labour and New Zealand First that they think they can tell parents what is best for them. Well, Tracey Martin may not trust you to make the choices that are best for your children, but I do and National does. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I hope it was not me that the member was talking about.

No, I apologise.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for an opportunity to respond to some of those comments from the other side, in particular. I think it is quite rich to talk about parents and their blood boiling when, really, I’m very sure that the teachers watching this debate tonight will have their blood boiling, knowing that the National Party believes that schools, basically, should be babysitting services for children and that against all advice and all scientific evidence—as we have heard very eloquently explained by my colleague Jan Tinetti—they should not be starting school before their fifth birthday. But disregard all that, and I’m sure that all the professors and esteemed academics will equally feel rather offended that you called them rubbish.

Now, it’s actually a pleasure to be taking a call on the second reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). When this bill came through the House in its first reading, this subject matter was quite new to me, but it has been an absolute joy working with my colleagues on this committee, and especially Jan Tinetti. So it is a real privilege, after working on this bill for several months, to share a few thoughts.

I’d like to thank all the submitters who submitted on this bill, who took time to share their views. There were 18 in total who came to talk on a few specific aspects of this bill, which mostly we have heard about tonight.

I’d like to make a couple of mentions of the main ones. I’d like to start with the cohort entry provisions. As I said, the history to all this has been eloquently explained by Jan Tinetti, but, basically, the change that this bill makes is it goes back to the situation prior to the change made by the National Government in 2017. So, really, all it does is it reinforces the idea that is underpinned by evidence that children should not be starting school until they actually have had their fifth birthday. So, under new section 5 in clause 5 of the bill, a five-year-old will have to wait to enrol, and, at most, that will be six weeks.

So it is not even earth-shattering—it’s six weeks—and, in fact, I think some of the members on our Education and Workforce Committee may have missed it, but we were given facts and data and numbers and figures that showed exactly how much it would cost the parents and how many children would be affected. If you look at the figures, or, well, if the members of our committee or if the Opposition members had bothered opening the report rather than just looking at their lines, they would have seen in the report that more than half of the children are not affected or are not starting school later by—goodness me!—a whole week. It might be a whole week after their fifth birthday that they’re going to have to wait, and do you know how many of the kids may have to wait five weeks? Five percent of all the children may have to wait up to five weeks. I’m sure their parents’ blood will be boiling in that regard!

We’ve heard about children being at the centre of learning, and I thought that was a rather hypocritical comment, considering the fact that my colleague Jan Tinetti had an excellent bill earlier—no, actually, it was late last year, I believe—that put children at the centre of learning. Something that the Office of the Children’s Commissioner agreed with was the National Education and Learning Priorities (NELP) bill, which required the Minister to consult widely on the statement of NELP with children, and guess what? Since the Opposition put children at the centre of the learning, as they’ve just told us, you’d think they would support that legislation. But, no, they voted against it.

So the other thing I’d like to mention that has already been well traversed is that private schools should be safer places. A comment was made by the Waitakere Area Principals’ Association. They said that the physical and emotional safety of all students, irrespective of the nature of the school they attend, should be paramount. The same arguments were used by New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI), Save the Children, and the New Zealand School Trustees Association (NZSTA). So, really, private schools are having the same standards as the State schools and State integrated schools. I am at a loss to understand the objections are to it, and it has not been made very clear by the other side.

The other thing that I have been confused about by comments from the other side is in regards to changes to the Teaching Council. Now, both our chair—and this is quite disappointing—Parmjeet Parmar and also the member Simeon Brown must have completely missed the advice that we asked for, which was to have it explained to us what “having regard to” would actually mean in law. Some submitters—notably the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) and NZEI, as has been mentioned—did make comments with regard to the importance of retaining the Teaching Council as an independent statutory body. We asked for some advice and the advice was—and the committee considered this—that the council’s independence is safeguarded by the requirement that it must “have regard to”, as opposed to being required to “giving effect to”.

So it has been explained to us—and it is even in all of our papers—that there is a very important distinction between “having regard to” and “giving effect to”, because they have different meanings in law, and what that means is that it’s well-established in case law that it’s completely two different things. So, once again, it is disappointing to hear that members of our committee and also the chair of our committee have completely missed or are disregarding that advice. Once again, “having regard to” means genuine consideration, but it means other factors can be considered to outweigh the thing that people are making a decision on.

Lastly, the repeal of the provisions for the community of online learning. Now, Denise Lee mentioned the comment about “Nobody spoke to us.” Well, when it comes to a lack of consultation, we heard it when it came to the community of online learning. NZEI, NZSTA, and PPTA all submitted that the communities of online learning legislation was developed hastily, with a notable lack of consultation with the education sector. I’ll read that NZEI mentioned “corporates driving what’s best for children”. NZEI called the legislation brought in by the previous Government “a flawed piece of legislation, ill-thought-out, and rushed”, and the PPTA elaborated on that same theme. They said the legislation was “rushed, un-consulted, and poorly conceived with little awareness shown of the impact on the wider school sector or the students involved”. They called it a “corporate entry point with New Zealand learners as guinea pigs” and “a lolly scramble, hoping different providers may come up with something good”. Now, if you’ve ever wanted to hear from experts in our education sector that the communities of online learning were not a good thing, then there it is.

Lastly, I would just like to say that it’s really important to add that the repeal of this doesn’t take anything away from the existing providers. The status quo will remain for online learning. The status quo will remain and will continue to operate—business-as-usual. The sky isn’t falling in. This is making things better. It’s putting children at the centre of learning. I support this bill and commend it to the House.