Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill

Thank you, Madam Chair, for this opportunity to take this call on the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill in the committee of the whole House.

Part 1 actually is the whole basis of this legislation. In Part 1, there are two sections, as the bill was originally introduced, that are inserted: 79A and 79B. Proposed new section 79A is about setting up the discretionary grant for boards, and 79B is about the effect of non-compliance with earlier discretionary grants. So it sets the conditions around compliance and non-compliance. As I said, this is the basis of this whole legislation, because the basis of this legislation is to alleviate the pressure that parents feel because of schools going out asking for donations, which are voluntary.

During the select committee process, we were informed about Supplementary Order Paper 303 that the Minister of Education has tabled. This is to make a change. This is to insert two new sections after section 79A. These are 79AA and 79AB. In this contribution I would like to focus on 79AA, because this is actually going to create a lot of confusion to the business of this whole legislation. In this section, actually, the Minister is wanting to get the flexibility to provide exemptions to mandatory conditions. So what the Minister wants, through a notice given under this section, is to enable boards and schools to be able to go out and seek voluntary donations for some specific activities.

So as I said in the start, the purpose of this bill is to take away that financial pressure that parents feel because of that school donation that is asked by schools, though we understand it’s voluntary. Schools were really concerned. They were saying that they won’t be able to take part in this scheme because this amount that is going to be allocated per student is not going to be enough for some activities like school camps, because school camps are quite expensive. It’s not like 100 percent of students going on school camps pay that voluntary expense, but what happens is that all students are taken on those camps, and in most of the cases the expense is actually paid by the school board.

So I believe that the Minister has actually responded to that through the Supplementary Order Paper, but what has happened is that through this, the Minister has created more confusion. Now, the confusion is at two levels. First, the bill was quite clear that if somebody gets this discretionary grant, they cannot go out and seek voluntary donations. Now, we understand that even if schools seek this discretionary grant, they can still go out and ask for a donation for certain activities, so that creates confusion at one level.

The second level of confusion that is being created, and this is after I have spoken to a number of schools—they want to fully understand what the Minister considers is a camp and what is not a camp. We understand and we know that for any curricular activity, schools should not be seeking voluntary donations, but for any non-curricular activities, schools are able to seek these voluntary donations. So when a school camp is taken—and I, personally, and some schools also believe that they want to make the most of that. For example, if a school camp goes to a beach, there is a lot of opportunity for students to learn about the nature around that beach—that is, how sea water reacts with rocks around that beach—or any of the other things that are there, which can be considered as an extracurricular activity. So how do we tell schools to split that activity while they are on a camp?

Here, the schools are really wanting to seek some clarification. I have spoken to some schools in Mount Roskill, where I am based, and they’re quite concerned about this exemption. As I said, this is actually going to create a lot of confusion. Before, we knew it was clear, but it wasn’t enough. Even schools that are in decile 1 to 7 didn’t want to opt for this option, and now the Minister is really keen to see that they become part of this scheme, so he has tabled this Supplementary Order Paper 303, which actually is creating more confusion.

Clearly, the Minister doesn’t understand what is needed, and the Minister is not on the right track, so we do not support the Supplementary Order Paper. We believe that the Minister should take some time to understand what the needs are, and how the Minister actually responds to that should be based on the concerns that schools are raising, and not just based on what the Minister thinks is the right thing.

So a half-cooked policy through this bill was put forward, and then a Supplementary Order Paper comes. That is also not satisfactory. It’s quite sad to see that the Minister thinks that this bill is going to resolve this issue.

I suspect that the issue that the member Dr Parmjeet Parmar just raised around what the definition of a school camp is may come up a little bit, so I thought I’d be happy to enlighten the committee that the Gazette notice that I intend to issue under this section—assuming the House passes Supplementary Order Paper 303 and the bill as it’s been reported back from select committee with those amendments, I intend to then issue a Gazette notice that defines a school camp as any curriculum-related activity where students are expected to stay overnight as part of that activity. I think that’s relatively straightforward. I think the example that the member raises clearly would be covered by that. I don’t think there really is any ambiguity. I think the school knows what a camp is and what a camp isn’t. A day trip is not a camp, because students don’t stay overnight. If they stay overnight, then it’s a camp.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a fantastic example of a bill in this transformational Government’s year of delivery. It’s an excellent example of how they are failing to keep their promises and how this is absolute, utter rubbish that this is their year of delivery.

I do wonder if the Minister of Education is going to get up again and tell us that it’s another one of his promises yet to be delivered on, because he knows very well that he promised all parents in New Zealand that all school donations would be done away with, but what we’ve ended up with is not that at all. In fact, what we’re going to see is that probably most children in this country will end up still having to pay a school donation.

It will be very interesting next year, in 2020, when those invoices start coming to parents and they say, “But, hang on a minute, Chris Hipkins, prior to the last election, promised New Zealanders that if they were in Government, in fact, school donations would be scrapped. And then we remember some bill going through, and we thought that would happen.” What they don’t realise is that the detail of the bill is it’s only deciles 1 to 7 schools, so all of the 8 to 10s are out, including everyone in my electorate, but then also those schools who actually decide that, in fact, they’re going to be losing out under this bill—which will be quite a few, I imagine—and, in fact, will still ask for donations.

What I would like to start with is also just to talk to the Minister about school camps, because there are many school camps for especially younger children—because I have a seven-year-old, and he goes on a camp, and it’s not an overnight camp. It is a whole day, and—you know what?—then they go home and they go back the next day because they’re too young to stay overnight. That’s a school camp.

So here we’ve got already a problem because of rushed legislation, because this Minister has to put up a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) at the last minute because he didn’t do his work—this Government didn’t do their work—and rushed through a bill under urgency and then had a truncated process in which we only had 13 days for people to put in their submissions. We got about 139-odd, but there would have been a whole lot more had they had more time. It just goes to show that process does matter, and, in fact, if we had had a better process, we wouldn’t have to have this SOP brought by the Minister at the last minute because he didn’t do his job.

I’d also like to talk about inequality, because 95 of the 139 submitters said that all schools should be able to get rid of school donations under this bill, and that’s a lot. It’s a big proportion of the submitters.

I want to talk about inequality, and I want to ask the Minister directly, because the ministry, we know, has been doing a huge amount of work about the decile system and getting rid of it and replacing it with a much better model. The Minister knows that very well, and yet here he’s bringing a bill to the House which ties us to a system that we know doesn’t work. It doesn’t know exactly where children are in need; it guesses where they are. We know a better system is needed. The ministry is doing work on it. The Minister agrees that we need to do work. In fact, we’ve had a working group come back and even tell us that that’s what’s required, and yet here we have a bill that’s tying us to a system that we know doesn’t work. I’d like to hear from the Minister why it is that—probably, I would say, in the next few years—we’re going to be having to change this legislation to get rid of any reference to decile, because we know very well that it’s going to be gotten rid of.

As I said, the problems with this bill are, firstly, the process—it was rushed; most of the people who came to submit to the select committee said that they needed more time and there would have been a lot more submissions—there are gaping holes in the legislation, and that’s evident by the fact that we have this last-minute SOP, because we know the Minister didn’t do his work; and then, of course, we have the fact that this whole bill is a massive let down to parents who are expecting that next year they will turn up to school and not have to pay a donation, and, of course, the cold, hard reality will hit them that, actually, this Government, instead of being transformational and in their year of delivery, has in fact reneged again on one of their main promises: that parents won’t have to pay donations any more. That is a massive let down.

I think the lesson for that member Erica Stanford is: before you come to the House and accuse a Minister of not doing their homework, it pays to read the bill that you’re speaking to, because suggesting that we’re going to have to come back here and amend it to remove any reference to decile would have a legitimate point if there was a reference to decile in the bill. In fact, there isn’t.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 303 in the name of the Hon Chris Hipkins to clause 4 be agreed to.