Education and Training Bill

I move, That the Education and Training Bill be now read a second time.

The Education and Training Bill is the culmination of about 2½ years’ worth of work to update and modernise our entire education system and the way that it operates. But particularly, it consolidates several pieces of education and training legislation into one Act of Parliament, making it more accessible to a wider range of people in the process.

I would like to acknowledge the 434 individuals and 96 organisations who took the time to submit on the bill, and I particularly want to thank those who gave their oral submissions during the COVID-19 lockdown or disruption period and also thank the members of the Education and Workforce Committee for the diligent and conscientious work on the bill during their time.

The bill proposes a number of changes, a number of significant policy changes, alongside a complete rewrite of our education legislation. The majority of this bill codifies and simplifies and amalgamates all of the existing statute law around the way our education system operates. But it does make some policy changes and I want to particularly focus on the changes that have been amended through the select committee’s deliberation.

The bill implements changes to the early learning services licensing regime so that the provision of early childhood education and care can be more closely aligned with the needs of communities. The committee’s added the needs of children to the list of considerations that the Minister must take into account when considering an application to apply for a licence, and for greater transparency and certainty the committee has specified fit and proper criteria to be used by the Minister when determining the suitability of applicants to run an early learning service.

I welcome the committee’s amendments in respect to the provisions that confirm the right for students enrolled in a State school to attend the school for all of the hours that the school is open for instruction. It has become apparent that some children, some of our most vulnerable children, are actively discouraged from attending school for the full number of hours that they are legally entitled to be there. This law removes any big ambiguity around that and clarifies that all children are absolutely entitled to attend school for all of the hours that is open.

It does allow for there to be a transitional attendance plan, which would last for up to six months, which would allow for a temporary reduction in attendance hours where that is in the child’s best interests. That is often necessary as a child transitions from being in the home to being in school, where they may have additional needs that need to be taken into consideration. The committee’s amendments would allow for the transitional attendance plan to be renewed once only for a period of up to six additional months. This amendment will ensure that all children, no matter how particular their needs are, are able to realise their right to attend school full time. They should not feel pressured to only attend part time.

Another change that the bill makes is regarding school boards. Under the bill, the Secretary of Education will take over boards’ responsibility for developing and consulting on enrolment schemes. Boards are currently required to develop enrolment schemes, which can be time consuming and an administrative burden. This change will enable the secretary to take a regional approach to developing enrolment schemes, and, as a result of this, it will help to reduce the compliance burden for school boards of trustees, who are, of course, volunteers. It will also improve transparency and consistency with the system of how we manage school enrolments. The committee’s proposed amendments, which I fully support, to clarify in the bill that the secretary has full responsibility for the development and management of enrolment schemes and to require the secretary to consult with the school’s board and take reasonable steps to understand the views of the community when developing a proposed enrolment scheme.

The bill introduces a new dispute resolution scheme for State schools. The committee has made amendments to allow for dispute applications to be made orally rather than only in writing, to allow for recognised caregivers, rather than only parents and guardians, to pursue disputes on behalf of students under the age of 16 and to make the scheme subject to the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman. The committee has also made changes to allow the chief referee of the new disputes panel to filter out complaints that are trivial or vexatious or that are better dealt with by another body. Regulations will be able to be made to ensure that information can be sought by the new panels, and I fully support these changes. I also want to acknowledge the committee’s diligence in finding a few key provisions that needed to be carried over from the Education Act 1989 that were not carried over in the drafting and that were missed, therefore, from the bill that was introduced to the House.

In addition to the substantive changes, the committee has made a range of technical changes, such as incorporating the recent changes made to the earlier Acts by the Education (Vocational Education and Training Reform) Amendment Act and the Education (Pastoral Care) Amendment Act, both of which were passed after this bill was introduced into the House. The Education and Training Bill was drafted and introduced and sent off to select committee before the magnitude, the full magnitude, of COVID-19 was known. We’ve got an opportunity in this bill to make some important changes to reflect the needs and issues that COVID-19 has identified. I’ll be moving a Supplementary Order Paper to that effect.

That includes delaying the expiry date of the Education (Pastoral Care of Domestic Tertiary Students) interim code of practice until 2022 to allow for the disruption caused by COVID-19, and it makes other minor changes around the interim code. A Supplementary Order Paper will also cancel the export education levy payment obligations for enrolments between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2021 in recognition of the need for relief for international education providers. It will also propose an amendment to enable the Minister of Education to vary a funding determination following consultation without a stand-down period whenever there is a national or local state of emergency or where there is an epidemic notice. These sorts of changes were enabled by temporary legislation that was passed by Parliament in the wake of COVID-19 and it formalises those changes.

I’m also proposing to allow for State and State-integrated schools to provide distance learning to currently enrolled students based offshore on a case by case basis until the end of the 2022 school year, and that would include the provision of NCEA.

The bill gives new powers to the Secretary of Education to act and respond in future emergencies and epidemics. Again, the law change that we passed right before the COVID lockdown period provided some additional powers that applied specifically to the COVID-19 response, but of course, we have to be mindful that other emergencies can also have an impact on the education sector. Having worked through that more thoroughly now, there is good reason for extending those provisions to other states of national emergency or other epidemics.

The Supplementary Order Paper will also make other important amendments to the bill. These include delaying the commencement of the enrolment scheme changes until January 2021, adding a new provision to allow the Secretary for Education to approve a provision in enrolment schemes that allows siblings of students currently enrolled at a school to also enrol at that school when an enrolment zone changes in a way that would otherwise prevent the sibling from attending the same school, otherwise known as grandparenting. That’s something that’s been done by enrolment schemes for quite some time but is not, strictly speaking, allowed for in the current law. So we’re tidying that up. We’re correcting the law to align with current practice. It allows the Minister of Education to establish subcategories of private training establishments by Gazette notice.

I do quickly want to touch on the physical force and physical restraint provisions in the bill, an issue that has been very contentious for the teaching community and for the disability community. The bill, as introduced, changes terminology around physical force and physical restraint. However, there are still some concerns that are being worked through, and I intend to bring a further Supplementary Order Paper during the committee stage to resolve those issues. It is important that we address the inconsistencies and the confusion that exist around this area of the law, but it’s also important that we address the concerns that have been raised by the disability community and so on. So we will continue to work on that and we will have a Supplementary Order Paper that will be introduced before this bill has its committee stage.

I believe this is an incredibly positive bill for the education sector. It codifies and puts into law many of the changes that the Government has been making over the last 2½ years. It will make the education legislation much easier to follow. It completes some work that has been ongoing for about 20 years to update and modernise our education statutes. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity. On this legislation from the very first reading, we have been explaining our concerns and our reasons why we oppose this legislation. In the first reading, we said that we hoped that we would get the opportunity to address our concerns in the select committee process. But that didn’t happen. Just now, I’ve heard the Minister saying that there’ll be some Supplementary Order Papers, but, still, all our concerns are not going to be addressed through those Supplementary Order Papers—but that is for the later stage. But for now, in the second reading of the Education and Training Bill, I’m taking this call to oppose this bill.

We oppose this legislation. As I said, there are several reasons and we are hoping that these concerns will be addressed, which didn’t get addressed in the select committee process. In the select committee process, though, we had a very good discussion on this legislation. I want to acknowledge each and every one that submitted. We received 574 submissions and we had the opportunity to hear from 90 submitters, so that was really good. So there was a lot of engagement, a lot of discussion about this legislation. We know that this legislation is not only a compilation of other legislation that have things to do with the education sector, but also to implement the final report of the Tomorrow’s Schools Review Independent Taskforce into law. So this is the Government’s response to that report that through this legislation will be implemented into legislation. So it does more than just compiling various education legislation in this legislation.

So there are several concerns. Number one, I would like to—as the Minister of Education said, about physical force and physical restraint, these terms which are being changed, and also religious education provisions in this legislation—they came up quite often in the select committee process. Definitely, the discussion around physical restraint versus physical force was a prominent one. In my view, this change of these words from “physical restraint” to “physical force” has actually revived this debate. So until now, in my view, the education sector was quite settled about the understanding of what “physical restraint”—or in other words, if we call it “force”—means in the education sector. But now reviving this debate might send a signal, which might not be the signal that we want to send through this legislation.

The other concern that we have is: how are our educators going to get training or understanding of what this physical force will actually mean? So, yes, “physical force” was defined in the select committee process and the definition looks good. But still, we have concerns about how this would practically be applied if educators have to apply physical force. Yes, the Secretary for Education will be coming up with guidelines and rules, and in the select committee process, we made it clear that the secretary will be required to consult with young people. Young people’s voices are important in this and also young people that have special needs and also organisations that provide services to people with special needs. But that may not be sufficient, so we have concerns because this debate has been revived because of this change in words that has come up in this legislation.

Then, in the early childhood education sector, we have concerns about the system that this legislation is going to set for applying for an approval to get a licence to provide early childhood education. In this, the Minister will be required to provide an approval to an entity to apply for a licence. So, yes, some concerns were addressed in the select committee process. We know, as the legislation was proposed, the Minister is required to take into consideration the demographics, what is already there, what is not there, and also the need of that community. But then we added the need of children in the select committee process and also, as the Minister is required to look at if the applicant is a fit and proper person or persons but the criteria were not described in the legislation, that has been clarified. The third thing is about if somebody gets the approval, but holds on to that approval, doesn’t proceed to the next level. Then what happens? Because the Minister will have the impression that the Minister has given 10 or 15 approvals in that area, so thinking that they will have progressed to the next stage, that is, to provide the service. If that hasn’t happened, how do we control that? So that has been managed by putting a timeline there.

But we still have concerns because this is going to add another layer and also the Minister may not have that kind of good grasp of what is needed in the community. This needs to be community-led and early childhood education providers, they know, they do their assessment before they come up with their proposal. If there is a company that is a well-known name in the early childhood sector, then it might be easier for them to get the approval. How will it work for somebody who is new and wants to enter in this sector? So we don’t have that clarification in this legislation, because we don’t want hurdles for people that want to enter into the early childhood education sector.

Then the other concern we still have is about educational achievement, because now educational achievement becomes one of the accountability factors for boards of trustees. So this is a very important point for us, because as a mum, when I sent my boys to school, I wanted to see how their school was doing and I wanted to see my kids were able to achieve an education. Obviously, sports were attached to that but education was the main focus for me, for my children. I’m sure parents out there, they want to see that their children are achieving an education when, you know, that is the main expectation. So we would have liked to see that educational achievement is actually the prime accountability factor for the boards of trustees, not one of the four accountability factors for boards of trustees. In my view, what this has done is this legislation, as it is proposed, is going to dilute that educational achievement accountability factor. So education in schools is important and we all understand that education is the key to success. We all want to see that every child is able to get education, is able to do well in their life, so educational achievement—getting that diluted—is not something that we like in this legislation.

We just heard from the Minister that there is going to be a Supplementary Order Paper in the committee of the whole House, but that we will consider when it is tabled. But this is about awarding NCEA overseas. So our education sector is highly regarded internationally. We know we get so many international students come here. They gain a New Zealand qualification. We also know that around 80 percent of these students, they leave, they go to other places, use this education that began here in New Zealand to make their life. Yes, a small proportion, they will follow that pathway to residency as well because the provision is available, so they try to take up that provision, too. But for NCEA not to be awarded overseas, as is proposed in this legislation, putting those restrictions and making it available only for people that are from here and it not being awarded overseas in my view is a step that is going to take us back.

Our export education sector has hugely supported our economy and we want to continue to see that. This is a sector which is highly regarded and continues to support our economy. We want to build on the sector, not minimise the sector, but as it is proposed it appears that it is actually not going to support it in the sense that we want to see it supported to support our economy. So we have concerns about this and especially in the context of COVID. Even during this legislation when we were dealing with this bill in the select committee process, these 90 submitters that appeared before the select committee, some of them appeared here in Wellington, some appeared through video link. So now people are getting used to using technology, getting used to connecting while they’re away, distance learning should be becoming kind of a part of learning nowadays. We all need to adopt technology. We all need to see how technology can be used. And awarding NCEA overseas actually is something that we seriously should look into.

So we are really looking forward to seeing what the Minister is proposing through the Supplementary Order Paper, but what I understand is that it is going to be up until 2022, as the Minister said. Also he said it is going to be on a case by case basis. So it’s important for us to understand what that case by case basis means and how that case will be evaluated for awarding NCEA overseas and what will be the criteria for that. So these are some of the reasons that I’ve listed why we cannot support this legislation. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I’m absolutely delighted to stand here and take a call in the second reading of this bill. I was away and sick when this came through last, at the end of last year, on the first reading, and I remember watching it at home and thinking I would really like to be there and having my say in this particular bill, because this is a really important piece of legislation.

The consolidation and the modernisation into one Act is incredibly important to the total sum of the education sector. I can remember when I was a school principal, and trying to find the relevant legislation that actually guided our profession and our sector was really difficult, because there were so many different pieces of legislation and, actually, some of the language was not accessible for many people to actually find, and so that would be the first point I would make—is that I really enjoyed working through the select committee process in bringing all of those pieces together. The consideration that the select committee members gave was very, very in depth. It was a fantastic process and, as the previous speaker has just mentioned, we had a mixture of face-to-face and a mixture of Zoom meetings, but I can guarantee that we gave this due process when we went through this particular piece of legislation.

A couple of pieces in this short call that I would like to point out and talk about, firstly around the enrolment schemes. I’m delighted to see the changes that this particular bill will bring to enrolment schemes. Having a more transparent way of enrolment schemes, not having to reinvent the wheel so many different times, having the regional ministry, the Secretary of Education, overseeing this, devolving that to the regional offices in education makes perfect sense, because, again, our boards of trustees are having to do all of that work and then take it to the Ministry of Education and then there can be disputes. I know that the other side of the House had some upsets and anxieties around this, but I can tell them that, from personal experience, this is exactly what the principals in my area are crying out for. They wanted to see a more transparent way of doing and having enrolment schemes worked out.

The most important part of that legislation is the very, very strong community consultation that still has to happen. That’s really strong in the bill, and I was so pleased to see that that was really highlighted there. So it’s more about a partnership, which is exactly what the sector wants to see. The sector has been crying out for a strong partnership between the Ministry of Education, principals, and boards of trustees, parents, whānau, and children, and this is exactly what this bill is bringing. It’s a bit sad that the Opposition, throughout that, failed to see that this is what this bill actually brought to the sector to make it way stronger.

The other point that I’d like to make is around the disputes resolution scheme. I am absolutely delighted to see this particular part come through and be strengthened within this bill. I have seen so many cases, over my time, of children who have been hurt in the process of disputes panels—well, no, they weren’t disputes panels; having the stand down, suspension panels—

💬 Hon Tracey Martin: Disciplinary panels.

Disciplinary, thank you, Minister Martin—the disciplinary panels. Children have been hurt in that process, and having no recourse, having no way to come back—whānau not feeling that they had a voice. In fact, it was only yesterday—yesterday—when I had someone phone me to tell me about a young boy who I happen to know quite well who went along for a suspension meeting, was running 30 minutes late, was told that they had no right to actually speak at that suspension meeting, because the people that were there had other things to do. That evening that whānau got a phone call to say that that boy had been excluded from school. There was no comeback for that family, and this bill is changing that. This bill is ensuring that those families will have a voice, and I really like the way that the committee came together and said, “Well, actually, some people will feel more comfortable bringing an oral submission.” So people can actually make the submissions in a way that is most comfortable for them. I feel really sad about that young man, that young boy—he was 11 years old—but I know that we are ensuring that those situations will be addressed in future by changing the legislation as it stands today.

💬 Hon Tracey Martin: Tell him to write to my office, Jan.

I will be doing that, Minister Martin; I will be putting a letter in to you.

I am delighted in this piece of legislation. It is making a big, big difference to the whole of the education sector, right from early childhood, right to tertiary. I have absolutely no hesitation in commending this bill to the House.

I do want to take this opportunity to welcome Jan Tinetti back and to say it is nice to have her with us for this debate. She was missed while she was away and while she was unwell, and we’re glad to see you healthy again, Jan.

But I do want to take issue, very respectfully, with the approach she took in that speech. What she kept referring back to was what would make the sector happy. I, on this side of the House, together with my colleagues, unashamedly say that when we are assessing education legislation, the concern we should have, the motivation we should have, should not be what makes the sector happy; it should be what improves the education of children and what improves the experience of the parents and families raising those children. Here on this side of the House, our focus in education policy is children and parents. We make no apologies for that, and I would say, respectfully, to the member and those of her colleagues, that a sector-first approach will not lead to the best outcomes for children.

Here in this bill, we have, actually, quite a solemn and significant opportunity, and it’s set out there in the purpose statement, and the Minister earlier made comments about what this bill sets out to achieve. It sets out no less than to update and modernise the entire education system. It’s taken 2½ years to appear here, and we are told that this is the grand solution. Of course, there is so much we need to do in education, because education is actually almost the most important thing—probably the most important thing—that a Government can do to shape the experiences that an individual has when they’re born in this country. We can’t control what happens in every family, nor should we, but we do have the power to change what happens in the hours that a child is in a State-run institution. All of us in this House, thinking about that power that the Government has to influence a child’s education, would surely say, if we were being honest, that we don’t do a good enough job in this country. How can we possibly think we do a good enough job of education in this country when we know that as many as one in five New Zealand children still leave school without the literacy and numeracy skills they need to succeed? They need to access further training, and they need to contribute fully to our society. So the size of the task is significant, and that’s why we have a right to expect from the Government in this legislation some significant and meaningful reform, because too many children are being failed by our current system.

My conviction is that if we are going to see change in the education system that truly, transformatively changes the experience for all those children who are being failed by it, then that change won’t actually come from big Government. As much as I like many of the officials in the Ministry of Education, they’re not going to be the ones that solve it. The real changes for education will come from the communities and families that truly make up our schools. Wherever we have seen successful innovation in education, it has been community-driven. I give you partnership schools. Partnership schools were an answer to the question of why do too many children keep being failed by our State system. Partnership schools showed that when communities take responsibility for their own people, when families can drive their own solutions, when they’re given the ability to innovate, they can make positive change.

But this bill says no to all of that. This bill doesn’t have communities in it. It doesn’t have innovation. It doesn’t have families. Instead, what this bill does is centralise at every opportunity. There, on that side of the House, we have members whose trust in the ability of big Government goes far too far. Here on this side of the House, we have a healthy scepticism about what Government can really achieve. I want to take you through some of the aspects of this bill which I think demonstrate the unbridled confidence that Labour members have in what a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Education can achieve if only we give them enough power, because this bill gives them more and more power, at the expense of families and at the expense of communities.

Let’s start with the zoning provisions. When we look at the zoning provisions, let’s remember what zoning’s all about. The purpose of zoning is to exclude children from the school their families would otherwise send them to. It’s so that if a school is overcrowded, we can make a choice to send some children away. Of course, in an ideal world, we would not do that. In an ideal world, if a school is really successful, it’s doing a great job of providing education, and a family says, “I want to send my child to that school because I think it’ll give them the best education possible.”, then we, as Governments would say, “And so you should—you should have that choice.” Yet, of course, no Government in recent history has been able to afford the increases to school property on an individual basis that would be required to support those choices, and so successive Governments have had to make school zones to avoid overcrowding.

I would put to you that in my lifetime, if there was something I could do to change education for the better—if I was that education Minister, sitting over there—I wouldn’t just tinker; I would look at how I can truly empower parents to choose the schools that they want. But instead what this zoning law does is it says, “Well, let’s just really zone in on our power to exclude and let’s not muck around with giving communities the ability to define the home zone of a school. Let’s not let communities be the ones developing where the boundaries might be. Let’s not let communities be in charge of the consultation. Hey, and let’s not let them be the ones that are actually deciding the geographical boundaries, because we can’t trust them, apparently.”

Apparently, according to the advice we received from Ministry of Education bureaucrats, who, we must remember, according to these members, know better, if we leave it to communities, they might not have equity in mind. I would put to you that the people who best have equity in mind are the parents of a child who say, “I want my child to attend that school.”, not a bureaucrat in Wellington saying that if you live in that neighbourhood, you can’t go to this school. I would put to you that a community has the best knowledge of which neighbourhoods and which families have the historic ties to a school and should have a right to go there.

So this bill says bureaucrats know better, and we on this side of the House take issue with that. We think that it devalues the role of communities and that it sets a dangerous precedent.

That’s not the only area where this bill puts the Ministry of Education first. Of course, this bill, very tidily, incorporates all of the changes that were made in response to the tertiary training reforms. Of course, they too were a radical centralisation of the tertiary and skills training system, in which the Minister of Education took many of the powers of asset control and ownership away from local polytechs, away from Southern Institute of Technology and other innovative providers, and said we’ll put it all in a central institution.

Let’s remember where this all came from. What started this bill out was the Tomorrow’s Schools reforms—the review of the Tomorrow’s Schools reform. The original report actually said that any kind of school board at all would be scrapped in favour of bureaucracy. We saw communities use their voice, we saw parents use their voice, we saw boards use their voice, and utterly reject that. But what I see in this bill is the Government’s attempt to sneak in as much central control as it can keep.

Finally, I want to raise the example of what goes on in early childhood education (ECE) in this bill. What this bill does is it introduces a new discretionary power for the Minister to accept or reject applications for early childhood education centres. I have been around education long enough, and the Speaker will remember, when he was the Minister, that this country actually has a history of under-provision of early childhood education. There have been times in our history where, if you wanted to enrol your child in early childhood education, you couldn’t find a place for love nor money. I think it’s a good thing—and I want to put it on the record in this House—that now, if you’re living in an urban centre, most likely, as a mum or a dad or a caregiver, you have a choice about where you send your child to early childhood education. I am nervous about a bill that creates uncertainty and creates an unclear process whereby the Minister can accept or reject an application for an ECE centre. I actually want to continue to see diverse provision of early childhood education in this country, for more people to want to come in and educate our children. And I fear that this bill gets in the way.

This bill is not only a missed opportunity; it shows the priorities of this Government, which are bad and which tend toward centralisation. National would put families and communities first. We would do much better in Government.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Thank you very much. Just to correct Nicola Willis, the speaker who resumed her seat, this bill didn’t start with the Tomorrow’s Schools review. It started with a conversation across New Zealand for a 30-year vision about what our parents, what our students, what our families, what our educators, and what our country believed success looked like. That was the first thing in education that this Government did. We went throughout New Zealand and asked New Zealanders, asked students, asked young people, asked our seniors, asked our parents, and asked our educators, “What does success look like?” They said that it doesn’t look like national standards and it doesn’t look like charter schools and it doesn’t look like a voucher system and it certainly doesn’t look like setting up those parents who happen to work in the Ministry of Education and have children inside our schools against the parents who don’t happen to work inside the Ministry of Education and have children inside our schools.

I find it fascinating that a member who’s going to stand for Wellington Central decides that insulting bureaucrats is a way to start her election campaign. There are incredibly dedicated parents inside of the Ministry of Education who spend an awful lot of time—much more time than that member—moving around the country talking to families, to students, to disability groups and other specialty groups, to teachers, and to educational professionals. To write them off in the way that that member just did—I don’t know what she thinks her election campaign’s going to be like, but if that’s the start of it, then I don’t hold out a lot of hope.

Can I come back to the bill. First of all, I also need to disagree with something that the Minister of Education said in his opening speech. Now, I don’t often disagree with the Minister of Education. He and I have had a long relationship inside this House, where we’ve worked on many facets of the education sector. But in his opening speech, he said that “boards of trustees are, after all, volunteers.” They are not. They are elected officials. Boards of trustees are elected by their communities to represent their communities’ hopes and to set the strategic direction for their local school for the outcomes for their children.

I have heard some other strange things from members of the Opposition around suddenly some lack of accountability, supposedly, about boards of trustees with the academic outcomes for their students, which is completely false. Boards of trustees are required to report, and of course they report not only to their community on the academic outcomes for their students but also on the safety and wellbeing and the holistic wellbeing of their students to their community as their elected representatives, but they also must report to the Ministry of Education on those outcomes and the things that they are doing around discrimination and anti-bullying and all sorts of other areas.

So I do take issue with the fact—boards of trustees are elected officials. They have put their hands up, they have been voted into those places to represent their communities. They are not volunteers.

The other thing I want to speak to is I want to acknowledge Catherine Delahunty. Chris Hipkins, Catherine Delahunty, and I used to be sort of the “Three Musketeers” around this place, actually, and certainly in that area of learning support, and certainly in taking on the Government of the day when they decided that, you know, everybody had to get to that line on that day at that time, or otherwise you’d failed—which was what was national standards—and I want to speak about the disputes panels.

So I want to talk about the disputes panels. That came out of the inquiry into dyslexia, dyspraxia, and children on the autism spectrum. That came out of the presentations made to us by the parents who had children with diversity that meant that the support they needed inside of school needed to be different so that they were able to participate more fully. Unfortunately, they got caught up inside the discipline process, because at that time, we did not have a Government that invested in the learning support that they needed for the schools to be able to work with them and their families around their diverse needs.

Now, this Government has not finished with the actions that we want to take to better support those families, but we have put one of the largest amounts of investment into specialist areas and into other areas and into learning support coordinators and a learning support delivery model, and we have acknowledged those students and we have acknowledged those families and the difficulties that they have had. We must do better, but the disputes panels came out of that inquiry. That inquiry was brought to the select committee by Catherine Delahunty, it was supported by Chris Hipkins and myself, and the casting vote was the Hon Judith Collins. So just to acknowledge all those and to say that we have now started to move forward another one of the recommendations from that select committee.

In my final moments, I want to talk about physical restraint. I want to talk about the dog’s breakfast that was left to us by section 139AC. That is the clause inside of the current Education Act 1989, section 139AC, which is the physical restraint clause. It never worked. It’s never worked, from the moment that the previous Government put it into place. It never worked for the children with diverse needs, it never worked for the teaching profession—it never worked. It was a knee-jerk reaction, without all the other supports around it that were needed to make sure that those children could participate in the school day with the right supports for their needs.

One of a teacher’s key responsibilities is to effectively manage their classroom environment so that positive teaching and learning can happen for all students. There are times when a student or a group of students, for whatever reason, disrupt teaching and learning, either by stopping teachers teaching or by stopping other students learning, and we must not forget that a classroom is a learning place, but it’s also a workplace. We have dual responsibility.

Teachers don’t want to use force. There is a problem still with the piece of legislation in front of us. I want to acknowledge Golriz Ghahraman, I want to acknowledge Chris Hipkins—the three of us recognise that what we currently have inside this legislation is not there yet. We will continue to do work and, as the Minister identified, we will bring in a Supplementary Order Paper in the committee of the whole House. Collectively, we’ve got to come up with a solution, because what we’re doing now is not working.

So we endorse the bill. We commend the bill to the House from the New Zealand First perspective, but we acknowledge that the three parties that create the Government are continuing to work together because we’re not there yet on clause 95, around the physical restraint. Our teachers do not want to use force and our parents want their children to be safe, but I have to acknowledge—I have to acknowledge—that we are seeing an incredible number of children coming through with behavioural issues and with the inability to self-moderate, and one of the things we know from the Chief Science Advisor is that the ability to self-moderate is much more a predictor of what will be success later in life.

So we owe it to these children, we owe it to their families, and we owe it to the teachers in our classrooms to try and get this right. We’re not there yet, but we’ll continue to work on it. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call on the Education and Training Bill. I couldn’t just believe what I heard over there from the Hon Tracey Martin: that after going out there, consulting, and putting the Tomorrow’s Schools report together, this is the best they can come up with. If that’s the best they can come up with, then I have grave concerns for the future of our education system in New Zealand—we’re in big trouble.

The other thing I want to take note of is that board of trustee members are volunteers—or not volunteers, as the member says. Actually, in a week like this, which is National Volunteer Week, I’d just like to start out by acknowledging the many thousands of board of trustee members—elected or whatever—who give up their time, who are volunteers, they do not get paid.

💬 Hon Tracey Martin: They’re paid—they’re paid.

Some of them don’t get paid. And if they do get paid, they get paid a pittance for what they do. So I just think that that statement is an affront to the volunteering capacity of our elected—[Interruption]

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! I say to the Hon Tracey Martin, one of the privileges in this House is for members to make errors, all right? They don’t need to be shouted down.

So look, on to the bill that we’ve got today, and I’d certainly like to acknowledge the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, Parmjeet Parmar, and all of the committee members that I now sit on this committee with. I haven’t been a part of this submission process, but I do want to share with you some thoughts of mine reading through the summary of the bill and the implications for this on our wider education system.

Firstly, look, I’ve lived all over the world. I’ve had the privilege of studying at some of the best institutions in the world, and I think some of the advantages of New Zealand’s education system are as follows: its first is that it’s community driven. It’s driven by these volunteers, or whatever you want to call them—people who give up their time and their effort because they want to see their schools do well. It’s decentralised: it’s decentralised in powers and it’s decentralised in terms of decision making. There’s local responsiveness and there’s local empowerment that goes along with that. I think that that is a unique feature of our education system in New Zealand, and it’s something that we should seek to preserve, no matter what happens.

I think that that is under threat with the bill that we’re talking about here today, because, as my colleagues Parmjeet Parmar and Nicola Willis have pointed out, this bill is about centralising power into the Ministry of Education. It is this philosophy that Government knows best and that Government is the monopoly provider of education and education solutions.

I also want to take note on how rushed this process has been. Our education system is really important, and there are thousands upon thousands of people that give up their time and work in this sector. I would’ve thought that a proper due process would have been called for in order to get these reforms right, because the feedback that I’ve heard from this sector in Northcote—principals and parents and board of trustee members—is clear. They are sick of the pull of reforms, no matter who is in Government. When National is in Government—and I’m criticising my own side here—we go one way, and then Labour gets in Government, we pull ourselves the other way. For the life of me, the one consistent feedback that I’ve heard from school after school is this: “Take the politics out of our education system.” So in that vein, why did we use the approach that we’ve taken in order to rush this through in an ideological manner that we have? That is what I ask and it’s what my community in Northcote is also asking as well.

But let me turn to the bill itself and the select committee process. Here are a few things that have come up that we strongly oppose on this side: the first around the shifting of responsibilities of zoning. So as I’ve pointed out, one of the great features of our system is local responsiveness and local decision-making for their communities. I have had a number of schools with significant pressures on roll growth that want the ability to determine the school zone for their communities. Now, we’ve heard from the Minister of Education this week that they’ll still have the opportunity to do that, but that’s not correct. Now the Minister and the ministry draft those zones for the school.

The second area is around removing the board accountability for raising student achievement. I just think that that is, again, removing accountabilities for school boards to focus on the right outcomes. I say this with the conviction of my own experience, because, quite frankly, New Zealand’s education system did not do much for me. But for all those kids out there who are underachieving—Māori, Pacific Islander, or Pākehā—we have to ask ourselves here, what are the incentives that we put in place for school boards to lift student achievement? Now we have a bill that we’ve got here today that removes the accountability of school boards to focus on that; so we’re opposed to that.

The third area is the discretionary power of the Minister and the Ministry of Education to grant new licences for early education providers. We think that, again, that is far too much concentration into the ministry’s hands on that. But, again, I come back to another part of this, which is around the process for putting this law in place. We have a democratic process in this House that is built on years of tradition and due process. We have here a case where the select committee process was shortened, where we spent less time looking at submissions because our country was in lockdown. I say this because I would have loved to hear from more boards of trustees as a part of this process, because let’s not forget, those boards of trustees, they’re all parents. They all have kids that go to school and they’re all invested in the education system that they serve. So I just think the process for this law was terrible and we should have had a more robust process going forward.

National’s vision for education in New Zealand is simple: we want to prepare our kids to succeed in the future world, whether it’s nationally or internationally, and that means taking those that underachieve and lifting them up, giving them a helping hand, giving those kids that probably would have dropped out, like I dropped out, and saying, “You can go to university. You can do well, and here’s the incentive structure for that in place.” We want a curriculum where people are stretched in our education system—whether it be with languages, whether it be digital fluency, whether it be cultural fluency, and we want a system where every kid achieves their God-given potential in this country.

There are aspects of this bill that we agree with, and I have not decided to focus on that today. But the promises of the Tomorrow’s Schools report were clear: let’s focus on tomorrow’s school, the school of the future. I had high hopes, as did many in the education sector and parents around the Tomorrow’s Schools review. But what we have here is a law that does nothing but to serve to satisfy the ideological bent of the Labour Party of centralising control of the sector, of saying that Government knows best, not parents and local communities.

Again, there were other aspects that we approve of, but by and large we do not support this bill in the House. I’d like to acknowledge, again, those in the select committee, and I look forward to hearing the amendments in the latter stages of the process. But, for now, National opposes this bill and we do not commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise to speak to this bill tonight, and what a mammoth piece of work it is, so I do commend the Minister of Education for shepherding this bill through the House and the Education and Workforce Committee, including the chair of the committee, that I have recently joined, Parmjeet Parmar, who has the mammoth task of shepherding bills like this regularly—it’s a busy committee. This bill, as others have said, updates two bills that have been repeatedly amended over 55 years, and we’re now seeing something comprehensive that addresses the education journey, from early childhood education into primary school, secondary school, tertiary and vocational training, all in one piece of legislation.

At last count, for me—and it might have changed slightly, but it’s 578 pages, so it is a dense piece of legislation. I won’t be addressing all of its parts, but—

💬 Chris Bishop: Oh, come on!

Ha, ha! We can all take our share, right? I would like to start with the aspects of the bill that address early learning and that the provisions of this bill, essentially, strengthen the community-based needs and, actually, in-home early childhood education. But one of the things that the committee has come out with and changed the bill, I believe to improve it vastly, is to include that the needs of children must be added to the list of considerations that the Minister must take into account in applying this bill to licence applications and considerations. We know that much of our law is outdated in the sense that we don’t have things like the rights and interests and wellbeing of children and young people be mandatory considerations, as they must be because New Zealand is a party to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, one of the most universal, binding, and enforceable pieces of human rights law that I’ve had the pleasure, and displeasure, sometimes, of working on outside of this House in my previous life, in trying to set measures and to apply that aspect of human rights law for children and young people. It does require us in our law to take their interests into account when we make decisions that affect them. So it is really nice to see, and a bit of a shock that it wasn’t already one of the mandatory considerations, but we’re at least updating our law in that way for the really young people that partake in our education system.

One of the things that the Minister touched on and I really welcome in this bill is the amendments and changes around the transitional attendance plans. Again, I think we were all a little bit shocked to find that some of our most vulnerable or systemically marginalised of students were being actually pressured not to attend school for the full number of days that they have a right to attend and they were being, in different ways, excluded. So this bill provides for plans to be set out and agreed upon between principals, whānau, teachers, and the Secretary for Education so that children and young people who wish to attend school in different numbers of days than what is provided for in an ordinary education can at least be part of that decision making, and all of the different parties can hear from each other. That plan takes into account that young person’s wellbeing but also the teachers and principals and others who’ve come together, and we know that in terms of due process, people feeling heard always makes for better decision-making and better acceptance of decisions, better understanding of why things are happening, and that was missing.

Along those lines, in terms of due process and what this bill addresses, we’ve also got the dispute resolution scheme improvements. That actually was a really, really big issue when I worked in child rights for the Children’s Commissioner, Human Rights Commission, for YouthLaw—all of the different sector-based organisations that looked after the rights of children and young people in education, who consistently and repeatedly fought for children and young people who had been excluded from education for various reasons having a right to be heard and having a right to appeal those decisions. Because we know that the decision to exclude a young person from education can be one of the most damning, one of the most profound things that actually happens to a young person—a person—in their life. You know, it can really affect the entire course of a person’s life—our livelihoods, our ability to find dignity in the world—and to not be heard, for whānau not to be able to participate in that process or be heard or to have a right to appeal, was incredibly damaging.

I know from the other end of the human rights spectrum that in terms of youth justice, vast numbers of young people that we see come through that end of our system have been excluded from school, have undiagnosed—you know, what’s described as serious learning disabilities, cognitive diversity, and none of that has been able to be heard or processed through something like a transparent and, in this case, free of charge process where those decisions can be made with the children and young person and their whānau being involved. This includes the right to be orally heard—we know that legal language and having to put things in writing is really exclusionary in a lot of ways.

One of the other things that we really welcome in terms of the Green Party is the clarity around the right to opt in to religious instruction in schools. Having lived under a theocracy and having had religious instruction imposed upon me, and the trauma of my family in trying to overcome that, I know that there is no place for enforced religious instruction in our public schools unless a child, the young person, and their family want to opt in to that, knowingly and voluntarily. This bill clarifies that, so it is a step in both modernising our education system and also upholding the rights, our fundamental rights, to not only freedom of religion but freedom from religion, if that’s what the families wish. So that’s something.

But I do want to also, and lastly, address the issue that the Hon Tracey Martin and the honourable Minister have both raised, and that is that on this side of the House, we have heard from teachers, we’ve heard from parents and children and young people, on the issue of the use of restraint and the use of force that comes under this bill. We’ve heard the trauma that’s been suffered on both sides. We know that teachers are anxious and distressed, often, about the way that they can execute their duty of care to the children in their classroom, whether it’s special needs, whether it’s something else that has caused a disruption in their classroom, but also the other children, and that they’re nervous about that. They don’t know where their rights and their duties lie. But we’ve also heard repeatedly from incredibly distressed parents, whānau, children, and young people who have had different types of treatments, and they don’t know—there’s no transparency, and there’s no standardised way that they can feel safe in those circumstances where there is some use of restraint or force. Those words being included in legislation makes everyone concerned—we understand—nervous, and there’s uncertainty around that.

So we on this side of the House—and I do appreciate so much the Hon Tracey Martin and the Hon Chris Hipkins, as Minister, who’ve all come together with us as the Green Party to try and resolve this issue, try and come to a place where there will be, as the Minister has indicated, a Supplementary Order Paper addressing this issue and the removal of words and phrases in this bill that may lend themselves to a situation where parents are uncertain about whether use of force may cross the line, and teachers, principals, and other school caretakers are nervous about where their duties and obligations or restraints lie. So we’re going to work together to change that—and that’s our promise to this House—at committee stage. We’re not going to leave any uncertainty around that, and we are working together, which is, kind of, the beauty of this MMP Government. But it’s nice that we’re all on the same page in terms of the wellbeing of children being absolutely paramount. So I commend this bill at this stage to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call on the Education and Training Bill at the second reading. I just want to remind the House that this was meant to be a piece of legislation which was going to give rise to the Government’s enormous contribution to the education sector through the Tomorrow’s Schools review where they were going to reimagine the education system and where they were going to make massive changes to how the system worked. But all we’ve got is really just a whole lot of legislation put together. It’s not, as the previous speaker said, 578 pages; it’s actually 668 pages, put into a big ream of paper, basically, with a few changes included, but nothing of the substantial visionary Tomorrow’s Schools changes which the Government and Mr Hipkins were going around New Zealand talking about. That’s a good thing in some respects, because one of the key changes that the Tomorrow’s Schools review did propose was to essentially wipe out boards of trustees and to reimagine our education system with so-called hubs, which would manage hundreds of schools and somehow deliver better outcomes. Of course, we on this side of the House opposed that proposal because we know that when communities are at the heart of education, when parents and families and children and educators are working together in a local school, then we will get better outcomes for our young people and for the future of our country.

So I’m very pleased to see that that centralisation change has been wiped out. But this piece of legislation does chip away and does continue to put the theme of centralisation into our education system. It’s about how much control the Minister of Education could grab. He realised he couldn’t grab it all, he tried, but he got as much as he could through this. Of course, the bill went to the select committee, and there were hundreds of submitters. I just want to acknowledge everybody who made a submission on that bill. I think 90 submitters came and presented orally to this select committee. I want to particularly acknowledge them for taking their time to do that.

I just want to make this important point around the process, because this bill has been kept to the traditional six-month time frame for bills going through Parliament. Whilst normally, in normal circumstances, that would be OK, in these circumstances, that meant that a significant portion of that time was whilst the country was in lockdown and dealing with COVID-19. Of course, COVID-19 has changed every single aspect of our society. In particular, it’s had a huge impact on our education system and on our education sector. I just want to acknowledge all the schools in my electorate of Pakuranga for the work they have done to continue to ensure that the education that young people in my electorate get continues to be to the top standard that it always has been. I just want to say thank you for all the hard work that they’ve put in.

Now I want to get to some of the key points in what we oppose in this bill. Firstly, one of the key power grabs that this bill does is to take responsibility off schools for the setting of school zones. This is an important point for schools up and down the country, and particularly important in my electorate of Pakuranga, because when a school sets a zone it can be a controversial aspect, but it’s also very important part of what a school board does. A school board, in setting a zone, has the responsibility of consulting with the community. And who best knows who is in that community? Who best knows that community? Is it the bureaucrats in Wellington who look at lines on a map and demographic data and come up with proposals? Or is it the people who actually live there, who send their kids to those schools, who help fundraise for the school, who know the parent community? Is it them or is it the bureaucrats in Wellington? This bill says it’s the bureaucrats in Wellington who know better than the parents in my electorate, and I take great offence to that because I know the parents in my electorate of Pakuranga know their community far better than the bureaucrats in Wellington who look at lines on a map.

I’ve had examples even during my time as a member of Parliament with zoning changes and the school will come and see you, or parents will come and talk to you about it, and they talk about what they know about this street and that street and who lives there and what that means—details which the ministry has no idea about. Inevitably, once you have that engagement, you get positive changes and you get a better outcome. But this says, “No, the bureaucrats in Wellington will know better than the parents in Pakuranga.”, and I find that completely offensive.

Another really important change it makes is around the purpose of our school boards of trustees. What it does is it removes school boards’ specific accountability for raising student achievement by making it one of four equal objectives. So currently, under the law, a school board’s specific accountability is to raise the student achievement in that school. That is their responsibility, clearly defined. Now it makes it one of four equal objectives with a range of other aspects which are barely defined and which will mean that that primary responsibility of student achievement gets diluted as the school board of trustees has to focus on other things as well.

When I think of our local schools, I think of student achievement as being the primary objective in that school. Because when I think of what the outcomes that we’re wanting from our education system are, it’s about our young people being able to achieve, to get a good education, and to come out with qualifications which will set them up for their future. This dilutes that responsibility and will inevitably lead to worse outcomes in our education system.

Another really important point, which goes back to how this piece of legislation should not have continued to be rushed through during COVID-19, is the fact that it removes the ability for NCEA qualifications to be granted offshore.

💬 Hon Tracey Martin: It went through select committee, didn’t it?

It did go to a select committee, and I hear a bit of chitter chatter about the rush—

💬 Hon Tracey Martin: A full select committee; it didn’t get rushed at all.

I hear a bit of chitter chatter about the rush—yes, I acknowledged earlier. I acknowledged earlier that it went through a normal six-month period. But the world has changed, the world has moved on, COVID-19 has happened. But the Government is now saying we’re going to bring a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP). So that SOP didn’t go to the committee, submitters didn’t get the opportunity to look at it, they didn’t get the opportunity to scrutinise it. The Government spent 2½ years having working groups and reviews in education, but when it comes to the crunch, they’re happy to whack an SOP in there so they can get their point across.

So one of the areas is the fact that this bill removes the ability for NCEA qualifications to be granted offshore. That has a significant impact on the international students, which—

💬 Hon Tracey Martin: That’s why there’s an SOP.

Well, then why did you not put it to the select committee?

💬 Hon Tracey Martin: Because COVID happened after it was at select committee.

Oh, there’s more excuses from the Government. They’re full of working groups and excuses; it’s the two things they are good at—and non-delivery, that makes three. And incompetence, four. Well, I guess the list does go on, doesn’t it? I could go on about the Government’s failures, but I won’t. Let’s get back to this piece of legislation.

Another part of this bill is it continues the ideological reforms around the review of vocational education. Another significant reform this Government has done, amalgamating our polytechs all under one umbrella, thinking that you’ll get better outcomes by having the one educational beast, which—it’s not going to be based in Wellington, that one. I think they’re going to base that one somewhere else, I think it’s in Hamilton this time.

💬 Hon Kelvin Davis: What’s your excuse for the failure of all those organisations under your guys’ watch?

Well, I can tell the Minister that’s asking me the question that the Government’s amalgamations will not lead to better outcomes in the vocational education system. We know it’s going to cost—they’ve already announced hundreds of millions of dollars in this Budget to try and put it into bureaucrats rather than education. That’s what they did in this Budget.

Another really important point is the education changes in this bill around early childhood education and how they are putting in place active network management. Now, what does active network management mean? More control for bureaucrats in Wellington rather than choice for communities and allowing choice for families when it comes to education. That’s what this bill is about. It’s about the creeping control of Wellington rather than empowering our local communities. The National Party will not support this bill.

This is a split call. I call Marja Lubeck, five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. You can just tell a lazy Opposition when they say that a six-month process is a rushed process. They obviously don’t do anything at all. As we’ve heard already in the speeches, this bill is a revamp of the whole education legislative framework. It puts a new structure in place. It’s more modern. It’s more reflective of a less prescriptive education environment, and, in general, it reflects all the many tidy-ups that are, quite frankly, long overdue.

What really thrills me though is the aspect of lifelong learning in this bill, something that this Government is, obviously, investing in heavily. We saw that recently with a boost into adult and community education.

This bill’s been through a very thorough process. We’ve heard 545 submissions. A quarter of those gave oral submissions, and I’d like to thank all those submitters who came. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I stand to make a contribution to the Education and Training Bill. It seeks to accomplish—it has a large scope. It wants to put together a number of existing legislation and consolidate it into the bill. It is a good thing, the consolidation. While that is a good thing, the resulting centralisation of control in the Ministry of Education is something that National does not support. National believes that it is indeed sensible to put the things together, but there are portions of the bill that National opposes.

I am a trustee in a board in a school in the place where I live. Speaking to the exchange about being a volunteer or not, I do believe that I’m a volunteer. I am paid a meeting fee, which is donated to the school—so, essentially, there is still consideration for being a trustee. Being a trustee, I’ve seen how much work goes into the board, into the meetings, and how much work and effort the parents of the school put into being involved in the direction of the school. Taking away the authority, or taking away the opportunity, for the board of trustees to make decisions and discuss and review the setting of the zonal geographic requirements of the students is something that the trustees actually—it’s a part of the desire to give service to the board, and taking it away is not something that they would agree to, I think.

The National Party also, on the other hand, agrees with and supports some portions of the bill. Removing barriers to foreign teachers who can become registered and come to New Zealand to teach is a good thing. The dispute resolution is a very good step forward, in the sense that it gives to the students and the parents the opportunity for a discussion outside when they have had no success from the school. This process needs to be fleshed out, because there have been concerns from submitters saying that they are not fully aware how this system could be worked out in practical terms.

The amount of work that has gone into the consolidation of legislation is such a big effort that running through the six-month period, with three months of that period done during the lockdown, makes it seem insufficient in terms of the opportunity that the public may have had to make submissions. Although many have been made, I understand that only about 23 boards of trustees were able to make submissions. So that’s a bit of a concern as well.

Ultimately, National believes in making sure—I’m sorry, my time has ended.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I must admit, after listening to the contributions from the Opposition, I’m a little confused as to where they stand. They support many things within this piece of legislation, but then they don’t support pieces of this legislation. So I would say it’s a matter of opposition for opposition’s sake, actually.

But one of the things I do want to talk about briefly is around the fact that people who provide home-based early childhood education—other members of their household will now have to be police vetted, and I think that that makes perfect sense. Because, in an early childhood setting, every person that teaches or works in that setting when children are around must be vetted, and so I see this as an extremely important step towards ensuring that our tamariki are kept safe while in their education and care facilities, whether it be centres or whether it be home-based.

Huge piece of legislation, fantastic piece of legislation, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m very pleased to take a call on the Education and Training Bill at its second reading.

You often get pieces of legislation in this House that very clearly show the differences in approach between the two sides of the House, and this is one of those bills. You clearly get that picture when you see the Government and the opposite side of the House believing that centralisation of decision making is best when it comes to education and when it comes to our young people. On this side of the House we’ve always clearly believed that it is our view that families, communities, schools, and boards of trustees know best when it comes to the education of our young people.

Nicola Willis said, prior, in her contribution earlier this evening, the best outcomes that have been made, the best decisions that have been made, are the ones that have been driven from the ground up, from the communities, from the schools, from the families, and from the boards of trustees. She made the very good point that charter schools were one of those things, that it can be proved that when the community comes forward with a solution for children who are failing in the mainstream and who are failing in even our special character schools, that what incredible results we get when the community takes control, they innovate, and they come up with solutions for those children, and no more so than at Vanguard Military School in my electorate. But no, gone by lunchtime then, and we see it again in this bill with a centralisation of decision making, taking power away from schools, communities, boards of trustees, families, and parents; where we firmly believe that decision making and all the power should be with them. It is always because this Government believes that they know best. They don’t trust communities. They don’t trust families. They don’t trust boards of trustees.

Frankly, although it’s a big bill with many pages, it’s a bit of a disappointment of a bill. I think Marja Lubeck actually summed it up best when she called this bill a long overdue tidy-up. This bill has come about from the Tomorrow’s Schools review, which was set up by this Government, and they spent millions and millions and millions of dollars on it. It came up with some radical ideas and solutions about changing the future of education and how it would look, and we end up with a bill—and she’s quite right, Marja Lubeck is quite right, it’s a bit of a tidy-up. It’s got a few bits and pieces in here but when you compare it with what the Tomorrow’s School’s report wanted, it’s a vastly different thing. So I guess all that money was wasted.

There are aspects, and I know that it’s difficult for Jo Luxton to understand—in a bill this big, there are obviously going to be some parts of it that we agree with, but the vast majority of it we don’t, and that’s just what happens. I’m unsure why that’s such a difficult thing to comprehend; it’s not surprising when you look at the size of the bill that there will be some parts of it. But there are so many failings of this bill that were not addressed at select committee for us to vote in favour of its second reading tonight.

The one thing that I would like to consider, and others have mentioned it as well, but I’ve got some specific examples I’d like to talk about, that’s the shift of power away from the boards of trustees when it comes to zoning. As I’ve mentioned earlier, we oppose provisions to centralise power and take away that responsibility from boards of trustees and centralise it with bureaucrats in Wellington. School boards know best their local communities, they know best their families, they know best their area, and they should be empowered to make decisions that work best for families, particularly on issues like zoning. On this side of the House we are very fearful that removing this autonomy and responsibility may lead to the Ministry of Education, however well meaning they may be, imposing conditions on schools that do not take families in these situations into account.

I want to just start my discussion about zoning just by saying that even the current zoning arrangements, they’re not perfect. But the things that schools and families and communities—the thing that is the big problem with the current situation is the ministry’s involvement. It’s not the school’s involvement or the board of trustees’ involvement, it’s the ministry’s involvement. What this bill does is take what little the school does have available to them and centralise it even further. It takes the worst part of the current situation and makes it even more worse.

I want to talk about two examples, one in Wellington and one in Auckland, one in my electorate in East Coast Bays. I’m not going to say the school but it’s a local primary school who have recently gone through this change of zones. They did the consultation, but in the end it was the ministry who came in over the top to make the decision, and that was the problem. It was the problem that the bureaucrats in Wellington came in over the top and said, and forced the school, firstly, to even undertake the consultation, and then forced them into a position that they didn’t want to be in. Now, the depth of feeling in the community when the ministry made this decision was absolute shock. It was one of anger and huge disappointment. I had parents ringing me saying, “We will fundraise for new classrooms. We will do this. We will do that. Why don’t the ministry understand that we are part of this community? Why are they trying to force us in the opposite direction to attend a school in a community that we have absolutely nothing to do with? We don’t travel in that direction. We don’t shop over there. We have nothing to do with that community. We are squarely in this community. That school is in our community.” The depth of feeling was surprising, the anger and the outpouring of emotion. I went to a couple of the meetings where they were attended by many, many very angry parents who could not understand why this decision couldn’t be made by the school. So as you can see the part of the decision-making process, it’s not perfect now, but the part that’s not perfect is the ministry making that decision.

Schools and boards of trustees can be trusted to make these decisions, to work with other schools to figure out where the growth is. It was really interesting in this case, actually, of this primary school that I’m speaking of, it said that there was going to be a development across the road of 450 new homes. Now, interestingly, the ministry didn’t even know about it. It was the community, the board of trustees, and the school that knew about it and could account for it but not the ministry. There’s so many examples of that in my community with different schools knowing where the growth is and actually trying to tell the ministry that their modelling is wrong, and actually, here’s where all the growth is, and here’s where we need to have our zones. The ministry are the ones who don’t have the up-to-date information and keep making wrong decisions. We end up with some schools that are over-enrolled and some that are under-enrolled, and it’s not for lack of trying by the local schools to try and get the ministry to understand.

The second example I wanted to talk about is a school that I was actually just discussing with Nicola Willis. She didn’t get time in her contribution to talk about it—Makara Model School. It’s in a relatively rural area—forgive me, I don’t know Wellington well. But what she said to me is that it’s over the hill from Karori, and it takes a number of students from the Karori region. It prides itself on specialising in children who have additional learning needs. It takes any student—it did take any students that had those additional learning needs, and it was known as a school that was best for those students. A lot of people from Karori would send their children to that school. What the ministry did was come in over the top and say, “That’s not allowed. We’re going to create a zone.” All of the schools wanted it. All of the parents wanted it. The community wanted it. But the ministry came in over the top and said, “Actually, we know best.” And that—I know you’re wanting me to come back to the bill, Mr Speaker—is the problem with this bill. It centralises this decision making. It takes those decisions away from schools and the consultation away from schools, communities, families, and boards of trustees, and puts it with bureaucrats in Wellington who don’t know local communities. They don’t know geography. As I mentioned, they quite often don’t know even where the growth is. Those are just two examples. Even now, the system isn’t perfect. But this bill is going to make it far worse.

In my final minute, I want to just say that we’re also very, very concerned that this bill removes a specific accountability placed on school boards to raise educational achievement by amalgamating up with three other objectives and giving them all equal weighting. No one on this side of the House argues that those three aren’t important, those other metrics aren’t important, but by not having educational achievement at the top of the list, in our opinion, it is not a good thing.

So in the dying seconds that I have left, I just want to say that we back communities, we back school boards, we back families, and we back parents to make the best decisions, and not this Government or bureaucrats in Wellington. Thank you.

I commend this bill to the House.