Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take this short call to speak on the Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill. Before I do so, I want to thank the member who introduced this bill, Terisa Ngobi, who happens to be also a parent herself. Thank you, Terisa, for introducing this bill to the House, which will help a lot of children and their parents.

The bill amends the Holidays Act 2003 to allow workers with children to take leave to attend parent-teacher interviews. It’s a simple change in the legislation that creates significant advantage to low-paid workers. It allows parents to attend interviews about their children’s educational performance that are held during their normal working hours.

This bill is structured in a way that does not—that does not—excessively burden employers, because we have heard a lot of concerns about the costs of this bill to the employers. It doesn’t cost much. Parents will no longer have to choose between their income and participating in their child’s education—which is very, very important—which wouldn’t be fair.

Why do we support this bill? In many cases, good and ethical employers already do this. They offer the leave to their employees. Therefore, this bill should not create any issue for anyone. In fact, we should all be pleased and happy with it. The refugee and migrant families that I come from tended to feel discouraged to ask for leave. Often they take up insecure and casualised work, which makes it really difficult for them. Employment arrangements to take leave is hard for them. This bill would ensure all parents have the opportunity to work in partnership with educators, supporters to support their child’s educational success.

Migrant families often come into New Zealand out of touch with the education system. Parent-teacher interviews, therefore, often is an important opportunity for these parents to discuss their child’s academic progress and to help them to integrate into a New Zealand education system.

There is a huge social cost associated with not implementing this bill. Children and their families would not be able to work together for positive educational outcomes—

💬 Hon Member: What nonsense.

It is true. The education sector is the glue for integration and the social cohesion that as a nation we are embarking to. Supporting this bill means we are wrapping up our arms around the families from all social and economic backgrounds. It takes a step forward into investing in our children’s future.

We know how COVID-19 has created some disruption for children and their families. It is important that the parents and teachers have the opportunity to discuss their children’s educational achievement, and how they can be supported to reach their full potential. Good educational outcomes for all our children are going to take all the stakeholders working together, working together in collaboration—that is, parents and guardians know what’s happening at school, and vice versa, and schools know what’s happening at home. This bill will help with just that. On that note, I highly, highly commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The National Party opposes this piece of legislation. This Government seems to live in a fantasy world where you can keep passing laws to offer another public holiday, double sick leave entitlement, now offer another half a day off a year to go to school interviews, thinking that it would have no cost and everybody would be happy. Well, unfortunately, the people that are operating a small business—a little cafe or a bookshop—and dealing with the difficulties of keeping afloat in business are having to foot the bill. And this is something that isn’t a problem that needs fixing. Schools and parents are quite capable of organising things so that they can arrange for parents to be able to come along to meetings. They’ve been doing it for decades, and they generally have opportunities outside working hours and flexibility in the system so that they can arrange to do it. Schools have been doing it for decades, they continue to do it; my schools do it. So this is another case of Labour pushing unnecessary cost and regulation without presenting any evidence whatsoever—no evidence whatsoever—of the problem that they’re trying to solve.

I haven’t seen long queues in front of my MP’s office of people concerned about this as an issue. Meantime, we’ve only got three out of five children attending school regularly. We’ve got a truancy crisis in this country, and this Government’s members seem to think the solution to it all is to make it easier for parents to attend teacher meetings. We’ve all worked out that we’re fully capable. It seems to be the impression that this Government thinks that New Zealanders and their teachers and their schools are incapable of working things out for themselves and that the Government has to come in and fix every single little problem with something else to put on to the shoulders of small business operators who particularly are struggling to stay afloat. So we, on this side of the House, oppose this as unnecessary legislation. We have trust in New Zealanders to be able to work it out for themselves.

I’m really pleased to be able to stand and provide Mr Goldsmith with some evidence, all right? So I’m really pleased to be able to stand and support Terisa Ngobi’s bill, the Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill, and we’re asking for resources, quite rightly, to be committed to something that shouldn’t just be because it feels good; it should be because the evidence is clear that it will make a difference.

So let’s start with the OECD in 2020. They talk about parental involvement in children’s learning as strongly associated with children’s socio-economic development, better reading proficiency and academic success, student engagement, and high school completion. And the way that connects with this piece of legislation is that they note a typical barrier to involvement is time constraints—“Inequality of ability to find, make, and take time to engage may increase inequalities in education.” So, to the member’s point about “Why bother?”, the evidence is very, very clear.

Let’s look a little closer to home, to the Education Review Office. They reported, in 2018, the benefits of such strong partnerships. Having teachers involving parents in setting goals and agreeing on next learning steps is critical. These conversations enable teachers to learn more about each student in the wider context of school and home, to develop holistic and authentic learning goals, and context for their learning. And it really, really helps teachers to become culturally responsive—critical when we are trying to address some of the inequalities in our system.

When this engagement is regular and honest, genuine and reciprocal learning partnerships happen, and that can only be a great thing for our kids. So when we value and work with whānau—not just a one-off speed date but ongoing relationships—it helps with transitions into school and between schools. We look forward to hearing all these voices come to select committee, and I urge you to support this bill.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Just to take a quick reply on this. First of all, I wanted to thank the members for your contributions, even those across the House. While we don’t all agree, maybe, for this bill, what we do agree is that education for all children is really important.

This bill is a game-changer; we’re asking for a proposed four hours per year for parents or caregivers to be able to attend their child’s parent-teacher interview. We know when parents, children, and their teachers come together, they’re able to develop a plan that is going to make sure that we set goals, so that those children—our future leaders—are able to get a good education, are able to have the same equal playing field as everybody else. That is the importance of this bill. You can talk about the costs—the minimal costs—but the employers I’ve talked to, good employers, are already doing this. They’re already supporting their staff to make sure that they get good education for their children and are able to support their families in whatever they need.

This is part of a bigger package for this Labour Government to continue to make sure that we lift our children out of poverty. This is one of those things that we can do to make sure there’s equality. This is one of those things to do. That’s the importance of this bill, and for that I commend the bill to the House.

The question is, That the

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.

Members, it is kai time. I will leave the Chair now and resume the Chair at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6 01 p.m. to 7.00 p.m.