Education and Training Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Education: I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training Amendment Bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

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

On behalf of the Minister of Education, I wish to take this opportunity to thank the members of the Education and Workforce Committee for their careful and cooperative consideration of this bill. I also wish to thank those who made submissions on the bill, as well as the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives for their report relating to this bill. And, as the Minister mentioned in his first reading speech, this bill primarily deals with issues that aren’t policy changes but are the inevitable necessary tweaks following the drafting of the Education and Training Act 2020, which was a significant drafting exercise.

While the amendments to the Act are small, they are relatively urgent. As part of the process of converting all education legislation into a single statute, Schedules 20, 23, and 24, relating to the enrolment schemes, electing and co-opting board members, and national student numbers, were to be automatically repealed on specified dates and converted into regulations. Upon further reflection, these three schedules all contain provisions that should remain in primary legislation rather than being converted into regulations. As such, the bill amends the Act’s sunset provision so the schedules are not automatically repealed on specified dates. The schedule relating to national student numbers is due to be repealed on 1 January 2022, making it necessary for the bill to be passed this year. I thank the select committee for their timely examination of the bill, which avoids a vacuum.

The Education and Training Act and the Children’s Act both contain provisions aimed at keeping children safe when engaging in education. It has become clear that there is some confusion about how the two Acts work together. The bill inserts a provision to make it clear that the first question employers must ask themselves is whether their new employee is a children’s worker. Only if the answer is “no” do the provisions of the Education and Training Act become relevant. There are a few other minor and technical changes in the bill, including amending the thresholds for interventions in State schools so that they replicate the provisions of the previous Education Act 1989. These thresholds were intentionally changed in the drafting of the Education and Training Act.

The bill also amends the physical restraint provisions to be consistent with the position under the now repealed Education Act 1989. This position was not intended to be changed. The bill amends section 6 of the Act to specify five education agencies that must give effect to the statements of expectations relating to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, issued jointly by the Ministers of Education and Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti. These agencies are the Ministry of Education, the Education Review Office, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, the Tertiary Education Commission, and Education New Zealand.

I wish to thank the Office of the Clerk, who drew the committee’s attention to two design issues relating to the bill. While the report from the Office of the Clerk did not lead to any amendments to the bill, these kinds of checks and balances are an important part of how our Parliament operates.

So, as the Minister predicted in his first reading speech, the bill did not set the world on fire. The bill has been reported back with no recommended amendments, and, as he hoped, with the bill being relatively technical, it has been non-controversial so far. I commend the Education and Training Amendment Bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Well, an education and training amendment bill again. I really wish the Minister would watch the home handyman on TV that says, “Do it once; do it right.”, because with these education and training amendment bills, it seems to be in one door, out another, back in the door.

So the purpose of this bill is to clarify safety checking processes for children’s workers and school employees. Of course National supports that; it’s tidying it up, of course we would. It would be nice if you could get it right the first time. It extends the ban on charging trainees a compulsory student services fee for year 1. Now, this is tied up with the review of vocational education; the merging of the ITP sector and the ITO—institutes of technology and polytechnics and industry training organisations sector. So it’s extending that out to a period closing 31 December 2022.

Now, how did that not get done right in the first place? The Minister knew when he was putting this merged Te Pūkenga in place that it was going to not happen until 2022—the implementation of it. But I’d have to say, having just come from the Education and Workforce Committee, where we saw what a shambles that amendment has created with Te Pūkenga, I’m not surprised that this has to be amended. Just on that amendment of the reform of vocational education and the setting up of Te Pūkenga, if people are wanting to just keep an eye on what the Minister promises: the Minister promised a modest headcount of a head office for Te Pūkenga—139 people at a cost of $11 million. That’s probably modest in this Government’s view, when they can throw millions and billions, but I can understand now, perhaps better, how they got the date wrong in charging the trainee compulsory student fees.

The other bit in it is about ensuring that only persons holding a teaching position are able to use physical restraint, and certain other provisions around rules of intervention. So, look, it’s a tidy-up bill, and National is going to support it. And, of course, we want to support when there are technical amendments, but it also shows the dangers of trying to do too much in too short a time—rushing things through without consultation, rushing things through under urgency, and then having to come and mop up later when it takes time in this House to do it. Quite frankly, I would hate to think how many times this Education and Training Act has been to the House in the short time that I’ve been here, in a year, but it’s certainly been frequently.

So National has concerns in a number of areas of what’s happening in the education sector, and we would rather that we were getting amendments coming to the House for this piece of legislation that were addressing some of the key issues that we’ve already talked about today in the House in the education sector. We would love to see some amendments on changes that can help improve the absolutely appalling truancy rate that is in this country. And before anyone leaps up and says that’s COVID, it isn’t COVID. Those truancy rates were there pre-COVID, and they are only getting worse. We would love to see an amendment to this Act come into the House that shows something being done to improve our maths and our science results in our schools. That would be worth standing here and debating in the House. We’d even like to see something come in that shows that immigration is going to open up and allow some more maths and science teachers in to help all those schools that are franticly trying to find maths and science teachers to staff their classrooms.

So, look, there are big issues in education happening at this very time. When we have a significant number of our young people in schools who have not been able to physically get to schools for the equivalent of over a whole term, and the impact that that is likely to have on their whole learning journey, we would like to see some things coming to this House that are going to address that, but instead—and I said it in my last speech—we are seeing a Minister who is fiddling while Rome is burning. There is nothing substantial coming in that is showing we are supporting the teachers, we are supporting the schools, and the schools are going to have to deal with these young people because there has been such variation in the amount of schooling that these young people have received over lockdown time. The schools must receive some sort of support to catch up that learning for those young people or they are going to be behind their whole lives. So those are the kinds of things that we would have hoped to see coming into here. I would just be very, very hesitant about seeing minor amendments like this and having to support them, but seeing nothing of substance and not seeing sufficient consultation so that legislation is done right and done once in the first place. My goodness, we are going to have to see some amendments come in with that shambles that is unravelling in Te Pūkenga as a result of the review of vocational education, which, again, had that theme of consultation that wasn’t done right, of a Minister claiming that there was an overwhelming majority of submissions supporting it, except there were 29 percent of them.

So we’ve got some remedial work that I’m sure is going to be in front of us again with the Education and Training Act. We will support the Government because these things need to be fixed up, not because we want to support you continuing to make messes. But it is taking our time, it is taking the House’s time, it is taking select committee time, and not one scrap of time has been given to these big issues in the education sector of truancy, of hard-to-staff discipline areas, of failing maths and science grades, and of schools that are crying out for support. So we will rise and support the Education and Training Amendment Bill second reading. We hope it doesn’t go out the door and come back in again with some other changes because the Minister forgot to find out about something or forgot to consult sufficiently. I understand it is likely, but could the Minister please start paying some attention to detail so we don’t constantly spend our time on cleaning up these shambles. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

It’s a bit rich for that side of the House to go on about what they know in education when you think about the abomination of national standards and what that did to our education system. We on this side of the House have an absolute desire and passion to ensure that education feeds the growing minds of this nation so that our young people learn and discover and thrive in a lifetime pathway of success. This bill has a few very short, important issues that need to be addressed. This is why I support this with urgency, and I commend this bill, the second reading of the Education and Training Amendment Bill, to the House, because Labour supports and thrives in an education journey with teachers, students, and parents for a better, brighter future for this country. I commend this bill to the House.

National supports this bill, the Education and Training Amendment Bill, which largely proposes technical amendments that fix up the principal Act. But let me say, here we are again. This House has spent inordinate time during this term of Parliament fixing up legislative errors in legislation brought forward by this Government. Members opposite may think that that’s no big thing—who cares; it’s just Parliament’s time.

💬 Hon Dr David Clark: Opposition didn’t do its job last time.

I would remind members opposite, including Minister David Clark, who’s currently barracking at me, that he is here, funded by taxpayers, and that the time of this House, the support for this House, is time that could otherwise be spent on issues that are far more important to everyday New Zealanders. Let’s remember the context.

💬 Anna Lorck: What’s more important than education?

Anna Lorck asks me “What’s more important?” Thank you for that wonderful question. I will tell you, Anna Lorck, what is more important. What is more important than spending the House’s time on technical amendments to a piece of legislation is the fact that two out of five children in this country do not regularly attend school. What future do those children have? What hope do they have, Anna Lorck? What hope do they have, Minister Jan Tinetti? Actually, we have major issues in our education system, and this bill does absolutely nothing to progress solutions to them.

Every hour we spend in this House has an opportunity cost. Every hour officials spend doing technical amendments to bills, every moment that the Minister spends having to fix up sloppy mistakes he’s made in the past is a minute not spent confronting the genuine challenges of our time, which in the education system are real. They are palpable. We have kids not going to school. We have kids failing to learn to read and write. We have kids who can’t do maths, and what’s the Minister of Education doing? He’s doing technical amendments to the Education and Training Act.

I notice that the members opposite have suddenly got a lot louder, haven’t they, colleagues? They’ve suddenly got a little bit louder, and I think that’s because it’s actually a bit embarrassing for them. I think it’s because they know that their constituents, who gave them their support and their votes at the last election, didn’t do that with the understanding that they would come to Parliament and spend their time representing them by pushing through technical amendments following sloppy mistakes. They know that, actually, New Zealanders expect pretty simple things. They expect that our schools will have children who attend them, and that where children aren’t attending school, where two out of five children aren’t regularly attending school, that the Minister of Education will see that for the crisis that it is, and that he will prioritise the time and resources of his ministry, of his officials, and of his own time, towards addressing that problem.

The members opposite know that every minute we are spending on technical amendments to change Schedule 20 relating to enrolment schemes, and Schedule 23 relating to electing and co-opting board members, and Schedule 24, which relates to national student numbers, is a minute not spent on the more real issues confronting our education system.

💬 Hon Member: Stop filibustering.

Was it Minister David Clark who made that contribution? He said to me that I was filibustering. Well, I’d offer this to you, Mr Speaker. Members on the Education and Workforce Committee spent some time considering this bill. This bill has multiple provisions, and it’s actually not the first time that a bill has been brought forward to fix up the Education and Training Act. I think it is absolutely appropriate that at the second reading of a bill, which is, fundamentally, about the way the education system in New Zealand works, that we do say, “What is the opportunity cost of this legislation?” Members opposite may think that there is a big money tree at the end of the garden and that there is room to do love and sunshine for all, but I tell you what, actually, members opposite would do well to learn that Government is about priorities. Government should be about where you spend your time, resources, and energy and what problems you focus on fixing. So it is absolutely relevant to this debate that we have an education and training amendment bill before us that does nothing, not a thing, to address attendance, to address falling literacy levels, to address declining numeracy levels, and that does not a thing to lift student achievement.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m going to give the member a little bit of encouragement to talk not about what’s not in the bill, but what is in the bill. I ask her to do that now, please.

I’m going to do that, and I really hope that New Zealanders are listening. I hope that while they listen to me doing that, while I tell them about what’s in this bill, they have in the back of their mind, “This is what I sent Greg O’Connor to Parliament to do.” What they sent Greg O’Connor to Parliament to do was, as the explanatory note of the bill states, “Clauses 5 to 7 amend sections 99(1) and (2)(b), 100(1), and 101(4), which relate to the use of physical restraint at registered schools, including by teachers. The amendments clarify that only persons holding a [current] teaching position can use physical restraint in accordance with the provisions.” And the reason we’re doing that here is because there were drafting errors in the original Act that members opposite failed to pick up at select committee, that the Minister failed to pick up, and that his hundreds of officials at the Ministry of Education failed to pick up. So here we are doing those clauses.

What Greg O’Connor, the member for Ōhāriu, came to Parliament to do was ensure that the House could spend its time on clause 8, which “amends section 171(2), which authorises interventions in State schools by the Secretary for Education (the Secretary) or the Minister. The amendment ensures that the provision directly corresponds with section 78I(1A) of the repealed Education Act 1989, which relates to interventions that may be used by the Secretary.” Is anyone following this? My sense is that these sorts of technical amendments are not what anyone sitting in this Chamber today thought they came to Parliament to do. My sense is that when I talk to voters about the great education challenges facing our country, what they want for their kids, and what they expect legislators to be focused on, it’s not actually about fixing up technical amendments and schedules in the new Education and Training Act.

Actually, what we do, I think, have a right to expect is that when we’re continually having to do these fix-up bills that someone, somewhere, maybe the Minister or maybe one of the good members opposite, sits down and says, “I think the officials at the Ministry of Education have got a bit sloppy. I think we need to demand better from them.” Actually, it’s not appropriate that the Minister is having to waste time on this, that members in the House are having to waste time on it, and that officials are having to waste time on it. I think it is absolutely appropriate in a second reading speech that we ask those questions, and I wonder whether the Minister of Education is happy that this sort of fix-up is continuing to have to happen.

I want to be realistic. A bill like this is necessary. We can’t, as legislators, let mistakes in the law continue and perpetuate when we are aware of them and when we know they could cause technical and legal difficulty in the future. It is appropriate to support amendments that make a piece of legislation function effectively in the way that it should. And, yes, it is also true that from time to time mistakes will be made in the parliamentary process. I fully acknowledge that. Those mistakes have been made on both sides of the House, with National-led Governments and with Labour-led Governments. But the point I’m simply making today in this contribution is that we have had to have fix-up after fix-up after fix-up to the Education and Training Act, and that is in the absence of any meaningful reforms and changes to genuinely address the very real problems in our education system. I could keep talking to you about the clauses in this bill, but I don’t think it’s the best use of the House’s time, and I would ask members opposite to consider that next time they bring an education and training amendment bill to the House, it actually does something to get kids better educated in this country. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Well, thank you, Mr Speaker. What a pleasure it is to be back in the House and to speak after the list member for Wellington Central Nicola Willis, because I hosted her in the mighty Rongotai electorate recently at Newtown School. She was a lot warmer then. She was a lot cuddlier. She was holding hands, well trying to, but I said, “Two metres, remember?”! She was a whole lot different. But, I guess, she was in a school, and that’s a good thing for any one of us, in this House, to be on the ground with the people, with the children, and doing good things, like getting people vaccinated, but I digress. Today, however, she’s obviously not in the same mood.

But I’m going to refocus and just talk about this very important amendment bill, because, as the Associate Minister said in introducing it, it is small, it is urgent, but it’s important. Those three words I hold dear because we do need to get this through. There are seven things on the list here that range from clarifying Police vetting provisions, through to those in early childhood education around regulation-making power, through to the statement of expectations relating to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and lots of other minor and technical changes. We could pull apart why, how, and spend months and years, but that’s not what the people of Aotearoa New Zealand want us to do. They want us to get on with it, make these changes, make anything possible to give—as the previous speaker said—our children all the education that they can possibly get. That’s why I’m commending this bill to the House.

Fakaalofa lahi atu, Mr Speaker. Fakaalofa lahi atu ki a mutolu oti. It’s Niuean Language Week—so big greetings to all our Niuean teachers out there and, of course, to all of our teachers across the great nation of Aotearoa, who are doing it tough for all of our whānau, particularly our teachers up in Auckland, who are doing their jobs in lockdown.

💬 It’s Groundhog Day: we’re back here to list this amendment, this bill, and when I remember the first version of this bill, that Groundhog Day was actually a lot quicker, because we know that this is just dealing with a few technical changes that need to be done. And it reminds me of that whakataukī, “Ko te manu e kai ana i te miro nōna te ngahere, ko te manu e kai ana i te mātauranga nōna te ao.”—the bird that partakes in the berries, their domain is only the forest; but the bird that partakes of knowledge, their domain is the world. But sometimes birds drop a few berries here and there in the forest and they’ve got to go back and pick them up.

So this bill is a quick tidy-up bill; it’s not controversial. People have gone through the list of the different amendments that need to be done, and I fully appreciate that as well—things like amending the sunset provisions, clarifying the relationship between the Police vetting provisions, ensuring regulations can be made to reflect a new requirement for proposed early learning services, specifying the agencies that the Minister of Education and the Minister for Māori Crown Relations relate to as well, and all of those types of things.

There are a lot of issues at play in education, and the Minister was right that this bill would not set this House on fire, but I am mindful that there are places around the world that are actually on fire. And so, by spending less time and less speech time on this reading, we’ll be able to focus on those bigger issues, like where those fires are happening. So things around climate change education are really important, making sure that we embed that within the Curriculum, making sure that that learning follows through the Curriculum review, making sure that that is part of the learning, because it is actually part of the reality that our children are inheriting and are in today. I won’t drag this out, but I will say that the Greens do support this bill. Ngā mihi.

I rise on behalf of ACT to take a short call on the Education and Training Amendment Bill. This is a bill which ACT supports. It is a technical bill that amends the Education and Training Act 2020 so that a number of provisions that are best suited for parliamentary enactment remain in the principal Act.

Obviously, that needed sorting, but it is debatable whether it’s the most important issue in education today. The bill won’t help things such as falling literacy and numeracy rates, terrible truancy rates, increasing students with learning needs, and increasing behavioural issues. New Zealand must start addressing these, and I think they’ve been well highlighted by previous National speakers.

As a former policeman, I am particularly interested in the amendment that limits the use of physical restraint, which will change the wording of several sections to clarify who can use restraint on a student. They would make it clear only a person holding a teaching position can use physical restraint, or someone who is specifically authorised by their employer. On the face of it, this makes sense, but I think it really is a little bit naive, and it needs pointing out that we must always remember the two sections in the Crimes Act 1961, which override rules and regulations.

The first one is section 41, which is prevention of suicide or certain offences, and it reads: “Every one is justified in using such force as may be reasonably necessary in order to prevent the commission of suicide, or the commission of an offence which would be likely to cause immediate and serious injury to the person or property of any one”. This would include an out-of-control student smashing up a classroom.

And section 48, which is self-defence and defence of another, which reads: “Every one is justified in using, in the defence of himself or herself or another, such force as, in the circumstances as he or she believes them to be, it is reasonable to use.”, such as students fighting. I would like to think if a teacher—or anyone else, for that matter—is put in the unenviable situation that requires physical restraint they are supported by their senior management, the Ministry of Education, and the law, whether they have permission or not. ACT supports this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand in support of this, the Education and Training Amendment Bill, which is being read for a second time and being debated around the House. While these amendments to the Act are incredibly small, they absolutely come with a time sensitivity which makes them relatively urgent.

There is one that I will point out as we talk about this today. The bill amends section 6 of the Act to specify five education agencies that must give effect to statements of expectations relating to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, issued jointly by the Ministers of Education and for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti. Now, there was the need to actually flesh this out, and when I talk about minor changes that this bill is fixing, this is one of those minor changes. It was simply to name those agencies.

So those agencies—for the benefit of clarity, and for those submitters that came forward wanting to put some names on them—are: the Ministry of Education, the Education Review Office, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, the Tertiary Education Commission, and Education New Zealand.

These are small but significant changes that we need to pass as a Parliament to be able to make sure that our education system and our training system is the best it can possibly be for New Zealanders. So I support it to the House.

This is a split call. I call Joseph Mooney—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The National Party supports this bill, which largely proposes technical amendments that tidy up the principal Act. It is, however, another fix-up of this large Act that the Government pushed through in 2020, last year. We acknowledge fix-ups are needed from time to time and that they should be amended as soon as possible, which is why National supports this reading. However, these continual fix-ups do take up the time of the House, do take up the time of officials, and do take up the time of the Minister of Education, that could be better spent dealing with big challenges in the education sector.

I note, for example, that 60 percent of students are not attending school regularly, and it would be nice to see attention in this House on how to address that issue. I note, also, that New Zealand’s primary school competence in reading, mathematics, and science has plummeted to their worst recorded level ever. Just over four in 10 students are meeting minimum levels in maths. Just over two in 10 are meeting minimum levels or expectations when it comes to science. And at least a third of maths teachers in New Zealand, not just in primary schools but also in secondary, are not trained in mathematics. I would hope that we will see some action from the Minister on these key things to address, as one of the biggest ways to ensure that our young people will have a good opportunity, because we all know that with a good education comes good opportunities for employment and good opportunity to advance for people’s future. So that is a key thing that we want to see from the Minister.

I’d note, with the students not attending school regularly, just going around schools in my electorate, that there is limited support, extra learning support, for children who have neuro-diversities, both in assessing students who have and also providing support to them. Neurodiversity is acknowledging that everyone’s brain works differently, and views learning through a strengths-based lens. Ten percent of the population globally has dyslexia, which is irrespective of language, culture, and ethnicity. I note that dyslexia is not an indication of intellectual disability. Individuals with dyslexia have brains which process auditory and/or visual information in a way that’s different from those with what we call neuro-typical brains. I’d like to see the Minister providing extra learning support for those students.

Fortunately, folks with dyslexia have the ability to learn in a different way. It’s still a very effective way, but they need the right support to do so. And if they don’t do so, that dyslexia is, unfortunately, linked to poor educational achievement, low self-esteem, poor behaviour, and feelings of frustration. You know, I just link that, potentially, I’d like to see some action from the Minister in seeing whether there’s a link between that type of neurodiversity, as well as others like dyspraxia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, that is seeing our students not engaging in their school learning and not attending school regularly.

I just note that a study was done on 120 learners in prison and nearly half—49 percent—showed evidence of significant dyslexia, and 82 percent had only had two years or less of secondary school education. So if we really want to ensure that we look after our learners, and make sure that they deliver at the schools to have good opportunities for them, we need to provide the right tools to ensure that the teachers can teach them in a way that works for the way their brain works. So I do support this bill. However, I do hope to see some more substantive action from the Minister.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker, thank you. Happy to rise in support of this bill this morning. It’s been mentioned that these are some minor tweaks to, essentially, what is the most significant reform to education legislation in quite some time. I want to reflect on some of the comments that have been made by members opposite, in that this is, perhaps, not a good use of the House’s time. I would disagree with that position because when we just look at some of the changes that this bill will provide for, hopefully that will paint a different picture.

For example, the use of the NSN—or the national student number—and ensuring that that won’t automatically be repealed, will ensure that schools up and down the country don’t have an additional administrative burden placed on their time. When we look at the ability for boards of trustees in our school communities to continue to elect and co-opt and fill those positions, if we didn’t do that, with some sense of haste, then it would mean that there was no value in communities being involved in the decision making and governance arrangements for schools. If we look at the physical restraint, capacity and opportunity: if we didn’t do that, then there would be limited clarity around who could actually engage methods in a classroom on school grounds. And, as a former teacher, I know the importance of knowing what one can do and what one can’t do, so providing certainty is important. When we look at what this bill provides in terms of clarity for Police vetting opportunities extending through to early childhood education systems, if we weren’t able to do that under urgency, then it would mean that there would, again, not be clarity in that sector.

So I disagree that this proposed bill is not a good use of the Parliament’s time, because while they are tweaks, they are important to ensure that our tamariki, our ākonga, and other members of our school community—including our staff—are safe and that there is clarity. On that basis, I’m obviously in support of it.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. It’s my pleasure to rise and take a short call in support of the Education and Training Amendment Bill. While I’m not a member of the Education and Workforce Committee and wasn’t privy to the submissions, I do want to begin by acknowledging the work of that select committee, especially as they have reported the bill back to the House without recommending any amendments.

This, as has been discussed this morning, has been a bill which isn’t going to set the House on fire, but is a bill which makes, as my colleague Tangi mentioned, some really important tweaks to help keep our tamariki and our teachers and staff in schools safe. I particularly want to draw the House’s attention to the clarification of the relationship between Police vetting provisions in the Act and the children’s worker safety checking provisions in the Children’s Act. Both Acts set out a framework to keep children safe while engaging in education. But, up until now, there has been some confusion about which framework to apply when checking the level that applies to some employees. This bill will clarify that, to remove that confusion, so as those vetting new staff know which provisions to apply.

I also want to note that it extends the current provision on tertiary education providers from charging compulsory student fees by another year to allow the permanent arrangements to be finalised. So that is why I am commending this bill to the House.

Kia ora. As we’ve heard in the House, this is a bill, the Education and Training Amendment Bill, that is to fix the mistakes in the drafting of the main Act. Fixing mistakes seems to be a signature brand of this Government. So here we are again. This is the second amendment bill before the House on the Education and Training Act—to fix mistakes.

My colleague Penny Simmonds, who is the member of Parliament for Invercargill, talked about these two decades that she’s had in the tertiary education sector and the engagement that she’s had in leading the Southern Institute of Technology. The importance of getting things right—she said, “Do it once; do it right.”

This is a bit like the Bob the Builder advert, where, again, we have a bill before the House where it’s fixing up oversights, errors, and mistakes when the Government rushed through this main Act in 2020. So Bob the Builder, we have a Minister who is “Chris the Constructor”. In doing that, it takes me—because this is a reconstruction, this is a fix-it-up, and I talked earlier in the bill that I spoke to before, the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees and Costs) Amendment Bill, about a hatchet, patch-it, fix-it-up job. It turns me to thoughts about the Mitre 10 ad of the two little boys playing in the sandpit—one New Zealander, one Australian—and the comment is “Mate, you’re dreaming”. I reflect, because I do recall when the Education and Training Bill was first before the House in 2020 and how it was being rushed through. This is what happens, those members in Government, when you rush things through, you don’t do it properly, you’ve got to turn around, declare your mistake, and fix it up.

Now, I’ll turn to the bill, because this is about fixing it up. National supports it, largely because they’re technical problems which we did address in the House in opposition to this being rushed through, identifying what the errors, the flaws, and the failings of this were likely to be—and, hello, here we are today in the House, fixing this up.

So in saying that, the fix-ups—turning to the Education and Workforce Committee’s report, they recommend the bill without amendment. The bill proposes, in the main, statements of expectations. It’s been identified to specify which agencies the Minister of Education and the Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti, for some reason, may issue statements of expectations, when this is an Education and Training Amendment Bill.

The other aspect that it proposes for a fix-it-up are limits on the use of physical restraint. That’s most appropriate, and it’s interesting standing and listening to other speakers in the House to learn of the life experience that they come from. I turn to my colleague in the ACT Party Chris Baillie, speaking about your former life as a police officer, serving there. My former life as a lawyer was working in youth justice facilities with children, and in my role as spokesperson for children, Oranga Tamariki, there are times when the use of physical restraint is required. In this setting, we’re talking about in the classroom. So one of the fix-it-up jobs that the Government didn’t get right the first time this was before the House is to clarify who can use physical restraint on a student, making it clear that only a person holding a teaching position can or may use physical restraint, or someone who’s specifically authorised by their employer to do so.

Another fix-it-up is where it clarifies interventions in State schools by the Secretary for Education—when and how the Minister or the secretary may intervene in a school.

Then, again, we turn to another fix-it-up: regulations relating to licences for early childhood services—amending the regulation-making power within the Act to allow regulations to be made that reflect the new process for early childhood education services to gain approval to apply for a licence.

Another provision for fixing up that initial oversight, when the legislation was initially rushed through the House under urgency, and here we are again today: retaining provisions in primary legislation, amending the sunset provision, so that specific schedules are not automatically repealed. These schedules are about school enrolment schemes, electing and co-opting board members to boards of State schools, and national student numbers. So, here in Opposition, we agree that it’s appropriate—should have been done properly the first time around—for these provisions to remain in primary legislation.

Then, finally, continuing with no student service fees until 2022. My colleague Penny Simmonds, who led the Southern Institute of Technology for a number of decades as the chief executive—this is applicable in her knowledge. The provisions that we’re fixing up today would extend by another year the current prohibition on tertiary education providers charging a compulsory student services fee.

My colleagues in Opposition have appropriately identified in the House today, to members in the Government, to the Minister of Education, that these continual fix-ups, these mishaps, these mistakes, these failings—which, as I said earlier, seem to be a signature branding of this Government. We do the job the first time round, do it right, do it once. Here we are wasting time. More appropriately, priorities should and must be given to those very issues impacting our children, our tamariki, our tauira, the students, around the lack of quality education. How we’ve seen the standards drop, how we’ve seen the failings, how we’ve seen the non-attendances, the truancy—which, for some reason, turn a blind eye, out of sight—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! The member will now refer to the bill and only the bill.

I’m referring to the bill, Mr Speaker—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! The member does not argue with my ruling. She sits down while I’m making it, she does not read her speech, and she refers to the content of the bill. The word “education” is not broad enough to talk about the entire education system.

So the changes that are being addressed in this amendment bill are acceptable. However, the focus—and, Mr Speaker, addressing the House, there was no argument with the ruling from the Chair. In addressing the House on this Education and Training Amendment Bill, it is appropriate that the bigger issues in education that I had appropriately pointed out—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! I’m just going to take my mask off. The member has now twice referred to a ruling that I made, and she’s just not allowed to. I’m terminating the member’s speech.

Fakaalofa lahi atu, Mr Speaker. I’m happy to rise in support of the Education and Training Amendment Bill. As members have canvased today in the speeches for the second reading, the genesis of this bill is the Education and Training Act that was brought into the House last year in 2020. That was a significant Act that brought together, from 1989, decades of changes and brought together and simplified the Education Act so that those that are working in the education system are able to apply it easily, efficiently, and effectively. Clearly, this amendment bill has got a number of provisions in here which could have been picked up earlier in that bill, but because it was such a significant change, it was clear that small changes needed to be made. Amendment bills are not unusual.

The previous member for Palmerston North, Tangi Utikere, who was a teacher, succinctly summarised why we need the changes in this bill. I just want to add one more aspect to it. For my sins, my self-inflicted sins, I was a member of a number of school boards, and because of that, when you are a member of a school board, certainty is really, really important to be able to have clarity around how the Education Act interacts with the Children’s Act, how that interacts around physical restraint—those particular rules are so important to make clear and certain when you apply them as a board member, when you apply them as a school, so that you always have the safety of the children in mind when applying those rules. So for those reasons, I too, like the members on this side of the House, commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.