Education and Training Amendment Bill

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

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

💬 Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I move, That the Education and Training Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

The Education and Training Act came into force on 1 August last year. That Act replaced the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Act 1992, the Education Act 1964, and the Education Act 1989, so this was an incredibly big undertaking. This bill does not deal with issues of policy but makes technical and non-controversial changes. These types of changes are inevitable after such significant legislative reform. It tidies up areas that were unintentionally amended and clarifies areas of ambiguity.

One of the main changes made by the bill is to amend the sunsetting provision in the Act. When the education legislation was amalgamated into one Act, there was a great deal of prescriptive legislation around the way early learning centres, schools, and tertiary providers operate. To provide greater flexibility around legislation that may need to be amended more frequently, some provisions were moved into Schedules with the intention that they would be converted into regulations. These Schedules would then be repealed automatically on specified sunset dates, providing time for regulations to be developed in the interim. However, it has become apparent that there are some provisions in the Schedules that are more suitable for primary legislation rather than regulation. For example, Schedule 20 includes some provisions that have an impact on the general right of students to enrol in a State school. This bill amends the sunsetting provisions so that most of the Schedules will remain in the Act.

The bill also aligns the Act more closely with the provisions of the Children’s Act 2014 to ensure our tamariki are safe while engaging in education. The bill clarifies that education workers who meet the definition of a children’s worker in the Children’s Act must be the subject of a comprehensive safety check before they start working. Only those education workers who are not children’s workers will be the subject of a police vet under the Education and Training Act.

The bill makes a number of other minor and technical changes. It amends section 171 of the Act, which relates to the thresholds for interventions in State schools, so that it replicates the provisions of the 1989 Act. The Act inadvertently changed the thresholds.

The bill amends the physical restraint provisions of the Act to change “teacher”, or the references to teacher, to references to “person holding a teaching position” so that former teachers who are now employed in a non-teaching position are not permitted to use physical restraint under section 99 unless specifically authorised by the school that employs them. This reflects the position under the now repealed Education Act 1989, which was not intended to be changed.

The bill extends the transitional provisions in relation to tertiary education providers that prevent them from charging a compulsory student services fee to those who are doing on-job training for a further year, as we continue to work through more permanent arrangements and improve that part of the legislation.

The bill clarifies the early childhood education regulation-making power in the Act, and it ensures that regulations can be made to cover applications for ministerial approval to apply for an early childhood education service licence. Requiring approval to apply for an early childhood education licence is a new process provided by the Act, but it has not yet come into force. Regulations will be required to operationalise the process, and those regulations will be in place by 1 August 2022.

The bill amends section 6 of the Act to specify five education agencies that must give effect to statements of expectations issued jointly by the Ministers of Education and Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti in relation to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. These agencies are the Ministry of Education, the Education Review Office, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, the Tertiary Education Commission, and Education New Zealand.

The bill was reported back to the House unamended by the Education and Workforce Committee. I again want to thank the committee’s bipartisan and collaborative approach to the bill. And on that note, I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for both the lunch break and the end of yesterday. Therefore this bill is set down for further consideration next sitting day, which starts at 2 p.m. this afternoon. The House is adjourned until then.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 12.56 p.m. (Thursday)