Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3)

I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3).

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

💬 Hon JAN TINETTI: I move, That the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill and, at an appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 31 July 2023.

In August 2020, the Government passed the Education and Training Act. The Act was a landmark moment for education in Aotearoa New Zealand, bringing together different education legislation into a single Act. The bill before the House today continues the Government’s programme of improving and strengthening the education system and ensuring that our system delivers equitable and excellent outcomes for all learners.

There are important and necessary policy changes within the bill. Most significantly, this bill establishes a new legislative framework for wānanga to better recognise their mana and rangatiratanga within legislation. My colleague the Hon Kelvin Davis will speak to these changes in detail, but I also want to note the importance of what is in front of us today. This new framework reflects the relationship between the wānanga and the Crown, a relationship that is centred on the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. By introducing bespoke accountability arrangements, we are enabling wānanga to consider how to best fulfil their aspirations and the aspirations of their ākonga, communities, kaimahi, and iwi.

I will now turn to other significant policy changes included in this bill. The bill strengthens the school board member eligibility criteria. As many of you in here will know, concerns have been raised during the recent board election processes about the suitability of some members of the public who have stood for election. In response, the Ministry of Education undertook a review of the current eligibility requirements for school board members, to consider whether they are fit for purpose. The review found that the current requirements do not adequately reflect the role that a school board member has in providing for a school to be physically and emotionally a safe place for students and staff. A majority of stakeholders and members of the public that were consulted also agreed that the eligibility requirements needed to be strengthened.

This bill will amend the Education and Training Act to ensure that people who are convicted of an offence listed in Schedule 2 of the Children’s Act 2014 are not eligible to serve on a State school board. An exemption to this can be approved by the Secretary for Education. The secretary will also be able to conduct random audits on school board members to check whether they meet eligibility criteria. Board members will be required to permit the secretary to obtain any relevant information needed to complete an audit. These changes to school board member eligibility criteria align the standards for board members more closely with those for teachers and other school staff. With these changes, boards can better fulfil their role of keeping our schools safe.

In a continued move to strengthen school governance, the bill makes changes to school board election provisions. These include a one-off amendment to shift the timing of the next mid-term school board elections to November this year, putting elections back on track to the usual timetable after a timing change in 2022. This amendment will give our boards more time to prepare for elections this year.

The bill also expands and modernises the school board member co-option criteria. School boards must have regard for these criteria when deciding to co-opt a board member. The bill updates the criteria to ensure that boards take into account the genders, sexualities, and sexes of students and school community, as well as the disabled students and the school’s disability community when deciding on members to co-opt. This change reflects this Government’s commitment to upholding equity and diversity within our schools. The bill will also enable school boards to fill the student representative position if a student is not elected at the annual September elections, rather than having to wait until the next election. This supports our commitment to strengthen the student voice on school boards.

These three changes to school board election provisions will work to ensure that the governance of our schools is representative and efficient. As part of our ongoing commitment to ensuring the safety of students, we have progressively strengthened police-vetting requirements for non-teaching employees and contractors in early learning services and schools. Last year, through the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2), we removed a two-week grace period for police vetting to ensure that non-teaching employees were vetted before they began work, or, in the case of contractors, before they had unsupervised contact with children. This bill adds to last year’s change by making it explicit that employers at schools and early learning services must consider those police-vets once they have been received and assess any risks to the safety of children before employees begin work, or contractors have unsupervised access to children. While most early learning services and schools are already doing this, this amendment ensures there is no uncertainty in our expectations.

The bill also supports the further development of the early childhood equity index. The new equity index will provide more accurate and up-to-date data on the distribution of Aotearoa’s socio-economic disadvantage so that the equity funding will be better allocated to support children in early learning services. To develop and then apply this index to fund services, the Ministry of Education needs to use data held by Statistics New Zealand. This bill amends the Act to permit the ministry to use this data, enabling us to progress development of the early childhood equity index.

The bill also strengthens accountability and transparency within our education sector. It will require universities and wānanga to publish information about employee remuneration of $100,000 or more and will restrict the appointment of the chief executive of Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu to a term of five years, with the ability to reappoint for further times. The bill separates establishment provisions for kura kaupapa Māori and designated character schools within the Act. As with the changes for wānanga, my colleague the Hon Kelvin Davis will speak about these provisions in more detail.

The bill also makes a number of minor and technical amendments to the Education and Training Act. These amendments include amending the definition of “domestic student” in the Act so that holders of a residence class visa studying overseas are required to satisfy criteria set out in regulations, removing the requirement to present a separate annual report on the export education levy, removing the requirement for tertiary education institutes when not bound by any collective agreement to consult with the Public Service Commissioner when appointing senior staff, ensuring that members of Te Pūkenga, the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology council, can remain in their roles until a successor is appointed, and broadening the regulation-making powers in the Act to allow regulations to be made that empower the Minister of Education to specify school opening hours. I look forward to seeing this bill progressing, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The National Party doesn’t support this bill. It supports elements of it, but, overall, it doesn’t address the major issues facing the education system in New Zealand that is failing to provide the world-class education that New Zealanders need. It’s a wasted-opportunity bill. The Government should be passing legislation to address the fact that only 46 percent of students were attending school regularly in term 3, 2022, or that 98 percent of decile 1 students failed a foundational NCEA literacy test. Those are the big issues.

Instead of tackling the real issues that we face in the education system in New Zealand, we have this tinkering bill that focuses on things such as changing the criteria for school board members to include genders, sexualities, sexes, and the school’s disability community. Well, I’m sorry, but that’s not where the attention needs to be. Our catastrophic results in reading, in writing, in science, and in maths should be keeping the Minister of Education up at night, but, instead, we have half a decade of declining standards, and no plans to turn this around. So we have this legislation here, a missed-opportunity bill, which tinkers on a series of issues, some of which make sense—yes, it might be useful—some of which are just fiddling while Rome burns. And we would be focusing, in the National Party, on teaching the basics brilliantly to ensure that every Kiwi kid can master the basics so that they can have the life they want to lead.

The Minister of Education, Jan Tinetti, stood up last week and said she’d like to work with National on education. Well, we’d like to work with her and we welcome that and suggest that a good place to start would be teaching the basics brilliantly and getting our education system focused on that rather than passing the No. 3 education bill and tinkering around with small changes in school board election processes. Lord knows how we’re going to actually do that, in a privacy sense, to work out how we’ve got the right genders and sexes and sexualities represented on the school board. It’s a mystery to me, and I don’t know how we’re going to expect people to send out little notices around the place explaining that and for the schools to hold that information.

So what does this legislation do? We have the child protection provisions so that anyone convicted of an offence is automatically ineligible, except exempted by the Secretary of Education—requires all compliance of licensed early childhood education centres, consider police-vets for non-teaching employees and contractors. How that works in practice in relation to plumbers and electricians turning up will be interesting for the select committee to have a look at, in a practical sense. Then we’ve got the school board election processes, which I said expands the criteria for co-opting and appointing school members to include, where reasonably practical, genders, sexualities, and the school’s disability community.

Then we look at the tertiary sector: establishing a new framework for the wānanga, requiring annual reports to include remuneration of over $100,000 per annum at universities. Well, yes, again, maybe of interest. Meantime, we have this burning conflagration of the Te Pūkenga catastrophe in the polytechs area, where hundreds of millions of dollars are being consumed in a hare-brained scheme that is not advancing the area at all after three years and hundreds of millions of dollars being spent. They still don’t have a clear plan of what they’re trying to achieve, what they’re trying to do, and they’ve got fewer students turning up and an economic catastrophe in that area. Instead of coming up with some sensible solutions and changing their mind on some of those areas, what are they doing? Well, they’ve got their mind really focused on the big issues and making sure that we have a complete list of their remunerations in the tertiary sector outlined.

I suppose that the theme that we’re seeing here is a country where there are some big fundamental issues that need to be addressed, and, in education, it’s about the fact that our Kiwi kids are coming out of the education system not equipped to succeed. If we looked at the NCEA literacy and numeracy pilot, we’d see that only 64 percent of students achieved the standard in reading, 34 percent in writing, and 56 percent in numeracy. I tuned in to The Wireless this morning and amidst all the stories about the rot within this Government, in terms of Ministers having to be fired—in between all those stories, there was a story from the business associations pointing out that their latest survey showed that employees were struggling with the fact that too many of the people that were hired to work didn’t have the sufficient literacy and numeracy to do the job. So there are some pretty fundamental issues in the education system that we need to be addressing and this Government is not effectively addressing. Instead, we get legislation like this, which is tinkering around the edges and not solving the problems. And, on that basis, we will not be supporting this bill.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Hei whakapuare i taku kōrero, ka huri ōku whakaaro ki tōku tupuna Te Whatanui. Tā Te Whatanui ka puta Te Rangingangana, nāna i moe i a Whetoi Pōmare, ka puta ko Tiaho, ka puta ko Henare, ka puta ko Uru, ka puta ko Te Wātene, ka puta ko Panapa, ka puta ko ahau.

[To open my speech, my thoughts return to my ancestor Te Whatanui. Te Whatanui’s child was Te Rangingangana, who married Whetoi Pōmare, and had Tiaho, who had Henare, who had Uru, who had Te Wātene, who had Panapa, who had me.]

I’d just like to start my contribution by acknowledging my Ngāti Raukawa connections, my tūpuna Te Whatanui. And the reason I acknowledge my Ngāti Raukawa connections is because, up in the gallery there, we have a number of my whanaunga from Ngāti Raukawa who have been involved in Te Wānanga o Raukawa for a long time. And for them, this bill is not about tinkering; it’s not about fiddling. It is something that might be useful. These aren’t small changes. These are things that are of interest—not maybe of interest—to them. These are big, fundamental issues that need to be addressed for the wānanga sector. Quite frankly, that was an appalling and belittling speech of the changes that are going to be made for the wānanga sector.

The aim of this bill is to provide a resilient education system that delivers for everybody, and that includes Māori. And when I heard Paul Goldsmith speak then, not once did he mention Māori; he just rattled through the list of things that are in this bill, and part of it was he mentioned “wānanga”—I heard the word “wānanga” once; no acknowledgment whatsoever of the importance of these changes to the wānanga sector. And it’s not surprising because, on that side of the House, they’re totally ignorant of what is important to Māori in terms of education.

We know that the system for Māori has not delivered. We know that mātauranga Māori hasn’t been appreciated by the system; we know that it has been suppressed by the system.

💬 Penny Simmonds: Te Pūkenga’s failing Māori.

And “who cares?”, she says. Who cares? Well, there is a whole group of people in Aotearoa who care about mātauranga Māori, who care about the education of our people. Listen to the rhetoric coming from that side, who do not care about mātauranga Maori, do not care about the wānanga system, do not care about all the gains that Māori have made for Māori education in terms of a by Māori, for Māori approach to education. If ever there was a reason for that mob to stay sitting on that side of the House in the next three years, this is it: a complete disregard and disdain for kaupapa Māori.

Māori have a desire to run education that impacts on them under their own way. They don’t like to have things determined by the Crown—and fair enough. Myself and the then Minister of Education in 2018 turned up to visit the people of Te Wānanga o Raukawa, and they had a number of issues that were important to them. One of them was the differentiation between Kāwanatanga and rangatiratanga. And I totally got it because I don’t see why Kāwanatanga should be involving itself intimately in the affairs of Māori organisations and institutions.

But naively, I thought that this issue could be settled just in a matter of months. And I apologise to my whanaunga up there, because naively I thought that we could sort this out, and it’s taken us a number of years. There was a bit of talking past each other at the start, but once we got the relationship set and once we got—and this is an important point for the members opposite: when we deal as political parties with Māori, we have to establish the relationship in the first instance, because if we get the relationship right, then the transactional side of things will come to fruition.

In the short amount of time I have, I’m proud to say that the wānanga framework that this bill will implement has been co-designed with the Crown—with the Ministry of Education—and the three wānanga. So, for people who don’t know, there are three wānanga in Aotearoa: Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, Te Wānanga o Awanuiārangi, and Te Wānanga o Raukawa. And this is an opportunity to reflect on the contributions that those wānanga have made over the past couple of years, as we have developed and designed the new wānanga framework.

This would not have worked without the support and partnership of those wānanga. The framework is built on Te Tiriti principles, and, in particular, the principle of rangatiratanga. There is a role for Kāwanatanga, but it’s a small role. Rangatiratanga, where Māori make decisions based on what they need to meet their needs, is most important so that they can achieve the article 3 guarantee of equity.

So the proposed framework provides the existing wānanga the opportunity to reconstitute themselves either as Crown entities or as non-Crown entities. So a bespoke Crown entity wānanga would maintain accountability primarily to the Crown, and a non-Crown entity wānanga would have primary accountability to iwi, to hapū—a Māori organisation—but still retain some accountability to the Crown.

But what we’re doing here is we’re giving the wānanga the opportunity to make a choice for themselves: whether they want to be a Crown entity wānanga or a non-Crown entity wānanga. Both types of entity would have their unique purpose, their functions, and their governance arrangements set out in an Order in Council. But this enables wānanga to convert to non-Crown entities. It rebalances their governance, the administration, and accountability to empower wānanga and their communities in their governance.

The bill also sets out provisions for the establishment and disestablishment of wānanga. But quite notably, for the first time in legislation, the bill defines the unique characteristics that define wānanga as a collective, recognising that what they offer is distinctive from other tertiary education institutions. These characteristics create requirements that must be met by any future organisations wanting to become wānanga.

Wānanga play a vital role in the tertiary education sector, and it’s a pity that that side of the House was so demeaning and belittling and derogatory in their previous speech. They play a vital role in the tertiary education sector. Their strong focus is on supporting ahunga, especially ahunga Māori. And they are vital in the transmission, the revitalisation, the accessibility, and the normalisation of te reo Māori and also mātauranga Māori.

When I talk about mātauranga Māori, I remember going to school and learning—I think I was at primary school—about the Israeli kibbutz system. Now, can you believe that by the time I got to high school, I knew more about Israeli kibbutzim than I knew about Ruapekapeka Pā, which is just up the road from where I lived, where my tūpuna fought—where Peeni’s tūpuna fought—where my ancestors died. I knew more about a kibbutz system in Israel on the other side of the world than I knew about the pā up the road from me.

Part of the history and the knowledge around the Battle of Ruapekapeka, I’ve since found out through my kaumātua up north. This particular kaumātua recites this mōteatea, which is a lament; he recites a lament and it goes on for quite a while. The lament is describing the whole heap of things: the passion, the loves, and all that sort of stuff of a particular wāhine who fought at Ruapekapeka. And right in the middle of a line, it stops dead; just ends, like mid-sentence. The reason was because that tūpuna whaea was shot dead in the middle of that lament. This is the sort of knowledge and mātauranga that we don’t teach in schools. I grew up down the road from that very pā, and not once did I learn anything about Ruapekapeka Pā, and the history and the knowledge and everything surrounding it. And that is an indictment on our education system. The wānanga, the kura kaupapa—those institutions set up by Māori, for Māori—are turning that around and making a real difference.

Raukawa, in the mid-1970s, established Mātauranga Rua Mano, where they were concerned about the knowledge; the ability of reo in Ngāti Raukawa. In 25 years—well, it’s now close to 50 years—they have turned that around because they’ve been allowed to do it mainly on their own. This is going to help them to do things even better, even stronger, and even faster. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m going to take this opportunity to correct the previous speaker, the Hon Kelvin Davis, in his characterisation of what I was saying during his speech. I certainly would not be disrespecting any of the three wānanga, and I want to acknowledge Te Wānanga o Raukawa, who are here today. I haven’t had the pleasure of working with them, but I certainly had the pleasure for two decades of working with Te Wānanga o Aotearoa and also Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi. Both organisations I had extensive years of working with, and I have nothing but admiration and respect for the work they are doing. I think back to my time working with Rongo Wetere and his start-up, and working also with his family of Sue Cullen and Kingi and the amazing work that they did in establishing their wānanga. So I acknowledge and respect the incredible work that they have done over many years—

💬 Hon Kelvin Davis: So support this bill.

I support the component of this bill regarding the wānanga, and absolutely—

💬 Hon Kelvin Davis: But not the whole thing—you won’t support the whole thing.

—but I don’t support the whole bill because it does not have the same depth of need that this component about the wānanga does. So, absolutely, the wānanga have been working with the ministry for some time to get this in place, and I acknowledge that it is work that the three wānanga want to have in the legislation, and I absolutely respect the work that they have done.

Can I just also clarify that what I was trying to point out to the previous speaker was the damage that Te Pūkenga is doing to the three wānanga. The damage that is occurring is that they are moving into the space of the three wānanga, and if he was speaking to the wānanga, he would be aware of the concerns that they have. So it is certainly not the three wānanga; it is Te Pūkenga that I have enormous concerns about. So thank you, Mr Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to clarify that.

The rest of this bill is bits and pieces. It is, as my colleague Paul Goldsmith said, fiddling while Rome burns. It is not addressing the real issues right across the education sector, whether it is in the early childhood education (ECE) sector, the compulsory sector, or the tertiary sector. It is mind-boggling that this piece of legislation is what this House is consuming its time on, when we have got real issues across all three sectors of education that should be being considered.

So let’s have a look at the ECE sector and at whether police-vets for non-teaching employees and contractors are necessary. Can I tell you from experience in an ECE sector that if your toilet is blocked, you need a plumber; you don’t need to wait for days to get a plumber police vetted to see if they can come in to unblock the toilet.

Can I tell you, there are a number of issues that the ECE sector is worried about: pay parity, ratios, and things like compliance with food costs and compliance that they have to spend money on every three years. They are not worried about whether their police vetting is done for their plumber or their electrician that they have to get in at speed; they are worried about the practicalities of being able to run an ECE centre at a cost with fees that parents can pay. So that’s what they are worried about.

Let’s have a think about what school boards might be being kept awake about overnight. Are they worried about the sexuality of their board members? Well, Marama Davidson might be—she might be worried about whether it’s all cis white males. But I can tell you the things that are keeping board members awake at night are not that; they are whether they can get enough teachers and whether they have got a curriculum that supports their teachers. They are worried about what they are able to teach in their classrooms, and thank goodness—thank goodness—the National Party has come up with a policy to be able to help them with that.

So when you have a look at the other concerns in this piece of legislation about the tertiary sector, do you really think the tertiary sector are tossing and turning all night worried about the terms of office for the board of Te Pūkenga?

💬 Shanan Halbert: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I’m just concerned that the relevancy of the member’s contribution today isn’t actually relevant to the bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is a question for the Chair, and the Chair is following it very closely, but thank you for your advice. Carry on.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. So the terms of office for the Te Pūkenga Board, there are so many issues: $200 million already spent; $63 million deficit projected for last year; heaven knows how much for this year, another $330 million is going to be needed over the next four years, and a leaked document that showed it was closer to $1 billion that would be needed over the next 10 years. So what is this piece of legislation concerned about? The terms of the office for the board members of Te Pūkenga.

This entity Te Pūkenga has got a whole lot more to be worried about, and this House has got a whole lot more it should be addressing around Te Pūkenga than the terms of office for its board members. How about starting to have a look at the number of redundancies that are being made, the number of courses that are being cancelled, or the number of campuses that are being considered for being closed? How about having a look at the real issues that are there concerning people in the tertiary sector?

Let’s go back to the police vetting of the ECE sector and let’s go back to the appointments of the boards for the compulsory sector. Just how do you think boards are going to find out about the sexuality of the board and their school community? Are they going to go out and ask all parents what their sexuality is to make sure that they’re represented on the board, and then, how are they going to store that documentation? Have you had a look at the concerns about privacy breaches of storing that information?

So how about a bit of common sense and practicality around what the real issues are for these sectors, and not some kind of made-up concerns that are sitting here in front of us today? How about some real concerns—some really meaty issues like the one that is being addressed for the wānanga?

I acknowledge that is a very real and very useful part of this legislation. But, for goodness’ sake, why, in all the other areas that we are looking at—ECE, compulsory sector, and tertiary sector—are we fiddling round with silly little bits of changes to legislation and none of the very big issues of student achievement, of students turning up to school, or of a tertiary sector that is serving their students, their staff, and their industries?

How about this House starts debating what are the real big issues in the education sector, instead of wasting time and diverting attention into silly little bits like this that keep you nice and busy—keep you nice and busy—and detract from the issues of real concern? Let’s talk about, instead, how we can have dropped out of the top 10 on all the areas that we should be concerned about: maths, science, English. How about showing some concern about that? That is where we will be facing social issues in the future and that’s where our tertiary sector will be having to pick up the pieces with second-chance learning. Let’s talk about some real education issues in this House.

It is a pleasure to be rising and taking a call on this important as well as technical bill, the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3). You know, it’s great to hear that people are concerned about what’s happening in education, and I just suggest—I know it’s out of scope—in response to some of the concerns, that they go and do some homework, have a look at the curriculum refresh. I know they’ll be waiting with bated breath to see the common practice model. There is a whole pile of work going on already, so that is why we were able to turn our minds to some of these significant issues.

I just need to shout out—it was great hearing about the wānanga, and I just need to acknowledge the kindness and the good grace and patience that Nepia Winiata at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa has shown me. You know, we heard about the absolute fundamental need to build relationships, to support the different parts of the education system, to support each other so that we can realise the aspirations for our ākonga, and I need to acknowledge him and his patience in helping me to get to know his wānanga and his team and the people that they aspire to support. It’s because of that, I understand the absolute need to make these changes.

One other piece I want to push back on is the idea that improving our board of trustees selection process isn’t important; it is critical. We realised the potential in the last elections. Somebody realised that you can politicise schools and our students and hijack our system and politicise it, and that is dangerous. It is dangerous because boards are critical to not just make sure that our schools function but that they thrive. They are critical for making sure that they are a physically and emotionally safe place.

So I’m really looking forward to this bill coming to our select committee so we can deal with those—you know, it is technical, it is a complex space, and we want to make sure that we have no unintended consequences that we don’t want. So I recommend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Greens to support this bill, the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3). It’s got “(No 3)” next to it, because these bills come to the House every now and then. Usually they just snooze through the House, but it must be an election year.

I want to begin my contribution by acknowledging those people that are at the chalkface of making sure that our tamariki, our students, get everything that they need in terms of guiding them through the education system—in particular, those teachers that showed up on the parliamentary forecourt last week. There was around 60,000 teachers from across kindergarten to primary school to principals, and, of course, the two unions: Te Riu Roa NZEI and Te Wehengarua the Post Primary Teachers’ Association.

There’s been a lot of conversation about the big educational issues that we should be focusing on, and, if we want to know what those educational issues are, we only need to think back to last week because teachers in large numbers told us what those issues were. It’s around making sure that they can put food on the table, roofs over their heads, and that their pay is in line with inflation. We all know that fruit and veg has gone up 21 percent, so things are getting more and more expensive. But more than that, and, in addition to that, it’s around workload, it’s around ratios in classrooms, making sure that kindergarten teachers can get appropriate sick leave, making sure that there are strategies to make sure that we retain staff and get staff back in; there’s a teaching shortage out there. So if we’re going to talk about the educational issues, they’ve told us about them.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, Mr Tuiono, we’re here to talk about the bill too, now.

Yep, I’m about to get on to the bill. Everyone else was talking about the wider education issues and I wanted to offer illumination, if you like, about that.

Along with everybody else around the House, I also want to mihi to the wānanga—nō reira—our kōhanga reo, and our kura kaupapa. There are specific provisions within this Act which, on the face of it, will help them to be who they are and what they want to be. So, for example, we talked earlier about an ability to convert to a non-Crown entity wānanga that is primarily accountable to iwi, hapū, or another Māori organisation, while retaining some accountability to the Crown and with bespoke purpose functions and governance arrangements.

Nō reira me mihi atu au ki te Whakatupuranga Rua Mano, Te Wānanga o Raukawa, Te Wānanga o Awanuiārangi me Te Wānanga o Aotearoa me ō rātou nei kaupapa kia hāngai atu ki te hāpai atu i tēnei mea te mana me te tino rangatiratanga. Me mihi anō hoki au ki a rātou mā ki roto i ngā kura kaupapa. Kei roto i te ture ngā kōrero mō te kura kaupapa, rātou anō i tiaki i ā tātou tamariki mokopuna kia mau anō rātou ki ō rātou nei tuakiritanga. Hoi e piri ana tērā āhuatanga katoa ki ō tātou nei kōhanga reo. Nō reira ko te ia o ngā kōrero ki tēnei o ngā ture, me mihi ka tika. Hoki ake au ki tērā o ngā whakataukī o ō tātou nei mātau tūpuna “Ko te manu e kai ana i te miro, nōna te ngahere; engari ko te manu e kai ana i te mātauranga, nōna anō te ao”. Nō reira koutou anō Te Wānanga, koutou anō ngā kura kaupapa, kura ā-iwi, te katoa o ō tātou nei āhuatanga rumaki, me mihi ka tika.

[So it is appropriate for me to acknowledge Whakatupuranga Rua Mano, Te Wānanga o Raukawa, Te Wānanga o Awanuiārangi and Te Wānanga o Aotearoa and their initiatives aimed at uplifting this thing we call power and self-determination. I should also acknowledge those who are in our Māori-medium schools. In this legislation are references to kura kaupapa, those who care for our children and grandchildren so that they retain their identity. However, all of those things are also relevant to kōhanga reo. So the trend of statements about this legislation, it is only correct to pay tribute. I go back to that particular proverb of our ancestors “The bird that consumes the berries is lord of the forest; but the bird that consumes knowledge is master of the world”. So to you in Te Wānanga, and you in Māori-medium schools, iwi-affiliated schools, and all of our immersion contexts, it is appropriate to pay tribute to you.]

I am looking forward to this bill coming to the select committee process. I did want to acknowledge the comments of the Hon Kelvin Davis in terms of the often robust discussions that we have to have with wānanga, with our Māori whānau, as well. And those are good discussions. We need to be absolutely sure that what we are doing in this House actually helps them to do the things that they need to do in terms of making sure that those educational outcomes are good for our people and good for our iwi. So I’m looking forward to the select committee process, and I’m hoping—and I’m pretty sure—that the wānanga will come along and they will give us some illumination; in particular, about those particular parts within this Act, about whether there are issues for them around whether this helps them or other. There are other things that the select committee might be able to unpack to make those particular provisions even stronger. And also with the ones that focus on kura kaupapa as well, I’m hoping some of our kura will come along, Te Rūnanga Nui as well, just to make sure—at least for this member—that what we are doing here is as specific and as useful for them as they carry out their purposes.

So, on that, the Greens will be supporting this amendment. These things come before the House, that’s why it’s called (No 3). It’s an election year, which is why members across the House are quite excited, I think. But I’ll end my contribution there.

E mihi ana ki ō tātou nei pouako puta noa i Aotearoa. Tēnā koe, tēnā koutou.

[I acknowledge our teachers all across Aotearoa. Thank you, thank all of you.]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to this Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3). I would like to, first of all, acknowledge what others have said: that there is something about this bill that seems unreal when you consider the challenges faced in New Zealand—secondary and area school teachers on strike today; 100,000 kids regularly not attending, attending less than 70 percent of the time; plummeting achievement; the debacle of Te Pūkenga, which is almost like the new KiwiBuild. Labour produce a policy like this almost annually now. Then you get to the question of: well, what is this legislation doing? What is it addressing? What is it hoping to achieve? The truth is: very little.

You might think that the Labour Party or the Labour Government is not capable of doing much, but they have actually managed to put together a detailed bill that does almost nothing. Let me just take you through what it actually does. It’s mainly focused on defining the governance arrangements of three wānanga, and, specifically, it says that those wānanga can be a Crown entity—a Crown entity wānanga that has all of the accountabilities that go with being a Crown entity—or it can convert to a non-Crown entity wānanga that is primarily accountable to iwi, hapū, and other Māori organisations while retaining some accountability to the Crown.

Just for people following this along at home: what exactly is Labour and the Government trying to do here? What difference will it make? Well, first of all, we can be fairly sure that it’s not going to solve the fundamental problems that New Zealanders have—too many kids who are not engaged, not learning enough to be productive citizens and keep New Zealand’s dream of being a First World country in an island paradise alive. It’s fairly certain it won’t do that, but it might take us in the opposite direction, because what they’re saying is that a wānanga can either be a Crown entity wānanga or a nonCrown entity wānanga that is accountable to iwi or hapū. But, in any case, the money still comes from the taxpayer. So what they’re really saying is that some wānanga will be accountable to the Crown, who collects the taxes from all of the people up and down New Zealand, and other wānanga that will get the same funding—well, they will be accountable to some local hapū or iwi or other Māori organisation.

That’s a really interesting question, you know: why would it be that there would be a different type of accountability mechanism but only for some iwi-led wānanga? Why is it that, somehow, every organisation shouldn’t be able to have the same sort of governance? Why not a Pasifika; why not an Asian university? But, actually, why would we decide that somebody’s race is the most important characteristic of the person? Why would people decide that race is the thing that differentiates people? Well, it seems to be that this Government genuinely believes that the race of some people matters more than others’, and there should be a different set of governance arrangements if you are a wānanga that can be accountable to iwi or hapū. But every other tertiary institution in New Zealand will be accountable to the Crown that collects the taxes as a Crown entity.

Why does Labour think this is a good idea? Well, because they believe that the Treaty of Waitangi was the first treaty in the world that actually brought people apart. For millennia, people have been signing agreements and treaties to bring people together, until this recent revisionist interpretation of the Treaty—that, actually, you should have a different set of political rights in New Zealand if you happen to be Māori but you have a different set of rights if you are non-Māori. This is the problem with New Zealand today. We have a Government that is obsessed with dividing people into tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti, and that, sadly—

💬 Rawiri Waititi: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Point of order, Rawiti—

💬 Rawiri Waititi: Rawiri Waititi—thank you. I don’t see anything in that bill that talks about tangata whenua or tangata Tiriti—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Waititi, the Chair will decide that. I’m watching this debate very carefully.

💬 Rawiri Waititi: Well, make a decision, Mr Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That’s close to disorderly—breaking up a member’s speech. So please—to be clear—the Chair is well capable of making those decisions.

Well, thank you very much, Mr Speaker. And isn’t that interesting about Rawiri Waititi and his ability to learn and respect the tikanga, because just five minutes ago—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Seymour, don’t comment on the Speaker. Carry on with your speech and ensure that it does remain relevant to the—

💬 Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Point of order, e te Pīka. I’d just like to remind the House that there is a decorum of expectation on the members in this House on how they talk about their colleagues. It is not appropriate for the leader of ACT to be talking about the esteemed leader of Te Paati Māori like that.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, the Chair will make that decision and will be watching very carefully. I’ll carry on, and Mr Seymour can have one more minute back for those interjections.

Well, thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for that, and I intend to use it and use it well. I just think that people watching need to reflect on the behaviour of these two Māori Party MPs in the last—

💬 Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Oh, point of order.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Right, the Chair will deal with this, Mr Waititi. Mr Seymour, you were doing well. Please stick with the bill and make sure that your comments are contextual within the bill in front of you.

Well, thank you, Mr Speaker. This legislation is about dividing New Zealanders—different rules, different governance structures. If it is the case that somehow having a non-Crown entity tertiary institution is a good idea, then it should be applied to anybody who wants one. Why would there be an operating model that is only available to people based on one race? It is because of this wrongful interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi that it’s something that divides people in half.

It might be interesting to go further through the bill. The bill, interestingly, also, while it reduces the accountability for some, it actually increases the accountability to the Crown for those who are elected to their local school board by their community. If you follow the bill through, it then goes on to say that if you are the Secretary of Education, you will have greater powers to review and audit the membership of a board of trustees.

So, on the one hand, we are changing the level of accountability to reduce it and say, “Well, you don’t have to be responsible to the Crown like everyone else. You could just be responsible to some local organisation. You still get taxpayer money, but whatever.”, and, on the other hand, they’re saying if you’re a community that’s actually elected your school board, then you are subject to even more incursion and bureaucracy from the Ministry of Education, because it gives the Secretary of Education additional power to do so.

I’d like to mention something else about this bill: that it does not deal with any of the substantial issues. All of it is administrative. None of it will result in the outcome that people seek. Will it be possible, as the old left—the left that I could actually believe in—used to try and make possible? Will it be possible that if you believe in social justice, that there will be a kid in any town or country, part of this nation, who can go to a place in their community where a knowledgable adult will transfer valuable academic knowledge that will equip them to participate in modern society as part of a First World nation? Will it give them the skills to understand the world, to be good citizens, to earn a good income? Will anything in this legislation do anything like that at all? No, it will not.

And that is the great tragedy, and it’s something that people are noticing not just in New Zealand but around the world. They see that we used to have a deal that if you follow the rules, go to school, do your homework, listen to your teacher, get good grades, turn those into skills that turn into qualifications that turn into jobs, and, ultimately, a career—if you follow the deal, you follow the law, you be a good citizen, and pay your taxes, then things can work out OK. You end up owning a place of your own. You end up with the knowledge that allows you to participate in the world.

People say that we used to have a deal. Where has that deal gone? Instead, they find that they are confronted with a Government that brings up legislation like this that solves no obvious problem related to anything in anyone’s life today, but they are nevertheless being forced to pay for it. Then they look into the main substance of this bill, and they find that not only is that administration largely trivial, largely back office, largely unhelpful to people’s everyday lives but it actually is based in a divisive and incorrect interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi that tells us that, actually, there are two types of New Zealander, the tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti, and they should have different political rights. That is why so many people are so disillusioned with this Government and with Governments around the world. That is why this sort of legislation needs to be sent packing. It is—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member’s time is completed.

Mr Speaker, a point of order. You said that I could speak for an additional minute.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry, I understood that the minute had been added on. OK, I understood that the minute had actually been added on, but I’m not correct. So you do have a further one minute now.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I was just winding up by saying that this bill should be sent packing. But in its place, with a new Government not so far away, will be legislation that is responsive, that is practical, that hears people’s concerns and aspirations, that treats every New Zealander as a human being born with the hope of one 5-millionth of the opportunity this great country has to offer—no more, no less. Can I just finish off by saying that one thing that really matters is tikanga, and when certain people can’t learn or respect the tikanga of this House, they lose the claim to criticise everybody else. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

That speaker did benefit from some confusion. He did actually get an extra 30 seconds, which may actually be taken into account later on.

Tēnā koe e te Mana W’akawā. Tēnā koutou ngā hapū, ngā iwi o te motu, e mihi ana ki a koutou katoa.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker. Greetings to the subtribes and peoples of the nation. I acknowledge you all.]

I stand to speak to the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3). I welcome the Government’s programme of improving and strengthening the education system to ensure our system delivers equitable and excellent outcomes for learners. Further, I welcome the wānanga legislative framework, and, in particular, it lifts my heart. It lifts my heart to see that it gives wānanga better recognition of their mana and tiro rangatiratanga. It recognises their unique role in tertiary education and it gives options to operate in a way that supports them to better meet the needs and aspirations of my people.

Wānanga are established by iwi with and for Māori, by Māori. This is a critical role in the protection and the revitalisation of te reo Māori, Te Ao Māori, and mātauranga Māori.

The member on the other side calls it a wasted bill. Well, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Who knows better how to deliver the basics to Māori than Te Ao Māori themselves? For too long, wānanga have had to fit—had to fit—into the system that does not take account of how they differ from other tertiary education providers.

Ensuring the basics are delivered by Māori, for Māori is imperative. It’s imperative because we have a holistic approach to learning. This includes knowing who you are, where your tūrangawaewae is—your identity. No one knows more than I, who came from a system of education that taught us—what a joke—about the whalers. There was no kōhanga reo, there was no kura kaupapa, there was no wānanga—that is an indictment on the history of Aotearoa.

You wonder how I got here. I got here because I rose above—I rose above the racism, the bias, the micro-aggressions that I had to endure in my life as I grew up. It took the last 10 years to actually really understand who I am as a wahine Māori, and I celebrate that—I celebrate that. It’s because of the last 10 years, knowing who I am as a Māori wahine, and my people who put me here to be here today. This just shows the importance of this bill. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

This is a split call—five minutes.

I’d like to open this by pointing out that I did study New Zealand history. I was very fortunate in my seventh form at school; I had a fantastic history teacher and he made us do New Zealand history, and it was fantastic. We went to Ruapekapeka, the “bats’ nest” that the Hon Kelvin Davis pointed out, and did a tour around many of the pā through Waikato and the North Island, and I greatly appreciated it.

But back to the bill. The Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3) seeks to change the criteria for school boards. It also requires licensed early childhood education centres (ECEs) to consider police vetting, when having people coming on site. Having police vetting can be a good thing, because you want to make sure that children—I mean, I have three young children, two of them in ECEs, and I want to know that when they go there, anyone that comes on site will be of credible character. But I also do note some of the concerns raised by Penny Simmonds, that we need to make sure that it does not put undue burden on businesses, and the example used was around a plumber coming on site, that they would be able to do that in an efficient manner and not be held up for five or six days while that police-vetting check went through.

Other provisions in this bill are around establishing a new framework for wānanga, and that’s received a fair bit of commentary today. It allows wānanga to reconstitute themselves as either Crown or non-Crown entities. We also have some changes to the board terms that Te Kura can have, up to five years, with the ability to go longer on that.

But I’d like to reiterate some of the key messages that we’ve heard from this side of the House today. You know, while we do agree with some aspects of this bill, I mean, we don’t necessarily agree that mandating the composition of the boards along lines of sexuality and other defining characteristics like that is an imperative. What I would think, and I’m sure most reasonable people would think, is that it’s a lot more relevant to have people with expertise in education and children’s education and children’s welfare being representative on those boards.

Also, this bill doesn’t address the major issues that are facing the New Zealand education system at the moment—and I note the Minister has just walked in and will be listening attentively. But everyone does know that we do have significant truancy issues, we do have significant performance issues, and this bill does not address any of those things. National has put forward a fantastic package recently—Teaching the Basics Brilliantly—and that’s really where we need to be looking when we are doing legislation in the education space. It’s making sure that people are coming to school. It’s making sure that they are learning—reading, writing, maths, science; those key things that are going to determine whether the current and the next generation of children are able to succeed in New Zealand and beyond, if so they choose. That is really what we should be looking at.

I mean, this Government, and I think Mr Seymour put it—well, I mean, he got a fair bit of commentary around it. But this Government has a fantastic ability to tinker on things that don’t necessarily move the dial, and I see some scorn looking at me at the moment. I’m talking about the boards here, Mr Davis. If that’s what the focus is, instead of the achievement of people, the achievement of people and skills—and you’d know a lot about how the system’s failing Māori, and that’s an indictment on our education system. But I would say that students in New Zealand, especially Māori students—and you can look at the statistics and they will reinforce this—perform a lot better under National Governments than under Labour Governments, because we focus on getting the basics right, mate. You can look at their achievements at NCEA level 2 from 2008, when you last had office, to 2017, when we left office, and they went from about 45 percent in 2008 to almost 70 percent when we left office in 2017. And I hear the giggles—you shouldn’t be giggling, because your Government is failing a generation of young children, and, unfortunately, Māori children are suffering from that. I oppose this bill.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. Because my name was brought into the debate by one of the speakers, I would expect to be afforded the same respect and given another minute in my speech.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is not a point of order. The member has sat down. Does that mean he doesn’t want to take his five-minute speech?

That was a point of order, Mr Speaker, so I’m waiting for your ruling.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m ruling it’s not a point of order. Does the member wish to take his five-minute call?

Point of order, Mr Speaker. Can you point out that my point of order is not a point of order, or are you rewriting the book?

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just hold on. We’re always in the order of compromise. The member can seek the leave of the House to have a minute added to his speaking time. So does the member wish to do that?

Yes please, Mr Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: So is there any objection? There is no objection, so a minute will be added. So we’ll add the minute. You’ll note that the clock has gone to six minutes now, just to save any confusion at the end of your speech.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your generosity. E te Whare, tēnā tātou. E te Wānanga o Raukawa, tēnā koutou. Anei tā koutou tangata.

[To the House, greetings to all of us. To the Wānanga o Raukawa, greetings. Here is your man.]

I’m alumni of Raukawa, so I’m really proud to have them here today and I’m really excited about what this bill does for our people. First of all, one thing I’ve learnt is you never take tikanga advice from arrogant and ignorant people. So that’s something I will never do. Kei te mihi atu rā ki a tātou i tēnei ata. [I acknowledge all of us this morning.] What a fun morning and start for us here today.

What I do want to say is that the changes to this bill recognises the mana of kaupapa Māori education providers, which should have been recognised years ago. However, we do have a few concerns around the commitment of the Crown and this Government to truly honour and support a rangatiratanga-based education sector, which means that we are in total control of what we do, how we do it, and the way we do it.

So mātauranga Māori experts and our people across the board have long called for the unique and distinct status of kura kaupapa—I’m not a kura kaupapa child; I was through the transition of kura kaupapa, but I am a kōhanga reo tamaiti and I’m also a wānanga Māori tamaiti that has gone through that particular system—to be recognised and enshrined in law, which is not tinkering. It’s not achieving very little or nothing, but it is the right thing to do. It is totally unacceptable for kura kaupapa to be relegated to the status of designated character schools as they are in current legislation. We therefore support the provisions that uphold recommendations of Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori.

I also note that this bill seeks to recognise the mana of whare wānanga and their unique status in the tertiary education system by enabling them to convert to non-Crown entities, and being responsible and accountable to tangata whenua, to iwi, to hapū, who pay their taxes in this country, whose assets have been stolen to build this country, and who have had their backs stood on for the betterment of this country. So I will not accept that we are anything less than that, but we are contributing more to the kaupapa that we’re trying to drive today.

For example, we have te whare Wānanga o Raukawa—that their order in council is well advanced and that their accountability to their founding iwi, Te Atiawa, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, and all the other iwi that are supportive of our wānanga will be strengthened, that it will be a great outcome, and we welcome it. And I reckon those Crown entity wānanga—universities, if you want to call them that—should jump on board because they should have more accountability to iwi and hapū that they are established in, which they are not. We know how important this is for Māori education institutions to be able to determine their own governance and accountability frameworks rather than being forced into one-size-fits-all Crown models. It is like Rangi trying to put her foot into Cinderella’s slipper. Rather than being forced into one-size-fits-all—it is not designed with the interest of Māori students in mind. This has been our reality for far too long, and any move away from that is to be acknowledged.

However, do we have some concerns about the bill and require some assurance going forward? Yes, we do. We put before this House that the kura kaupapa Māori claim is currently before the Waitangi Tribunal, and to the Government, we need you to have a look at the outcomes of that particular tribunal hearing and adopt the tribunal recommendations. It is the utmost importance that Government stop cutting across tribunal claims and stop cherry-picking what to implement in these types of changes. I think it’s really important, Minister, that we do that—that we consider and that we ensure that those tribunal hearings are part of the changes that we’re trying to achieve here for a better Māori-medium education model.

I wero to the Crown and the Government, where the resources to power and sector to achieve rangatiratanga is stated in the goal of this bill—we need to see that. We need to start seeing more of that in the legislation passed by Government.

What are the funding implications of these changes? Will this isolate kura kaupapa Māori? Will it isolate whare wānanga? These are the things. And when I heard one of the speakers this morning—that is exactly what he was talking about. It was about isolation, was about separation, and was about making something less and making something more. So these are the things that we want to ensure: that there is equity, that there is equality and the resourcing of Māori medium kaupapa, whether it’s kura kaupapa or whether it’s whare wānanga. These are the things that we are concerned about.

The Government needs to recognise the similarly the nature of State schooling. Kura kaupapa Māori are self-developed development initiatives that mediate the assimilation tendencies implicit in the conventional schooling system. You know, Labour has, I’m sure, had a look at the Māori Party education policies. You know, we want to establish a $200 million fund to drive whānau, hapū, and iwi education and training initiatives. I hope that this bill reflects that and that we’re able to establish those things at that particular level, and we will implement the tribunal claims and make this a legal requirement of the Crown. We look forward to this in the select committee process. We look forward to participating. We want to ensure that Te Tiriti o Waitangi is not just principles but the articles are upheld in this bill as we head forward to ensure protection of Māori-medium education. Kia ora tātou.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise in support of this bill, because, for the first time in law, what will be in place is a focus on the special characteristics, the special dimensions, that identify wānanga as a collective unit in this country, but also identifying what they offer as something distinctly different to other tertiary institutes around Aotearoa New Zealand as well.

I want to just spend my brief contribution focusing on the changes that this bill will provide for school boards around the country, because it is important that those who are in governance roles and responsibilities in kura around the motu are appropriate individuals to effectively provide that governance lens in leadership around our communities.

I’m sure that I join with many others in this House who have spent a number of years as a member of a board of trustees—myself as a staff trustee and as a parent trustee and the chair of a board for close to 15 years. And so ensuring that those who are occupying those seats around the board table are members of our community who are appropriate is something that is particularly pleasing to see.

I’m delighted that this bill will also, at first reading, provide an opportunity for the Secretary for Education to undertake an audit to ensure that new eligibility criteria applies to all board members who are in those governance roles making decisions for our tamariki. This is in response to concerns that have been raised by community members over quite some time, and it’s a bill that delivers on that. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m pleased to rise to take a call on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3). I say pleased—I really mean disappointed.

What a wasted opportunity. If you read the New Zealand Herald today, you will see we have a crisis in mathematics in this country. A great piece by, I think, Audrey Tan, who lays out in detail, the situation that we’re in with failing rates of achievement.

I just want the people who are watching this debate out there today to know that while there are some noble recommendations in this bill, we are facing a crisis of achievement in this country. A third of our 15-year-olds were able to pass a basic literacy and numeracy achievement. What’s worse is only 2 percent of decile 1 kids could pass that same rate. The bill we have before us today does nothing to address any of those concerns; the things that Kiwi parents up and down the country are worried about—is my child at curriculum? Are they progressing through the curriculum? Are they going to be able to pass an NCEA basic literary and numeracy test when they turn 15, in order to gain their NCEA accreditation? What we get in this bill is a lot of little tweaks, and some of them, as I say, are quite noble. But I guess the question is: should we be discussing whether or not we include members on boards of trustees according to their gender, sexuality, and sex when we have such a crisis in achievement levels?

Let me just, again, for the public out there—how bad things are: less than half of our kids who go to high school are at curriculum for math, for writing, and for science. Only 20 percent of our kids are at curriculum for science. The bill we have in front of us today talks about including genders, sexualities, and sexes on the school board. I want to get to that in a minute, because I think there are some big problems with that. But I think the main point that I want to get across is: what a wasted opportunity.

For everybody out there watching, the Minister of Education is more concerned with what’s in this bill, which I’ll go through in a minute, than she is around our declining achievement rates. It was stated in this House just last week that no improvement in achievement has been made in six years of this Government. So we are no better off after six years of a Labour Government in our achievement of our children. I’ve laid out how bad that is, especially if you are underprivileged in this country. In this country, it matters how much you earn, depending on what academic outcome you get. It shouldn’t be like that; it should be that education is the great equaliser, and no matter your background, your circumstances, you turn up to school and you get the same opportunity as everybody else. But it is not true in this country, and you can see that through the fact that only 2 percent of our decile 1 kids could pass that basic test.

Yet here we are, with a bill, basically—you know, like I say, some noble things. Look, it’s very important that we make sure that people who apply to be on a board haven’t been convicted of some serious crimes. Speakers before me have gone through the bill, and I’m not going to go through it in detail. But I would just like to pick up the point around the appointments to the school board after the initial process has gone through where people vote.

We are potentially going to change the law to make boards take into account the character, gender, ethnic, and social diversity of the school—again, a noble cause. But I guess the point that is even made in the departmental disclosure statement (DDS) is: how do you practically do that? If you want to ensure that you have people of differing sexualities or differing genders on the board, especially when it comes to their sexual preference, I guess the question is: how do you know that? What process would you go through to find that out? When your child enrols at school, will you be required to let the school know which sexual preference you identify with so that then when they need to appoint someone to the board, they could go and ask you because they require someone to better reflect the character of the school in terms of character, gender, ethnic, and social diversity of the school? That is problematic. The DDS says it’s problematic, because, firstly, how do you ask for that information, because that’s kind of weird and awkward, and then, how do you hold that information? And there are privacy concerns that the DDS brings up around, potentially, the holding of that information.

But I guess the broader point is that the most important thing about a board is that the people on that board have governance experience, that they have property experience, that they have legal or HR experience, that they potentially have some mental health experience—

💬 Hon Kelvin Davis: They-know-their-Māori-communities experience.

Yup, exactly. Great point from Mr Kelvin Davis. But actually going into detail about people’s sexual preferences in order to then put them on the board seems to be problematic for the reasons that I’ve mentioned.

Again, look, potentially a noble reason behind it, and the Minister can speak to that, but I want to come back to the point: what a missed opportunity we have, debating this bill, when we’ve got kids who cannot read and write at 15; where half of our kids are not at curriculum by the time they reach the end of intermediate. We know that even by year 4, the rates of achievement are dropping off—when we should be talking about making sure that we’ve got a curriculum that lays out, year by year, the core curriculum knowledge; that it doesn’t matter which school you go to in the country, you will get access to that same knowledge. It doesn’t matter where you go to in the country that you should be assessed for your progression along the curriculum.

We know that the Education Review Office have been saying for a decade that half of skills are not having effective use of assessment or collecting assessment data. Why should it be the case that if you go to one school that you get assessed as to your progress, parents know how their kids are doing; you go to another school, that’s not being done? It’s all about consistency, and this bill doesn’t address any of that.

This bill, as I’ve mentioned, we’re talking about boards of trustees, and one of the other issues that I want to mention, a particular issue, about this bill is this, again, noble—and I understand why they’re doing it—the Government want to create an equity index for early childhood services, and part of this bill is being able to access the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) data in order to do that. Again, no problem with that, but questions for the Minister that we will be asking at select committee and through this process is: exactly how will this equity index work for early childhood education (ECE), especially?

If we take a look at the process we went through with the Equity Index with schools, it was fraught. I asked for a briefing from the Minister—remember, at the time, that Minister was Christopher Hipkins—and in the media recently he said that “education shouldn’t be a political football” and “we’re all open to all of these briefings and working together.” Well, I asked for a briefing on the Equity Index last year from Chris Hipkins, and guess what!

💬 Maureen Pugh: What?

I didn’t get one. The answer: “No. Sorry, we’re not going to work cross-party”, even though he comes out last week and says, “Oh, it’s all about cross-party; let’s not have a political football.” Well, I asked for a briefing on the Equity Index—didn’t get one. I’m concerned that there will be similar problems when we introduce an equity index for ECE, and that there will be ECEs that currently get a level of funding for the level of depravation of the area that they’re in, and that funding may drop away, because that’s what happened with schools.

There were a lot of schools that lost out on their funding, they did no better off, when they expected that they would, and they didn’t understand the process. Many schools I went to talk to said, “We thought we would get more money. We either ended up getting no more or we lost out.” I’m really worried in this bill around the Equity Index for early childhood that we’ll be in a similar position where there are early childhood centres in deprived areas that will miss out.

I guess the other question is: how will that equity index be decided? You may have more children in your centre who are identified as not going on to achieve NCEA later in life, which is what the IDI data predicts. You might have 10 children, but they only come to the centre a couple of hours a week each, so overall the total amount of hours they do is not high. Whereas, you might have three children that are at your centre 40 hours a week each. So I guess then the question to ask is—this is very different than the school system where children are required to be there six hours a day, whereas in ECE, the hours that are attended are very different.

And so the question will be: how will they use the IDI data? Will they use it in the same way that they’ve used it to predict outcomes for school children? And then how will they apply that to centres? Will it be based on hours of children attending, or numbers of children attending? I am worried that we’ll be in a similar situation, where centres will believe that they’re entitled to a lot of funding because they have children who are desperately in need and who are there a lot of hours per week but may end up losing funding. So those are some questions that we’ll have.

💬 Hon Kelvin Davis: Can you clarify if you’re criticising the Equity Index that you guys set up?

💬 Hon Jan Tinetti: Yeah, that National set up.

The Minister should have listened more carefully. The Equity Index has been great, but there have been some teething problems: (a) that I haven’t been able to ask the Minister about because he refused a briefing, and, (b) many schools have brought up that they thought that they were going to get funding and then they didn’t. There are some issues around that that I think we need to avoid for ECE, to make sure that all of those centres in deprived areas either get to retain their level of funding or get more funding. So, with that, we will be opposing the bill.

Thank you. It’s my job, as the last speaker in this debate, to bring this debate back to the bill before us rather than the distractions and, perhaps, some of the dog-whistling that’s been going on in this debate.

First of all, I want to focus on something small in the bill which I do not think is trivial at all, and that is the actual dealing with people who are coming into a school as contractors, as workers—they’re working with children directly or they’re working during school hours—and checking them to make sure that they have not committed some of the offences that are in Schedule 2. Those are not trivial offences; they’re very serious offences. They’re things like sexual abuse. They’re things like kidnapping. We don’t want people in those schools, even for two minutes, before they’re checked.

This is a very important part of the job, and I did hear speakers from the other side suggest that this was something that was impractical to do. While it is tempting to trust the person coming into the school—and, actually, it is human nature to do so—this is a situation where we cannot afford that kind of error. This bill is not trivial, because it will remedy that and it will make it mandatory for people to check and make sure that that doesn’t happen. It will keep our children safe. That’s an incredibly important part of this.

I want to talk about a big-picture issue here, and I’m only going to take a minute more. One of the bigger-picture issues here is equity. There’s a difference between equity and equality, and they’re both really important: one treats people the same; the other looks at the person and gives them what they need. One of the things that’s in this bill is an attempt to do that with our Māori community, who have been utterly under-achieving in our system for years and years. We can’t do the same thing over and over again, because it is failing our children, and we need to change things up.

And this changes things up consistently with our obligations under the Treaty, and our own concept—and I don’t actually care myself whether it’s historical or now. Right now, my concept, my commitment, is to a partnership, and this piece of legislation uses that model of partnership and uses the model of self-determination to make sure that education changes for the better.

Those are two important things that are in this bill; they are not trivial. They don’t solve all our education problems, but they are important, and they’re before this House in urgency for that reason. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is, That the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3) be considered by the Education and Workforce Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.

Instruction to Education and Workforce Committee