Education and Training Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the parliamentary website.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: I move, That the Education and Training Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 5 September 2024 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 193, 195, and 196.

This is a very important day for education policy in New Zealand. This Education and Training Amendment Bill focuses on three areas of policy. The first is introducing a legal framework for charter schools / kura hourua here in New Zealand. The second is to remove laws that would have put specific network planning requirements on early childhood education centres. That bureaucracy will be gone because it made no sense. And, finally, this legislation will allow the Secretary of Education to make specific rules around attendance, addressing the crisis in attendance that is bedevilling not only New Zealand’s schools but our future as we currently conceive ourselves as a modern, developed country with a highly educated population who went to school.

I work through each of these matters in this speech before saying I look forward to the select committee, and I thank in advance Katie Nimon, the Education and Workforce Committee chair, for the work that I know the committee will do, hearing from New Zealanders, improving the legislation if and where necessary, and reporting back so that this policy progress can continue.

First and foremost, the framework for charter schools / kura hourua will put in place the rules for who will be responsible for the administration of charter schools, and that is by and large the authorisation board, a board of experts from different backgrounds with knowledge of communities up and down New Zealand, with knowledge of education, and with knowledge of law and business, so that we can have entities from across the political spectrum, from up and down the country, from different ethnic backgrounds, able to come forward and run schools in a way that suits the aspirations of those communities and those students.

That authorisation board which is put in place is absolutely key, and the authorisation boards will be, under this law, responsible for negotiating and striking contracts with the sponsors who run the schools. Those contracts will be quite different from the approach that has been taken to New Zealand education under successive Governments. For far too long we have overly stipulated how each dollar of funding is used for this or that. We’ve forced schools to negotiate with the Ministry of Education local office—often for trivial things, to wait long periods of time—who have stopped them from being able to expand when even there was clear demand from the parents and the students in the community for more of the education they were offering. We’re going to stop that level of stipulation and micromanagement. In this contract we’re going to say, “You get the money that is owed to the students of this country.” Their share of the education funding will be paid to the school in cash in full. That’s quite a big concession.

But there’s another change that we’re going to make in return for that freedom and flexibility to start a school or to convert a State school. We’re going to say, “Actually, we’re going to contract you for outcomes.” Because the amazing thing that happens in the current State system is that a school can keep getting funded even when the students aren’t attending and when they’re not achieving. It’s an incredible thing that this has been allowed to go on for so long, and charter schools will be the opposite.

I say to my colleagues from Te Pāti Māori that in many respects this is tino rangatiratanga in action. This is allowing communities to take control of their destiny so long as they live up to the mana of achieving and engaging the rangatahi and the students in their rohe, in their community. And the Labour Party—they don’t know which way to go on this because they kind of like the idea of tino rangatiratanga, but they also like the middle class unions that back them and pay their fees, and they’re not quite sure about that.

Camilla Belich: Teachers—we like teachers.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Camilla Belich says, “Oh, it’s about teachers.” It’s not about teachers. You see, here’s what this is about for teachers. The Opposition is saying that teachers are opposed to this. Actually, this is a liberation of the education profession. You see, charter schools will allow a group of teachers to run a school their way, and so long as they have the mana to achieve the results of engaging the students, having them show up and learning, we’re going to stop interfering with them.

Camilla Belich should take note, because I talk to teachers and Post Primary Teachers Association members too, and New Zealand Educational Institute members and all her union backers, and do you know what they say quietly? I say, “What if you had 10 years where you knew that the Ministry of Education and successive changes in Governments weren’t going to mess with you and put new conditions on how you teach and what you teach all the time?” And they say, “What? For 10 years?” They say that would be amazing. Well, you know what? With a 10-year contract, these schools will actually be firewalled away, achieve the results, keep the children safe, keep the children learning, keep the children engaged, and you’ll have the professional autonomy to do education your way.

Hon Jan Tinetti: Rubbish—rubbish!

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: That’s a pretty popular idea with the teaching profession, and Jan Tinetti ought to get with the programme and listen to a few of the teachers that are saying that. She might be surprised at how many are saying it.

This legislation also allows State schools to convert to charter status. It’s not just new applicants, brand new schools; it’s also—and she might be surprised how many State schools are showing an interest in this—to actually take on charter status and do that deal: attendance and achievement, and here’s your money and here’s your autonomy and here’s your mana and your dignity as a profession, as an educator, to do it your way, so long as you’re getting the results. That conversion process is also set out in the legislation.

All together: charter schools are back, school autonomy is back, tino rangatiratanga in education is back, and self-determination for the children and the educators and the future of this country is back with this legislation. And the Labour Party? They’re not back; they’re backward. That’s the big problem for the Labour Party on this issue. They’re not back and they won’t be back for a long time, but they’re certainly backward.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a few more aspects of this legislation. It also removes the network planning provisions for early childhood education centres. This legislation was just completely nuts, because it is the Labour Party “we know best” ideology that the Ministry of Education can decide whether or not a person should be able to invest their own money in serving students, young people, and a community that wants them to be there. And how do we know the community wants them to be there? Because they send their children to the centre. If they don’t, it either won’t start or it will go broke. I know it’s a new concept for some people on the other side, but this is how the New Zealand economy works.

Instead of the Ministry of Education micromanaging where you can open an early childhood education (ECE) centre and whether or not you can expand and how many children you can have at your ECE centre, we’re actually going to leave the decision up to the people that risk their own money to start them and the parents who truly know what is best for their children, who decide to send them there because they’re happy, because they’re safe, and because they’re learning. Those are the people who should have the power, and these are the people who will have the power. And, all together, it means people spend less time on the bureaucracy of justifying their existence and more time on the empowerment about being able to do it their way.

Finally, we are going to give powers to the Secretary of Education to make changes to the way that attendance records are required to be reported. Another amazing thing is that for far too long, as a country, we really never got to grips with who is attending school each day. So we don’t know what the patterns are. We don’t know why they weren’t there. We’ve got regulations that are almost 100 years old if you go back to the legislation they’re initially enabled under, and so we’re going to require that data. With that, I commend this bill to the House.

It’s been a long time in this House that I’ve heard such a confusing rant by a Minister. In fact, six times—six times—the Minister mentioned the Labour Party; obviously enamoured with us on this side and the wonderful legislation that we had put in place, obviously can’t wait to be over on this side again and, obviously, with terrible legislation like this that won’t be that far away.

Hon David Seymour: She said my speech was confusing!

Hon JAN TINETTI: I say that this was confusing because, on one hand, you’ve got the Minister talking about flexibility and on the other hand you’ve got him talking about tightening up in areas such as attendance; a totally confusing piece of legislation, totally contradictory to itself. I would have to say to the Minister: please go and learn what tino rangatiratanga actually means, because he obviously has no idea. I know that my colleague is going to talk about that in greater depth and greater detail later on.

Charter schools represent, more than anything, an absolutely concerted effort to deregulate the public education system. They have few restrictions in place on pedagogy, curriculum, class size, discipline, and other details in their operation. We have the most devolved education system in the world. How on earth do we think that having that absolutely devolved system like that is going to improve the education system for young people who have been marginalised within the system?

Charter schools represent a slow drip towards privatisation within our schooling system. Let’s go back a little way to see where charter schools came out of. They were born out of the States by a gentleman by the name of Albert Shanker, who was what is called the founding father of charter schools. He withdrew his endorsement of charter schools in 1993 and became a vociferous critic against them; totally—totally—absolutely appalled with the direction in which they were moving in. He watched the charter schools movement evolve as he saw new businesses jump into the education industry. In the States, charter schools have been started by social service agencies, universities, teachers, parents, philanthropists, hedge fund managers, for-profit firms, corporations, charter management organisations, and community groups. Now, we might hear people say on the other side, “Well, that’s not New Zealand”, but hang on a moment, go and have a look at the early childhood education (ECE) sector because that is very much New Zealand and those groups are very much represented right throughout the early childhood education system.

Again, we might hear the other side say, “Oh, but hang on a moment, that wouldn’t happen within the schooling system in New Zealand.” I would then cite a white paper that was written by one of the groups who was interested in opening a charter school, which said, “For widespread success there needs to be the ability for sponsors to get a return on capital, which has made the ECE model so successful in New Zealand.” So we’re talking about a slow drip towards privatisation that will quickly become an absolutely leaking drip.

When we look at the research that sits around whether charter schools have been successful or not, the Minister often quotes the Center for Research on Education Outcomes study. Last week in our Estimates hearings, we talked about the reliability of that study and we were able to put that one to bed completely. The Minister has been completely selective in his research. There is research that has come out of Stanford University—the Minister might actually note that Stanford University is a big university—that shows that 80 percent of charter schools in the study performed either the same or worse than the local public schools: 80 percent. Why on earth are we looking at introducing something to this country that has an absolutely backward impact on the number of young people in this country?

This is a sad day for education. This is an absolutely atrocious day. The other side should hang their heads in shame for what they are doing to the young people of this country. This is an absolute attack on quality public education. I do look forward to showing that throughout the select committee process and I do look forward to those members hanging their heads when they see the evidence of how bad charter schools are for young people in this country.

Members, I need to insert that the question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This bill has three parts to it. You’ve got the first part, the first bit, which is around charter schools. You’ve got the second part, around the removal of the network’s approval. And you’ve got the third part regarding the ability for the Secretary to collect data on attendance.

This is a chimera of a bill, and, like the story of the kind of Chimera and Bellerophon, this is not a beast that slays. Let’s start with the charter school bit. The previous speaker, the Hon Jan Tinetti, has already mentioned, in terms of the lack of evidence internationally—we have seen that unequivocally and unbiasedly, if that’s a word, charter schools as a model work. This is something that we have mentioned before, both in terms of the data from the US and also when we are looking at economisation in the UK. This is something that ruins education systems and this is something that ruins the future of a nation, the future of Aotearoa, in this case.

I think, to start with, let’s just draw attention to the regulatory impact statement. As you go into the regulatory impact statement, it is riddled with, “Here are the risks, these are the uncertainties, these are the limitations. Due to the lack of time that we have given, we have not been able to consult with X, Y, and Z.” So this is not a serious solution to the issues that we are currently facing. Yes, we admit that there are certain elements of our education system that need to be tightened up. There are certain things and there are certain parts of our education system, yes, that have let some students and some schools down.

However, the funding that we are looking at here, $153 million on charter schools—imagine, proportionally, what that funding would do to the public sector in order to uplift all—all—of tamariki, all of rangatahi, all of our students across the country, when we are looking at educational systems. So this is not a serious solution. It is simply a vanity project, something to make people look pretty when they’re looking at themselves in the mirror in the morning. We cannot gamble $153 million on uncertainty, so this is something that the Green Party is unequivocally opposed to, because of the fact there is simply no evidence that suggests it works. It is not the magical bullet that we see elsewhere that is going to magically fix the education system and some of the issues and harshness that we see our students and teachers and our schools go through currently.

Now, the second head of this chimera is around the network approval process. This is what I mean. Charter schools—we’re looking at this privatisation, it’s about community-based, in fact, you know, we’re also allowing people from overseas to also invest in our education system with unclarity around financial scrutiny. But the second part of this, in terms of network approval, that was put in place for a reason, because of the way that the early childhood education (ECE) sectors have been managed. Without it, and without that level of financial sustainability, the Ministry of Education is able to do—without the kind of work that is expected when we are going through the scrutiny process for setting up an ECE centre, what we’ll see is that we’re going to be putting more young people, more tamariki at risk. And not just the students in those ECE centres but also the teachers. This is serious, especially when we hear the Minister of Education talking about consistency, talking about what we need to do, talking about structured literacy, talking about the reduction in our numeracy and literacy—that starts at the ECE level. And without any form of scrutiny, we are seeing that at risk.

The last point I want to mention, the third head of the chimera, is around attendance. And while, yes, it’s a good idea to collect attendance and, yes, an attendance action plan is good, but data for the sake of collecting data is not worthwhile. What are we going to actually do with it? With that, the Green Party does oppose this bill.

It’s a pleasure to speak on the bill, the Education and Training Amendment Bill. I will just remind all those watching that it is not just about charter schools. There are important administrative regulatory changes also on early childhood centres to enable rules and also daily reporting of attendance. So with that very important point, we need to tighten up regulation, offer more choice to parents, and I commend this bill to the House.

Madam Speaker, thank you. I want to start by just congratulating the honourable Minister for this bill. This is about, again, this coalition Government keeping our promises. Charter schools, to me, are about recognising, as the Hon Duncan Webb said in the last debate, that one size does not fit all. I think there is a very logical set of criteria there, a logical set of expectations on charter schools, and I think they will make a significant improvement to our education system.

When I listened to what the Opposition was talking about, it’s as though our education system is working brilliantly at the moment. The reality is that we know it is not—we know it is not. We have a terrible attendance rate at the moment, and you cannot teach children who are not at school. Therefore I’m particularly pleased also to see the enablement of the Secretary for Education to collect really good data so that we know exactly where our students are and we can get them back to school, get them back to learning, because that’s what we need to do for their future and for the future of this country. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I wish I could say it was a pleasure to take a call on this bill, but it’s absolutely not a pleasure. It feels more of a duty to draw this House’s attention to this absolutely blatant attack on public education which is going through this House at the moment.

In New Zealand, we have a public education system. Yes, it’s not perfect; but, yes, there is a lot of work that goes into making sure it’s good. This bill will just take money away from the public educators that are currently doing the best job that they possibly can educate—

Andy Foster: It doesn’t.

CAMILLA BELICH: Yes, it will, and I want to draw the House’s attention in the short time I have in this first reading to some great contradictions that this Government currently has in relation to charter schools. Recently, in scrutiny week, the Minister that brought this bill to the House, the Hon David Seymour, said, and I quote, “I’m never comfortable with any level of Government spending that could be reduced.” Well, I’ll tell the Minister: there is a huge amount of money that is about to be going into charter schools with absolutely no justification and it is a waste. It will take money away from the public education system and it will mean that there is less ability to ensure that a good public education is occurring for our students.

It is completely contradictory to the measures that this Government say they’re proud of, that the current education Minister, Erica Stanford, is implementing. Rules about cell phone use, rules about time spent on literacy, rules about time spent on maths—none of these will apply to charter schools. So if those are good for children in New Zealand, why are they not good enough for children that end up going to charter schools? It’s an absolute disgrace.

Now, you may say, “Oh, actually, it’s not going to be a waste of money.” Well, I’ll draw the House’s attention to two statistics which show that charter schools end up costing New Zealanders more, in contradiction to what this Government says is its absolute priority in reducing spending. The average annual operational cost per student of all charter schools is over $18,000, almost triple the $6,000 for public schools of the same period. The National-ACT charter schools from 2014 to 2018 cost up to $48,421 per student and needed more than six times the average amount of money spent on children in State schools. Why are we not putting this money where it should go: into our State education? Why are we not backing our local schools and our local teachers? I don’t have the answer for that.

I don’t understand why we need charter schools. We currently have private schools, we have integrated schools, we have home schooling. There is choice available for parents. Why do we need to establish a totally separate—totally separate—type of school that gets public money but has absolutely no accountability for our curriculum; it has no accountability in relation to an hour of reading, writing, and maths? They can look at their cell phones for all we know. All of these things that this Government stands against. It makes absolutely no sense. It’s a huge contradiction; a huge waste of money.

As workplace relations and safety spokesperson from the Labour Party, I feel it’s also my duty to raise some very serious concerns that we have around the way that these will be incorporated. The Minister can establish a charter school. He can also tell a State school that it can become a charter school. Now, what are the consultation requirements around this? Does this have to be with the permission of the State school? I can’t see that in the legislation. That is an outstanding question that I think should be of absolute concern to every New Zealander watching this debate.

The Minister, David Seymour—who is opposed ideologically to the State—as a libertarian head of a libertarian party is able to go around and make all of the public schools into charter schools. I’m not clear that there has to be adequate consultation with the community to ensure that that happens.

What happens to the teachers? As workplace health and safety spokesperson, I have a duty to ask what happens to them. Well, their contracts—that they worked so hard for—go into the bin. This is a Minister who is opposed to unions. He has spoken in his first reading speech absolutely disrespectfully to the mandate that unions have to represent their members. He has spoken and represented their views incorrectly in this House to say that they are secretly in support of charter schools. Well, I tell you—I challenge anyone in this House to look at the New Zealand Educational Institute website, the Post Primary Teachers’ Association website, and see their absolute opposition to charter schools.

Hon Member: Oh, unions? Unions!

CAMILLA BELICH: Unions represent the teachers in this country—they are opposed to charter schools. So I challenge any member in this House—[Interruption] I challenge any member of this House to go and read those.

In relation to their working conditions, they have an absolute mandate to have an interest in this area, because what is going to happen to their terms and conditions? Their collective agreement goes into the bin. They are all under individual conditions. It means that anything that they have bargained for in terms of the way that they like to work in a particular school, all the work that their union has done to make sure that their terms and conditions reflect what they need as teachers—gone.

Unlike the people on the other side of the House, we trust the professionals out there to do their job, and this bill will give them the opportunity and the freedom to get on and do it, right? But, ultimately, this is about the children who desperately need a great education, and charter schools will certainly help with that. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Whāia te iti kahurangi; ki te tūohu koe, me he maunga teitei. [Pursue excellence; if you should bow, let it be to a lofty mountain.]

We have a right, in this country, to an equitable, free, public education. In this House, we all stand for the best achievement of our rangatahi in this country, the best outcomes, and the best opportunities to live a good life with their whānau.

Charter schools are an experiment. They are ideological, and they are being put forward in this country without the evidence, without the expertise that our good public education system currently has. The question here is: how do we fund it? How do we fund success? If we have issues with attendance, then fund it. If we need to raise achievement, then fund it adequately.

This Government, their track record in just six months—it’s contradictory to the idea that David Seymour puts forward as the Associate Minister of Education. This week, we’ve seen them put forward punitive youth justice policies that will harm our rangatahi in this country and will put them in youth justice facilities and prisons. They’ve put forward boot camps as the best idea that they can possibly pull out to put young people on the right pathway. They’ve removed cellphones. They’ve enforced one hour of reading, maths, and arithmetic in schools. They’re removing the sexuality guidelines that were put in place to keep young people safe in their schools, and they’ve cut funding to school lunches in a cost of living crisis. We cannot trust this Government on a charter school experiment.

The Minister, in his speech, talked about tino rangatiratanga. In his view, this is his example of what tino rangatiratanga achieves. Tino rangatiratanga doesn’t come from the USA. It doesn’t come from the USA. It comes intrinsically from a Māori world view. It starts with our whānau. It starts with our reo. It’s the emancipation of our people, our families, and our communities to be able to self-determine their education system for themselves, to have sovereignty and decision making over their lives, to have the independence and the autonomy—that is tino rangatiratanga from Aotearoa.

I acknowledge the work of all of our public schools, but I also today want to acknowledge kura kaupapa Māori—people that have transformed our education system in the closest example that we have in this country to tino rangatiratanga. But I come back to the question around funding. If we want to raise achievement, particularly for Māori, in this sense, then kura kaupapa Māori is also our best example. But if we want to raise achievement for everyone in our public school system, then fund it in the same way that this Government is funding charter schools.

The National and ACT experiment with charter schools that ran from 2014 to 2018 cost up to $48,000 per student annually. That’s more than six times the average funding spent on students in State care. I talked about how if we want to improve attendance outcomes in this country, then fund them. If we want to raise achievement of our rangatahi, then fund it. But there is inequitable investment in each of our rangatahi in what is being proposed in this House today, and that is why I say that charter schools are not a quality way forward, because they’re inequitable purely by the funding investment per student in this country, and it is not acceptable that this child gets a different investment than that child.

My final point here today is that this is an experiment. It’s not tino rangatiratanga, and we must come back to—

The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The three objectives in the Education and Training Amendment Bill are, ultimately, driven by this coalition Government’s commitment to drive improvement in our children’s education and achievement, to help set them up with the skills they’ll need out in the real world, to help them with the skills they’ll need to have a chance to be successful. Anything that helps contribute to those objectives, such as this bill, should be supported as a priority by everyone in this House. I commend it.

The Government’s priorities here could not be more wrong. Today they are using the House’s urgency to pass through a bill which is deeply ideologically driven. It is not evidence based and its budgetary impact and the reasons why we are here having urgency related to the Budget documents in the first place are all out of kilter. The evidence shows here, as my colleagues have said, that this will cost New Zealanders more. It does not result in efficient spending in our education system, and I’ll come back to that later.

I wanted to talk a little bit about why we have a public education system in the first place, and what my colleague Camila Belich has raised here as being an attack on that public education system. Because on this side of the House we believe in an education system which everyone has access to, which we consider to be, you know, a privilege that all New Zealanders can go to their public school down the road in their local neighbourhood and get the same kind of education everywhere. That education needs to be of a high quality. And we all agree in this House that there are things that we need to improve, but that is the thing that we should all be debating: how we improve people’s access to their local education and take pride in their local schools and back their local teachers. Not this chimera of a bill which basically puts the politics of the ACT Party ahead of all of the evidence that we know works and that backs our local teachers to do the best they can.

Public education can be something that we’re really proud of in New Zealand. We’re really lucky in this country to have basically everyone being able to go to their local school. It’s something that not only brings out the best in our young people in New Zealand, but also is really important for those neighbourhoods. Local schools can be this cornerstone in our local neighbourhoods, in our cities, in our rural towns, which enable people to meet each other, to have a connection to one another, and for young people to be able to engage in a touch point for the public system.

Hon David Seymour: This is a fantasy—defending the indefensible.

ARENA WILLIAMS: And I hear the member David Seymour criticising that goal, but that is actually what we have in New Zealand. It’s a decade’s worth of a public education system which people are proud of and which we need to back more strongly.

The transformative power of education is something that we can all be proud of in this country. My dad’s story: he grew up on the shores of the Ōhiwa Harbour only speaking te reo Māori, and his parents weren’t in the picture. He grew up with his grandparents who didn’t have any kind of contact with the European world but were able to send their grandchild to the public school, and it was something they were really proud of. He went through primary school. He started when he was nine and he got to go to high school because Peter Fraser’s Government put school buses on the roads to let rural Maōri kids go to school. That kind of interaction with the State was this family’s first interaction. It was a really positive one because it transformed his life; the ability and the skills to read, to write, to be a part of that community then let him go on to teachers’ college to become a teacher and then a journalist.

It’s that transformative power of education that we want for every New Zealander. Only by investing in our public education system through things like buses to get kids to school, things that enable parents to be able to send their kids to school with no barriers like school lunches and an end to school donations, that’s the kind of priority we should be making, because it’s only through those measures that we allow everyone to have the same kind of access that my dad did. And when I talk about a social elevator, it is truly something, it is the only thing, really, that we have baked into our system which allows people, no matter what they are born into, no matter what conditions they grow up in, to get ahead in life. We need that public education system so that we are a thriving society which also is fair for people and allows people to get ahead.

When we introduce something like charter schools into the system, which is directly competing for the same funding that our public education system desperately needs, that is taking away from the kids that otherwise rely on it. That is taking away from Maōri kids, that is taking away from those kids who would otherwise not be able to get ahead. We should see this for what it is, which is an ideology focused on giving those who already have more of a leg up in an education system because they can pay for it. We should be focusing on funding our public schools well. We should be focusing on removing the barriers to success in education, like making sure kids are fed. But this Government’s priorities are backwards. They are not only taking away those things like free school lunches, which we know principals and schools are telling us improve educational outcomes, but it is further entrenching those inequities that exist in the system. That is why we should vote against this bill.

Improving educational achievement in this country is critical. I’m particularly interested, as a member on the Education and Workforce Committee, in when we get into the early childhood education and the removing of red tape, particularly around the network approval requirements introduced by the last Government. I’m looking forward to getting into the work and getting this bill passed through the House. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is, That theducation and Workforce Committee.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.

Instruction to Education and Workforce Committee