Education and Training Amendment Bill

I move, That the Education and Training Amendment 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 legislation brings into effect policies that have actually been introduced in New Zealand before. It is certainly true that there are some modifications and improvements that will mean that charter schools, as we propose them today, will be even better than the pilot of charters that was run in New Zealand from around 2012 to 2017. However, that does not mean that there is an extensive need to consult on something that we effectively ran a five-year pilot of—very successfully, I might add—in New Zealand.

The network provisions are simply removing something that has had no positive effect, is openly criticised by the sector, and will return to the status quo ante that all parties appear to have been happy with for a long period of time.

Finally, the power of the Secretary to require attendance rules be made in schools is simply enabling the Secretary to make a rule—not any particular rule—and one would hope that allowing the Ministry of Education to make rules about children having to attend school and schools having to report that they’ve attended would be relatively uncontroversial across most parties in the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m somewhat perturbed to hear the Minister, the Hon David Seymour, minimising in this debate the importance of an education bill and saying that this is stuff that all sides would be really interested in and that would mean we would shorten the process because of it.

It would be very rare that an education bill would have a shortened select committee, because it is education—we are talking about our kids; we are talking about our present and our future. It is really surprising to me that the Minister would take this sort of line of thought around the fact that because we’ve had a failed experiment of charter schools in the past, it means we’re not going to consult with any great detail on them. I would have thought, because it was a failed experiment, we should have had more consultation happen.

The Minister has sort of minimised the last two parts of the bill as well, and I want to talk about those first, as the reason why we do need to have a very good and robust select committee, including the timing of it. It really concerns me that we would shorten that time. And then I would like to come back to the charter schools and the failed experiment that we’ve had, and why that consultation needs to be longer.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): I do warn the member that this is quite a tight debate.

Hon JAN TINETTI: I do know that, Mr Speaker, and thank you for reminding me of that. I am well aware of that. I’m talking about why the time frame needs to be a normal time frame. So please, Mr Speaker, I’m well aware, but you’re very welcome to keep reminding me of that, as well.

With that early childhood change, the Minister said that most people would be happy about that and so there wouldn’t be any need to have that conversation. That is not the feedback that I have had from the early childhood sector, and therefore there will be a lot of people who will be very interested in the network management provisions. They understand the implications of that for the early childhood sector, particularly in those low socioeconomic areas. I know there is a large number of them who want to take the time to submit on this particular part of this bill and that they see this as their opportunity to have their thoughts and their wishes being said and heard across this House. The only time they will have is during the select committee process, so to shorten that time is a real concern.

I’d also say, for them, they would be really concerned, having heard the previous debate, that the Minister did spend a lot of time speaking about charter schools and probably thinks that people will not be submitting so much on the early childhood side of this, whereas, in fact, there are a lot of people out there who are very concerned that the early childhood provision part of this bill is kind of being rammed in with charter schools, and they see that they’ve become the poor relation to the schooling sector. They want to make their voices heard in this particular process, so to shorten that time is absolutely insulting to those people from that particular sector. I’m really urging the Minister to rethink for those particular people, for whom he has the oversight as Associate Minister, with his early childhood hat on.

There is also the attendance, but I’m not really going to spend much time talking about that. I think there will be people who will submit on that.

Hon David Seymour: I can imagine the member wouldn’t want to talk about attendance!

Hon JAN TINETTI: I am absolutely quite happy to talk about attendance, Mr Seymour, but this is not the time to talk about this. As the Speaker has said, this is the time to be talking about the length of time we’re spending at select committee. So let’s have a conversation about that at another stage. And let’s have a conversation about the invitation that you gave to me at select committee, which, I notice, hasn’t been forthcoming since select committee last week. But I do look forward to getting that invitation anytime soon to my office, and then we can meet up to talk about attendance further.

Let’s put that aside now and go back to talk about charter schools and why it is really important to have the correct time spent on this at our select committee. The Minister talked about why he thinks we need a shorter time, around the fact that he’d already piloted the charter school model back between 2014 and—whatever the time was; five years he had of that failed experiment. And it was a failed experiment. So, therefore, there are a number of people who have said they want to be able to speak on this, to present on it, to be able to speak on it. But not only that, what the Minister has failed to say in his speech right up front, about this particular part of the debate, is that this is not the same. He is actually putting a very new part and a very big change into our education system. He is talking about current public schools having the opportunity to become charter schools.

Now, that is one of the biggest changes to hit our education sector. Why would we shorten the debate? That is going to take choice away from our kids—and I will say why in a moment. Why would we shorten that debate to make that specific change in our education sector? Why I say that it takes choice away from our kids is that if a school that has an enrolment zone that is a current State school chooses to become a charter school, what choice do those young people have to go anywhere else, when all of those schools around them have an enrolment zone? The Minister has taken the choice away—

Hon Member: What’s this got to do with the report-back date?

Hon JAN TINETTI: And thank you, Mr Speaker; that’s exactly why we cannot have a shortened debate on this. Our education system is far, far, far too important to narrow this down to about eight weeks of consultation. In that time, we’re not talking about eight weeks of consultation; we’re talking of only a few weeks—or even a few days, really—where written submissions come in, and then we have to hear the many oral submissions that come in.

I was on the select committee in 2018 when we talked about the repealing of the charter schools legislation. I know how many people submitted to that. We’re talking in the thousands, of people who submitted to that. To shorten a select committee process right now is not OK in the education sector. It is putting our young people’s education at risk by taking away the true debate. But the Minister is over there, saying that that is not right. That is exactly what is right. I remember the last time the Minister submitted to the select committee on charter schools and he urged the committee to listen to what he said, and he urged the committee to pay due diligence and really think about it. He is not giving people that same due diligence by shortening this period. He is taking that away from people, and that is not OK. He has stood up before in this House about how we should have a strong democratic process, and he is now the one who is saying we will shorten it because we have run this system in the past. We have not run this system as it stands at the moment, we have not run it the way that he has set out in his bill, and we have not run it with those schools that are currently State schools becoming charter schools.

One of the final points that I would like to make is that consultation with Māori is really important in this particular instance, and I fear that shortening this process will take away from that consultation. Māori are very much who the Minister has identified, or one of the key demographics that the Minister has identified, and we have strong ways of doing our consultation and working with our consultation with Māori. I fear that the voices of Māori who don’t align particularly to iwi groups will be marginalised, but I also fear that the voices of those in iwi groups will be marginalised in this particular process. Whether they come in support or whether they come against the charter schools, their voices will be marginalised in a much shorter process. I am really, really concerned that an area that we do really well, and we get told about overseas that we do really well, with our Māori-medium education, will not have the opportunity in such a short time frame to be able to give that consultation.

My final point is that there are a lot of young people with learning support needs who have contacted me about this bill. They are concerned about the lottery of the roles that could occur and do occur overseas with charter schools. They want to have the time. They want to have a full and strong process throughout the select committee to consider this bill. The Minister has taken that democratic right away.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I, too, echo the previous speaker, the Hon Jan Tinetti’s sentiment that the shortened time frame for the select committee on such an important bill which has future implications is something that should be quite concerning for all people. When we are looking at select committee timing, we are looking at usually six months to collect the information, to do the due diligence of consultation. So we should, theoretically, not be looking at reporting back to the House on 5 September but pushing it out to December, which I understand may come with challenges on some of the Associate Minister’s own goals in terms of when certain elements of this bill should be set up.

I would just like to speak on the rationale on why having a full select committee process and a full duration of the select committee process is really vital for this particular bill. First of all, we mentioned already that this amendment bill comes in three different and seemingly unrelated parts. In the first part we talked about it in terms of the attendance element of it. You know, there will be people who would like to consult and who would like to feed into this bill, who may need some time to fully flesh out and understand the implications, but also what additional work there would be when the Secretary for Education is given the authority to collect some of this attendance data. I think this particular element might be the smallest element of the three that we are looking at, but still, there will be people who would like to provide some feedback on this, and that may require time to generate some of the data. Now, the previous speaker, the Hon Jan Tinetti, has already talked about this in terms of the network approval element. When we get attendance, this is tied into the Associate Minister of Education’s announcement of the attendance action plan, which is for schools, particularly for public and for State schools.

The second part, when we’re looking at network approval, looks at the completely different elements of our educational system, which is around early childhood education. Again, when we’re looking at something like this, the network approval process has only been in place for a month and we have already read in the regulatory impact statement about the limited time. Consistently, over and over again, when we’re looking at the regulatory impact statement, we see the limited time that the ministry and adviser had to consult and put something together. As a result, it is absolutely crucial that we will be given sufficient time to consult on the network element, particularly in terms of the network approval when we’re looking at what the impact would be on community-based early childhood education (ECE) providers and what the impact will be on private for-profit ECE providers. What will be the impact it has in relation to the FamilyBoost that the Government has announced that gives compensation or rebate to parents? With a lot of these we are looking at multiple elements and multiple stakeholders that potentially would like to feed into this particular element of the network approval. Hence the absolutely vital element of having that full select committee process and not just simply having the report back on 5 September.

When we’re looking at having the report back on 5 September, I also just want to sort of lay out what some of that could potentially look like as well. It looks like there will be a submission process for possibly the July period, and then there will be hearings, etc., during the August period so that we are able to report back. So, in fact, when we’re looking at the process itself of a select committee, it actually doesn’t give sufficient time for people to provide that feedback and for the select committee itself to be able to hear from the relevant and broad-ranging stakeholders that is required for something like education. The impact of education is a slow burn in Aotearoa. If we don’t do something well, if we’re not being meticulous about it, it will have a long-term impact. So, again, this is why it is so important. The Government has already mentioned that they like the democratic process. They want to have a decentralised process, but at the same time, we’re seeing that it’s not giving sufficient time for the public to fully express their democratic right, as is the right of people of Aotearoa to be able to feed into something like this.

The third element of the bill is around charter schools, and this is probably the most crucial and the most time-consuming element of this particular bill. When we are looking at the impact it will have, first of all, if we are just looking at the conversion element that the Associate Minister has announced—this is State schools converting to charter schools, which also, again, does not engage with or is apart from what he says over here in the bill. It is apart from State-integrated schools, distance schools, kura kaupapa Māori, specialist schools, and designated character schools. So when we’re only looking at consultation from public schools, we’re looking at feedback from agencies, we’re looking at feedback from schools, and within that school we’re looking at feedback from teachers, we’re looking at feedback from support staff, we’re looking at feedback from students, and we’re looking at how schools are going to have sufficient time to consult with their communities, with their local communities. This is something that the Associate Minister has himself mentioned: this consulting is about allowing communities to have their voice back and have their level of autonomy, and consulting with the boards of the schools.

That is just from the school component, which may take up a lot of time; you also have the community element. The Hon Jan Tinetti has already mentioned the kind of consultation that will be required with whānau, hapū, and iwi from a Māori perspective. This is something we must acknowledge: that the current education system has let our Māori rangatahi and students down in many regards. So it is really important that we have the time to be able to engage with them, and for these hapū and iwi to be able to engage and have the wānanga, have that kōrero themselves, to be able to sensitively tease out exactly what they would like to feed in as part of this process.

Another element of this, looking more at engaging with communities, is our rural communities, not just simply our regional communities but our rural communities, who also feel that they are being let down by the system. So it’s really important that they get given sufficient time to be able to have their say as well.

Grant McCallum: I just did!

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Of course, finally, the last part of this puzzle—and you know, as you can see that other members who are also incredibly passionate about rural communities may also encourage their communities to make submissions. They would also then know how long it takes for rural communities to pull something together.

The last component of this is how the students are able to pull something together. We’re looking at not just students but also student collectives. The student voice is incredibly important when we’re looking at anything that is related to education. For far too long our system has negated or has neglected the voice of the students. So, in this case, how are we going to consult with the relevant students, in conjunction with their parents, in conjunction with their teachers, and in conjunction with their schools? This is going to be really, really important. And when we are looking at all of these, obviously we are also looking at how we are able to do these sorts of consultations potentially with students or potentially with families whose English may not be their first language. How are we going to be able to consult with those families and with those communities in a really sensitive and articulate and measured way, so that they know exactly what it means for their children and for their families? This is something that would affect every person in Aotearoa because every person in Aotearoa goes through the education system.

We absolutely need to have that level of scrutiny and that level of insight from across the board, from all aspects, from all facets of our community of Aotearoa when we’re looking at this particular bill. So I would highly, highly encourage and endorse the delay of this reporting to the six-month select committee stage.

Arena Williams: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

Before I call the next call, just now we’ve had two quite full speeches on this and provided a lot of context. From henceforth, I’ll be looking for some very narrow arguments around the timing. So I am calling Arena Williams.

For a call or for a point of order?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Sorry—calling Arena Williams.

ARENA WILLIAMS: OK. Briefly on—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Oh, sorry. Was that a point of order?

ARENA WILLIAMS: I would like a call, though, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Oh, you’re seeking the call?

ARENA WILLIAMS: I am seeking the call.

Katie Nimon: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The member called a point of order.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): OK, so the member is—point of order.

ARENA WILLIAMS: Mr Speaker, I acknowledge your guidance there and that was something that I was listening for. I just want to be helpful to the House and bring your attention to Speaker’s ruling 115/3. I’d invite you to consider the Minister’s speech—that’s on page 115, Mr Speaker—where he provided the House with some further context, as you say.

The reason why members on this side of the House have been debating that context is because the Minister didn’t actually provide a reason for his use of urgency. So in Speaker’s ruling 115/3, it’s about the Speaker not accepting a closure motion when a Minister has not provided a reason for the need for use of urgency. In that case, we are still interested in hearing from the Minister and we have a Minister here in the House who might be able to provide a reason, but we haven’t heard that yet. So that is why Opposition members have spoken quite widely to the context, because we’re still waiting for the Minister’s use of urgency reasoning.

Yes, that’s why I’ve allowed the debate to actually be wider than I may have otherwise. But at this stage, we also move to the repetition stage, so I just indicate now that I’ll give the member a call—indicating, too, that we’re looking for new material.

Mr Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak to this motion. The reason I am speaking is because I want to urge the Associate Minister of Education to consider a later report-back date. That’s for two reasons: one is the ability of the Education and Workforce Committee to use its financial scrutiny functions for this bill, and the second is for its consultative functions, and some assistance for the Minister, in what will be a contentious piece of this legislation. Given that it is a closer report back, one of the risks open here that the Government will be weighing out is its consultation responsibilities with Māori groups, and so I’ll speak to that in the second half of this contribution.

Firstly, to those financial scrutiny functions, it’s really important for the Education and Workforce Committee to actually have a longer extension date than would be normal, because this is pretty unique in what this legislation would empower. You’ve got a use of a public asset here, which has been public before and open to the scrutiny of something like the Office of the Auditor-General and subject to those provisions which apply to the use of public funds, then moving into a system where it would not be subject to that level of scrutiny. So what’s going to be really important here is for the Education and Workforce Committee to be able to not only hear from members of the public but also hear well-prepared work from the Public Service on what those new financial oversight arrangements should be, because this is the use of public funds moving to private benefit. It is almost unique in the sense that only this select committee is going to perform those functions which makes sure those governance arrangements are appropriate for what had been, sort of, a public asset in public ownership.

The questions that the select committee will need to consider—and it will need a proper briefing from the Office of the Auditor-General on this—are whether those financial oversight provisions, which have been performed by the Public Service in the past, should be performed by some other independent entity or should be performed in a way which is then publicly available, and, if so, what checks and balances there are on that. They will also need to consider who the appropriate auditor is for a situation like this, because we’ve already seen that the use of public funds by charter schools has been widely debated. That was one of the things we heard from the Minister. When the Minister provided his commentary on this motion, which he had introduced just moments ago, he said that the pilot had been successful. But you’ve also heard from the Hon Jan Tinetti that the average annual operating cost per student across all charter schools was over $18,000, which was almost triple the average of the $6,600 for public schools over the same—she was quoting, there, the researcher Dr Shannon Walsh. So what we see here is a select committee which will be presented with, basically, alternate facts about what the financial implications of this are and how that money has been spent in the past compared to now.

The reason why I bring up the pilot and what the Minister said about that is, actually, the pilot presents the select committee with more financial information than it had in the past. It needs to scrutinise that information. That’s the reason why we do pilots in the education and the health system: so that we have robust financial information in the first place, which we can then make good governance decisions about. When the Minister brings up the fact that he has a pilot here and that he alleges that it is successful, that select committee’s job is then to go away and make sure, for that Minister, that he is correct about that. We need, in this House, to come back to the next reading of this bill in a way that we can be sure that, actually, the financial arrangements do have the right level of oversight and are, as the Minister said, being done in a way which has been successful in the past. That’s really worthy of the House’s time because this is quite a unique situation where we have public assets going into what will then be used for private benefit.

We also have heard the New Zealand Educational Institute Te Riu Roa say that the cost is up to $48,000, for $121 per student annually, which is more than six times the average funding for students in State schools. So the reason I bring that up is, actually, I would propose to the Minister that what would be useful here is to not only instruct the select committee to spend more time but to seek that further analysis by not only the Office of the Auditor-General but also by Treasury, who are the only kind of policy shop that we have to be able to make these kinds of decisions, so we’re not using alternative facts.

I then turn to the issue of consultation. The motion has been made to the Education and Workforce Committee—that is useful—but under the new Standing Orders provisions, following the review in 2020, there are also provisions for that committee to work with other committees on particular parts of legislation and particular topics of inquiry. It would be really useful—and I urge the Minister to consider this—to ask for the Education and Workforce Committee to also work with the Māori Affairs Committee to consider this particular piece of consultation and to drill into the details here. If the Māori Affairs Committee is able to then consider what the Crown’s duty of active protection is in working with Māori in the education sector, then that would be a useful thing to be able to report back to the House.

The duty also owed is one of consultation. As I said before, this bill opens up some new risk for the Government—it’s a new legal risk. If consultation isn’t properly conducted with Māori interest groups, there is a risk here that it will create ongoing litigation, ongoing lack of trust, between those people and the Crown. It’s something that all members of this House should be interested in because, as parliamentarians, we really are stewards of the Crown’s relationship there, which is created by those principles of the Treaty and by obligations under the Treaty. So it would be useful for that Minister to consider the role of the Māori Affairs Committee here, to consider the role that that bipartisan, cross-partisan committee can play in our Parliament to open up space for what is, essentially, playing out the duty of good faith owed by the Crown here to Māori who want to participate in it.

Those are the two points I have. I look forward to hearing from another Minister of the House about the reason why there is urgency required, and another one of my colleagues then can speak to that point.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. As Labour’s associate spokesperson for education, in particular for Māori, I want to add my contribution to the argument, why we need to have a longer select committee process to allow for proper and actual consultation to take place with Māori. Now, I know the issue has been raised by previous members—

Grant McCallum: Repetition.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: It’s not repetition because I want to take the House to the departmental disclosure statement which says—yup, it’s on page 12—“Due to time constraints, the Ministry of Education has not been able to undertake formal consultation with the public on any … proposals in the Bill.” There has been absolutely no consultation on any of the proposals in this bill.

I want to talk to the regulatory impact statement. Let me take you to page 29 of that, where it talks about the Tiriti o Waitangi analysis. At paragraph 109, it says “As a partner to Te Tiriti, the Crown has a duty to actively promote and protect Tiriti rights [and interests] and to develop education settings in a way that supports Māori-Crown relationships.” This duty is recognised in section 4(1)(d) of the Act, which records one of the education system’s purposes as being to establish and regulate an education system that honours Te Tirit o Waitangi and supports Māori-Crown relationships. Te Tiriti analysis supports the Crown to uphold our obligations to Māori by actively considering how a charter school model might impact Māori.

I am arguing that we need to have an extended time frame because, as was argued in the Waitangi Tribunal for the repeal of section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act, Māori have said that it is not partnership and it is not consultation to invite Māori to participate in a select committee process. That is not the standard for consultation.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Well, bearing in mind, Ms Prime, that broadening out about the actual fact of consultation versus the time for consultation are two different arguments.

Hon WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Yep, so I’m making the point that that is not even the appropriate place for it, but we have an acknowledgment in this departmental disclosure statement that none has taken place whatsoever. So all we have is the select committee process, and I argue that is not upholding the Treaty responsibilities and obligations of the Crown when it comes to Māori.

Now, if that is the only place where this can actually take place, is the time frame adequate and sufficient for that to be meaningful? I don’t think it is, and I am arguing that the time frame is too short to allow for there to be any meaningful consultation and work with Māori on what is proposed in this legislation. And I implore the members on the other side of the House to go and speak to their Minister about their concerns, about their failure to uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi. I’m sure that Minister in particular will be so interested in Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

If I can guide the members and tell them to look at pages 29 and 30 of the regulatory impact statement and the further table of analysis, which points out what all of those issues are, when you look at the number of considerations that the advice has, I do not believe that the time that has been allowed is sufficient to address all of the things that they have identified need to take place in consultation, need to be answered on how to improve these proposals for how to deliver for Māori in our education system. Thank you.

I move, That debate on this question now close.