Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill.

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

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: I move, That the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) 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 four months and one day after the bill receives its first reading.

Early childhood education (ECE) is one of, arguably the most, important sectors that the Government is responsible for. The reason for that is not that around about $3.1 billion of taxpayer’s money goes into it. It’s not that parents stump up a comparable amount for their side of the funding, although those are significant amounts of money—around $6 billion. The reason it’s so important is that early childhood education has such a big influence on the development of young New Zealanders and their potential as they move on to participate in primary and then intermediate and then secondary and then tertiary education.

Now, I recently learned that three-year-olds have 85 percent of adult brain matter. Some people ask why three-year-olds don’t take more responsibility! On the other hand, it shows just how much of a young person’s development happens in those early days and it’s that that early childhood education can affect. That’s why it’s so important that the Government gets the regulation right. I think it’s fair to say that the early childhood education sector, for whatever reason—people could come up with their theories—has been badly neglected when it comes to Government policy. People that run these centres—around 4,000 of them up and down the country—are being frustrated, driven to distraction, by conflicting rules; by a really dictatorial approach; by really minor rules that are none the less enforced on pain of being shut down, given a notice, they can no longer continue; and by inconsistent enforcement.

The Government’s response actually came from the Ministry for Regulation to do a sector review, to go out and hear from the people affected and ask them, “What are your problems?” and then compare the rules that the centres are subjected to with good regulatory practice. After listening to literally thousands of people; going away, working with other Government departments, with the Education Review Office, with the Ministry of Education; listening to the people that run all the kindergartens, the big chains, the small cottage—you might say—early childhood centres, the home-based carers, what was found was that there needed to be about 15 different changes.

In fact, there were 15 recommendations from that report the Government adopted. If I was to simplify them, I would say that it comes down to simplifying the rules, improving the way the rules are enforced, and changing who enforces the rules. Those are the three changes that we’re going through. Ninety-eight licensing criteria are being crunched down to a smaller number, and many of those that remain will be greatly simplified to give people running ECEs an easier time, while making sure we have a laser focus on children’s safety.

There will also be a change from the Ministry of Education to the Education Review Office as the specialist enforcer. But it’s the bit in the middle—the way the rules are enforced—that we’re talking about today, in particular the establishment of a Director of Regulation, somebody who is accountable—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Oh, another bit of bureaucracy.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Someone said, “Oh, it’s more bureaucracy.” Well, the thing is, there’s already a person doing this job, but what is changing is that they are going to have statutory responsibility, principles of why the Government regulates early childhood centres and how it regulates early childhood centres, put into law so that people who actually run these centres, people who invest in them, people who actually do the hard work every day, if they feel that they’re getting an unfair deal, there’s one person who’s responsible under law to regulate responsibly, and that person is making sure that the rules are consistent up and down the country. That is something that I believe people want. In fact, I know that they want it, because when we went out and did a sector review, they told us that they wanted it.

We’re going to see a set of principles put in place that say child safety is at the centre of everything when we regulate—so is the children’s education. But, critically, there’s the principle that the regulation should be done in such a way that it has the least impact; that it’s proportional to the purpose; that people don’t get the run-around and have to fill out forms and papers just for the sake of it; that they don’t feel intimidated; that they don’t feel they’re going to be shut down immediately—they’re going to face a graduated approach, where it’s not one high-stakes decision; that there are actually processes and five steps of warning people if they have made a transgression, and then escalating from there, rather than what happens sometimes to unfortunate centre operators, with no warning: being shut down and losing their licences.

This is the kind of approach that people want the Government to take. They don’t want open slather. They do want regulation. But they also don’t want a punitive approach where rules that they may not have known about, that were inconsistently enforced, suddenly show up on their door with a punitive approach that takes away their basic rights. That is why this piece of legislation is so important. It forms a part of the Government’s response to the regulatory sector review. By the time this bill’s done, the changes from the Ministry of Education to the Education Review Office are done, and the new rules are put in place, we will be able to say that in less than two years the Government has gone in, listened to early childhood educators, looked at the rules they’re subject to, streamlined the rules, laser-focused on child safety, and ensured that people can spend more time investing in the potential and the growth of the next generation of young New Zealanders and less time dealing with bureaucracy and paperwork. With that in mind, I commend this bill to the House. Thank you very much.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. There’s not much that I agree with that member on, on the other side of the House, but I do agree that the early childhood sector is one of the most important sectors that Government does have the oversight of. It is the formation of our young people’s learning starts, although I would probably, actually, argue that it starts prior to that, in the womb, but it is where we see the biggest learning of our young people over that time.

I’m pleased to hear the member start to show some facts about his understanding of early childhood development. One thing that I would say, though, in that speech, is that I’d have to go back and check in the Hansard, but I’m not certain that I heard the word “teacher” anywhere in the actual speech, and that does concern me.

This Government has had an attack on early childhood since they started in office, and it has been one thing after the other. I was going through the member’s press releases and having a look at the different areas of where they’ve attacked. Everything—every month there has been something where they have got rid of something. It’s been based on an ideological basis rather than on quality education, and often there has not been that mention of the people who are the most important, that make the biggest difference to our young people in those early childhood centres, and that’s the teachers.

This bill puts the control of early childhood education in the hands of a Director of Regulation rather than focusing on the outcomes of quality early childhood education. It is only going to be the children at the heart of this, and their whānau, who are going to be the losers. As a country, we need to have a laser focus on high-quality early childhood education and the drivers for that. If we lose that focus, if we start to use some distracting information, then we’re going to be all the worst in our system. We have a system, as it is now, that has been lauded worldwide. We have a system that the rest of the world has looked at and said, “This is an absolutely amazing early childhood education system that you have in your country. How do you get that?”

I know this because I’ve had conversations with Ministers of Education across the globe, including in jurisdictions where we look up to them for what they do, such as the Scandinavian countries. They have held us in awe of what we do, but actually, now, they’re starting to ask us, “What on earth is going on in your system, where you are putting kids second and putting centre owners first?” That’s what I heard in that opening speech—that the Minister had had lots of conversations with centre owners. But I ask how many conversations were had with teachers who work with those children, one-on-one, during the day? How many conversations—or one-on-10, or whatever their ratios are. It is really hard for them out there at the moment.

That is one of the key reasons why we are losing so many good quality teachers out of the profession: because we are simply not looking after them and not giving them the status of the professionals that they are. If we are saying that this is one of our most important sectors in Government, and we heard the Minister say that here this afternoon, then why are we not putting quality early childhood education front and centre, and putting those teachers—those qualified and skilled teachers—front and centre?

Hon Kieran McAnulty: I’ll tell you why: profits.

Hon JAN TINETTI: That’s absolutely right: it is about profits. This is all this Government is doing at the moment, is siding with the people who are making the profits and not the people who are actually working and doing and delivering that quality education.

I really feel for those teachers. I asked the Minister how many centres he has been around lately, because I’ve been to quite a number, and in those centres people’s morale is low. It is quality teachers, who are absolutely stressed, and they are crying out for them to be recognised and their sector to be recognised as an area that this Government needs to really home into that quality early childhood education.

We’ve already had a number of academics in this country—really amazing academics in this area—who have spoken up and said what they think about this piece of legislation, and I look forward to seeing them. I’m sad that it’s going to select committee, but I look forward to seeing and hearing from them there. I do not support this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Let’s be clear: when it comes to early childhood education (ECE), I think we can all agree that the education of our youngest and of our mokopuna and our tamariki is paramount. It is important when we want to ensure that we have the development, the education of our children at the heart of our decision making. It is important for us to know the impact and the kind of nurture that is relied upon of our teaching force when you’re looking at early childhood education, or education in general.

However, what is quite laughable about this bill is the fact that when we are looking at some of the Cabinet papers, “children”, “teacher”, “education” are rarely found. Instead, what we do see in Cabinet papers: “reduce cost to business”. This is the paramount goal of the Associate Minister of Education on introducing any bills when it comes to early childhood education.

Now, there are a number of concerns that we already know in the ECE sector. We know about the high cost of fees to parents, the kind of racketeering that we see despite the 20 hours free that is being offered. We see teacher-child ratio being at an all-time high so that there are too many children per class and teachers are struggling. All of this is despite the fact that we have a world-leading—literally world-leading—education strategy in early child education in Te Whāriki.

The idea of setting up a director in this is adding more yellow tape—let us be clear about that. It is setting up, also, that director to fail without fundamentally changing the levers and changing the way we address early childhood education. How is that director going to be able to fulfil the requirement of health and safety and wellbeing of children when you have higher and higher teacher-student ratios, when you no longer have qualified teachers, when ECE teachers have just lost out on $22 million, as has been lately reported?

All of these should be concerning for parents and for the people of Aotearoa New Zealand when it comes to bills such as this. This bill does ignore major, major systemic issues that we are currently seeing, but not only that. I think it’s really important, in this case, to actually challenge the Minister on the fact of whether he will genuinely listen to submitters in the select committee on this bill—a challenge to the Minister to take some actual responsibility and accountability for bad decisions that have been made under that Minister.

To give an example, when the Education and Training Amendment Bill was first introduced, part of that that affected ECE was the removal of network management; 96 percent of the submitters opposed it, yet that did not sway the Minister in any way, shape, or form. The Minister doesn’t care about what the New Zealand public thinks—just cares about who the Minister’s been talking to, who are the businesses of ECE, and the privatisation of ECE.

Other decisions that are made—what we have found recently today: that the vast majority of the feedback on the Minister’s school lunch programme, for example, is negative, overwhelmingly the feedback is negative, and that was done through an Official Information Act request. The Minister must be able to be held accountable for introducing something like this into the House, and we are looking forward to seeing the submitters on this.

The Green Party recognises the issue that we have, that ECE is facing in Aotearoa New Zealand, and we have the Green solution for it. In our Green Budget, we stated that we are wanting to see changes to ECE, changes that this bill proposes to do, but it cannot be done by introducing a director. It needs to be done from a system level and from a funding level. What we want to see is to ensure that we are no longer privatising our ECE. That is the crux of the issue. We should not be able to commercialise the bookends of our lives. So the Green Party will not support this bill, but we’re looking forward to the select committee stage.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise as a member of the Education and Workforce Committee to speak in support of the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill. There will be some changes that will make it easier to do the work of early childhood education without as much tanglement of red tape, and I commend the bill to the House.

It’s a pleasure to rise to speak in support of this bill. We heard a lot from the Opposition about somehow this bill is not about the welfare of children, but look at the following objectives of Part 2: number one, to protect the health, safety, and wellbeing of children receiving early childhood education; and number two, to improve educational and developmental outcomes for those children. What is that about “other than looking after those children”?

New Zealand First supports the reforms that prioritise children’s wellbeing, while bringing clarity and confidence back to public regulation. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It gives me great pleasure to speak in support of the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill. There are many, many positive changes being proposed in here that many of our colleagues have already articulated tonight, and I’m looking forward to it commencing itself to the select committee. I commend it to the House.

Kia orana, Madam Speaker. I didn’t think I’d get to my call so quickly, given the nature of this issue, but it is what it is. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this bill that touches on the education sector. It’s unfortunate that the nature of the content in the bill is something that doesn’t give me a lot of pleasure in having to talk about.

We heard from the Minister responsible for this bill that, you know, this is around basic rights being taken away of those that are involved in the operational functionality of early childhood sector operations—no, it’s not, actually. What’s really important is that tamariki, our learners, our ākonga are actually in safe learning environments. That is what is really important.

We’ve heard from my colleague the Hon Jan Tinetti around the fact that quality education is vital, it is important. We are well known all around the world for the way in which we not only treat those practitioners in that sector but the way in which we go about ensuring that our sectors are connected to the community and also connected to whānau, because that is absolutely important. That is what is vital.

I started out my training as a secondary school teacher, as an educator, and I cannot underscore the absolute value of making sure that when kids go to a learning environment, they get the best possible chance that they can in that environment. My hat goes off to all of those in our primary sector, to colleagues that were in the secondary sector, but also to those who do the hard yards in the early childhood education (ECE) sector as well, because teachers, regardless of where you are—whether you’re ECE, primary, secondary, or tertiary—will notice the huge difference if the learning environment in those ECE opportunities is such that it’s not actually giving young folk the best start in life.

I’m sure we’ve all had an opportunity as members of Parliament to go out into different learning environments, whether it be a kindergarten or an ECE, to see and to really understand the hard work that those practitioners, those teachers do on a daily basis, who go beyond what is expected of them on a standard day. I’ve had a chance to visit a number of Pacific ECEs, actually, operating around this country. The real passion that parents, uncles and aunties, grandparents, siblings, cousins, and others have around the real intimate nature that those ECE opportunities provide is something that cannot be taken for granted.

What this bill does is it basically just cuts through all of that. This is coming from someone who also holds the regulation portfolio. It is ironic, actually, that this is going to introduce a new Director of Regulation in the ECE sector. This is going to create more red tape into the sector. This is something that basically flies in the face of what is good legislation, but it is no surprise to me because, if we look at the track record of this associate education Minister, not only is he wanting to pursue these changes; he’s already said—as a colleague has already mentioned—that the changes to the lunches in schools programme is a problem. It is really something quite negative, where he’s blaming local government as a sector for the issues around school attendance and saying that they need to do more, when they are absolutely connected to their communities.

This sense that it is some form of dictatorship under an existing regime is absolute nonsense. What this is doing is sending a very strong and clear signal to those who are in the early childhood education sector at the moment that, actually, the work that you do, the understandings that you bring to the role that you undertake, is something that is not valued. This is a bill that is not sending any sense of valuation to those involved in in the sector.

It is disappointing that the Government seem to want to look at those who are working really hard in the ECE sector and say, “We don’t actually value the fact that you’re trained. We don’t value the fact that you’re qualified. We don’t value the fact that you’re skilled, and we certainly don’t value the fact that you are experienced.” If this Government did, they wouldn’t be looking to cut through many of the exciting opportunities, actually, that exist in our kōhanga, that exist in our kindergartens, that exist in any early childhood centre. This is something that we will continue oppose even through the select committee.

It’s a pleasure to rise this evening and talk about the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill, and I really look forward to the Education and Workforce Committee’s report back to the House. I commend this bill.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Thank you for that. Well, what’s this bill really about? This is a classic piece of ACT Party legislation, where they put in a series of kind of complicated Orwellian double-speak clauses. If we think about it, the cover is this Director of Regulation for early childhood education (ECE). Why we need to have a new Director of Regulation is beyond me, but, in fact, the ACT Party seems to like clipboard holders, so we’re going to have one, or probably more.

The interesting thing is that this director has, under the Act, a whole lot of duties, and it’s got statutorily independent functions and then functions which are not independent. If you go to new section 27C, inserted by clause 7, it makes it clear, as you’d expect: “In performing their statutorily independent functions, the Director of Regulation must act independently of the Minister”. Now, what’s the inverse of that? That when you are exercising any other function, you’re not independent of the Minister. That is to say, you’re to act under the direction of the Minister. Once again, this is the ACT Party reaching deep into the Public Service and seeking to direct it for its own political ends.

You see that it uses words which, on their face, sound relatively innocuous: take a “risk-based, proportionate, fair, and transparent approach”; avoid “imposing unnecessary costs on parents, caregivers, and service providers.” Now, that might be OK if you gave it to an independent public servant to interpret, but when you give it to an ACT Party Minister to interpret, it means “Do away with the rules”. When you come to dealing with complaints and issuing guidance on the regulatory approach and regulatory strategy, they are not statutorily independent; the Minister can direct the Director of Regulation as to how that should go about.

That is the invidious kind of intervention that the ACT Party has into our Public Service. Carrying out “proactive, regular, risk-based monitoring”—what does that mean? Well, what that means is that the Minister for early childhood education can set parameters as to what kind of ECEs will be subject to scrutiny at a particular level, and which kind will be subject to—shall we say—light-handed scrutiny. Perhaps the ones that are a part of a large network of ECE providers will be subject to lighter scrutiny than small, independent, and community-based providers. I don’t know, but that might be what we’d see. This here is just part of a programme of deregulating ECE and other important sectors for the benefit of a few. The suggestion that the safety of children is being put first, frankly, doesn’t lie easily in the mouth of the Minister who spoke at the first reading moments ago.

What we see here—and it is truly ironic that we have the Minister for Regulation with his Ministry for Regulation now speaking to having a Director of Regulation—is a proliferation of regulation positions. It’s absolutely outstanding, and Mr Hernandez’s point about it being a sea of yellow tape is a good one. I wish I’d thought of it. In fact, what the ACT Party are doing is just creating, time and again, bureaucracy upon bureaucracy, which are actually there to push their own ideological and political agenda. That they’re starting with our children—with our youngest children, our early childhood education—is deeply concerning.

Of course, when we see these new regulations come out, when we see them having less scrutiny of children’s welfare—of nappy changes, of medication being delivered, of how much they’ve eaten, the bottles they’ve had; all those things which, as parents, we know are important, that we want to know about—what’s going to happen then? That’s what we’re going to get from this kind of bill. I certainly don’t commend it.

I’m the final speaker in the first reading of the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill, and it’s really sad to hear the other side of the House making out as if there’s some really deep conspiracy theory going on. The functions of the Director of Regulation, as proposed, are: enforcing compliance by service providers, providing information to parents, carrying out risk-based monitoring of compliance by service providers, and helping improve the knowledge of parents. There’s no conspiracy theory. We commend this bill to the House.

The question is, That the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill 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