Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. With pleasure I rise on behalf of the Green Party to offer our support for this piece of legislation which I've just heard the Opposition is also supporting at this stage which was news to me because previous speakers seemed to suggest they were opposing it. So maybe they just need to spend a bit more time talking to each other and reading their notes. Despite the level of detail—picking up introduction" versus "introductory"; it did seem like there was a level of attention to detail coming from that side—it didn't seem to flow through into knowing what their vote was I think.I think it's been pointed out that this is a very significant piece of legislation and rather large—578 pages—and the overview is setting up a learning journey: a piece of legislation that follows the learning journey from early childhood through primary secondary tertiary and vocational training into one piece of legislation. I guess it's come out of a lot of the Tomorrow's Schools conversations around the country and there is a huge amount of detail in this with a range of different policy new policy initiatives while bringing together pieces of legislation: I understand the 1964 Education Act as well as the Education Act of 1989 as well as the legislation covering some of the tertiary education.I wanted just to point to some of the particular policy points that drew my interest possibly the least of which are some of the points around updating the legislation where it is removing the reference to standards and forms. It was way back in my time in the education system where we still had those and while I still have to have people explain to me what standard or form year 9 refers to not many people are asking that question anymore. So it's time that that was updated. It also removes the requirement for teachers to take an oath of allegiance which does seem kind of a feature of another time. And it removes the ability to exclude students in situations where the principal has reasonable grounds to believe the student is not clean enough to keep attending school—a philosophy or a concept that's quite hard to get your head around in today's world and it certainly seems very timely and well overdue to have that kind of concept removed from legislation.Some more substantive points—and there are many of them in this. This is actually providing a more robust framework around home-based early childhood education (ECE) which is really important. This is an area of early childhood that has developed significantly over the last few years but we haven't had good oversight of it and that means that the quality of care of children can't be guaranteed in the current context. So what this puts in place is police vetting for all adults in the home regardless of whether they are likely to be there during the hours of the home-based care to provide that certainty. And it gives the Education Review Office the power to enter a home where ECE is taking place so that they have that power of audit and check and I think that is incredibly important. I think there's some amazing work happening in some home-based ECE and in my community where the kindergartens in East Porirua have been supporting community members to get qualifications to be able to provide home-based ECE that's also led to them supporting them to get their homes insulated to be quality environments. That's provided employment as well as improved parenting know-how in the community as well as improved the standard of housing. An amazing initiative—so much kudos for them—but we need to make sure that all of those home-based ECE initiatives around the country have that same degree or a basic standard of care and that we can feel confident in the delivery for our kids.So also the legislation allows the Minister of Education to approve or decline applications to open a new early learning service based on specified criteria and as part of the application process to request further information. It is clear that we need more oversight of ECE. It's incredibly important in terms of our kids' development to have quality early childhood education and certainly it's the Green Party's view that we have not been stepping up to the plate to the degree that we need to in that area. This legislation will make it an offence to operate in an early childhood education centre without a licence.Some of the other aspects that I think are really important in this are around recognising the teacher shortage that we have and it will enable the Teaching Council to renew teachers' practising certificates where the applicant either has recent teaching experience or professional learning and development or has agreed to undertake a refresher course. I will be interested to hear the submissions around that point to make sure that we are addressing that teacher shortage while ensuring the adequate professionalism within the profession which has been well protected up to this point.The legislation also I think clarifies that satisfactory recent teaching experience will include overseas teacher experience and that just seems eminently sensible and good to have that clarified within legislation for many reasons. As we have a more diverse population it's good to have a teaching population that also has connections to other countries where our students may come from or indeed a teaching profession that reflects the diversity of our students. So that seems a quite simple measure that may help with that. So the legislation also provides a mandatory code of conduct for members of school boards with sanctions for non-compliance and broadens the objectives of the boards from the primary focus being on educational achievement to now include objectives to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and relevant student rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the Human Rights Act. When we see in the recent report around student educational achievement concerns around that and an increase in bullying in our schools and a gap in terms of educational outcomes and that we know as a country that we have not been able to deliver equitable outcomes for Māori actually it's really important that we recognise systemically that we need to change the way we do things to be able to deliver the standard of education that we expect for all of our children and particularly for tamariki Māori.The legislation also clarifies that the right to education includes the right to hours and puts limits on the variation in how long those hours can be varied for. That's about ensuring that children of all abilities are not being partially excluded from schools. We know that that has been happening and I do recognise that it's going to take a significant shift for our schools to be able to deliver that but our students our kids deserve it. The right to education is an absolute right and we have to do more to ensure that right is realised."