Upston Louise: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Upston Louise: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 24 March 2010. Volume:661;Page:9826. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupo) 
: 
 I am very pleased to stand and talk about Part 1 of the Education Amendment Bill in its Committee stage. I want take the focus back to the two main points that this bill addresses and I will pick up on the one that states the legislation basically is about reducing compliance costs for schools in the area of police vetting. 
I am very pleased that National started with a bill that Labour was unable to support in the first reading. At this stage of proceedings we have ended up with a bill that is supported across the Chamber with the exception of the Green Party. That is democracy in action. The discussion on reducing compliance costs relating to police vetting is a keen interest of mine. I firmly believe as this Government believes that we must make sure that as much of the spending as possible is focused on the right area. Anything that gets in the way of schools teaching and of schools achieving positive outcomes in education is what we have our sights on. 
In terms of police vetting we added the clauses in new section 78C to make sure early childhood services and schools are able to get the vetting done in a time frame that suits them. We also needed to make sure the vet would be required before non-teaching staff had unsupervised access to children. It is an important part of the amendment bill. It is about making sure children in school environments and in early childhood services are safe. 
I spoke in the second reading about the growing number of home-based early childhood services. Adults in those families over the age of 17 need to be included in that police vet because children in the care of the home-based services are exposed to them too. As it is an area that is growing it is important that we do not layer unnecessary costs compliances and regulation on to the services that take the focus away from education. Schools and early childhood services will have to request a police vet check within at least 2 weeks of non-teaching staff starting work instead of as previously was the case before the staff start work at the school. It will mean that there is not a hold-up and it reduces the risk of delays being incurred because of the police. 
Another amendment that has been confirmed is the policy position that police vet checks will not need to be renewed for staff who are no longer employed by the school or early childhood education service. That is common sense but it was something that we needed to tidy up. Schools or early childhood education services will need to apply for a police vet within 4 weeks of the Act coming into force. That will also ensure that they are not held up by any police delays. 
Police vetting was one of the primary focuses of the amendments. The second focus was the whole area of information matching between the Teachers Council and the Ministry of Education. There has been quite a discussion about that already so I do not see it as necessary to cover old ground. But it is important to make sure that we focus on issues like the reduction of compliance costs for school services. Thank you.