Davis Kelvin: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Davis Kelvin: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 09 December 2010. Volume:669;Page:16331. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) 
: 
 I too will respond to Chris Tremain’s comments and his analogy about not accessing one’s own marae if one lives way away from it. Quite frankly I would just go to the nearest marae just like if my children could not go to the school that I went to I would send them to the nearest school. This is exactly what I have done in Kaitaia. I grew up in Kawakawa an hour and a half’s drive south and it would not be practical for me to bus my kids down to the school I went to so I just send them to the local school. 
I will address the amendment from the Hon Trevor Mallard inserting new section 35RB after new section 35R in clause 11 of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). Subsection 1 of 35RB says: “Any student who is facing suspension or expulsion from attendance at a school registered under section 35A or the parents of that student may request details of that school’s disciplinary procedures.” I think that is common sense. In fact it was my impression as a former principal that schools were meant to put out to their community their complaints procedure at the start. So if a parent or a student— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: State schools have it but private schools don’t. 
KELVIN DAVIS 
: Private schools do not have that requirement. That to me is an inequity and should be remedied. Private schools should be required to put out their complaints procedures to parents so that if there is a complaint they know the procedure to go through so that little complaints do not get blown up out of proportion. I think this is just an extension of the requirement that disciplinary procedures be put out to parents and to students. 
Something else I will add is that a student’s disciplinary record should be put out too. When dealing with the misbehaviour of students as a principal I know that in the case of a lot of parents we would notify them when their child misbehaved but when the child got to the point that he or she was going to be stood down or suspended the parents came storming in and said that they had not been informed. We would be able to pull out a record of the times we had informed the parents by way of letters and phone calls that their child had misbehaved. That requirement could also be included somehow so that parents have the complaints procedures first of all they have the disciplinary procedures and they have their child’s disciplinary record. 
New section 35R itself is I believe unfair on State schools. Subsection (2) states: “Unless the student is within a reasonable time reinstated at the school or enrolled at some other registered school”—this is if they have been excluded—“the Secretary must … (a) arrange for the student to be enrolled at some other reasonably convenient registered school that the student can attend; or (b) direct the board of a State school that is not an integrated school to enrol the student at the school;”. I find that a bit unfair. As a State school whenever we sadly excluded students from our school we did not have the facility for them to have the Secretary for Education direct the board of a private school to enrol them. It is really unfair that private schools can dump their unwanted kids on State schools and the State schools then have to manage them as best they can within the resourcing private schools have. Really that is a bit of discrimination in my mind towards State schools in that they have to deal with the students that have been excluded or expelled from private schools. 
With that I say that Labour will not support this bill. Going back to the reasons that I started off my speech with my personal feeling is that the five main parts of this bill do not actually address what we really need to address in education. I would hate to see us come back for a third education bill at some stage in the near future. I would hate to come back in a few weeks or months in the new year and debate further issues that will not really make a significant difference to raising the achievement of the critical mass of our students. Kia ora. 
The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Trevor Mallard to clause 6 be agreed to: 
to omit subclauses (1) and (2) and substitute the following subclauses: 
(1)Section 11F(1) is amended by repealing paragraph (d). 
(2)Section 11F(1)(e) is amended by omitting “fifth” and substituting “fourth”. 
(3)Section 11F(2) is amended by omitting “or fifth”.