Wong Pansy: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Wong Pansy: Education (Export Education Levy) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:14753] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 I really appreciate the opportunity to make a second contribution because there is some very important information that I want to share with my fellow politicians about why even the Greens should not support this bill. The unanimous action by all the export education providers to not support this additional levy is because of the lack of confidence in the way the gatekeeper the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is doing the job which means that the private institutions that actually perform are punished. 
 Let me give two examples. I have some information in front of me concerning a high-profile college—the Paramount Institute of Auckland. On 14 November 2003 an ex - staff member wrote to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority about problems at the school and its lack of adherence to the authority’s criteria for providing good education. The person did not get much of a reply so on 26 November she again wrote to the authority. This time she provided three pages of details outlining where the school had failed in terms of individual students or collectively in adhering to the authority’s guidelines. On 27 November she received from the authority a reply to the three-page complaint thanking her and advising that if the authority were to act on the information she would have to lodge an official complaint. 
An official complaint form was attached for her. But how bureaucratic: a detailed complaint was lodged but not accepted because the correct form had not been used! Eventually on 1 December she wrote to another person at the New Zealand Qualifications Authority saying: “What do I need to do before the NZQA will take positive and decisive action?”. I ask the Minister to give us one good reason why we should have confidence in the gatekeeper and why we should be supporting this bill. 
I want to detail a train of events that happened in respect of the Modern Age Institute of Learning—-an example of another high-profile collapse. On 13 May 2002 the first financial statement filed by an accountant at that stage already showed that the balance of the trust fund held at the institute as at 31 December 2001 was $611054 while the accountant’s work paper indicated the amount should have been $1011714. One would have thought that by then alarm bells would be ringing. 
In February 2003 the New Zealand Qualifications Authority during its audit met a representative from a chartered accountancy firm expressing concern about the management of the trust fund but took it as an assurance at that stage that something was going to be done to fix the matter. That was February 2003 and we moved on to 16 May 2003 and once again the New Zealand Qualifications Authority found out that a new trustee had been appointed for the Modern Age Institute of Learning trust account and on 19 May the qualifications authority claimed it had obtained a written assurance from the new trustee that everything was fine. When I looked at that written assurance all it said was that the new trustees confirmed they would consent to the receipt of student fees which are to be held in trust in accordance with New Zealand Qualifications Authority quality assurance standard 1. It did not give any assurance whether the trust fund was operating or whether the funds in that trust were accounted for.