Davis Kelvin: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Davis Kelvin: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 09 December 2010. Volume:669;Page:16341. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) 
:  
Mr Deputy Speaker 
tuatahimaku me whaiwahiahau ki te mihi atu ki tera o ngatuahine a te Honore Hekia Parata kuatohua hei Minita o te Karaunaiterawikikuapahureakenei i te wahanga o te tautohetohe. Kuawarewareahau ki te mihi atu ki a koe Hekia. Na reira tenara koe moteneihonoretanga hei rungai o pokowhiwhi me ki hei rungai a tatou te iwi Maori. Na reira tena koe tena koe tena koe. 
[ 
The first thing for me to do Mr Deputy Speaker is to set aside a moment in the debate so that I can acknowledge that sister politician of ours the Hon Hekia Parata who was appointed a Crown Minister just last week. I forgot to do that Hekia. Congratulations on this honour placed upon your shoulders—let us say upon us the Maori people. Well done congratulations and good on you 
.]  
Labour will not support the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) aside from the part Trevor Mallard has just mentioned that protects children in day-care centres. I am glad about that because I believe that the bill will do very little to raise achievement whereas I believe that all education legislation and education policy should be targeted at raising achievement. 
I think we spend too much time focusing on peripheral issues such as whether children should have hereditary rights to attend the schools their parents went to. I think that is a total waste of our time. Perhaps when we have covered all the other main issues in education which would take a number of decades I believe then we might finally get to that issue which might be at the top of the priority list but right now it is in my opinion way down at the bottom of the list. We should be focusing on the core issues that will raise achievement. 
I have already spoken a couple of times in the House about making sure that teachers are given the conditions in which they can weave their magic. It is up to us in this House to create those conditions as politicians and as policy makers. We need to make sure teachers understand that they have to account for the effect size on the strategies they use. They need to know and prove that what they are doing in classrooms in tertiary institutions or in early childhood centres is making a difference. They need to question their practice and they need to have those skills. That is what we need to be legislating for and it is what we need to have policy on—making sure teachers can question the efficacy or otherwise of their practice challenge their assumptions and go on to make changes where necessary. 
We should aim for 100 percent of our students right across New Zealand to leave school at the end of year 13 with a National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 3 or university entrance on top of that. I do not think we do enough to engage kids in school. That is something else that teachers need to be able to do—engage students at school right through until the end of year 13. Research states that the success of students in their adult lives is not so dependent on how high their qualifications are but rather on the length of time they spend at school. So in other words if a student stays at school right until the end of year 13 and achieves only NCEA level 1 they have more chance of being successful as an adult then if they got NCEA level 1 in year 11 and then dropped out. So we need to encourage students and create the conditions where students will stay at school right through to the end of year 13. 
We need to work with parents as well. It is about engaging parents in the education of their children so that they set in their children’s minds at the very earliest age and consistently apply the expectation that their kids will stay in school until the end of year 13. A student would be better off eating their lunch for 13 years at school than dropping out in year 9 year 10 or year 11—but I do not want people to think that is what I am encouraging students to do. 
We really really need to support our teachers with professional development. This morning I was up just north of Wellsford at the opening of a marae and I heard a story from Bishop KitoPikaahu. I thought it was the perfect metaphor to describe the place of professional development. He told us a story about two men who were given an axe each and told to go and clear a hill of scrub. One guy had to clear the left-hand side of the hill and the other guy had to clear the right-hand side of the hill. The guy who was clearing the left-hand side of the hill was known to be a hard worker who could work from dawn to dusk without stopping. The other guy was not quite so athletic and he decided that every hour he would take a 10-minute break. At the end of the day when they came back down the guy who worked his guts out without stopping had cleared three-quarters of the hill. The guy who took a 10-minute break every hour had cleared the whole side of the hill. The guy who worked his guts out could not understand why that had happened so he asked the other guy: “Why is it that you were able to clear the whole side of the hill?”. The other guy said: “Well every time I sat down for a 10-minute break I sharpened my axe.” 
That is a metaphor for always making sure that teachers have regular time to sharpen their tools and to hone their skills. There is no point for them to just go on working and slogging their guts out for 10 15 or 20 years without having regular professional development where they can sharpen their axe their tools. I think we need to create the conditions where teachers are able to do that. We need to support teachers; we do not need to keep hammering away driving them like slaves. 
I already said in the Committee stage that this bill looks at secondary-tertiary programmes and I think those programmes do have merit. I know there is no evidence to say that they will definitely make a difference to a student’s education but I think there is a perfect opportunity for researchers to follow them for the next 5 or 10 years in order to determine whether they actually make a difference. I really hope they do work because they change the context in which students are learning. 
The programmes give an element of choice to students who are not comfortable or not succeeding in the traditional school setting. Those students have the opportunity to go off and to work in a tertiary setting. The programmes are mainly apprenticeships which is great. We need to encourage students to follow different avenues. But I do have a concern that those students who have the brains particularly if they are difficult students to teach may be encouraged to head off down a trade-type line instead of being encouraged to stay in school. Regardless of those side issues I think it is an opportunity worth exploring and one I think we should take further in terms of changing the context in which students can learn. 
We should set up specialist schools or perhaps a pilot in an inner-city area where parents have the choice not to send their children to just a regular school where they do maths science social studies and English but instead to say an arts school. The children still learn to read and write but they would do that around the theme of art. They could learn about art history they could practise different types of art they could learn dance they could learn drama or they could learn to sculpt. The students could do whatever. The school would be based around a particular context and a particular theme so that the children hopefully are engaged in their learning. For example if we wanted to teach a child in a regular school how to play the violin we would have to hope that someone who could play the violin got a job there as a music teacher whereas if we had an arts school where music was part of the curriculum the school could apply especially for a violin teacher and we expect that teacher who could play the violin would have an intense passion and flair for what he or she was teaching and a love of that subject. We would hope that having that teacher would get better results because he or she could bring that passion into the job. 
Again I say I am glad. We will vote against this legislation other than Part 1A which protects kids in day-care centres in malls. I think that is a sensible thing to do. It was a dangerous oversight I believe to omit that provision in the original bill and I am glad that that provision has been returned. Kia ora.