SpeechEDUCATION (SCHOOL DONATIONS) AMENDMENT BILLIn CommitteePart 1 Main amendmentDr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you Madam Chair for this opportunity to take this call on the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill in the committee of the whole House. Part 1 actually is the whole basis of this legislation. In Part 1 there are two sections as the bill was originally introduced that are inserted: 79A and 79B. Proposed new section 79A is about setting up the discretionary grant for boards and 79B is about the effect of non-compliance with earlier discretionary grants. So it sets the conditions around compliance and non-compliance. As I said this is the basis of this whole legislation because the basis of this legislation is to alleviate the pressure that parents feel because of schools going out asking for donations which are voluntary.During the select committee process we were informed about Supplementary Order Paper 303 that the Minister of Education has tabled. This is to make a change. This is to insert two new sections after section 79A. These are 79AA and 79AB. In this contribution I would like to focus on 79AA because this is actually going to create a lot of confusion to the business of this whole legislation. In this section actually the Minister is wanting to get the flexibility to provide exemptions to mandatory conditions. So what the Minister wants through a notice given under this section is to enable boards and schools to be able to go out and seek voluntary donations for some specific activities.So as I said in the start the purpose of this bill is to take away that financial pressure that parents feel because of that school donation that is asked by schools though we understand it's voluntary. Schools were really concerned. They were saying that they won't be able to take part in this scheme because this amount that is going to be allocated per student is not going to be enough for some activities like school camps because school camps are quite expensive. It's not like 100 percent of students going on school camps pay that voluntary expense but what happens is that all students are taken on those camps and in most of the cases the expense is actually paid by the school board. So I believe that the Minister has actually responded to that through the Supplementary Order Paper but what has happened is that through this the Minister has created more confusion. Now the confusion is at two levels. First the bill was quite clear that if somebody gets this discretionary grant they cannot go out and seek voluntary donations. Now we understand that even if schools seek this discretionary grant they can still go out and ask for a donation for certain activities so that creates confusion at one level. The second level of confusion that is being created and this is after I have spoken to a number of schools—they want to fully understand what the Minister considers is a camp and what is not a camp. We understand and we know that for any curricular activity schools should not be seeking voluntary donations but for any non-curricular activities schools are able to seek these voluntary donations. So when a school camp is taken—and I personally and some schools also believe that they want to make the most of that. For example if a school camp goes to a beach there is a lot of opportunity for students to learn about the nature around that beach—that is how sea water reacts with rocks around that beach—or any of the other things that are there which can be considered as an extracurricular activity. So how do we tell schools to split that activity while they are on a camp? Here the schools are really wanting to seek some clarification. I have spoken to some schools in Mount Roskill where I am based and they're quite concerned about this exemption. As I said this is actually going to create a lot of confusion. Before we knew it was clear but it wasn't enough. Even schools that are in decile 1 to 7 didn't want to opt for this option and now the Minister is really keen to see that they become part of this scheme so he has tabled this Supplementary Order Paper 303 which actually is creating more confusion. Clearly the Minister doesn't understand what is needed and the Minister is not on the right track so we do not support the Supplementary Order Paper. We believe that the Minister should take some time to understand what the needs are and how the Minister actually responds to that should be based on the concerns that schools are raising and not just based on what the Minister thinks is the right thing. So a half-cooked policy through this bill was put forward and then a Supplementary Order Paper comes. That is also not satisfactory. It's quite sad to see that the Minister thinks that this bill is going to resolve this issue.