Education Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Education Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 23 September 2008. Volume:650;Page:19051. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Education Amendment Bill (No 3) 
First Reading 
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Minister of Education) 
: 
 I move  
That the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a first time. 
 At the appropriate time I intend to move that the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) be considered by the Education and Science Committee. This bill does two important things. It implements a number of policy changes to improve accountability for student attendance and engagement at school and to make early childhood education services and schools safer for children and students.  
The Government wants to support young people to stay in school complete their qualifications and identify the opportunities available to them once they leave school. This bill underpins this focus by making school responsibilities for managing student attendance more explicit. It sets out the minimum steps that a school board of trustees must ensure are taken to ensure school attendance including taking action when students are absent without reason or justification. More and more schools are searching for opportunities to provide individual learning programmes for their students and to link them with potential destinations beyond school. The $40 million Schools Plus package announced by the Prime Minister at Massey High School last week enables schools to offer new options for secondary students in 2009 with further decisions to be announced next year as we further develop Schools Plus. The bill also ensures that students get good guidance on career choices and pathways. Students will stay at school until at least the age of 16 and boards of trustees will get greater clarity about their roles and responsibilities.  
The bill also strengthens students’ safety in early childhood education services and schools. New measures will improve and streamline the current provisions for police vetting of all non-teaching staff contractors and volunteers who may have unsupervised access to children as part of their role. We are also taking the opportunity to reduce the compliance burden on early childhood services and schools so instead of applying through the New Zealand Teachers Council for a police vet early childhood education services and schools will directly apply to the New Zealand Police. The bill also provides for information matching between the Ministry of Education and the New Zealand Teachers Council to identify those who are teaching in schools without registration and for the Teachers Council Disciplinary Tribunal to suspend teachers for more than the current limit of 3 months if needed where potential serious misconduct is being investigated while the matter is being resolved.  
Other amendments in the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) will enhance the effective governance of schools. The timing of boards of trustees elections will be moved from term one which is the busiest time of the year for schools to later in the year. Establishment boards will be allowed to establish more than one new school and the education Minister will have greater discretion to approve alternative constitutions for school boards. Several other measures in the bill are of a remedial nature and correct a number of unintended consequences of the current law including the retrospective validation following an imperfect change of proprietor in an integrated school and removing the need for an Order in Council to authorise the continuing payment of teachers’ salaries through the central resourcing system. Finally the bill introduces a small number of technical and minor remedial amendments. These include clarifying certain definitions validating Crown payments to integrated schools and correcting drafting errors.  
Taken together the measures contained in the bill serve to strengthen the education system so it can better respond to the different learning aspirations of students and better support improved educational outcomes for all of our students. I commend the first reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) to the House. 
ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast) 
: 
 I rise to speak on behalf of National to the Education Amendment Bill (No 3). I read in the general policy statement of the explanatory note of the bill which the Minister of Education Chris Carter has just spoken to that the purpose of the bill is “to enhance student safety in both the early childhood and compulsory sectors; and improve accountability for student attendance and engagement …”. The last sentence of that general policy statement states: “These changes will help to modernise and improve education legislation.” If that is the case it is a very dark day for education in this country as we know it. It is a very dark day because typically the current Minister has over-inflated exactly what this bill will do. 
This bill has no vision whatsoever for education in the 21st century. There is no substance to this bill but a whole lot of rules and regulations. It reflects a socialist agenda reaching out to claw back control from schools and communities and to put in place central control over how our schools are run. In the last week of Parliament we get a bill on education and like the Minister the bill is going nowhere. National is not supporting this Education Amendment Bill (No 3) as introduced to the House. 
The Minister stood in this House and said he and Labour want to support young people in school to gain skills and to learn. But the bill and this reheated policy called Schools Plus—which is actually all about the 2002 Mayors Task Force for Jobs policy which has been pumped up and given a catchy new name—show that this Government has no idea about how to keep and support young people in school so that they can develop some skills and get some qualifications. The bill shows that the Government really does not know what to do. Instead of the Government putting some real support behind the many principals out there who are doing amazing innovative things with kids who are enthusiastic dedicated and what is more very successful despite the meagre resources that this Government is making available to them and instead of the Government getting in behind those principals and asking what it can do to help them keep those kids in schools what do we have? We have a bill that is full of rules and regulations telling those principals exactly what they can do but more important what they cannot do. That is Labour’s answer to everything. 
So let us look at what the bill is all about. We have police vetting. That has been dressed up as trying to keep our kids safe in the school environment and we all want to do that. But because this bill has been rushed into the House without any consultation to show that this Minister who has done nothing for 12 months has finally got off his chuff and done something— 
Hon Shane Jones 
: Widely supported. 
ANNE TOLLEY 
: By whom? Here is a press release from the New Zealand Playcentre Federation that states that 11000 volunteers at playcentres alone would need to be checked. We know that the Labour Party does not care about the parents of playcentre kids because it would not even include them in its 20 hours early childhood education policy. It would not even include them in that. It does not think that parents who take their kids to playcentre are worth supporting—[ 
Interruption 
] 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Politics as we all know is the art of the possible and the possible we will explore today is good order. I refer the colleagues on my right to Speakers’ ruling 57/3. 
ANNE TOLLEY 
: The Playcentre Federation has stated that its whole existence is placed at jeopardy by this bill because of the very rushed nature and non-consultative manner in which it was brought to the House. This is a draconian set of regulations. The New Zealand Educational Institute—a great favourite with this Labour Government—is also concerned that the measures being introduced to Parliament regarding police vetting could seriously impact on community and family involvement in schools and centres. So we have a draconian set of rules and regulations that will change the very nature of parental involvement with children’s education at a time when the Government is saying it wants to do all it can to support students to stay in school to gain more skills and to learn more. 
The information-matching programme is the piece of the legislation that we have all been waiting for for 12 months. I was on the Education and Science Committee and I know that the Teachers Council has been asking for this legislation for more than a year. The Minister promised that it was coming. We simply do not know how many unregistered and unauthorised teachers are out there in our classrooms around the country. Why is that important? Well it is important because there is such a shortage of teachers. In fact last year more teachers left their profession than had done over the last few years. Teachers are leaving their profession in droves. Schools are really strapped to get replacement teachers and they are being forced to take teachers who may not be registered or authorised. So data matching is the important piece of this legislation and it should have come to the House well over 12 months ago. 
Let us talk about early-leaving exemptions. Two years ago anyone could leave. It was easy to get an early-leaving exemption. A bit of heat is put on the Government it goes right the other way and it is now getting rid of all leaving exemptions. What a load of rubbish! There has been absolutely no consultation with schools. Principals up and down the country are saying: “What! Where did this come from?”. The Secondary Principals Association president Peter Gall said that some pupils who have been exempted from school have mental health problems but most were “chronic truants whose fit with school just wasn’t right.” We in the National Party understand. We understand like most Kiwis out there that for some students—just a small number of them—alternative non-school options meet their needs better. Those alternatives meet not just the needs of those individuals but also the needs of the rest of their classmates and the teachers whom they share their classrooms with. So not putting in place early-leaving exemptions is a complete flip-flop by this Government and it will have quite perverse outcomes from those that it wants to achieve. 
I have here a letter that my colleague the Hon Bill English received from the parent of a child. That parent was trying to get an early-leaving exemption for his daughter to leave high school to begin a hairdressing apprenticeship in January 2009 when she will be 15¾ years old. She is a good student does not have any problems at school and therefore does not fit the current criteria for an exemption. If the bill comes into place she will not be able to leave at all until she is 16. How ridiculous it is to stop a child from leaving school to take up an apprenticeship for hairdressing which will give her a good career. Under the current criteria she cannot get an early-leaving exemption but we can appeal to the Minister for an exemption; under this legislation she will not be able to leave at all. That just does not make sense. 
That brings me finally to the legislation around what boards of trustees can and cannot do. Why on earth do we have to put that into legislation? The Tomorrow’s Schools programme has now been working for 18 years. It has been working without any legislative detail on what the responsibilities of a board are. The Education Review Office considers that 60 percent of boards are governing well and that only 7 percent are struggling to achieve good governance. Where is the rationale for suddenly putting into legislation the requirements of a board of trustees? I am talking about the requirements around what boards can do what they must do what they are allowed to do and what they can ask the Minister or Cabinet for permission to do. 
I suspect that this is not actually about boards of trustees. It is the dark hand of socialism reaching into schools and saying that Tomorrow’s Schools gave too much power to communities; it gave too much power to parents to decide what was right for their children in terms of their children’s education in their children’s schools. This legislation is reaching out to pull that back because this Government believes that only it and the Ministry of Education here in Wellington know what is right for those children. I am reminded of  
Yes Minister  
and that magnificent saying that the Government knows best. That sums up what this Labour Government is about. It cannot trust parents. It cannot trust communities. The Government knows best. 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 I have read the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) and I can say that the speech that Anne Tolley has just given bears no relationship to what is actually in the bill. The member created a speech and she has been determined to give it come what may at some stage during the latter part of this year. Tonight seemed to be the time to do it. But what she has just said has no relationship to what is in the bill. I am absolutely astonished that the National Party is prepared to allow people who are not vetted to have unsupervised access to young and little children. That is what this member would allow to happen by opposing this bill.  
This bill is about the safety of children under 5—student safety in the early childhood and compulsory sectors—and the vetting of the people in charge of those children. The National Party says that anyone can be in charge of those children regardless of what his or her criminal record may be. Essentially Anne Tolley is saying that she is not interested in the criminal record of someone who is in charge of a child under 5. She is voting against legislation that says that Parliament wants to make sure people supervising young children are vetted by the police. Surely that is a fundamental point. We do it in every other area of the community; why should we not do it for the early childhood sector?  
Of course the issue in respect of playcentres has to be considered carefully. They have been around for a long time. We know the care and concern that parents have for children in playcentres. But the situation today in New Zealand is unsatisfactory. People with criminal records get involved in these areas for one unsavoury reason and the National Party is opposing legislation that will ensure that there can be vetting of these people. I really do not believe it but I guess I have to. That is the level to which the National Party has reduced itself today.  
On the question of accountability for student attendance and engagement in the compulsory sector Anne Tolley goes on and on about truancy levels in schools and this bill makes a slight adjustment and improvement in this area yet that National Party member who is asking for something like this to happen opposes it now that it is happening even though in a minor way. How can we win with some people? 
Hone Harawira 
: You can’t. 
DAIL JONES 
: I agree with Mr Harawira. Gosh we have agreed for once! It is good to see that I can agree with Mr Harawira from the Maori Party. I say to Mr Harawira that we have to watch this as people might start talking. 
Hone Harawira 
: No chance! 
DAIL JONES 
: Ha ha!  
This bill makes largely technical amendments. We have just heard a dramatic speech from Anne Tolley about socialism in the administration of school boards. Clearly she has never read the Education Act 1989 or the provisions with regard to boards of trustees. She has never read the schedule of the Act that sets out the controls and the constitutions for boards of trustees how elections are to be held and suchlike. They are extensive. On occasions I as a lawyer have helped school boards of trustees with administering elections and suchlike. All those provisions are there already. This bill gives an option as to how that type of control can be exercised. It increases the opportunities that a school has as to the way in which the existing measures can be carried out. It does not reduce the options; it increases them. It gives more possibilities to a board of trustees in terms of how it can carry out some of its requirements. The bill does not limit the boards; it increases the opportunities they have.  
I have one question to ask the National Party. We have this bill. What is the National Party’s policy on education? 
Anne Tolley 
: You’ll see. 
DAIL JONES 
: The National spokesperson on education says we will see. Well we are just over a month out from the election yet the National Party still does not have a policy on education. How can the National Party be critical of anyone else’s policy when it does not have a policy of its own other than to oppose simple legislation of a technical nature? Just because the legislation was introduced by Labour the National spokesperson believes that it has to be wrong and she has given a speech that has no relationship to this bill whatsoever.  
I would have loved to see a bill introduced that introduces a non-repayable student allowance—a universal student allowance which is New Zealand First policy—but of course that might have forced the National Party to say whether it had a policy on that. As we know it does not support a universal student allowance. That is just an aside and I must move on.  
As I see it this bill is straightforward legislation. It deals with various administrative matters. There is nothing awesome about it other than the need to protect our children. For example clause 26 inserts new section 78C “Police vetting of persons with unsupervised access to students at school”. I want police vetting of people with unsupervised access to students at school. National does not want that; National is quite happy for there to be no vetting of persons with unsupervised access to students at school. New sections 78CA to 78CC set out when a police vet must be obtained they set out procedures relating to police vets and they also provide for an exemption. Some vetting-exempted agencies are identified by a  
Gazette 
 notice. So it is a very broad-ranging bill in that respect.  
I am absolutely staggered that National is moving away from a strong law and order policy. We saw that in the Law and Order Committee in respect of legislation relating to Wanganui and tattoos the Wanganui District Council (Prohibition of Gang Insignia) Bill. We saw that National members did not support the Wanganui District Council. We know that National is weak on law and order and that has been confirmed yet again tonight.  
The bill also provides technical amendments with regard to the matching of register information and information about payment of teachers’ salaries at payrolled schools. How can one possibly oppose legislation as technical as that? If there is a drafting error it will be picked up by the Education and Science Committee and we will consider what it says. The National Party wants to oppose a bill that includes the matching of register information and information about payment of teachers’ salaries at payrolled schools. I would have thought that those provisions would improve the situation of the teaching profession. New Zealand First wants the standards and conditions of the teaching profession to improve. The National Party obviously does not want the standards and conditions of the teaching profession to improve. That is why it is opposing this legislation.  
The bill also includes in clauses 50 to 53 provisions regarding the duration of interim suspension investigations by a complaints assessment committee of reports of convictions complaints about competence and the requirement that the Teachers Council must coordinate police vetting. What is controversial or difficult about this legislation? National even opposes a provision relating to the transfer of land.  
This is straightforward legislation largely of a technical nature. It ensures the protection of young people who are in a situation where there is unsupervised access to them which is clearly defined in clause 77 “Interpretation”. The definition of “vetting-exempted agency” is set out there and I am sure the Education and Science Committee when it considers this legislation will have no difficulty working with Playcentre to make sure that its concerns are well noted that steps are taken to make sure that the children concerned are always supervised and that any problems with regard to unsupervised access are taken care of.  
I understand that one of the worst paedophile cases reported was a case involving not a parent but a gardener who was working around a playcentre area. He was the paedophile. We must make sure that that sort of thing does not happen again and we must make sure that unsafe people who are involved in an unsupervised access situation are caught at an early stage.  
New Zealand First has no difficulty supporting the welfare the benefits and the protection of children under 5 and we will be supporting this bill. I am absolutely staggered that a contrary view could be taken by any party in this House. 
ALLAN PEACHEY (National—Tamaki) 
: 
 Well here it is—the Education Amendment Bill (No 3). That is all the Government has to show for 9 years in office three Ministers and goodness knows how many Associate Ministers. In the last days of this Parliament and in the dying days of that Government it has dropped this bill under urgency into the House. That alone is good enough reason to oppose the bill and I say the National Party does oppose it.  
I assume that what we heard from New Zealand First’s Mr Jones was his final address in the House. I wish he had told us that earlier; we could have got a bit of a muster for him. But I hope that he will go back read his  
Hansard 
 and just reflect a little on some of the things he actually said. You see one of the problems with this bill is that it is typical of the Labour Government. It looks back—it looks back. It in no way looks forward to what will be the critical issues in New Zealand education.  
Hon Shane Jones 
: But you don’t know them. 
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: Well the list member Mr Jones has been shouting a lot tonight— 
Hone Harawira 
: Shane! 
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: —oh yes; I would not want him to be confused with my friend from New Zealand First—but he needs to reflect on one thing. I am a bit of a fan of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and I can see in  
Trial by Jury 
 
a role for Mr Jones. He could be just slipped in there somewhere as the clown or the fool wandering around looking under chairs looking at benches and seeking high office. That is Mr Shane Jones.  
I want to talk a little about teacher registration and the registration provisions of this bill because as I have said it is very backward looking. This bill tidies up the results of the misadministration of the Government but it is very important that this House is under no illusions as to what teacher registration means. I ask members not to confuse it please with teacher competence. It is easy to say we have a great registration system and all the rest of it but that does not equate to having teacher competence. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Why isn’t this member the education spokesperson? 
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: The members opposite who are challenging me need to just reflect on that. They can go to any number of Education Review Office reports on schools and they will find statements like “Some teachers in this school”—or “Several teachers in this school”—“do not teach the New Zealand curriculum properly.” or “They are do not know how to maintain correct relationships in classrooms.” That is in report after report from the Education Review Office. But when somebody like myself asks the next question: “Are the teachers to whom the Education Review Office is drawing attention registered?” the answer is always yes. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: How’s Selwyn College? 
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: Oh Selwyn College will do very very well because the people of Tamaki have a member of Parliament who is prepared to stand up for children. Frankly if some of the members opposite had the same sort of integrity that I have and put the interests of children first a lot of New Zealand children would be getting a better education. I will defend the actions I have taken towards Selwyn College before anybody at any time and I would welcome a debate with the Labour Party about what constitutes a good school.  
I was talking about teacher registration. Many people in the education sector will tell us that the current teacher registration system actually gets in the way of the sort of professional standards that teachers need to be developing in order to have fulfilling successful careers in the 21st century.  
I move now to the truancy provisions in this bill. You know those provisions are a classic example of the Labour Government’s policy towards education over 9 years. What has it done with regard to truancy? It has spent a heap of money— 
Anne Tolley 
: But not very well. 
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: —but not well—and employed a whole new pile of administrative structures again not very well and now that this Government is in its dying days as a Government it has finally occurred to it that even with that expense that waste of billions of dollars none of that has worked. So what has it done? Have Government members gone back and looked at themselves and looked at how they have caused this situation? Have they acknowledged at long last the failure of their approach: building huge bureaucracies and giving people cars to drive around in clipboards and a sense of importance? It is now clear that that approach has not worked. We need just to go to South Auckland and talk to some of the people in the ministry there and they will tell us that approach is not working and why it is not working.  
So what has the Government done? It has landed on boards of trustees on principals and on teachers. That is what it has done. There has been much more work for schools to do and much more money to be expended all because the Government has failed in terms of the bureaucracies it has set up to deal with truancy. Schools were actually doing pretty well in the 1990s with regard to issues like truancy. They were doing pretty well. Truancy is much much worse now than it has ever been because of the way that the Labour Government has handled it. And what is its answer now? You see again this is classic socialist educational policy: find another reason to blame teachers principals and boards. It is classic socialist educational policy. In the last— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Let it all out! 
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: Mr Cosgrove has a lot to say tonight. Am I to assume that he will not be giving a valedictory statement tomorrow and this is it? We do not think that he will be back. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: I’ll see you out Grandad. 
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: Well I tell Mr Cosgrove that we will see—we shall see.  
I will finish with reference to the special education provision here. Although I welcome the acknowledgment of the role of special schools I have to ask the questions: “Why has it taken 9 years?” and “What about the real issue for special schools in this country?” which is the need for them to expand their capability their ability to work on a broader front with the least fortunate of our children. Again that is just another example of this Government— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Come on Grandad wind it up. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Repeated reference to a member’s age is out of order; I refer to Speaker’s ruling 38/7. 
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: I am not offended by references to my age because I know that unlike the younger members opposite I have actually achieved something in life. I came to Parliament after I had succeeded in life not instead of succeeding in life.  
I will finish on the point that the capability of our special schools is what people who are looking forward are looking at. But here we have one more example of looking backwards. The National Party will not support this bill; we have very very good reason for not supporting it. I do not believe that it will proceed beyond its first reading. Thank you. 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Kia ora tatou e te Whare. The news that broke this morning could not have been more timely when thinking about the first reading of this Education Amendment Bill (No 3). The nation woke to the news that a police officer ended up hospitalised after a mass brawl between pupils of two Hastings schools. It was not just a playground fight. Hell no we are talking about an all-in brawl involving it is said up to 200 pupils aged between 13 and 15 years old. It has been suggested that the fight had been organised via a text message and it quickly steamrolled from there.  
This incident left two officers injured according to the newspapers six students aged between 13 and 15 years old being arrested and charged with disorderly behaviour likely to cause violence and a 14-year-old appearing before the Youth Court today charged with assault. The issues of student safety therefore are clearly uppermost in our minds. The issue of student to student violence however is not identified in the scope of the bill. The matters of safety in this legislation are focused on non-teaching staff contractors and volunteers who may have unsupervised access to children. Students are clearly missing from the list and if this morning’s incident is of any value it may be to ensure that when we talk about safe environments we make the effort to ensure all are encompassed within this brief.  
The bill has a broad focus of enhancing student safety in both the early childhood and compulsory sectors. Measures will be introduced to require police vetting of all people who have unsupervised access to children during the opening hours of early childhood centres and schools. The bill identifies a number of helpful scenarios that show how the regulations will work. A parent who coaches swimming or supervises reading in the school library with no other staff present will be affected by the legislation but whanau members who go on a camp who drive the kids to a school trip or who supervise students with teachers present will not be affected. There seems to be a comprehensive consultation list included in the bill which we were pleased to see including the education sector union and Te Kohanga Reo National Trust. Although these groups were consulted on the statement we believe the select committee hearings on this bill will be crucial in terms of testing that this bill has the balance right.  
I ask whether students themselves should be included in the legislation and whether volunteers will withdraw their services wanting to avoid what Playcentre New Zealand president Marion Pilkington called “the indignity and stigma of a police check.” I ask whether the additional checks will discourage the community from becoming involved in the life of the school and whether it will create a culture of mistrust or alternatively whether the changes will make parents feel more confident that their child is under safe supervision. We will look forward to hearing the responses of whanau members volunteers educationalists education professionals managers and all of those experts in the education sector who care for the well-being of our tamariki of our children.  
The quality of care is an issue that we in the Maori Party are particularly interested in where the amendments in the bill look to improve accountability for student attendance and engagement in the compulsory sector. We are interested in the intention to ensure students receive good counselling and guidance to assist them in determining career choices and pathways. This is a matter we wholeheartedly endorse in the Maori Party.  
We want to make sure that our young people make good decisions about tertiary study or industry training and that they know the financial impact of the choices they make but we are unsure that simply amending the principals’ existing duties regarding guidance counselling is all that it will take. Legislative changes are all well and good but what schools are screaming out for is actual resources and pragmatic investment that will make the difference. It is our policy intention that to improve the choices our young people make Career Services should be moved to the Ministry of Social Development to work alongside the Ministry of Youth Development Work and Income and StudyLink to collectively support the choices young people make. Similarly with the overarching concerns that relate to attendance and engagement the Maori Party from day one of this Parliament has brought to the fore the crucial need to reward school success and innovation in reducing underachievement and disengagement. In fact one of my first contributions to the Education and Science Committee was setting up the inquiry into making the schooling system work for every child.  
The report on that inquiry which was tabled in the House in February of this year revealed data from the Education Review Office that only 44 percent of schools had evidence of improved learning outcomes amongst their Maori students over time. We explored alternative models for Maori education that were benefiting Maori students including kura kaupapa Maori Maori boarding schools designated character schools and programmes such as Tu Toa which uses sport and tikanga Maori as a catalyst to improve learning. In fact a key recommendation in the report was that the schooling system should support worthwhile programmes outside the general stream for Maori.  
It is disappointing that in this bill the focus on improving engagement in the compulsory sector appears to ignore the recommendations of the select committee report instead focusing on technical amendments to monitor absences or repealing the enrolment exemptions. Although contacting parents and following up on absences is useful it still does not do anything to address the large-scale system failure to excite and engage students in ways that will engage them and encourage them to stay at school.  
Another group of amendments in the bill to identify whether teachers are teaching without a current practicing certificate or whether schools are illegally employing teachers is also a bit of a concern. The amendments are introduced to ensure the ministry can keep accurate registration information and that the Teachers Council is able to keep up with current authorisations. Now that is all well and good but again I ask whether the technical amendment is the most important variable in determining the quality of the teachers we put in front of our children. If we want to invest in the future of our nation we must ensure our teachers are culturally competent and professionally capable to inspire our tamariki to a love of learning.  
This same emphasis on technical accuracy carries through to the amendments proposed for school boards of trustees. The bill proposes minor amendments to do such things as repeal the requirement for a board to hold an election of trustees on the second Tuesday of May for goodness’ sake. This is hardly the major issue for my constituents. When they talk about boards of trustees their concern is not to do with the second Tuesday in May or the third Friday in June. Their focus is on wanting to ensure that schools are accountable as essentially community-based organisations. The Maori Party believes the public needs to be provided with much better information on school performance particularly for Maori and Pacific Island student achievement. We want to ensure that boards of trustees are held accountable for Maori achievement that Education Review Office reports are made available to whanau hapu and iwi and that schools must disclose achievement statistics to all of their whanau and community. That would surely have all schools lift their standards in their education of Maori and Pacific Island students but as we in the Maori Party constantly say what is good for Maori will be good for the nation.  
We will support this bill as it is a doorway to other important issues that must be discussed if we truly care for the learning outcomes of the next generation.  
JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to speak to the first reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) a bill that my New Zealand First colleague described as largely technical. I take exception to that. It actually has a large amount of quite substantial policy change in it. United Future is happy to support this first reading because we think the content of the bill traverses a number of issues that should be considered. However I have to signal that we are unconvinced by some of the solutions this bill seeks to provide. We would like to see some work done on those by the Education and Science Committee and we hope the bill will return to the House with some of those issues resolved. We feel strongly enough about them to say that if they are not changed we may have to reconsider our position on the bill.  
Let us look at some of our concerns. The first part of the bill talks about introducing improved police vetting to keep both early childhood and compulsory sector educational facilities safer. Now that sounds very good. However I have already received as I think many members will have letters from Playcentre New Zealand and other groups that have read the wording of this provision and remain unconvinced that it will not be an onerous provision on them. Playcentres that pride themselves on their open-door policy and their open invitation to parents and extended family members to be part of their child’s education may well be disadvantaged if we are not clear that this bill does not capture them in some way. The information-matching provisions will help the Teachers Council make sure that only registered teachers holding current practice certificates are able to teach in our schools. We think this is a good thing and United Future is largely happy with those provisions.  
Around the issues of accountability for student attendance and engagement in compulsory education we are open-minded about the provisions to clarify the steps a school board of trustees must take when a student is absent without explanation and also to clarify the principal’s responsibility to ensure students get the guidance and counselling they may need if they are going through a difficult time before jumping to exclude children or stand them down for a period. We have some question marks around repealing the ability of the Secretary for Education to provide enrolment exemptions for 15-year-old students. We would like to know more about that provision and we will be very interested to see what submitters say to the select committee about this and how it fits into the Government’s announced policy of Schools Plus. Anne Tolley read out a letter about a young girl about to turn 16 who had the opportunity to take up an apprenticeship. If that fits in with what the bill talks about when it refers to valuing offsite experience as a key criterion to be considered by a board and if obtaining things such as work experience counts then it may be OK but we are really unclear at this stage as to whether this provision will not limit the opportunities for some students in a way that could be unhelpful.  
The other thing we find interesting is that any focus on middle schooling seems to be absent from this section of the bill. One of the problems United Future has focused on is that if we look evidentially at when a student is going to disconnect from schooling lose interest and possibly become truant it is often in those emerging adolescent years—years 7 to 10—when students particularly when they reach secondary school are not coping well with 50-minute periods swapping around and a reduced level of pastoral care from what they were receiving in the primary sector. It can be just too much for some students. We certainly support some of the educationalists’ thinking about middle school students: the need to provide a lot more pastoral care within the high school system and to invest in those students so that fewer of them are disconnecting in the first place. We would love to see whether any submissions are received on this.  
On the matter of school boards of trustees we are unclear as to why there is any advantage to moving away from a set date towards a more flexible arrangement whereby the Minister can determine the date of the election. Maybe there are some benefits that we are unaware of but it seems a little unusual. However we are open to being persuaded on that. The amendment in relation to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is a technical amendment to include private schools in the definition of schools that are eligible to be accredited by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.  
However this week United Future has raised an additional concern that we think could fall within the brief of this bill and we would love the select committee to consider it. Currently the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is not required to accept National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) marks from high schools if the students’ parents have not paid the New Zealand Qualifications Authority fee. It is also unclear whether schools are obliged to hold on to a school leaver’s marks in the hope that somebody will then pay the fee so that the marks can be sent on; and if they are required to hold on to those marks for how long. The real risk right now in New Zealand is that there could be literally hundreds and hundreds of New Zealand students who have completed 2 or 3 years of NCEA and because their parents were unable or unwilling to make that payment those marks could literally be lost within a short time after they have left school.  
We would like to call on the select committee and the Government to consider making it an absolute requirement that all marks are passed on to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and stored there and if it then chooses not to release those marks officially to students who have not paid their fees that could be another consideration. But at least let us make sure that all achievement marks—all unit standards that have been achieved by students—are recorded and held in trust for that student so that he or she can have access to them when that student needs to apply for jobs or for tertiary education. Beyond that if the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is not going to be required to do this then the Government needs to give some very clear guidelines to secondary schools as to how long they are to hold on to the information and even to resource those schools with the storage capacity to hold on to those marks for so many years before they in the end disappear into the ether.  
The third consideration that United Future would like the select committee to consider on this matter is whether there need to be some flexible payment options for students who want to move on to tertiary education. Could the $75 owed by a student to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority be lumped on to his or her tertiary student bill so that it could be paid with that? Could for instance Work and Income be allowed to manage the debt on behalf of such students and subtract it from their parents’ benefit as it does with other debts or are those students allowed to have access to their marks and pay off the bill themselves once they get employment? We think that this is a serious problem and when we talk about the tail of underachievement coming out of New Zealand schools part of that tail could well be hundreds of students who did get some NCEA units have got some qualifications but actually have no way of proving that because the New Zealand Qualifications Authority does not have those marks on record and is unwilling to receive them. United Future would love to see that problem be addressed. We consider it to be a lot more important and a much more urgent need than merely changing the definition of those who are eligible to be accredited by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.  
We are very happy to support the first reading of this bill but there are some serious things we want to see fixed if we are to support it beyond the first reading. 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 I want to take a very short call on this bill the Education Amendment Bill (No 3). The Greens will be supporting its referral to a select committee and I note that the select committee will not be considering it until after the election so there is some time for its clauses to be looked at by the community and by politicians in the meantime.  
The big issue that has arisen for me has been in relation to playcentres and the issues of supervision and police vetting. I understand that this is a very serious concern for playcentres and I think they are right to be concerned. In our view we do need to look very carefully at balancing the concerns about the impact on playcentres and other centres of police vetting—the costs and the difficulty for especially volunteer activity in these centres—against the needs of children to be safe. It is something we need to look at very seriously at the select committee. I do think the select committee needs to address the issues which is why we are supporting the bill.  
There are a lot of other issues in the bill that we are concerned about but we are concerned about this issue in particular. I support the New Zealand Playcentre Federation in its lobbying of politicians on the issue. We know that it is a serious concern for that organisation. I think there is an interesting discussion about the definition of “unsupervised access to children” in the bill and in time the select committee will need to look at what that means.  
I want to acknowledge the Green Party’s support for the legislation as well as Playcentre and its very real concerns about the bill and I want to send the message that the Greens will be taking this issue very seriously. 
PAULA BENNETT (National) 
: 
 To my mind the best way to describe the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) is that it is the good the bad and the ugly and one starts with the good. The good in the bill has to be around the information-matching programme and the fact that we are finally getting to a stage where the Ministry of Education is talking to the Teachers Council. I have been on the Education and Science Committee for about 20 months now and I was absolutely astounded to hear that the Teachers Council teachers register was not in sync with the Ministry of Education’s register. That meant that teachers who were not registered were able to teach in schools and actually say that they were registered; when their registration was suspended obviously the Ministry of Education and the Teachers Council registers were not matching up. 
The good part of this bill has to be that finally after a long period of time changes are being made. Certainly in the time I was on the select committee I was astounded to hear from the officials that this sort of stuff was happening. The matter arose over a really serious issue: a teacher had been teaching in a school and there had been some inappropriate behaviour and it turned out that the teacher was not registered. But no one actually knew; none of the matching that was needed was going on. So if we were looking for the good in this bill then that would certainly be a small element of what we think is necessary and what we actually need to do. 
We then move to the bad—some of this stuff is just incredible. Really by reading this bill we are getting the sense that this is not currently happening in schools and that the only way the current Government has to make it happen is yet again to just legislate—legislate legislate and overlegislate. 
I want to give those who might be reading this debate later or listening to it a little example of what this bill proposes to do. The explanatory note states that the bill is “designed to improve accountability by—specifying the minimum steps that a school board of trustees must ensure are taken in situations of unexplained or unjustified student absence.” Are we saying that right now school boards of trustees and their principals are not stepping up when children are absent from school for an unexplained reason and are not doing something about it? Instead we should actually talk to those schools and identify where these pretty major problems are. If parents principals teachers and boards of trustees are not addressing truancy and problems with children being away we actually have more of an issue than a provision in this bill. The only way this Government has to address it is to put it in legislation and cross its fingers quite frankly. 
Anne Tolley 
: Put another rule in. 
PAULA BENNETT 
: It puts another piece of legislation in; it puts another law in place instead of actually addressing what is a very big problem and something that is critical. If it is not a critical part of the jobs of principals teachers and boards of trustees to make sure the children are at school then quite frankly this provision is just a waste of time. 
Another method listed in the explanatory note is: “amending the principal’s existing duty to ensure students get good guidance and counselling …”. Do we really need legislation to ensure that that sort of stuff is happening in our schools? We do not. 
Anne Tolley 
: What they need is the finance to do it. 
PAULA BENNETT 
: We need principals to have the resources and the finance to get on and do that job themselves. 
Let us talk a bit more about some of the bad things in this bill. The explanatory note talks about giving “the Minister the power to prescribe a date or range of possible dates for triennial elections:”. The Minister will get a little more Draconian deciding what is best for schools instead of schools and boards of trustees getting on and deciding what works for their communities and what works for them. I pick up on what the Maori Party was saying earlier about what is important to boards of trustees and what is important to schools—it is not about the dates and things; it is about how they are running and about the important stuff that is going on within them. 
It will not be a surprise to those who know of my interest in early childhood education that I certainly presume the ugly to be the stuff around police vetting. Let us not make light of it. Occasionally in certain circumstances some pretty ugly stuff is going on. If we thought for one moment that this legislation would curb some of the abuse of children that goes on then we would not waste an instant in stepping up to make sure it was happening. But this bill is not about that. This bill is about ill-thought-out and Draconian steps that will not take measures to ensure a child’s safety. 
The example that has been used in the cries I heard from the other side of the House earlier—and Mr Jones from New Zealand First raised it—is the safety of children and this issue was certainly raised around Playcentre. Let us think about this logically. I would like to think that maybe the Minister Chris Carter has not visited a Playcentre school and that is why he does not understand them. Actually the Minister likes to go on quite a lot about where he has visited who he has seen and how many schools he has been to. 
Anne Tolley 
: He doesn’t learn much! 
PAULA BENNETT 
: No and when one goes along afterwards and speaks to those schools one hears them say that he may have been there but he did not listen. This might be one of those cases where he did not listen. The bill talks about volunteers needing to be police-vetted but who are the volunteers in a playcentre? 
Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith 
: Parents. 
PAULA BENNETT 
: Parents are the ones who volunteer in a playcentre. 
Allan Peachey 
: Mum and dad. 
PAULA BENNETT 
: Mum and dad and often grandma and granddad are actually the ones who volunteer in playcentres. Under this legislation volunteers in all parent-led centres—such as kohanga reo some of our Pacific language centres and certainly Playcentre—will all have to be police-vetted. So parents who actually have their children with them pretty much 24/7 will now be considered a risk under this legislation and will be police-vetted. Not only is that not possible for playcentres because they do not have the resources and the funds but it is also off-putting for many volunteers to go through the process when a parent turns up to play with their child. 
Have we seen what actually goes on in a playcentre? More often than not when one goes in and speaks with a parent one sees that parent sitting in the sandpit and talking and playing with his or her own child. That parent will have to be police-vetted under this bill. I think the Labour Government is actually taking it far too lightly. We heard from New Zealand First the cries of outrage that all of a sudden we do not support police vetting but let us remember that police vetting is happening now. Police vetting is happening in our centres and in our services now. In fact from 2004 to 2006 35000 non-teacher police vettings were done—35000 police vettings were requested. 
Anne Tolley 
: And how many naughty people were found? 
PAULA BENNETT 
: Well only seven people out of the 35000 were actually identified as sensitive or with red stamps. That is seven out of 35000. Those seven were picked up by the current regulations around police vetting and by services and centres having the common sense to know what is best for their children because the parents know what is best for their children. 
Have members heard about National’s policy? Let us trumpet that. When we took on the 20 free hours’ early childhood education policy we said we trusted parents to make the best decisions for their children and as such we would bring Playcentre kohanga reo and parent-led services into the 20 free hours policy. Let us actually identify them as a quality option. Let us identify them and stand up and say that parents know what is best for their children and their families. There was not a peep from Labour. There were peeps on other stuff and there were squawks on other stuff around the policy but there was not a word from Labour members because they knew that this was what parents wanted. They knew that there would not be a big call to put us down for that one. 
Ideologically Labour stands against parents knowing what is best for their children and as a consequence it could not ideologically support Playcentre and parent-led services being counted in the 20 free hours policy. It was not about the money and it is not about the money. The Minister knows that—it is not about the money for Playcentre and kohanga reo. It is about being identified as a quality service. National will stand up proudly and say that we trust parents to make the best decisions for their children. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a first time. 
Ayes 69 
New Zealand Labour 49; New Zealand First 7; Green Party 5; Maori Party 4; United Future 2; Progressive 1; Independent: Field. 
Noes 48 
New Zealand National 47; Independent: Copeland. 
Bill read a first time.  
Bill referred to the Education and Science Committee.