Parmar ParmjeetDr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you Madam Speaker for the opportunity to take this call. I want to make it clear from the start that National will be opposing this legislation the Education and Training Bill in the first reading. I believe that the Minister of Education before introducing this bill would have done his numbers and the bill will definitely go to the select committee. That is my assumption at this stage. So in the select committee I look forward to working on this legislation with various members from both sides—that is Government and Opposition—and I also look forward to hearing from submitters what they have to say about this legislation. This is wide-ranging legislation which covers early childhood education (ECE) primary secondary and tertiary education. As the Minister pointed out this is a big piece of legislation—500-plus pages—so I believe that the work on this legislation has been happening for a number of months now. If that was not the case then I'd be really nervous if the Minister produced this legislation in just a couple of weeks' time. So what I want to highlight here is that while this legislation was being worked on the Minister introduced the Education (Vocational Education and Training Reform) Amendment Bill and also the Education (Pastoral Care) Amendment Bill. I can fully understand the circumstances around the introduction of the Education (Pastoral Care) Amendment Bill which was because of that unfortunate incident that happened in the South Island at one of the universities where one student lay dead and nobody knew about that student. So I can fully understand about that legislation. But for the Education (Vocational Education and Training Reform) Amendment Bill to be introduced while this big piece of legislation was being worked on I don't understand why that has happened. So to me it looks like there has been a disjointed approach towards this Education and Training Bill because it's clear that as the Minister said those two pieces of legislation will be incorporated into this Education and Training Bill. Then based on what the final version of those two pieces of legislation will be the Education and Training Bill will be updated later on. So to me it looks like it could have been part of the Education (Vocational Education and Training Reform) Amendment bill—especially that bill out of those two bills could have been part of this Education and Training Bill. So in the select committee process we could have dealt with the whole legislation together—this legislation that deals with the education sector so that we could deal with that big picture that is needed for the education sector. As I said we are opposing this legislation in the first reading but we reserve our position going forward because it will all depend on how we deal with this legislation in the select committee process—what kind of changes are made to this legislation in the select committee process. There are some provisions that we think will work OK for the education sector but then there are other provisions that we have some serious concerns about. One of the concerns that we have with this legislation is about boards of trustees losing their right to develop consult and review school enrolment and school zones. So this is something that boards of trustees understand better in our view because they understand their communities they understand what will benefit their communities and what needs to be done through their school to deliver for their local communities. That power coming to the Minister in my view looks like the Minister wants to control all enrolments and zones. In my view that is going to lead to a loss of that independence that boards of trustees of schools have. So we really want to see that local communities have that control schools have that control for their local communities and for their local students which is going to be lost because of this legislation. So we have concerns about this and we look forward to seeing what submitters have to say about this provision in this legislation in the select committee process and what kinds of changes will be made to this provision in the select committee process. We also see that educational achievement has now become one of the four objectives for boards of trustees. So educational achievement for any parent any student or any school should be a primary objective or it should be the primary objective but now it becomes a primary objective because it becomes part of four primary objectives and all these four primary objectives are at the same level. Given that all these four primary objectives are at the same level we are concerned about the effect of this on the educational achievement objective. We believe that because of this this objective will be diluted—the focus from the boards of trustees on this will be diluted—and we don't want to see that happening. Again this is another area where we are concerned and we really want to see how this legislation will come out after the select committee process. As I said there are some provisions in this legislation that we think are good like for example the Minister being able to set minimum eligibility requirements for principals. We believe in quality education and quality education comes only if people that are delivering that education are of that standard. So we really want to see that the quality of our teachers and principals is really good to be able to deliver to the expectations of students parents and our country. But at this stage we don't have much information about what this setting minimum eligibility requirement means. We want to see what it means in regard to the standard or the quality of principals in various schools. So we overall would support this if it is to improve the quality but we want to see what this actually means. The Minister also talked about offshore institutions not being able to award NCEA. I fully understand the argument there; that is about the integrity of our education system. But the concern I have and the concern that we have is about various agreements that we have with various countries about export education. We know that in various free-trade agreements we include education. We include export education in that especially with developing countries. They want to go to developed countries to gain education and New Zealand being a developed country is an attractive place for various developing countries to come and gain education. Also in those agreements is the ability for New Zealand to provide this facility to students—this is without them coming to New Zealand gaining NCEA in their own country. So how this provision will affect that export education sector is something that we want to know more about.Then as I said this legislation covers all areas—that is early childhood education primary secondary and tertiary. In early childhood education especially home-based early childhood education the changes that this legislation makes do raise some concerns for us. All home-based early childhood education centres even people that are not involved in providing that service will have to go through a vetting process—a police vetting process. But then this legislation says that without the requirement of a warrant police will be able to go in and inspect home-based early childhood education centres. We have concerns about that because in our view that makes those home-based early childhood education (ECE) centres feel like criminals and we don't want them to feel like criminals because this is an area this is a service that is needed by all communities. Parents with young children have other commitments so they need these early childhood education centres and home-based early childhood education centres which are actually doing quite well providing that service for their local communities. Already we are seeing a shortage of ECE teachers. We don't want to see home-based ECE centres put off because of this provision in this legislation and create an even greater shortage of ECE service providers.So we have these various concerns and as I said the select committee process will be really important for us to consider our position going forward on this legislation. We will not be supporting this legislation in the first reading but in the select committee process if the concerns that we have are addressed then we will reconsider our position. But at this stage we are not prepared to support this legislation. Thank you Madam Speaker.