Flavell Te Ururoa: Education Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Education Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 23 September 2008. Volume:650;Page:19059. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
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.