Hipkins ChrisEDUCATION AMENDMENT BILL (NO 2)Second ReadingHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I move That the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time. This bill amends the Education Act of 1989 the Education Act of 1964 and the Education (Update) Amendment Act of 2017. It builds upon the Government's work programme for a quality education system that puts all of the learners at the centre.To recap briefly what the bill does: the bill ensures that school boards cannot adopt a cohort entry policy that enables children to begin school as part of a cohort before they turn five; it requires private schools to be safe places for students; it ensures that the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand's decisions relating to the teaching profession are made within the context of Government policy; and it removes provisions due to come into force on 31 December this year that would enable communities of online learning to be established in order to protect New Zealand's quality public education system.I'd like to thank the chair and the members of the Education and Workforce Committee for their consideration of the bill. I would like to thank the 18 people who took the time to make a submission on it.I want to talk through in more detail the provisions of the bill and the changes that this effects. Firstly turning to cohort entry the bill changes the settings for cohort entry so that only children who have turned five can attend school. It is Government policy that children under five should not attend school and that was the view of the 2015 Advisory Group on Early Learning that this is too young an age to start. The Government has listened to them. We already have one of the youngest school starting ages around the globe. Many other countries are starting at six or seven. Our starting age of five already puts us amongst the youngest for those who are starting school. Moving into four-year-olds starting school is a step too far for this Government. The bill also increases the number of entry points for schools that have adopted cohort entry from four times a year to eight times a year. So under the existing cohort entry policy the child would start school at the beginning of the term nearest to their fifth birthday even if they were four years old. As we've indicated if a school is adopting cohort entry the child can only start at the next cohort entry point after their fifth birthday. If we left that until the next term a child turning five say on the second day of term would have had to wait an entire term before they can start. So having a mid-term entry point and eight cohort entry points through the year means that they will not have to wait as long. So it gives parents more flexibility around when their child will start school. Schools with high enrolment numbers will have more manageable cohort sizes and that is important for the individual teacher-to-student attention which we know is vitally important in those early first years. It does reduce the costs for parents around early childhood education. The Education and Workforce Committee has recommended two technical changes to the bill in relation to cohort entry. The first is to replace reference to students attending school with a reference to students being enrolled in school. The other change removes the reference to four-year-olds attending school. The Government certainly supports those changes.The next major set of changes is around private schools' registration criteria. This provision brings the safety requirements for private schools into line with what is already required for State and State integrated schools. I welcome the support of the private schools for these changes.Currently the Secretary for Education cannot consider student safety when registering a private school. The bill adds an additional registration criteria for private schools that requires them to be physically and emotionally safe places for students. This will help to ensure that all of our students regardless of the type of school they attend are able to learn in a safe environment. Adding a new registration criteria will allow the Secretary for Education to consider the physical and emotional safety of the students when assessing a private school's application for registration. Importantly it will also allow the secretary to intervene in a private school if he or she has concerns about the safety of students. Those interventions can include issuing the school with a notice to comply with safety requirements requiring the school to inform parents that there is a safety concern and in some cases cancelling the school's registration if the secretary and the school cannot agree on how to resolve those concerns. The Education Review Office will also be able to review the private school's safety policies and procedures. As I indicated this simply brings private schools into line with the requirements on the majority of schools which are public or State integrated.The bill ensures that the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand's decisions on matters relating to the teaching profession are made within the context of Government policy. The Government in keeping with the promise made to New Zealanders prior to the last election has restored the right for teachers to elect the majority of representatives to their professional body. The council's got many important functions including setting the criteria for teacher registration and the standards for qualification that lead to teacher registration. We need to make sure that the public interest in those processes is protected.The bill requires the council to consult with the Minister of Education before making changes to the criteria for teacher registration and the standards for the qualifications that lead to teacher registration. It still leaves those decisions with the council. It gives the Minister the ability to issue a Government policy statement regarding one or more of the council's functions which the council must have regard to when performing its functions. The Government is responsible for supporting an adequate supply of teachers for the policy that puts children's learning at the centre and for maintaining the quality of our public education system. There must be a mechanism for the Government to ensure that its direction is being followed.The committee has made five changes relating to these provisions and I'll talk through them briefly. The first of these changes amends clause 12 of the bill requiring the council to consult with the Minister when reviewing and then subsequently changing the criteria for teacher registration or the standards for qualifications. In the original drafting the council's ability to maintain the criteria and standards without consulting the Minister was removed. That was a mistake and the committee has corrected that so that if the council is keeping the standards as they are they do not have to consult with the Minister.The committee has also made two changes relating to the power in the bill for the Minister to issue a Government policy direction. First they've recommended that any Government policy direction be presented to the House of Representatives and published in the Gazette. The Government supports this change. Secondly the committee has recommended changing the name of the Government policy direction to a statement of Government policy". This is an important change because it follows concerns that a direction implies the council would be required to follow it. That's never been the case and was never the Government's intention. The Government supports this recommendation so that it's clear that while the council must have regard to the statement of Government policy it remains an independent entity.The committee also recommended two other technical changes: changing all references to the Education Council to the Teaching Council—which of course has been Government policy for some time—and amending the commencement date for the Teaching Council provisions so that they come into force the day after the bill receives Royal assent and I support those.Finally the major section that I want to talk about is the repeal of the provisions around communities of online learning. The bill repeals the provisions in the Education (Update) Amendment Act 2017 that would have enabled communities of online learning—or COOL—to be established. These provisions were due to come into force at the end of this year.Under the legislation enacted by the previous Government had it been implemented—which was of course implemented with very little consultation—it would have opened the door for children with additional learning needs to be shuffled away from schools to private providers. It would have allowed private sector bodies who are not education bodies to become accredited as COOLs. Tertiary and other private sector bodies would not be required to teach to the national curriculum or employ registered teachers. Online learning could become an option for any student that chose it even if it was not the best option for them. In this form COOLs were not innovative or collaborative and they could potentially become a way for schools to off-ramp students with additional learning needs and that is something that this Government is not willing to tolerate. Existing online providers such as Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu will not be affected by this change and they'll be able to continue to offer online learning on the same basis that they do now. The committee has by majority not recommended any changes to these provisions of the bill.In summary this bill strengthens New Zealand's quality public education system. It gives parents confidence that when they enrol their children they'll be starting school after the age of five and it ensures that if they're enrolling in a private school their parents can have confidence that their children will be learning in a safe environment."