Parker David: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1037. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour):In this contribution I want to refer to a matter that was raised by the Labour Party in its minority report. It concerns one of the amendments introduced by clause 38 in Part 1 which is provided for in the new proposed section 382(1)(i). This is related to the functions of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand or the Education Council as it is shortened to in the bill. The proposal is that the Education Council amongst other things has the obligation to issue practising certificates and set criteria for the issuing of practising certificates of different kinds including renewals.Paragraph (i) states: “to ensure that appraisals made by professional leaders for the issue and renewal of practising certificates achieve a reasonable and consistent standard”. The legislation is going to impose an auditing and moderating requirement for those appraisals for at least 10 percent of the practising certificates that are issued or renewed. So one in 10 practising certificates will have this more complex process that includes moderation or audit—in fact audit and moderation not either/or but audit and moderation. The point that was made by the Labour Party in our minority report was that we do not think this additional cost is justified. I know that National Party members like to think of themselves as being the party that stands against unnecessary compliance costs but this seems to be an obvious case where they are adding to compliance costs in a way where there has been no justification given.As was stated by my colleagues the research suggests that the best teacher appraisals are those that are conducted in a collegial manner in a high-trust environment rather than in a rules-based system where you have audits and moderation. So I would be interested to hear from the Minister in the chair Nathan Guy as to why he thinks the cost which is going to have to be borne by someone if you are employing auditors or moderators to do again what has already been done by the Education Council is justified. The Education Council of course is quite a large body and it has the obligation to appoint lead people on its behalf to issue these practising certificates. I would have thought that that was enough—that you could rely on the education authority to come up with its own systems. It might want to have an audit occasionally but why it should be specified in statute that one in 10 of the practising certificates that are issued or renewed in any one year should always automatically have to be checked seems to me to be a bit over the top.I do not know why we cannot just trust the Education Council to actually decide what is appropriate. If it comes across a problem it might think that to tidy things up it needs to test one in 10. But I cannot imagine it needing to test one in 10—to put through moderation or to audit one in 10 of the renewals of practising certificates for teachers for example every year. It just seems to me to be a waste of money and a waste of time and frustrating for everyone involved. So I would like the Minister to answer that. I do not know of other examples where we have other professionals who when they apply for renewal of their practising certificate—whether they be a lawyer a doctor an engineer or whatever they are—for every one in 10 they automatically have someone acting as a moderator or an auditor in respect of those functions.I am not going to traverse again the issue as to appointments to university councils but one issue that I did not have a chance to address is the other end of the process which is removals. My understanding is that the removals power in the legislation has been changed so that the Minister—[Bell rung]The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): The Hon David Parker—on the basis of loudness.Hon DAVID PARKER: Thank you Mr Chairman. I will not take the full call. I am not sure what the justification is for the Minister having the power of removal not just of the members of university councils who have appointed by the Minister but of all of them. As I understand it until now the university council controlled its membership in respect of the removals. You would then expect that the ones whom the university council appointed would be the ones who would exercise a right of removal. But I am told—and in fact I have read the provision in the legislation; I forget the proposed section just offhand but I did have a read of it—that the power of removal is vested in the Minister in all instances including in respect of appointments that are not made by the Minister. I would like some explanation from the Minister as to why that is necessary as well.