Davis Kelvin: Education Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Davis Kelvin: Education Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:653;Page:2669] 
KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) 
: 
 I have been following the developments and initiatives that have unfolded in this Parliament in the last 6 months in respect of education. It is with some concern that I stand to talk about the Education Amendment Bill. Let me make it clear that I support the reducing of the compliance burden on schools and early childhood education services by allowing for vetting applications to be made directly to the New Zealand Police but I do not support the provisions that weaken requirements for police vetting of contractors. I support the amendments that introduce information matching between the New Zealand Teachers Council and the Ministry of Education to identify individuals teaching in schools without registration. I also support the provisions relating to 3-month suspension of teachers’ practising certificates. 
My concerns about the progress that education has made in the last 6 months stem from the seemingly ad hoc nature of the educational initiatives that have come before us. Those initiatives include national standards fining parents of truants plain English reporting changes to National Administration Guideline 5 and now this Education Amendment Bill. As an educator for some time my concern stems from the lack of a coherent progressive plan to move the New Zealand education system into the future. From what I have observed the initiatives developed over the last 6 months barely relate to each other and they appear to be based on populist notions with little or no grounding in solid educational research. 
On the issue of police vetting I have concerns regarding the safety of students if there are people working in school grounds who have not been vetted. To illustrate my concern I recall a conversation I once had with a social worker who made a list of 100 men from a particular community whom she wanted to work as role models with at-risk teenagers. Because a social worker selected these people we would assume that they appeared to be upstanding members of the community. However as a precaution the social worker asked police to vet those 100 names in case they had criminal records only to find that 78 of the 100 of those male mentors had faced criminal charges for violence. This simple analogy serves to illustrate that this part of the Education Amendment Bill alone is an example of poorly conceived legislation. 
That aside my greater concern is that there is no link between the relaxing of police vetting and any sort of academic achievement. If we were to examine the research we would find there are dozens of initiatives and strategies that we should be discussing instead that make real and significant improvements to educational achievement. My concern is that we have spent considerable time and energy debating issues that have no research to back their efficacy. 
While we continue down this path of debating bills that have no basis in research we will simply wander down a path of schools failing students. What everyone fails to realise as we debate this bill is that the secrets to raising educational achievement are actually no longer secrets. There is a pile of new research much of it New Zealand - based that spells out very clearly what schools principals teachers parents and students need to do in order to make students learn. This is the research that we should be debating in this Parliament. It stuns me to think that instead of focusing on what is known to raise achievement we keep dreaming up unproven issues to fill the time and give the impression that progress has been made in the name of education. 
Research suggests that even with the strategies we have discussed progress probably will be made. That is simply because there are few strategies that actually make students dumber. If the National Government claims that its initiatives will raise achievement it is probably correct but it is more likely to be a case of student achievement being raised in spite of these initiatives rather than because of them. What needs to be debated and examined in this House are those initiatives or strategies that have the most—and I repeat the most—or greatest effect on achievement. 
To illustrate my point there are dozens of initiatives that raise student achievement and they are ranked from most effective to least effective. All of them can be found in this book I am holding  
Visible Learning 
 written by Professor John Hattie. Let us say there were just 10 strategies that were proven to raise achievement. The question is why we would use the strategies ranked sixth seventh eight ninth or 10th when we know that strategies one through to five will be more effective in raising achievement. Professor Hattie an eminent New Zealand researcher has done exactly what I have just described. He has written this fascinating book called  
Visible Learning 
 which is a synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. I have checked through the strategies that Professor Hattie has analysed and not only does police vetting of contractors not rate in the top half of those strategies but it is not mentioned in the research at all. It is rated as being even less effective than those few strategies that do make students dumber. My question is why we are talking about police vetting when there are much more effective strategies for making students learn. 
I struggle to see the relevance of this part of the bill which will actually jeopardise the safety of New Zealand schoolchildren and I seriously believe that it is just a populist diversion. While we here in the House continue to draw the attention of educators towards issues that have no effect on raising educational achievement we will simply divert them from the educational issues that will make a difference. In the House today at question time I heard about trade academies. I thought to myself: fine trade academies probably do raise achievement because as I said earlier there are not many strategies—although there are a few—that make students dumber. My belief is that trade schools will only be as effective as the quality of the teaching that goes on inside the trade academies. I have checked Professor Hattie’s research and trade academies are not mentioned per se. However under the heading “Types of Schools” there is a part that describes charter schools which are described as “publicly funded schools that have been freed from some of the regulations and statutes that apply to other public schools often of a particular flavour and they usually involve some form of innovative teaching principles.” I believe I am correct in giving a general description of what the trade academies would do. However Hattie’s research has ranked charter schools 107th out of 138 initiatives. That means they are way down on the list of effective strategies that make students learn. What will make students in trade academies successful students is the quality of the teaching that goes on there. Despite the low rank on Hattie’s scale an excellent trade academy with excellent teaching will be more successful than a mainstream school with poor teaching. 
I ask members in the House whether if they were to undergo life-saving surgery they would prefer a surgeon who used an operating technique know to have the No. 1 success rate or a surgeon who used the 107th most successful strategy. To relate that question to this debate why are we not discussing issues and strategies that we know because of the research will make kids achieve? 
As a principal I had to get all employees and contractors vetted at our school. I viewed it as one of those administrative tasks that just had to be done; so like all good leaders I delegated it. The systems our administrative office set up meant that the vetting just happened. I know that the majority of principals in New Zealand schools are teaching principals and they teach in small schools. But most still have a school secretary who really should be able to post off the vetting form and hand the confidential letter to the principal when it returns. The effort this takes is insignificant compared with ensuring the safety of our children. The system a school sets up can be as streamlined or as muddled as it wishes. 
The other concerns I have regarding this bill are around the sections that have been removed that no longer require the board of trustees to monitor the performance of the principal and the staff and especially in managing and reporting against the school’s aims and objectives set out in the school charter. 
I will finish there but I want to end on the point that if we genuinely want student achievement to be raised then in this Parliament we need to be examining and discussing the issues that are proven to make a difference to student achievement. There are piles of research that illustrate what those strategies are. Thank you.