Joyce Steven: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeJoyce Steven: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading[Sitting date: 13 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16688. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment):I would like to thank the author of the Novopay contract Chris Hipkins for that contribution. I would like to thank him for that. Unfortunately I cannot thank him for much else. Unfortunately also I do not understand his contribution. I have tried to summarise it. I have tried to summarise it for him. It appears that he thinks that independent teacher councils are important but they should not be too independent. That is the first thing he said. He also seems to be relitigating Labour’s support for teaching excellence. He seems to be quickly moving away from its support for teaching excellence. But to be fair to him that is Labour’s “yeah nah” approach as exhibited in education.The Education Amendment Bill (No 2) is an important bill. This bill will improve our education system. I agree with the remarks made by my colleague the Hon Hekia Parata and I suspect I will not agree with remarks about to be made by “Jurassic” Grant Robertson. In my speech I would like to focus on the two areas of the bill—Grant Robertson: What’s that Humpty-Dumpty?Hon STEVEN JOYCE:—within my portfolio of tertiary education skills and employment. It is all right; I will come to you Grant. First let me deal with the Government’s reforms to university and wānanga governance. These moderate but important changes modernise councils so that they are smaller skills-based and can better respond and more quickly respond to the challenges of modern-day tertiary education. The changes will mean that the councils can more easily meet the needs of a rapidly changing employment market; adapt to the new challenges from changing technology teaching and learning; and operate more effectively in an increasingly competitive international university environment.There are four major changes from the current model. Firstly councils will decrease in size from 12 to 20 members currently to eight to 12 members. Universities and wānanga will choose their council size within those parameters. Secondly council membership requirements will be more flexible by the removal of specific representative requirements. The current law is highly prescriptive and outdated in that regard. Thirdly the Minister and councils will be required to appoint members with skills knowledge or experience relevant to each council’s particular needs. Fourthly the duties and accountabilities of individual council members will be clarified. That is it. “Jurassic” Grant Robertson has been roaming the campuses desperately trying to wind the students up to revolt in the streets and they have largely ignored him. In fact if it had not been for my signing them up for the Young Nats at Victoria University’s campus the other day nobody would have been talking to him.These changes will allow both universities and wānanga to recruit the expertise needed to effectively respond to the challenges of a changing environment. Individual council members will get a clear picture of what is expected of them. Those who are performing poorly will be prevented from undermining the overall performance of a council. The changes will help address the difficulties that larger councils can have with timely decision-making and communication. They will bring university and wānanga councils more in line with most other organisations in the modern world which have been moving towards smaller governing bodies for quite some time—many many years in fact. The governance changes made to our polytechnic sector in 2010 have greatly contributed to the turn-round in educational and financial performance in that sector. All university and wānanga councils will be required to have at least one Māori member to assist the Government’s role of raising achievement for Māori. This will not be a significant change as all but one do today.The changes are particularly important for wānanga. The current governance settings were not written with them in mind. They were asked to adopt the university settings. The changes will allow increased flexibility for wānanga to reflect their unique stakeholders particularly iwi on their councils. I want to stress that despite the scaremongering of “Jurassic” Grant—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Can I just remind the member that the member must use an honourable member’s full name not a nickname or anything else. All members in this House are honourable.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I apologise Mr Assistant Speaker. I will not refer to him in that manner again even though his response to these things is reasonably outdated. The changes will not compromise institutional autonomy or academic freedom. These freedoms are guaranteed by section 161 of the Education Act which is not changing so I can therefore save the Opposition members their breath for the rest of this debate and the subsequent stages of this bill because those matters are not changing. I know that members opposite are concerned about student representation and that is important. Under the changes proposed in this bill councils will be free to choose to retain their student and staff representation. I have already stated that I expect most institutions will do just that. The key point is that they get the flexibility to determine the best make-up of their councils; we treat them like adult organisations.The changes proposed in the bill are the latest in a series of incremental reforms made by the Government to improve the performance and quality of tertiary education. We have reduced spending in low-value areas such as student loans for people who consistently fail their courses and we have improved the way the system targets need.Grant Robertson: Like people over 55. They’re terribly low value aren’t they Steven—people over 55.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: We have set performance incentives on providers and students—here comes the guy who wants to spend the money—and improved information for students about the performance of providers and the employment outcomes of their study. Interestingly Government investment in tertiary education has risen substantially. In 2012 we invested $2.2 billion in publicly owned tertiary institutions. That in itself is an increase of 13.4 percent since 2008. The investment increase in universities is higher—up 16 percent since 2008. The approach is paying off. We achieved a record number of qualifications in 2012—162000. The number of domestic students who completed a Bachelor’s degree in 2012 was the highest ever at 25400 up 4790 in just 2 years—an increase of 23 percent. Right through the 2000s despite the buckets and buckets of money that Labour poured into this system the number of degree graduates flat-lined despite these big increases in funding. So these results are great to see when somebody manages the tertiary education system properly and does not rely on old fossil politicians from the student unions. Many more young people are now moving from school to degree-level study: from 13600 students in 2007 to 16500 in 2012. These include more young Māori and Pasifika. The total number of Māori students enrolled in total in qualifications at Bachelor’s level or higher increased from 17500 to 21900 in 2012. The number of Pasifika students increased too from 8500 in 2007 to 11800 in 2012.I will now talk about how the bill will improve the education system’s responsiveness to the needs of international students. International education is very important to New Zealand. It contributes $2.6 billion a year to our economy and 28000 jobs for New Zealanders. I thought most parties in this House supported international education; after last week though I am not quite so sure because the Shane Jones and Raymond Huo thing about supporting international education one day and not the next did send yet another confusing signal from the Opposition. The Business Growth Agenda has set a goal of doubling the total value of New Zealand’s international education sector to $5 billion by 2025. It is also part of our drive to be better connected across the world. Our success as a country depends on our level of connectedness. At the end of the day we are a small trading nation and we need very strong links with the world and international education is an important way to develop those links. It provides New Zealand with lifelong ambassadors as graduates go back to their home countries and share their experiences with friends family and colleagues. It helps enhance teaching and research the sharing of knowledge and the building of human capital. We must take steps to ensure always that our international students have the best possible experience while they are here. This bill adds on the reforms we have already made and creates a new legal framework for the Code of Practice for the Pastoral Care of International Students. This will enable targeted interventions in situations where providers are not complying with their obligations under the code. A more effective and efficient sanction process will be introduced to ensure that code signatories represent New Zealand education in the best possible way. It also establishes a dedicated disputes resolution scheme which provides international students with an accessible and efficient forum for settling financial or contractual disputes with providers.The bill also makes improvements to student fee protection which covers both domestic and international students. That will help reduce the compliance costs associated with that for private training establishments. The bill strengthens the ability of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to undertake quality assurance of tertiary education organisations and streamlines the process for deregistration of private training establishments. To protect the quality of tertiary education the bill strengthens enforcement and offence provisions and provides disincentives for those who seek to avoid the consequences of poor performance. This bill is from a Government that is doing a very good job in the education sector and a very good job in tertiary education. I know it is galling for the Opposition but we are receiving great results in the tertiary sector. This bill makes important changes to the governance of our universities and wānanga so they can respond more effectively and strategically in the modern world Mr Robertson—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order!Hon STEVEN JOYCE: —and it will create a more robust regulatory framework for our international education sector. This bill is a good bill for our tertiary education sector. I commend it to the House.