Simmonds PennyEDUCATION AND TRAINING AMENDMENT BILLThird ReadingDebate resumed from 8 December.PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. I rise to speak in support of the Education and Training Amendment Bill although not without some reservations. So this is a fix-up bill and it's very unfortunate that it's about the fourth time since I have been in Parliament that this Act has had to be fixed up in the past sort of 12 or 14 months.So the bill amends the Education and Training Act 2020 with some relatively minor things and others that are a little bit more significant. So it clarifies the police vetting checking of children's workers and school employees. It extends the ban on charging trainees a compulsory student services fee. It extends that by a year. It emphasises that only people holding teaching positions can use physical restraint and there are some other minor amendments around powers of intervention by the Secretary for Education.So clause 4 covers specifying the agencies to which the joint statements of expectation can be issued by the Minister of Education and the Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti. Clause 5 to 7 is around the use of physical restraint at registered schools and this is the one that clarifies that only a person holding a teacher's position can use physical restraint. I suppose in that area having been very familiar with the work of teacher aides I wonder how on a practical level that is going to play out for teacher aides many of whom are dealing with students who can be quite physical and so I do want to acknowledge the amazing work that teacher aides right across our schools do. I hope this doesn't make their life more difficult.Clause 9 relates to the interventions that may be used by the Secretary for Education. Clause 9 is relating to the regulations around early childhood services requiring ministerial approval to apply for a licence and that application has to be granted before an application for a licence can be made.So I guess two of the more significant parts are around this transitional provision of charging compulsory student fees. That came about in the August 2020 amendment to the Education and Training Act when the mergers were enabled of industry training providers (ITPs) and industry training organisations (ITOs). I think it is worth noting that that select committee process was a very truncated process and I really wonder now if some of these matters could have been dealt with much better had that not been such a truncated process.I hark back to something that I feel quite a grievance over: that submissions at that time to the merger of the ITPs and the ITOs—only 29 percent of the submissions in that process supported it and yet the Minister called that an overwhelming majority. I think of that very truncated select committee process and those hundreds of submissions and had that process been a little more fulsome perhaps we wouldn't be revisiting needing to extend out that period whereby it's prohibited for tertiary providers to charge a compulsory student services fee to students in the workplace. I note that the reason it has to be extended out from the select committee report was it hasn't been possible to finish consultation with the learners and providers to confirm arrangements and so it's having to be pushed out. Charges can't be made until after 31 December next year 2022 which in essence means that they cannot be charged until 2023. I think that could well have been avoided had the original bill in 2020 not been rushed through.Clause 13 is with regard to the police vetting of persons who carry out work with children and I know in my previous role it became quite difficult to judge which people needed to have that vetting just how much time they might be spending with children whether that was their primary role and so it became quite difficult and a definition of a children's worker came through. So this enables a person to carry out work with children but who don't fall within that definition of a children's worker to be required to provide police vetting. Of course we agree that we want to see that it is completely covered and we are completely sure of those that are working with our young people that they have gone through the appropriate processes.We acknowledge that from time to time fix-ups like this are needed but it is incredibly frustrating for us that this piece of legislation is needing so many fix-ups on such a regular basis. While those that are perhaps listening might say Well what is the issue with that?" the issue is that it takes officials it takes select committee time it takes MPs' time and it takes time in this House to go through these amendments. So we would urge the Government to think seriously when they try and truncate these processes. Often in the long term it ends up being much more convoluted and takes up much more time for everyone. Of course National opposed that original legislation the Education and Training Act 2020 because we were concerned about some of the big changes that were occurring from this in terms of the centralisation and I would have to say some of the things that we foresaw at that time are now coming to fruition. Again had the process been less truncated perhaps they could have been avoided—things like Te Pūkenga the chief executive not knowing which of his subsidiary companies are viable and which are not.There are some really serious issues in our education space at the moment that are impacting significantly on not only our students in the education sector but our industries—things like lack of international students insufficient numbers being admitted into medical schools. That has not been increased since 2015 even though we have a desperate shortage of medical graduates a desperate shortage also of veterinary science graduates and again insufficient numbers going into our vet school and insufficient funding for Massey University which is our only vet school to be able to provide further places. We also have concerns obviously in our compulsory schooling sector around the state of our maths and our reading skills.So I suppose our message is that while we support this fix-up bill to improve and make up for some of the things that weren't covered earlier we really wish that our time and the officials' time were being spent on looking at those very very major issues in our education sector rather than once again dealing with minor fix-ups with a bill that really should have been done in the first place. Thank you Mr Speaker."