Davis Kelvin: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDavis Kelvin: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 25 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:829. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau):I would like to start off by just addressing some of the comments made by one of the members across the way there talking up the Government’s Investing in Educational Success policy—a policy that was designed to remove expert teachers and principals from their classrooms or schools for a couple of days a week so that they can go and help people in other schools which on the face of it sounds OK until you actually examine the detail of what that will mean in schools. You see the place where learning occurs is at the interface between a teacher and the student. When you happen to take a teacher out of the classroom for a couple of days a week and when a relieving teacher comes into a classroom we know—all of us know from our experiences in school—that except in the case where that relieving teacher is an exceptional relieving teacher it is just never the same and learning is not the same. I really want to put to bed now this notion that taking teachers out of the classroom for 2 days a week and bringing in a relieving teacher to relieve is actually going to raise achievement. It may help teachers in other schools who are getting the help of the expert teacher but it is never going to help the children in those classrooms who are having the relieving teacher there.We are searching for a reason for the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). It appears that the National Government is following the mantra that if it ain’t broke let us smash it with legislation. It is absolutely hammering something that does not need to happen.I would really like to take up the issue that my colleague Megan Woods raised around section 161 of the Education Act guaranteeing academic freedom. That academic freedom is now in jeopardy but it is not just that. Section 75 of the Education Act gives boards of trustees the complete discretion to run the school as they see fit. Section 76 gives principals the complete discretion to manage a school as they see fit. But a part of this bill is about imposing audits of appraisals on schools. So 10 percent of any practising certificates that are going to be renewed in a given year are going to be audited.The schools’ appraisals systems are going to be audited. Let us do the maths. There are about 45000 teachers throughout New Zealand and every 3 years those teachers have to have their practising certificates renewed. That means that in any given year there are going to be 15000 teachers needing to have their practising certificates renewed. Ten percent of that means that there are going to be 1500 appraisals audited. I ask the question: who is going to do this work? Is it going to be the Education Review Office? I do not know. If it is the Education Review Office will it have the time? Will it have the resources to enable it to conduct these audits? If not who is it going to be? Are these people going to be respected and knowledgable educators who can go in to schools to check out the efficacy or otherwise of any appraisal system?The bill talks about consistent standards in this appraisal system. If we have somebody go into a school in Invercargill and somebody go into a school in Kaitāia how do we get the consistent standard and how do they moderate? The bill says “consistent standard by auditing and moderating the appraisals …”. Everybody in education who is worth their salt knows that “moderation” is a pretty fraught word. We can have moderation of a writing sample—a child can do a writing sample in a classroom and two teachers in classrooms adjoining each other can actually moderate that and because of the difficulties of moderating they can come up with different grades for that piece of writing. So how can we ensure the consistency and the moderation of an appraisal auditing system throughout the country? It also takes away the principal’s right to run the school as he or she may see fit under section 75 of the Education Act.We have heard that there were hundreds—I heard over here thousands—of submitters and of those submitters I am told that only 13 actually supported this bill in full. If we cannot get the education system and teachers across the board to support this basically we are going to resort to Draconian measures to enforce it and that is not good for trust either.I do want to raise something that has been puzzling me in terms of clause 353 around registration. It says: “The Education Council must register an applicant under section 352 if satisfied that the applicant—(a) is of good character;”. I have got no arguments with that; that is fine. It says: “(b) is fit to be a teacher;”—that is fine. It says: “(c) is satisfactorily trained to teach;”—yeah that is cool. It says: “(d) meets the criteria for teacher registration …”—yeah nothing wrong with that. And it says: “(e) either—(i) has not been convicted of a specified offence listed in Schedule 21;”—which I have here and I will read it out soon—“or (ii) has (in accordance with the provisions of any other relevant enactment) been granted an exemption by the chief executive in respect of every conviction for a specified offence listed in Schedule 21.” And you think “Hmm that sounds um reasonable. People may err and they may get a conviction but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re unfit to teach.”—until we look at schedule 21 and the specified offences.The first specified offence is “sexual violation”. So if I go back and read this—I had to read it a couple of times—it says that the chief executive may actually grant an exemption or the potential is there for the chief executive to grant an exemption for somebody who has committed sexual violation. The second specified offence is “attempted sexual violation and assault with intent to commit sexual violation”. So that is someone who has tried and failed to rape somebody. The third one is “sexual conduct”—look the list goes on and there is nothing here in these specified offences that I could see that would make sense for a chief executive to even try to consider granting an exemption for and I think that that particular part of the bill is absolute nonsense.I am concerned about the possibility of teachers being gagged. We know that this Government does not like criticism of any form. We have heard other members speak about the potential gagging of teachers. This is what will happen if a teacher dares to raise their head above the parapet and criticise education policies such as the Investing in Educational Success policy. Chances are that they could see themselves up in front of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ) if they are not careful and if they push the boundaries too much. So we are concerned that teachers are going to be prevented from making public comments on Government policy and criticising education policy. I think it is essential that teachers be able to have their say around educational matters because there is nothing wrong with seeking alternative or contrary views. It just makes the educational argument stronger.There is another part of this bill that concerns me and that is around the powers of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand and we will go into this in greater depth during the Committee stage. It is around the council being able to charge for any goods or services it provides in accordance with its functions. I am really concerned that—[Interruption] Yes in terms of user-pays as Megan Woods says but in terms of the function of auditing the appraisals is this a service that schools do not want but are going to actually have to pay for as a part of this bill? The Labour Party opposes this bill in its entirety.