Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm very pleased to take a call on the Education and Training Bill at its second reading.You often get pieces of legislation in this House that very clearly show the differences in approach between the two sides of the House and this is one of those bills. You clearly get that picture when you see the Government and the opposite side of the House believing that centralisation of decision making is best when it comes to education and when it comes to our young people. On this side of the House we've always clearly believed that it is our view that families communities schools and boards of trustees know best when it comes to the education of our young people.Nicola Willis said prior in her contribution earlier this evening the best outcomes that have been made the best decisions that have been made are the ones that have been driven from the ground up from the communities from the schools from the families and from the boards of trustees. She made the very good point that charter schools were one of those things that it can be proved that when the community comes forward with a solution for children who are failing in the mainstream and who are failing in even our special character schools that what incredible results we get when the community takes control they innovate and they come up with solutions for those children and no more so than at Vanguard Military School in my electorate. But no gone by lunchtime then and we see it again in this bill with a centralisation of decision making taking power away from schools communities boards of trustees families and parents; where we firmly believe that decision making and all the power should be with them. It is always because this Government believes that they know best. They don't trust communities. They don't trust families. They don't trust boards of trustees.Frankly although it's a big bill with many pages it's a bit of a disappointment of a bill. I think Marja Lubeck actually summed it up best when she called this bill a long overdue tidy-up. This bill has come about from the Tomorrow's Schools review which was set up by this Government and they spent millions and millions and millions of dollars on it. It came up with some radical ideas and solutions about changing the future of education and how it would look and we end up with a bill—and she's quite right Marja Lubeck is quite right it's a bit of a tidy-up. It's got a few bits and pieces in here but when you compare it with what the Tomorrow's School's report wanted it's a vastly different thing. So I guess all that money was wasted.There are aspects and I know that it's difficult for Jo Luxton to understand—in a bill this big there are obviously going to be some parts of it that we agree with but the vast majority of it we don't and that's just what happens. I'm unsure why that's such a difficult thing to comprehend; it's not surprising when you look at the size of the bill that there will be some parts of it. But there are so many failings of this bill that were not addressed at select committee for us to vote in favour of its second reading tonight.The one thing that I would like to consider and others have mentioned it as well but I've got some specific examples I'd like to talk about that's the shift of power away from the boards of trustees when it comes to zoning. As I've mentioned earlier we oppose provisions to centralise power and take away that responsibility from boards of trustees and centralise it with bureaucrats in Wellington. School boards know best their local communities they know best their families they know best their area and they should be empowered to make decisions that work best for families particularly on issues like zoning. On this side of the House we are very fearful that removing this autonomy and responsibility may lead to the Ministry of Education however well meaning they may be imposing conditions on schools that do not take families in these situations into account.I want to just start my discussion about zoning just by saying that even the current zoning arrangements they're not perfect. But the things that schools and families and communities—the thing that is the big problem with the current situation is the ministry's involvement. It's not the school's involvement or the board of trustees' involvement it's the ministry's involvement. What this bill does is take what little the school does have available to them and centralise it even further. It takes the worst part of the current situation and makes it even more worse.I want to talk about two examples one in Wellington and one in Auckland one in my electorate in East Coast Bays. I'm not going to say the school but it's a local primary school who have recently gone through this change of zones. They did the consultation but in the end it was the ministry who came in over the top to make the decision and that was the problem. It was the problem that the bureaucrats in Wellington came in over the top and said and forced the school firstly to even undertake the consultation and then forced them into a position that they didn't want to be in. Now the depth of feeling in the community when the ministry made this decision was absolute shock. It was one of anger and huge disappointment. I had parents ringing me saying We will fundraise for new classrooms. We will do this. We will do that. Why don't the ministry understand that we are part of this community? Why are they trying to force us in the opposite direction to attend a school in a community that we have absolutely nothing to do with? We don't travel in that direction. We don't shop over there. We have nothing to do with that community. We are squarely in this community. That school is in our community." The depth of feeling was surprising the anger and the outpouring of emotion. I went to a couple of the meetings where they were attended by many many very angry parents who could not understand why this decision couldn't be made by the school. So as you can see the part of the decision-making process it's not perfect now but the part that's not perfect is the ministry making that decision.Schools and boards of trustees can be trusted to make these decisions to work with other schools to figure out where the growth is. It was really interesting in this case actually of this primary school that I'm speaking of it said that there was going to be a development across the road of 450 new homes. Now interestingly the ministry didn't even know about it. It was the community the board of trustees and the school that knew about it and could account for it but not the ministry. There's so many examples of that in my community with different schools knowing where the growth is and actually trying to tell the ministry that their modelling is wrong and actually here's where all the growth is and here's where we need to have our zones. The Ministry are the ones who don't have the up-to-date information and keep making wrong decisions. We end up with some schools that are over-enrolled and some that are under-enrolled and it's not for lack of trying by the local schools to try and get the ministry to understand.The second example I wanted to talk about is a school that I was actually just discussing with Nicola Willis. She didn't get time in her contribution to talk about it—Makara Model School. It's in a relatively rural area—forgive me I don't know Wellington well. But what she said to me is that it's over the hill from Karori and it takes a number of students from the Karori region. It prides itself on specialising in children who have additional learning needs. It takes any student—it did take any students that had those additional learning needs and it was known as a school that was best for those students. A lot of people from Karori would send their children to that school. What the ministry did was come in over the top and say "That's not allowed. We're going to create a zone." All of the schools wanted it. All of the parents wanted it. The community wanted it. But the ministry came in over the top and said "Actually we know best." And that—I know you're wanting me to come back to the bill Mr Speaker—is the problem with this bill. It centralises this decision making. It takes those decisions away from schools and the consultation away from schools communities families and boards of trustees and puts it with bureaucrats in Wellington who don't know local communities. They don't know geography. As I mentioned they quite often don't know even where the growth is. Those are just two examples. Even now the system isn't perfect. But this bill is going to make it far worse.In my final minute I want to just say that we're also very very concerned that this bill removes a specific accountability placed on school boards to raise educational achievement by amalgamating up with three other objectives and giving them all equal weighting. No one on this side of the House argues that those three aren't important those other metrics aren't important but by not having educational achievement at the top of the list in our opinion it is not a good thing.So in the dying seconds that I have left I just want to say that we back communities we back school boards we back families and we back parents to make the best decisions and not this Government or bureaucrats in Wellington. Thank you."