Tinetti JanThird Reading Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Education): I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3).SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon JAN TINETTI: I move That the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a third time.I'd like to start by thanking once again those who took time to submit on this bill and the hard-working members of the Education and Workforce Committee who carefully evaluated the views of the public and helped strengthen this bill by providing useful suggestions and deliberation.This bill will provide important and necessary changes to the Education and Training Act 2020 that will support great outcomes for students across the education sector. It will support the rangatiratanga of wānanga enable school boards to better fulfil their role in keeping our schools safe strengthen school governance and increase accountability and transparency in education institutions.The most important and significant change in this bill is the establishment of a new governance framework for wānanga to better recognise their mana and rangatiratanga. I am going to leave it to my colleague the Hon Kelvin Davis to speak to these changes and the other proposals that impact kaupapa Māori education in detail.I would like to mihi to those people who are in the gallery to support this but also as the education Minister I want to show my absolute delight that something as we heard my colleagues say in the committee of the whole House that has taken a significant amount of time has got to this point. I am absolutely excited and ecstatic that we are able to pass this here today.Another important change in this bill that we haven't heard too much about is the strengthening of school board eligibility requirements to ensure that they adequately reflect the role the school board members have in providing a school that is a physically and emotionally safe place for students and staff. That is really important. The changes that we are making around board eligibility when they come on to board membership are all about the emotional and physical safety of our students and staff.The bill ensures that people who have been convicted of an offence listed in Schedule 2 of the Children's Act 2014 are not eligible to serve on a State school board unless they have been granted an exemption by the Secretary for Education. This is something that has been raised with me a number of times around keeping our young people safe by looking at those board members and how we can strengthen that. Today we are putting right something that was a bit of an anomaly in the previous legislation. The bill also empowers the secretary to conduct audits on school board members to ensure that they meet eligibility criteria.In parallel to these changes a code of conduct for school board members was recently issued which makes clear board members' responsibilities and expected standards of behaviour. Both the code of conduct and these eligibility changes contribute to safeguarding our schools and increasing the confidence of school staff students and the school community that board members are suitable for the role and acting appropriately.I would like to thank particularly the New Zealand School Trustees Association who have had a lot of input into developing both the code of conduct and the changes that we are making through this bill here today.The bill enables the ministry to publish or disclose data relating to the socio-economic status of children attending early childhood education services and their families for the purpose of developing an early childhood equity index. A really important part of this is that we found that again there was a bit of an anomaly around being able to share that data across from Statistics New Zealand and we are able to do that quite easily after this. I'm really happy that we can do this to ensure that that equity index can be developed in its entirety. It is really important to make certain that we have equal opportunities right from our youngest learners within the system.The bill makes three changes to the board election provisions to ensure that the governance of our schools is representative and efficient. The first of these we haven't heard a lot about either but this is actually really critical. The first is a one-off practical change to shift the timing of the next mid-term school board elections to November of this year. It is important that we get this legislation through right now because that's November of this year.The 2022 triennial school board elections were moved to allow time for changes to be made to school board election settings. This shifted the next mid-term elections to March 2024 which means election processes would need to begin in the summer holidays. This amendment avoids this impractical timing by reverting schools to the usual election timetable and it is something that schools have wanted.The second change modernises and expands school board member co-option and appointment criteria to ensure that boards reflect as far as reasonably practicable the genders sexualities and sexes of the student body and the community of the school and the diversity of schools' disabled students and disability community when deciding on members to co-opt or appoint. This update makes the criteria for school board co-option more inclusive and encourages board members to think about how they can best reflect the diversity of their school students and community. I remind people in this House that we are talking about 5 percent of boards who use the co-option as a process to make sure that their communities are appropriately represented within their board of trustees and this is a prompt for them to think about the different diversities within their school community.The final change to school board election provisions is to enable school boards to fill the student representative position if a student is not elected at the annual September elections. Currently if no student representative is elected at the September election the vacancy cannot be filled until the next election. This change will allow the vacancy to be filled and support the Government's priorities in education to reduce barriers and increase student participation.The bill builds on previous amendments that have strengthened police vetting requirements for non-teaching and unregistered workers and contractors at schools and early childhood services. Again we're talking about the safety of our young people which is critically important.There are other changes that this bill is making to support accountability and transparency within our education sector. It requires universities and wānanga to publish information about the remuneration and benefits of employees and former employees for amounts of $100000 or more improving transparency within that part of the sector. The bill restricts the appointment of the chief executive of Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu to a term of five years with the ability to reappoint for further terms. Finally the bill makes a number of minor and technical amendments to the Education and Training Act to ensure that it is fit for purpose and to tidy up and modernise the language within the Act.I am convinced of the positive and meaningful impact that this bill will have on our education sector particularly the new enabling framework for wānanga that has taken many many years but is a significant reflection of the progression in the relationship between the Crown and wānanga. I am absolutely delighted to commend the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3) to the House.SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.