King Colin: Education Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
King Colin: Education Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 16 August 2011. Volume:675;Page:20838. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 I start off by rebutting the speaker from the other side Carmel Sepuloni who was trying to draw a comparison between student unions and those people for whom education has not worked out in life. If members on the other side cannot see the difference between those people who have access and the qualifications to go to university and those for whom education has not worked out then that probably explains Labour’s failure when it was in Government. It just forked out money into tertiary education without any consideration—any consideration—for the quality that came out the other end. 
The Education Amendment Bill (No 4) is long overdue. It is necessary because of the inactivity of the previous Government and some of the conduct that we see in the education sector especially by private training establishments. One of the very important functions of education in New Zealand an important sector of it is international education which may be known as the export sector. New section 234B inserted by clause 30 talks about the necessary information that private training establishments must provide for students. This is very important. Private training establishments—PTEs—provide a very important function within the tertiary education sector. However there have been cases where we have all been embarrassed by the lack of discipline that has been applied to the processes of how student fees have been managed. This part of the bill brings the functions around student fees how they are carried out and sorted into sync with those of universities and suchlike. It deals with how the fees of international students in private training establishments are protected. 
Their fees have to be put into a trust. What is a trust? It has to be at arm’s length separate from the private training establishment. As new section 234C(1) says “ ‘trustee’ means Public trust a trustee company under the Trustees Companies Act 1967 a chartered accountant in public practice or a lawyer whose practising certificate allows the holding of trust funds.” It becomes quite clear that a process is being put round the management of student fees. New section 234E(1) makes the comment that funds must be deposited “as soon as practicable”. That was an interesting aspect. The Education and Science Committee asked officials what the definition of “as soon as practicable” would be. Evidently it is a legal term. We were assured of that. To some of us it appeared to be slightly loose. However they assured us that within the legal system “as soon as practicable” means reasonableness—I do not know; they can sort that one out. But it is there. We had an interesting little discussion with the officials. 
The Minister has a part to play in this process. He has to advertise in the  
Gazette  
how refunds of any student fees—in this context the refund entitlements of international students—for courses have to be handled. This bill tidies up an issue with regard to withdrawal. New section 235A(1) says: “A private training establishment must—(a) allow every international student enrolled for a programme or training scheme that is of 3 months’ duration or more to withdraw from it at any time within the refund period;”. It talks about the refund period: the establishment must “allow every international student enrolled for a programme or training scheme that is of less than 3 months’ duration to withdraw from it within a period (being less than 7 days) specified by the Authority;”. 
This bill tidies up a lot of the rogue activities of the private training establishments. It is not onerous; it just writes out the rules. When we look at ourselves within the international educational scene we have to be able to provide certainty and we have to be able to deliver a high standard of education and that is what this bill does.