Hipkins Chris: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading[Sitting date: 13 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16686. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):That is what my mother calls me when I am being badly behaved. First of all I suppose I should sympathise with the Minister of Education’s croaky voice. I am not sure whether I will get through 10 minutes today either. There seems to be something in the water at Parliament today.I do want to pick up on some of the comments that the Minister made in her speech on this bill the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). It seems that whenever the Minister speaks in the House about education there needs to be some translation. When she talks about an independent voice for teachers and a teachers’ body that is governed and owned by the teaching profession it is very difficult to reconcile that with the idea that the Minister will hand-pick all the members of it. How is the profession supposed to feel in ownership of the body if it does not actually have any say in who is governing that body? The membership of the council is going to be exclusively determined by the Minister. That is completely at odds with the idea that this will be a body that is owned by the teaching profession.The Labour Party does support an independent teaching body; whether it is called the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ) or something else it does not really matter. The principle of an independent body is something that we are strongly in support of. However having that body exclusively appointed by the Minister simply is not going to lead to that. This body to do the job that it is being tasked with must have the confidence and the support of the profession because without that it simply is not going to be able to do the job and it is not going to get that support if the teaching profession feels that the new EDUCANZ body is something that is being done to it rather than being done with it.When Hekia Parata talked about this being the result of a 3-year conversation most people in the education sector would say that there is a big difference between being talked at and spoken with. The problem is that the current Government’s approach is very much to talk at people who are working in education rather than have a genuine conversation with them. I think that there should be an independent robust education council or teaching council that does have quite an expansive role in raising the quality of education in New Zealand and in raising the status of the teaching profession in New Zealand. Sadly that is not what the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) is delivering.When Hekia Parata mentioned briefly the changes in this bill to make tertiary governance more effective what she effectively meant is the removal of staff and student representation. That is not going to lead to more collaboration and a more collegial approach to educational provision. Hekia Parata talked in her speech about the Government’s plan to introduce expert teachers. One simple question: which teachers will not be the experts?Hon Hekia Parata: The ones that aren’t raising achievement.CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh the ones who are not raising achievement. Well if they are not raising achievement then one has to question why they are still teaching and ask whether in fact the Government should be focused on providing support to all teachers because all teachers should be expert teachers. The idea that we are going to have a two-tier teaching profession—where if you are one of the lucky few who gets an expert teacher you get a better-quality education than all the others who supposedly have non - expert teachers—clearly shows that the Government has got all its priorities wrong.When the Government talks about expert principals what it is basically saying is: “We will take a principal who is doing a good job of running their school and we will reward them for that by taking them out of their school for a couple of days a week and we will pretend that by being out of their school for a couple of days a week they can still continue to do the good job they were doing when they were there full time.” Most principals will say that actually being a good principal is more than a full-time job. Running one school is more than a full-time job so how on earth Hekia Parata and the Government can think that a good principal will somehow be able to run a whole lot of schools whilst still running their school at the same time is beyond anybody.It is no wonder that the teaching profession and the principals are walking away from this. They are clearly walking away from this and we have seen that in the last few days. They were willing to give the Government the benefit of the doubt and in record quick time Hekia Parata has already managed to burn them off. She has already managed to burn them off. The whole profession was willing to say: “Actually let’s work with the Government and see whether we can make this work.” and already it is walking away saying: “No this isn’t going to work.” EDUCANZ and the future of the teaching profession should be driven by the profession. In what other profession does the Government dictate: “This is how you will run yourselves. This is what all of the criteria will be.”? There are not very many. I actually think—Hon Hekia Parata: The Minister already makes all the appointments Mr Hipkins. Read the law that your Government put in place.CHRIS HIPKINS: I have read the Cabinet paper I say to Hekia Parata. I have read the Cabinet paper thin as it was and it was very clear that there was a very insubstantial evidence base there. Going on holiday somewhere does not create an evidence base for something. It seems to be that Hekia Parata thinks that just by going somewhere and speaking to a few people it creates an evidence base. Actually there is a lot more to an evidence base than that. There was a very flimsy evidence base for the proposals that have been put forward by John Key and the National Government and it is no wonder that that is already starting to come unstuck.We do need to focus on raising the quality of education in New Zealand and that starts by recognising the critical role of the teaching profession in setting and maintaining the standards for the profession. That is something that this Government is not willing to do. This Government thinks that it can impose those standards on the teaching profession including by setting up an establishment body for the new education council of New Zealand which has a National Party office holder on it. If you want to know why it is that the teaching profession baulks at the idea that the Minister would appoint—hand-pick—the entire board of the new education council of New Zealand that is a pretty good example. That is a pretty good example. I actually think that the teaching profession should have the ultimate say or at least a significant say on how this body is made up. That is not something that Hekia Parata is willing to do because this Government thinks that it should be dictating to the teaching profession what should be going on within the profession.This bill of course entrenches—entrenches—the double standard of this Government where on the one hand it is talking about raising the standards for the teaching profession and then on the other hand it is exempting charter schools from those provisions. It is exempting its small group of charter schools from those provisions. If it is really committed to raising the standard of the teaching profession why would it exempt the newest schools—the schools that it wants to expand? Why would it say that this new model of education should be exempt from the agenda to raise the standards in the profession? It has no good reason for doing that. This bill simply entrenches the double standard that says that schools in the public system should be dumped all over as they have repeatedly been by this current Government while the charter schools which the Government is hand-picking and establishing should get a different set of standards.Of course it is all spin—all this good news that we are getting from the Government is spin. Let us not forget that this is the Government that thought that the answer to quality teaching was increasing class sizes. This is a Government that after a year and a half and $43 million of taxpayers’ money being shovelled at it still cannot get the payroll system right—Hon Steven Joyce: That you signed up “Chippy”!CHRIS HIPKINS: —so that teachers actually get paid for their work. Steven Joyce is an absolute failure. “Mr Fix-it” still has not fixed it. A year and a half and $43 million later Steven Joyce’s answer is to shovel another $10 million at it and hope for the best. Novopay does not work and Steven Joyce still has not fixed it. He has been an absolute failure. “Mr Fix-it” did not fix Novopay.Bigger class sizes Novopay school closures in Christchurch national standards that are neither national nor standard—the litany of educational failures of this Government is not going to be undone by a little bit of spin work now where the Government claims it actually values the teaching profession. It values them so much it is not willing to entrust them with any decision making over the future of the teaching profession. This is a Government that is not willing to practise what it preaches.This is a Government that wants to control everything. Hekia Parata wants to control the new education council and yet we know that the courts do not have any faith in her decision making because twice she has been challenged in the courts and twice she has lost. She has been twice challenged in the courts and she lost on both occasions. The courts even went so far as to say that she had abrogated her responsibilities as a decision maker.Now Hekia Parata wants to have decision-making responsibilities for the whole teaching profession. She wants to hand-pick the entire body of the new education council. I think that is wrong. I think teachers should have a say in who is going to be on this new education council. The Government has no good reason for explaining why it does not believe that. Not once has the Government put forward a compelling argument for why this body should be exclusively appointed by the Minister of Education.We should be focused on raising the status of the teaching profession in New Zealand. That means meaningful recognition for the teaching profession. It means meaningful ongoing dialogue and discussion with people working in the teaching profession. It means a two-way conversation not a Minister who is preaching to them telling them what is best for them and never listening.