Hipkins ChrisEDUCATION AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I move That the Education Amendment Bill be now read a second time. This bill amends the Education Act 1989 and the Education Update Amendment Act of 2017. This bill is about backing our public school system moving away from a system of a punitive and narrow approach to measuring a child's achievement to one that is meaningfully measuring children's progress against the rich and diverse curriculum that we have in our school system and restoring student and staff voices in the decision making on councils of tertiary education institutions which the previous Government removed.This bill will strengthen the quality of schooling education by removing national standards. National standards were neither national nor were they standard. They significantly increased the workload of teachers for no discernible gain for the young people who were in their classes. The evidence continued to mount up making the case against national standards an easy one to make. This Government has listened to those with expertise and we have abolished national standards already. This bill removes them from the statute books.The second major change that this bill implements is the removal of the charter school model from legislation and supporting the transition of existing charter schools into the public education system. Nobody should be surprised by this. When the last Government decided to embark on their ideological charter school experiment every other party in Parliament except for the ACT Party and the Māori Party indicated that they were opposed to that experiment. Labour New Zealand First the Greens and I'm pretty sure that United Future at the time as well made it clear that we did not want to see our public education system undermined in that way and this bill gives effect to the commitment we made back then. We are removing the ideologically driven experiment of charter schools and we are supporting those who are currently in charter schools to transition into the public education system because we do not believe that they should be disadvantaged and penalised because of the last Government's ideological experiment.The bill also supports the integrity of the fees-free tertiary education commitment that the Government has made by creating a new offence for making a false representation in relation to an application for free tertiary education. This will significantly simplify the enrolment process and remove the need for people signing up for fees-free to do a statutory declaration. They will no longer need to go and find a justice of the peace to sign their application because this process has been made that much simpler. It's a similar amendment to one that this House made recently or within the last few years around passports where people no longer have to do statutory declarations in order to apply for a passport. It's a very sensible provision that will remove a lot of administrative burden and create much more convenience for those wishing to access their entitlement to free post-school education and training.The bill also restores guaranteed staff and student representation on the councils of tertiary education institutions. Let's go back and rewind to when the last Government removed that provision and let's consider how well that's worked out for the governance of our tertiary institutions as this Government has to bail them out to the tune of tens of millions of dollars because of poor governance decisions by some of those very same institutions. Would those decisions have been made had the staff and students who actually have a direct interest in those institutions been involved in the decision making and if they had had a voice at the table—I don't think they necessarily would have. Yes there are some big problems facing that sector as a whole but there is no question that the governance model imposed by the last Government has failed spectacularly. We can significantly improve that by ensuring that the people with the most direct interest the staff and the students who are absolutely committed to the success of their institutions have a say in the governance of those very institutions.The bill will also make some pragmatic changes to the new strategic planning and reporting framework for State and State-integrated schools and enable a smooth transition to the regime. The Education (Update) Amendment Act passed by the last Government made quite significant changes to the way our school governance planning processes work. That was something that the Labour Party component of the Government—I can't remember how New Zealand First and the Greens voted—supported the intention of that which was to have a statement of national education and learning priorities and then to get schools to align their plans to that.We supported the statement of national education and learning priorities but the timing for doing that was so short that the Government wouldn't have been able to issue that and schools wouldn't have been able to consider that before they had to have their new strategic plans in place. So this bill buys some time so that we can get that right so we can get a statement of national education and learning priorities that reflects the priorities of the nation when it comes to education and so we can ensure that the transition from the existing regulatory regime is a smooth one. That amendment for example removed all of the National Education Guidelines and National Administration Guidelines that schools currently adhere to and we've got to make sure that the process of repealing those and replacing those is a smooth one and we're allowing the time to do that properly.The bill also resolves errors and omissions in the Education Act of 1989 and the Education Update Amendment Act of 2017 to address minor technical issues in the Education Act of 1989. The Education and Workforce Committee deserves kudos for reporting this bill back to the House with some credible and sensible amendments. With regard to removing national standards and establishing the new offence provision they recommended no amendments. With regard to the removal of the charter school model they have made some technical changes in the bill and the Government supports these changes. They have also adopted a Supplementary Order Paper put forward by the Government that responds to some of the concerns raised by the charter schools in their transition into the public education system including their desire to ensure that their designated character is preserved and we have made provisions to ensure that. Also we have made sensible changes around the transitional provisions for staffing consistent to transitional provisions that have been made in other parts of Government policy where there has been a transition from one form of entity to another. They are very sensible amendments that have been put forward.The committee has also made some sensible amendment suggestions to tertiary education institution governance including ensuring that the process for selecting staff and student representation is a fair and robust one and is consistent with the overall intent of the bill.This is the first major step or one of the major steps in fulfilling several Government election commitments for education. It removes national standards—commitment delivered. It removes the charter school model—commitment delivered. It restores the right of staff and students to have their representation on tertiary councils reinstated—commitment delivered. And it signals a move towards a system of reporting that provides a far richer and more comprehensive picture of student progress against the curriculum and removes national standards—commitments delivered. This bill is a sign of a Government that is getting on with the job of delivering on the commitments that we made to New Zealand of ensuring we've got a robust quality public education system that serves all New Zealanders.