Woods Megan: Education Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Education Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 14 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:9871. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram):I am pleased to be able to take a call on this bill the Education Amendment Bill to address some of the speeches that we have heard in this House this afternoon about this legislation. I would describe some of the claims that we have heard in this House about partnership schools as truly extraordinary. First of all we had John Banks stand up and tell us that partnership schools will transform education in this country. This is about where my agreement with Mr Banks finished because yes they will. They will introduce State-funded education for profit. They will introduce unqualified and non-registered teachers into our classrooms. They will be run by individual contracts which is the way in which this Government seems to want to govern our country: government by contract. And it will mean a loss of boards of trustees and local communities having a say in how their schools are run. But then Mr Banks really hit the nail on the head when he told us that this was a “paradigm shift” and a “world-class business opportunity”. Well I thought we were here debating the Education Amendment Bill not talking about where the mates of this Government could make their next buck because that is what it seems to be boiling down to.Then we had an equally extraordinary speech from the chair of the Education and Science Committee Dr Cam Calder. I sat through the hearings on this bill. I am a member of that select committee and to sit there and hear or read 2100 submissions from people who told us very good reasons why it was that charter or partnership schools were a bad idea for education in this country and then hear a number of those submitters being denigrated by the chair of that committee is truly extraordinary. Dr Calder told us that the teacher unions should have behaved like their Swedish counterparts. They should have rolled over in the way the Swedish teacher unions did. Well Dr Calder let me tell you that educational achievement in Sweden stopped with the introduction of freedom schools. Even the Maxim Institute will tell you that it was a failed model. The chair of the Education and Science Committee should do his homework before he comes to this House and bandies examples about. It truly was 10 minutes of union bashing. How dare teachers in this country and their representative bodies make submissions on a bill about education! This shows today that the ideological blinkers that this Government is wearing with its coalition partner the ACT Party are firmly in place. This is about ideology. This is about votes in the House. The best he could come up with was 10 minutes of union bashing.Well Dr Calder these are educational professionals. These are the people charged with teaching our children and who do have opinions on education and the future of our education system in New Zealand. And do you know what Dr Calder? I do not know one teacher who would ever ever offer an apology for the fact that they do care about the education system in New Zealand and that they do care about the education of our children. New Zealand teachers whom I speak to are in favour of change. To claim that they do not want to see any change is simply not true. What they want to see is change that works and the legislation that we have before this House is in no way change that works.This is a sad day for New Zealand children because we are getting a step closer to a scheme that was cooked up over a cup of tea to ensure that this Government held the votes in this Parliament. Instead of the Government focusing on making all our schools the very best that they can be we have got a Government that is putting profit before our children’s education and that is not something that anybody in this House should be proud of. There are crocodile tears and words coming from the opposite side that this bill is not about profit; that it is about choice that it is about freedom and that it is about ACT Party values. Well then I challenge members of the Government to vote for my colleague Chris Hipkins’ amendment to this bill that says: “Fine. Take the profit motive out of it.” If you really do believe that it is for not-for-profits and iwi groups then vote in favour of the Supplementary Order Paper that removes the ability for people to make a profit from these partnership schools because until you do your words are hollow. They are—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!Dr MEGAN WOODS: Sorry Mr Assistant Speaker your words are not hollow. Until the Government votes for this Supplementary Order Paper they are going to be just hollow words words with little meaning and a thin veneer of what the Government is trying to do which is open up new business opportunities for its mates.Labour does strongly oppose this bill. We will not agree to National’s charter schools in any way shape or form. People need to know that the ongoing funding and support for charter schools will not be guaranteed under a future Labour Government. We will not guarantee any charter school established during the term of the present Government the right to integrate into the State school system. No further charter schools will be established under a Labour Government and legislation allowing for their establishment will be repealed. Why is this? It is because children in New Zealand deserve better than what the legislation we are debating offers them. They deserve more than a dangerous gimmick and a political stitch-up over a cup of tea between John Key and John Banks. Education is not a business; it is about the future of our children.There is no evidence that charter schools lead to improved results. In fact the overseas evidence has proved that more often than not charter schools fail. The evidence base for making the case to establish charter schools is simply not there. This is simply a Government that is continuing its modus operandi of governing us by contract. This is the traders’ approach to education not the educationalists’ approach to education. Under this legislation all we are getting is contracts that will not deliver for our children and unqualified and deregistered teachers in our classrooms. How is this going to be better for the education of our children? Would anybody in this House allow an untrained doctor to treat their child? The answer is more than likely a resounding no so why would anybody in this House want an untrained teacher to teach their child? If the Government’s claims that it is about educational achievement are true then why is it not following all the evidence that shows within the OECD that where the tightest teacher registration occurs you have the highest educational outcomes? The simple fact of the matter is that if this was a Government that did care about educational outcomes teacher registration would be high on its agenda.We heard from submitter after submitter to the Education and Science Committee about what could be done—even about the utilisation of people who did not have formal teaching qualifications under the present education system that we have. The difference is that they fell within a recognised system and that they were part of an overall scheme where registration was valued. They were not thrown in front of our children.The other objection we have to this amongst many—and my colleague Tracey Martin from New Zealand First spoke of this—is that there is no compulsion on charter schools or partnership schools to deliver the agreed curriculum. We have a very good curriculum in New Zealand. It is well developed and in many ways it is the envy of the world but there is no onus on charter schools to deliver the curriculum. The tragedy of this—and this has been lost by the rhetoric from the Government on this—is that New Zealand has a world-leading education system. Many of our approaches are seen by others around the world as innovative and our parents and our communities have some of the most say in the world in governing our schools through our boards of trustees model. This legislation does away with that for charter schools. Communities and parents will not be the governors of them. Contracts and boards are what are going to govern this type of education in our country and this is not good enough. Submitter after submitter came to the select committee and told us that this would not work and they did not want it. The Government did not listen to them. It did not listen to them about the flexibility.The other important piece in the puzzle in this for me is that of course Christchurch is being seen as one of the sites where we are going to experiment on our children. We have seen in New Orleans what happened post - Hurricane Katrina. Christchurch is being eyed up by the Government as a prime site for experimentation. Our schools are being closed. We are going to hear about that later this month. The children of Christchurch who have already been through so much are going to become the guinea pigs of this Government and the price of a coalition deal cooked up over a cup of tea. The poorest children in the eastern suburbs—