Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (National): I rise to give my final speech on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). I want to start on a positive note because this bill does contain one good thing. The good thing that it contains is a reform to the process by which universities may change their name. This reflects recent events in New Zealand where one of our—if not our most—premium universities Victoria University of Wellington decided that it would go about changing its name. Unfortunately the university council attempted to make that change without the support of its community with a significant proportion of students and alumni opposed to that change and with staff divided on it.We at the Education and Workforce Committee heard submissions about in fact the ambiguity in the law as to whether or not the Minister of Education could approve or disapprove that change. Minister Hipkins did a good thing: he rejected that name change proposal. The Victoria University council should be acknowledged: they too did a good thing and dropped the proposal. But what this change in the law does is make it very clear for the future that if any institution is to change its name it will require a resolution in Parliament.I think it's appropriate that universities which are creatures of statute should be accountable to the members of this House on whom it will be incumbent in future to ensure that no name change can occur unless it is genuinely in the interests of a university and its community.However I move to the more negative aspects of this bill which are unfortunately the reasons why we must oppose it. In doing so I just first want to ask the question of members opposite: is this the best you've got in education? Is this the best that we are going to see? Because I do not think that parents—that mums and dads—when they're thinking about what they want from schools what they want to see improve for their children are thinking about amendments like this.First we have the cohort entry policy. We've had all sorts of claims on the other side but let's be very clear: National absolutely preserved the rights of parents to choose the age at which their children started school. It has been the case in New Zealand that children don't need to start school till their six historically. National preserved that position. However what we did do was we extended the choice by saying that we wanted to preserve the idea that anyone by their fifth birthday can start school. So we will allow for cohort entry so that a few children might start a few weeks before their fifth birthday.So it is incredibly disingenuous of the members in this debate to have claimed that we were forcing children to start school before their fifth birthday. We did no such thing. What we did was provide an additional choice to some parents who may for example have had an older sibling at the same school and wanted to do one drop off not two or who may for example have observed that one school was doing a great job of embracing principles in Te Whāriki the early childhood curriculum was embracing play-based learning or would be a good place for their child to be.Parents and children have different circumstances and they should be recognised by allowing parents to make the decisions that are best for their own children—a principle that the opposite side of the House simply refuse to uphold.Then we move to the issue of the Teaching Council. This is petty because what we have here is a backflip from a Minister who campaigned on giving autonomy to teachers in the running of their professional institution but then received advice from his own officials that in doing that he was putting at risk the public interest in terms of aligning the work of that council with the needs of the education system. He gave with one hand; he took with the other and this is where he takes it by saying that he will direct that council through Government policy statements. We oppose that.Finally before I sit down I just want to talk about communities of online learning and what the removal of the provisions for these communities of online learning represents. What it represents is this Government's failure to in any way create a framework or a foundation for the huge advancements that are happening in digital learning that are happening with online platforms. Instead they have removed a provision which would have allowed for new things to evolve. What we say on the side of the House is actually the Government has a role in ensuring that new innovations can take place so that we can embrace the best of online learning for our children into the future.This bill is pure politics. It's not about delivering for kids; it's about unwinding sensible provisions by the former National Government. It does nothing on the issues that really matter. It does nothing for example for the hundreds of children waiting for early intervention support. It does nothing for the children who are not getting what they need out of their schools. We should judge this Government not by what it says but by what it does and this bill is something we thoroughly oppose.