Roy Heather: Education Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Roy Heather: Education Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:653;Page:2665] 
Hon HEATHER ROY (Associate Minister of Education) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to speak to the first reading of the Education Amendment Bill. ACT is supporting this bill for no other reason than that there are many amendments here—it is a tidying-up bill if you like. The amendments make absolute sense and quite why some of them were not addressed well before now is anybody’s guess. 
The main amendments are firstly to introduce an information-matching programme to compare teacher information held on the Ministry of Education’s payroll system with information from the Teachers Council’s teacher register. The purpose of this programme is to identify teachers who are teaching without a current practising certificate and it will also identify schools that are illegally employing these teachers. As I say it is a very sensible and straightforward amendment that should have been dealt with before now. 
The second amendment which has been referred to by most speakers is the reduction in compliance costs related to police vetting by removing the Teachers Council as the conduit for police vetting of non-teaching staff and contract staff. As the previous speaker Colin King said we are talking here about parents and volunteers. Quite why we would try to discourage parents from participating in their children’s education as volunteers I do not know. This amendment removes the requirement to obtain police vetting for contractors who have no unsupervised access to children. It does not change at all the supervised access provisions but here we are talking about parents and volunteers who will not have direct access to children and certainly will not be alone with them. It does not remove the requirement for the police vetting of teaching staff or non-teaching staff who have unsupervised access to children but it does remove the Teachers Council as the mechanism for obtaining police checks. This should make police checks quicker and cheaper for schools and removing compliance costs in this instance is very much a good thing. It is interesting to hear from Colin King that this move is endorsed by both the Principals Federation and the New Zealand Educational Institute. They have called this move common sense and I have to agree with them. 
In my particular area of delegation as Associate Minister of Education I am pleased to see that some provisions in the bill will make things much better for those undertaking special education and also for independent schools. I come first to special education. Provisions within the bill will allow special schools to be accredited for NCEA (National Certificate of Educational Achievement) which is not currently the case. As I have gone around the country visiting special schools satellite classrooms and children with special education needs who are being mainstreamed I have seen that this issue has been very much a bugbear particularly in special schools. Several students at these schools are at the academic level where they are able to participate in NCEA but this is not automatically available to children in special schools. This bill will rectify that anomaly. If there is one thing we should be aiming for for all children in New Zealand it is the opportunity for them to reach their full potential whether they are educated at a State school an independent school an integrated school or indeed a special school. 
The bill also clarifies the terms “special class” “special clinic” “special school” and “special service”. Some might look at this provision and ask why it is necessary as we are just talking about words. But as we well know in the public sector definitions become very important when it comes to funding and resourcing so this too is a very welcome amendment to the Education Act. 
Also in the special education realm this bill amends the definition of “State school” to include “special school” which is currently not the case either. Special schools are usually funded and resourced by the Ministry of Education in exactly the same way that State schools are and it is a matter of great importance to the children attending a special school—and also to their parents and those working in the area—that they be considered to be under the State school umbrella. It means that they are seen with a degree of normality that is perhaps sometimes denied them. 
With regard to independent schools this bill removes an anomaly in the Act so that private schools are able to be lawfully accredited to offer NCEA. Many will be unaware that this is actually not the case at the moment; this amendment corrects something that should have been corrected long ago. 
The bill allows for combined establishment boards that can set up more than one new school and it allows for more flexibility when independent schools are reviewed. We heard just before that such schools will now come under the same rules in terms of Education Review Office examination as every other school in the country which is absolutely the right thing. 
The bill outlines other amendments which are of a relatively minor nature. Again while we have the opportunity to tidy up things that should be other than as they are that opportunity is being taken. I will give a few examples. The bill allows for more flexibility in relation to when triennial elections for school boards of trustees are held. At the moment the law stipulates that elections for school boards have to be held on the second Tuesday in May. Quite what is special about the second Tuesday in May is anybody’s guess. I have had a think about it but it escapes me. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Don’t you know? 
Hon HEATHER ROY 
: Perhaps Mr Hughes can enlighten us in his next speech or maybe not. 
Anyway the bill allows a lot more flexibility in this regard and the Minister will have some say in the date when elections will be held. 
There are a couple of fishhooks in the bill in ACT’s view but we feel they will be able to be tidied up at the Education and Science Committee. One of those fishhooks is the clarification of the definition of a playgroup. The explanatory note of the bill states that “The Bill amends the definition of playgroup to make it clear that at least half the children attending a playgroup session must have a parent or their caregiver present and that the same caregiver cannot be nominated by more than 1 set of parents belonging to a playgroup.” The ACT Party does not agree with this provision. We think that it is overly inflexible and a little bit bureaucratic and at the right point in the select committee process we will be suggesting some amendments. 
The bill also allows for teachers’ practising certificates to be suspended where there has been an allegation of serious misconduct. I contend that not one single member in this House would argue with that provision and quite why it was not there before is unclear. The bill allows for the suspension of a teacher’s practising certificate to be extended until an investigation into misconduct is resolved. That too makes good sense. 
As was also mentioned by the previous speaker a couple of tertiary education amendments will be made and again they are just good common sense. Under this bill for “students who knowingly make false or misleading statements in their applications:” there is an expansion of “existing offence provisions relating to student allowances . . .”. That issue will be able to be dealt with whereas previously it could not be. 
That is the ACT Party’s stand on this bill. We think the bill is very sensible and we will be supporting it but we would like to see just one or two of the amendment provisions tidied up at the select committee. Thank you.