Seymour DavidEDUCATION AND TRAINING AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingHon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training Amendment Bill.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the parliamentary website.Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: I move That the Education and Training Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 5 September 2024 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions) during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House and outside the Wellington area despite Standing Orders 193 195 and 196.This is a very important day for education policy in New Zealand. This Education and Training Amendment Bill focuses on three areas of policy. The first is introducing a legal framework for charter schools / kura hourua here in New Zealand. The second is to remove laws that would have put specific network planning requirements on early childhood education centres. That bureaucracy will be gone because it made no sense. And finally this legislation will allow the Secretary of Education to make specific rules around attendance addressing the crisis in attendance that is bedevilling not only New Zealand's schools but our future as we currently conceive ourselves as a modern developed country with a highly educated population who went to school.I work through each of these matters in this speech before saying I look forward to the select committee and I thank in advance Katie Nimon the Education and Workforce Committee chair for the work that I know the committee will do hearing from New Zealanders improving the legislation if and where necessary and reporting back so that this policy progress can continue.First and foremost the framework for charter schools / kura hourua will put in place the rules for who will be responsible for the administration of charter schools and that is by and large the authorisation board a board of experts from different backgrounds with knowledge of communities up and down New Zealand with knowledge of education and with knowledge of law and business so that we can have entities from across the political spectrum from up and down the country from different ethnic backgrounds able to come forward and run schools in a way that suits the aspirations of those communities and those students.That authorisation board which is put in place is absolutely key and the authorisation boards will be under this law responsible for negotiating and striking contracts with the sponsors who run the schools. Those contracts will be quite different from the approach that has been taken to New Zealand education under successive Governments. For far too long we have overly stipulated how each dollar of funding is used for this or that. We've forced schools to negotiate with the Ministry of Education local office—often for trivial things to wait long periods of time—who have stopped them from being able to expand when even there was clear demand from the parents and the students in the community for more of the education they were offering. We're going to stop that level of stipulation and micromanagement. In this contract we're going to say You get the money that is owed to the students of this country." Their share of the education funding will be paid to the school in cash in full. That's quite a big concession.But there's another change that we're going to make in return for that freedom and flexibility to start a school or to convert a State school. We're going to say "Actually we're going to contract you for outcomes." Because the amazing thing that happens in the current State system is that a school can keep getting funded even when the students aren't attending and when they're not achieving. It's an incredible thing that this has been allowed to go on for so long and charter schools will be the opposite.I say to my colleagues from Te Pāti Māori that in many respects this is tino rangatiratanga in action. This is allowing communities to take control of their destiny so long as they live up to the mana of achieving and engaging the rangatahi and the students in their rohe in their community. And the Labour Party—they don't know which way to go on this because they kind of like the idea of tino rangatiratanga but they also like the middle class unions that back them and pay their fees and they're not quite sure about that.Camilla Belich: Teachers—we like teachers.Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Camilla Belich says "Oh it's about teachers." It's not about teachers. You see here's what this is about for teachers. The Opposition is saying that teachers are opposed to this. Actually this is a liberation of the education profession. You see charter schools will allow a group of teachers to run a school their way and so long as they have the mana to achieve the results of engaging the students having them show up and learning we're going to stop interfering with them. Camilla Belich should take note because I talk to teachers and Post Primary Teachers Association members too and New Zealand Educational Institute members and all her union backers and do you know what they say quietly? I say "What if you had 10 years where you knew that the Ministry of Education and successive changes in Governments weren't going to mess with you and put new conditions on how you teach and what you teach all the time?" And they say "What? For 10 years?" They say that would be amazing. Well you know what? With a 10-year contract these schools will actually be firewalled away achieve the results keep the children safe keep the children learning keep the children engaged and you'll have the professional autonomy to do education your way. Hon Jan Tinetti: Rubbish—rubbish!Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: That's a pretty popular idea with the teaching profession and Jan Tinetti ought to get with the programme and listen to a few of the teachers that are saying that. She might be surprised at how many are saying it.This legislation also allows State schools to convert to charter status. It's not just new applicants brand new schools; it's also—and she might be surprised how many State schools are showing an interest in this—to actually take on charter status and do that deal: attendance and achievement and here's your money and here's your autonomy and here's your mana and your dignity as a profession as an educator to do it your way so long as you're getting the results. That conversion process is also set out in the legislation. All together: charter schools are back school autonomy is back tino rangatiratanga in education is back and self-determination for the children and the educators and the future of this country is back with this legislation. And the Labour Party? They're not back; they're backward. That's the big problem for the Labour Party on this issue. They're not back and they won't be back for a long time but they're certainly backward.I would be remiss if I didn't mention a few more aspects of this legislation. It also removes the network planning provisions for early childhood education centres. This legislation was just completely nuts because it is the Labour Party "we know best" ideology that the Ministry of Education can decide whether or not a person should be able to invest their own money in serving students young people and a community that wants them to be there. And how do we know the community wants them to be there? Because they send their children to the centre. If they don't it either won't start or it will go broke. I know it's a new concept for some people on the other side but this is how the New Zealand economy works.So instead of the Ministry of Education micromanaging where you can open an early childhood education (ECE) centre and whether or not you can expand and how many children you can have at your ECE centre we're actually going to leave the decision up to the people that risk their own money to start them and the parents who truly know what is best for their children who decide to send them there because they're happy because they're safe and because they're learning. Those are the people who should have the power and these are the people who will have the power. And all together it means people spend less time on the bureaucracy of justifying their existence and more time on the empowerment about being able to do it their way.Finally we are going to give powers to the Secretary of Education to make changes to the way that attendance records are required to be reported. Because another amazing thing is that for far too long as a country we really never got to grips with who is attending school each day. So we don't know what the patterns are. We don't know why they weren't there. We've got regulations that are almost 100 years old if you go back to the legislation they're initially enabled under and so we're going to require that data. With that I commend this bill to the House."