Carter Chris: Education Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Carter Chris: Education Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 23 September 2008. Volume:650;Page:19051. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Minister of Education) 
: 
 I move  
That the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a first time. 
 At the appropriate time I intend to move that the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) be considered by the Education and Science Committee. This bill does two important things. It implements a number of policy changes to improve accountability for student attendance and engagement at school and to make early childhood education services and schools safer for children and students.  
The Government wants to support young people to stay in school complete their qualifications and identify the opportunities available to them once they leave school. This bill underpins this focus by making school responsibilities for managing student attendance more explicit. It sets out the minimum steps that a school board of trustees must ensure are taken to ensure school attendance including taking action when students are absent without reason or justification. More and more schools are searching for opportunities to provide individual learning programmes for their students and to link them with potential destinations beyond school. The $40 million Schools Plus package announced by the Prime Minister at Massey High School last week enables schools to offer new options for secondary students in 2009 with further decisions to be announced next year as we further develop Schools Plus. The bill also ensures that students get good guidance on career choices and pathways. Students will stay at school until at least the age of 16 and boards of trustees will get greater clarity about their roles and responsibilities.  
The bill also strengthens students’ safety in early childhood education services and schools. New measures will improve and streamline the current provisions for police vetting of all non-teaching staff contractors and volunteers who may have unsupervised access to children as part of their role. We are also taking the opportunity to reduce the compliance burden on early childhood services and schools so instead of applying through the New Zealand Teachers Council for a police vet early childhood education services and schools will directly apply to the New Zealand Police. The bill also provides for information matching between the Ministry of Education and the New Zealand Teachers Council to identify those who are teaching in schools without registration and for the Teachers Council Disciplinary Tribunal to suspend teachers for more than the current limit of 3 months if needed where potential serious misconduct is being investigated while the matter is being resolved.  
Other amendments in the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) will enhance the effective governance of schools. The timing of boards of trustees elections will be moved from term one which is the busiest time of the year for schools to later in the year. Establishment boards will be allowed to establish more than one new school and the education Minister will have greater discretion to approve alternative constitutions for school boards. Several other measures in the bill are of a remedial nature and correct a number of unintended consequences of the current law including the retrospective validation following an imperfect change of proprietor in an integrated school and removing the need for an Order in Council to authorise the continuing payment of teachers’ salaries through the central resourcing system. Finally the bill introduces a small number of technical and minor remedial amendments. These include clarifying certain definitions validating Crown payments to integrated schools and correcting drafting errors.  
Taken together the measures contained in the bill serve to strengthen the education system so it can better respond to the different learning aspirations of students and better support improved educational outcomes for all of our students. I commend the first reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) to the House.