Martin Tracey: Education Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10606. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Talofa Mr Chair. As I was saying last night before we went to the break I wanted to make sure that we understood that any conversation around the development of policy or procedures by the Ministry of Education with stakeholders must include the boards of trustees. It is the boards of trustees that hold the discipline hearings. This is something that is not well known to most people because most people do not end up in front of a board of trustees for a discipline hearing. Very few children inside our school system end up inside this process.I want to clarify that when we call it a discipline hearing it is somewhat misleading. The purpose of this process is to identify with an issue make sure that all the evidence around the issue dealing with that student is put on to the table and make sure that every effort is made by the school the staff and the board of trustees to provide the supports necessary to re-engage that student safely—safely for themselves and safely for everybody else in the school—with their education. So it is the boards of trustees at the end of the day that have the power under current legislation to implement random drug-testing for example. Random drug-testing or the ability to take bodily samples—for example urine tests—was one of the conversations we had and this goes to the commencement clause. This goes to the reason why very clear guidelines need to be worked out with all stakeholders prior to the commencement of these clauses and one of those major stakeholders if not the major stakeholder is the boards of trustees.I was expressing my ill ease—it was a conversation had and Mr Sabin put in a lot of conversation around the surrender and retention parts of this Education AmendmentBill—and I still carry some ill ease that the bill refers to teachers constantly as opposed to boards of trustees in the legislation. Although the teachers are on the front line and there is an aspect of this bill that has been put into place to keep them safe just as it has been put into place to keep students safe the boards of trustees are actually the people who set those governance rules who create those policies and then delegate down authority to implement those policies to staff through senior management. So at the end of the day after much discussion it was agreed by a majority in the Education and Science Committee that it was the teachers at the front line who needed to be referred to in the legislation. That was the recommendation of the officials.I trust that that will work. I trust that teachers do not feel empowered by this legislation to go beyond the boundaries that they are delegated down to do by their boards of trustees and I trust that prior to the commencement date the ministry will work closely with all those groups to make sure that we all clearly understand that this is about safety not about restriction of freedom and that this is about working together for the best outcomes for all our students including those students who show up at our discipline hearings.The other parts that we are discussing tonight are around the title of the bill. I did think that there is some room—I mean the Education Amendment Bill is a somewhat innocuous little title for this bill. So I have a couple of suggestions. One is the “Bill English Outlasts Outwits Outplays”—