Parata Hekia: Education Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParata Hekia: Education Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 04 June 2013. Volume:690;Page:10672. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): I moveThat the Education Amendment Bill be now read a third time. The Education Amendment Bill amends the Education Act 1989. It will play a key role in supporting the Government’s objective of how we get five out of five students achieving educational success. This Government is absolutely focused on that. We do not want educational success for a few—for some—but for all so we have focused on a full range of measures that will deliver that possibility to all New Zealand school students and learners. This bill helps deal with a number of things in fact. It creates the legal framework by which we will establish partnership schools or kura hourua. It also looks at the provision for how school staff may exercise search and surrender provisions in order to ensure that schools are safe and secure places while protecting the rights of students. It also makes provision for a number of other areas that will allow greater flexibility in the delivery of education in New Zealand.Starting with the two significant or substantial provisions in terms of creating the legal framework for partnership schools or kura hourua we know that it will help us deliver a third option for educational provision in New Zealand. It will enable us to have a legal framework that allows for partnership between the community sectors business and education because this Government recognises that there is not a monopoly on how quality education can be delivered. In fact it can be delivered through a number of ways and we are interested in exploring all of those ways because we will leave no option unconsidered in how we ensure that we raise educational achievement for five out of five kids.We know that our education system in New Zealand is world class but not world leading. We know that it is top performing as an education jurisdiction. It performs for the vast majority but not for all. We know that those who have been traditionally underserved by our education system are the same groups of people year in and year out. So there is a system response that we need to make. We want those parts of our education system that are performing well for the majority of our students to continue to perform well and indeed to perform better but we also want to address those parts of the system that are not performing as well. That means working with all of the schoolsthat we have—and we have over 2500. Those 2500 schools already canvass a range of options. We have single-sex and coed; we have total immersion in English and total immersion in Māori and bilingual units; we have faith-based and secular-based schools; we have small medium and large schools; and of course they are spread the length and breadth of our country.What partnership schools do is offer us another option—another option that is focused on results on transparency on ensuring that the sponsors who propose and go through a very thorough approval process are focused on how they will deliver educational results for the students whose parents choose that they should go there. There will be no compulsion in this. Partnership schools provide another option but it will be transparent in terms of what is expected. It will be transparent in terms of the conduct of its business. It will be transparent in that the disciplinary provisions of the Ombudsmen Act will apply. It will be transparent in that all of the requirements will be specified in a contract between the Ministry of Education on behalf of the Crown and the successful sponsor and all the reporting that will be expected in respect of that whether financial operational or educational will be reported to the Ministry of Education which of course will ensure that it is captured by the Official Information Act.The bill provides that the sponsors may recommend that a proportion of their staff may not be registered as teachers but that is not to be confused with not having qualifications and not having skills. Indeed kura kaupapa had the same kind of difficult birth that the Opposition would try to attend partnerships schools with. There was a belief that kura were so different from the rest of the mainstream system that they could not possibly be good when the facts which have been incontrovertible since they started are that children and young people who go to kura by and large on average do better—Māori kids—than they do in the mainstream system. The kura will tell us that much of that success is due to experts in te reo me ōna tikanga who may not be registered teachers but nevertheless deliver learning in ways that ensure educational success. We envisage the same sort of track record occurring here with partnership schools. So what this legislation does is put around it a legal framework that makes this option clear stable transparent and focused on getting five out of five kids being educationally successful.As I have said there will be no compulsion for a parent to send their child here as there is no compulsion for a parent to send their child to any particular type of school. And as I have said many times before too it is not the type of school; it is the quality of performance. We will be holding these schools to the highest standards. We will be expecting that they will be able to deliver successfully to these kids and if not the ultimate sanction will apply and that is that they can and will be closed.A second part of this legislation focuses on ensuring that we are very clear about what the rights are of not only teachers and principals but also other authorised staff to ensure a safe and secure environment wherein learning can break out potential can be realised and educational success can be within reach of every one of our students. But we are realistic. We know that schools are also microcosms of society and that there can be dangers and unsafe instruments or behaviours that are brought into schools. We want to ensure that our teachers and other authorised staff have the ability to exercise search and surrender responsibilities that ensure that where staff suspect that a student may indeed be harbouring inappropriate equipment or anything that might present a danger to other students staff have the ability to require these young people to disclose those.The Education and Science Committee members have worked really hard together and with the sector to strike a very good balance between ensuring the safety of all students and protecting the rights of the dignity and privacy of other students. This hasbeen a very challenging balance to strike and I think that this legislation does that. It will be reinforced by the establishment of guidelines which will be formulated under the Secretary for Education’s auspices but also through involving a working group from the sector. After all principals and teachers are the ones who every day face these challenges and want to know that they are going to have sensible and practicable provisions by which they can exercise these cautions.The final part of this legislation deals with a range of other provisions all of which are dedicated to this Government’s commitment to raising educational achievement for all kids. One of the things it starts off with is a recognition that boards of trustees are Crown entities but unlike every other Crown entity they have no purpose articulated at law. This legislation remedies that omission by making it very clear that the role and purpose of boards in everything they do is to focus on ensuring that every student has the opportunity to do well educationally. So whether it is the management of property financial responsibilities to be discharged the kind of curriculum programme that is to be taught or the kinds of skills that are to be employed at the school the board is doing all of that with one clear focus and that is to raise the achievement of all.Allied to that is a provision for making timetabling flexible. We learnt from Christchurch that by enabling schools to have flexibility in their timetables they could cater for a whole range of students but in particular for that very permeable interface which this Government has made more permeable in the secondary-tertiary transition where young people go off to trades academies for 2 or 3 days a week or take up other options such as internships practicums and so forth. We do not want a hidebound structure within schools that precludes that possibility. We want educational success to not only be in reach but also be achieved by five out of five students and this legislation puts that within their grasp.