Parata Hekia: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParata Hekia: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee[Sitting date: 27 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:957. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education):Tēnā tātou. Tēnā koe Mr Chairperson. I rise to take a short call on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). I would like to begin by thanking and acknowledging the Education and Science Committee for the recommendations that it has made which have been included in the bill—in particular the recommendation about the appointment of members to the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ).I want to start with the point about changing from the New Zealand Teachers Council to the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand and answer some of the concerns that seem still to be apparent in the minds of members notwithstanding that they spent so long on the select committee. The New Zealand Teachers Council is at law a Crown entity. It must obey and work within certain restrictions and parameters that apply to Crown entities. What is being set out in this bill is that this new council will be statutorily independent. It will be able to make its decisions as an independent body.Education is of course of great interest to many New Zealanders. It is important given that this public good if you like—this public right—is to be managed or governed by a statutorily independent entity that there are some levers that the Government of the day is able to exercise to ensure that that public good is being governed in the best possible way. There are only two of those levers in this bill. One is the opportunity for the Government of the day to ask for reports and the other is the opportunity to appoint council members.One of the recommendations that Education and Science Committee made which has been accepted and which I applaud is that five of the nine appointees must not only be registered teachers but hold current practising certificates. I thank the committee for picking up that anomaly and correcting it. It is important that the majority of members on that council are from the profession. But let me be clear: firstly the appointment will be made by the Minister but all teachers all education organisations all parents groups and all members of the public will have the ability to nominate for consideration those people who they think should be on the board and be considered for appointment. Secondly the competencies and capabilities of those nominees will be clear and gazetted so that we understand that we are putting together a body that represents the broad range of experiences and expertise that will be required for governance of this council. It will be an entirely transparent and public process that can be subject to the scrutiny of all given the importance of this appointment.The next question is why the name is changing. Well we have an education system that is of sectors joined loosely: the early childhood sector the primary sector the secondary sector and the tertiary sector. But New Zealand’s children do not consider themselves to be in a sector. They are having their educational experience from 0 to 18 years of age generally which is the provision for our free and compulsory education schooling system. What we are trying to do through the educational council is provide for educators and teachers who operate in the early childhood sector as well as teacher leaders and principals who operate throughout.So although teaching as a qualification is an integral and critical part of this we want to try to ensure that we are embracing the entire system so that the focus can be on the students their learning their achievement and the contribution that these professionals can make to it. It is the Educational Council of Aotearoa New Zealand because we also wanted to indicate that this country was founded on a bicultural platform that it is a platform for our increasingly diverse and multicultural and plural modern nation so that name is not a meaningless name as has been suggested by previous speakers but it is evocative of the inclusiveness that we think is important to characterise an education system of the 21st century.The next issue that has been of some concern for members is the distinction between ethics and conduct. Clearly these are not mutually exclusive. Conduct must reflect the ethics and values that are held to be important by a body. So I just wanted to make that short contribution. Thank you.