Tolley Anne: Education Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Tolley Anne: Education Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:661;Page:9645] 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 I move  
That the Education Amendment Bill be now read a second time 
. This bill will improve the quality and effectiveness of education legislation. It proposes two broad areas of policy change. The first area of change is in current police vetting arrangements which will improve students’ safety and reduce compliance costs for schools and early childhood education services. The second change introduces information matching to provide a better system for ensuring that only registered teachers are employed by schools. The bill also makes a range of other amendments to improve efficiency in the schooling system and improve education law. Since the first reading of the bill the Education and Science Committee has recommended a number of amendments to strengthen the bill by clarifying some of the policy decisions. I thank members of the Education and Science Committee for their careful consideration of this bill. I also acknowledge the contributions of those who provided submissions. 
I will now go through the key elements of the changes to the bill recommended by the committee. They relate to police vetting and school governance. I am particularly pleased that the committee adopted the changes I proposed to make police vetting of household members mandatory when children enrolled in a home-based service are being cared for in a home other than their own. This change will apply to household members who are 17 years of age or older. I proposed this further amendment following feedback during the recent consultation as part of the review of early childhood regulations. Nearly 60 percent of the home-based services consulted and over 90 percent of other individuals and groups consulted said that any household member in a home-based care environment should be subject to a police vet. Parents also said that police vets should be mandatory for all members of the household where the care is being provided. Educators working for home-based education and care services are currently required to be police vetted. Vetting household members will maintain consistency and minimum standards across licensed home-based services. I clarify that household members in licensed home-based services are not the same as parent and community volunteers in schools and early childhood education centres including playcentres and kindergartens. Volunteers are not covered by the law and are not required to be police vetted. 
The bill has been amended to make it clear that the requirement to renew police vets every 3 years applies only if the person concerned is still employed or engaged at the school or early childhood education service. A further exception has been included to cover situations where a person’s employment circumstances have changed. For example a cleaner who now works during the evening and not during school opening hours will not require a repeat vet. Schools and early childhood education services will now have a 4-week period to implement the changes to police vetting instead of 8 weeks as originally proposed. The committee has recommended changing the requirement to obtain a police vet in that time to one of applying for the vet. That change avoids placing an obligation on the school board or the early childhood service provider which would rely on police to meet it. The shorter time frame balances out allowing enough time for the application to be made and giving effect to the policy that the police vet must be sought promptly. Overall the policy changes to police vetting in the bill will maintain students’ safety reduce compliance costs and streamline administration for schools. 
The bill removes the New Zealand Teachers Council as the conduit for police vetting of all non-teaching staff and contractors. This saves schools early childhood education services and the Teachers Council both time and money. The changes in this bill will minimise the risk that some non-teaching staff and contractors may have unsupervised access to children before being police vetted. Needless police vetting will be minimised by requiring only those contractors to be police vetted who have or are likely to have unsupervised access to children. 
The committee has recommended an amendment that takes the notion of a combined establishment board that was in the bill as it was introduced to its natural conclusion. That will give the Minister of Education the ability to stagger the opening of new schools governed by the combined board. The establishment phase for a new school ends at the time of the first school trustee elections after the school has opened for instruction. There are likely to be situations where one of a group of new schools will be ready to open before the others. This change reflects the policy intent of combined establishment boards and the flexibility it provides will be a useful tool for managing potential future growth. 
I remind the House of the other changes proposed in the bill. I understand that the submissions that commented on these areas supported the changes. After police vetting the second area of broad policy change to improve efficiency is information matching. The bill provides for information matching between the Ministry of Education’s payroll database and the New Zealand Teachers Council’s register of teachers to identify those who are teaching in schools without registration. It is most likely that those identified will simply have failed to renew their practising certificate and they will be given the opportunity to rectify the situation. For others however the information-matching programme will pick up whether they meet current teaching or safety standards thus ensuring that our students are safe and receiving a quality education. The bill also makes a number of other minor amendments to improve the efficiency of the school system or to enhance the effective governance of schools. Once again I thank the members of the Education and Science Committee for their work. I commend this bill to the House.