McClay Todd: Education Amendment Bill — First Reading 
McClay Todd: Education Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:653;Page:2673] 
TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) 
: 
 I rise to support the Education Amendment Bill in its first reading and it is my intention to support it in other readings as it comes before this House. This legislation will do a number of things. It will allow comparisons between information kept by the Teachers Council and the Ministry of Education to identify people who are teaching in our schools and to identify those who are teaching without registration. 
Earlier tonight the Minister of Education said that these measures will reduce school compliance costs and improve efficiency in the education sector. The Minister is right. That is exactly what this Government is about. I congratulate the Minister Anne Tolley on giving the bill priority—something I note the previous Government was at least consistent in failing to do. This Government wants schools to be able to get on with education to focus on teaching and learning not bureaucracy. This bill is one more step towards making our schools better. The Minister has been extremely focused on delivering for schools and students in New Zealand. Our new Minister Anne Tolley has achieved more in the last 5 months than the previous Government did in 9 years. 
The bill makes a number of small changes to enhance the effective governance of the compulsory education system and the effective administration of the compulsory and tertiary education systems. The bill will provide greater clarity around a number of definitions and will correct minor technical and drafting errors in the existing Act. These changes will help organise education efficiently and improve education legislation. The National Government is committed to working through the many inequalities and serious inadequacies that were left to it by the previous Labour Government and to ensuring that children in our schools are safe. 
There are around 90000 registered teachers in New Zealand schools and with few exceptions they are very good teachers. They have the great responsibility of raising the next generation of New Zealanders. These teachers tell me that they believe that they might not have been supported enough by the previous Government but that this Government and our Minister have the future of young New Zealanders at the front of education policy. We have brought this bill before the House and there have been many bills like this one focusing on education. 
Many people are employed in and around our schools who are not teachers but who also have unsupervised access to our children. The vast majority of these people are law abiding and suitable to be in charge of students. However sadly not all have acted in the best interests of those children. The Teachers Council has estimated that there could be as many as 3500 unregistered teachers working illegally. Not all of these unregistered teachers are likely to be acting inappropriately. In fact probably very few of them are. But the checks have not been done and we do not know enough about their background to be sure of the safety of our children in the charge of those people. That means they have not been police vetted as suitable to lead classrooms. 
A quick check of media reports of the past few years—all of the years the party opposite was in Government—identifies potential problems we face in keeping our children safe in schools. In November 2001 the then Teacher Registration Board found that a teacher in Northland who was sacked over an alleged affair with a student had been teaching illegally for more than a year. That teacher lost her job following complaints from parents and the young boy’s mother of inappropriate behaviour towards this young student. The board said that it had checked its records with a view to striking that woman from the register and found that she had never been registered. The principal of the school concerned said that he had forgotten to check registration when employing that teacher. The board’s director at that time Harvey McQueen was quoted as saying that this omission was serious and that the board could not deregister someone who had never been registered. In the case of this woman he said that it was unlikely that she would ever be able to be registered as a teacher again or in the foreseeable future. 
In September of last year media reported that an unregistered alcoholic teacher with numerous drink-driving convictions was allowed to continue to work at a school after authorities learnt of his criminal convictions—an unregistered teacher responsible for educating our young people. That case puts the spotlight on rules that allow people to take charge of classrooms before checks of their suitability are completed and on privacy laws as they currently stand that prevent any negative findings from being quickly conveyed to the schools concerned. At the time this teacher was employed he had a number of previous convictions which would have affected his suitability for that job and a compulsory police check prior to employment through registration would have meant that this person would not have been in a position where he was responsible for our students. The principal of the school concerned said that had he known of the teacher’s convictions he would not have employed him. Obviously the system is not working. 
In March of last year a male teacher in Auckland was convicted of indecent assault and sexual charges against girls that he taught. He quit when the allegations emerged in 2005 and then went on to work as a relief teacher in another school and as a voluntary coach in a girls’ college. There are many more reports: a teacher convicted of assaulting his own child by throwing a knife at him; a teacher with fraud convictions; a teacher convicted of repeat drink-driving offences; another of violence against his wife in front of their children; teachers convicted of stealing from their own schools or inappropriate manhandling of students. All of those people lost their registration or would have lost their registration as teachers. However the current checks and balances in the education system meant that in many case they could be re-employed as teachers without registration and without appropriate police checks. 
As a parent to me that is unacceptable. It is not acceptable that after many many years the system is capable of letting down parents and their children. I condemn the delays and time-wasting on the part of the previous Government which did not try to rectify these issues and was not capable of putting the safety of children forward as a priority by passing a law when it had a chance when it was in Government for 9 years. I note tonight that members opposite cannot even bring themselves to decide to support this bill and to support the safety of children. 
Yesterday in my electorate in Rotorua I went to Aorangi School which is right in the middle of the Rotorua township. I was greeted and given a great welcome by 120 young students who had beautiful singing voices. It was great to see young 7 8 and 9-year-old children standing up and speaking in Maori and welcoming our small party to their school. They are very good students. The principal and teachers are extremely committed to the school. The parents entrust their children to the care of the school each and every day of the school week. This school has a very good feeling about it. It was positive and one could see that the interests of the child were put first. The teachers there are exceptional; they go far beyond the call of duty for their young students. I believe that the parents of the young kids at Aorangi School would want us to pass this law to ensure the safety of their children. I have absolutely no concern about Aorangi School and how it is being run; it is an exceptional school. But we need to ensure that our laws support those very good registered teachers in their work in the school. I think the parents of this school—many of whom might have voted for the party opposite once—would want the Labour Party to work out what Opposition is all about stop opposing everything just for the sake of it and support this bill to help ensure the safety of these children. I am sure these words will fall on deaf ears and I do not expect the members opposite to think of the parents or the children of these schools or any other school in my electorate any time soon. 
The bill will identify teachers who are teaching without a current practising certificate or authorisation and therefore schools that are illegally employing these teachers. It will focus on any person who will have unsupervised access to children in our schools and ensure that appropriate checks of that person’s character through police screening is undertaken before the person is employed or active in that school. The bill also provides for information matching between the New Zealand Teachers Council and the Ministry of Education to identify the registration status of people employed in teaching positions. This means that many of the people I spoke of previously for whom it was subsequently deemed not to be appropriate to have unsupervised access to children in our schools might not be employed or will not be re-employed. The bill provides the highest degree of assurance to parents that their children are being nurtured and are safe in our schools. 
The bill also looks at police vetting. It creates new procedures and sets criteria for obtaining police vetting of people who will have unsupervised access to students. This bill provides a new definition for unsupervised access to children and substitutes definitions for “playgroup” and “hospital-based education and care services”. The bill means that the New Zealand Teachers Council ceases to provide a police-vetting service to early childhood education services in schools allowing those services in schools to apply directly to the police for these checks a check that must be done and completed before employment commences.