Woodhouse MichaelEducation SectorHon Michael Woodhouse (Chairperson of the Education and Workforce Committee): Thank you Madam Chair. It's a pleasure to kick off the debate on the reviews of the various departments that make up the education sector and I do so as chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee a role that I have held for somewhere in the region of about nine days. I was worried that it was going to be perhaps the shortest cameo as a select committee chair in parliamentary history but no; after the Business Committee meeting today I'll still be the chair and perhaps for the foreseeable future in any event.But I am in something of a bit of a void because I came to that role after the financial reviews of these organisations so what I intend to do is highlight some of the things that I have gleaned from the report of the select committee. But before I do I want to acknowledge the previous chair of course Sarah Dowie who oversaw the reviews of these organisations and wish her well in her new role.I want to highlight first the examination by the committee of the Ministry of Education and in particular the most recent announcement of the new Government in the implementation of fees free. Now we have said quite a bit on this side of the House about the poorly targeted nature of this policy and the fact that $2.8 billion is going to go into the pockets of many many thousands of families mine included who simply don't need it. The question therefore one should ask is—and the committee did—is that money well spent? Is that going to lead to an increase in enrolments particularly of people who might otherwise not have had the benefit of tertiary education? The answer from the ministry was Well it's too early to tell but 2018 enrolments don't give any indication that there has been the slightest bump in the number of students enrolled in our tertiary sector." So that's $2.8 billion over the next four years and no evidence that it's going to make a blind bit of difference in increasing access to tertiary education. It shouldn't have been a surprise—certainly it wasn't to the Opposition but it shouldn't have been to the Government—if one looks at other policies of this nature around the world and in particular Scotland which basically went fees free right across the board and indeed it had no impact on access to tertiary education.Now it's interesting to note from the report that of the 353000-odd students in tertiary education in 2016 51550 of them are in private training establishments. The committee also examined this—and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority—from the perspective of the international education market something that I know extremely well from my nearly five years as Minister of Immigration and the examination of the degree to which the policy the Government has about dispensing with the so-called low-quality courses and the estimated 15000 to 22000 international students fewer that would come to New Zealand as a consequence of that. Quite rightly the ministry pointed out that that's not a policy that they would oversee; that would be the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment but clearly they did have an interest in making sure that New Zealand as a destination for international students and the reputation that it has is upheld.I note that having banged the drum for months and months and months on this issue—in fact it was in this very very place that the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway told this House we desperately need to take a breather we've got to turn down the tap and the big target was international students. So I note with a great deal of interest that the trigger has not yet been pulled on that policy. In fact there has been a deafening silence on that issue; not entire silence actually—my sources within the international education industry are telling me that Mr Lees-Galloway has been talking to them about it and providing quite reassuring tones about the fact that the Government will not be implementing the thing that they campaigned so stridently on last year. I think that's a very good idea. As we note from the report New Zealand is very internationally competitive. Even those so-called lower-value courses still provide a great deal of benefit to the students and to the country."