Parmar ParmjeetDr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker for this opportunity to speak on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). This bill amends three Acts so obviously there is a list of things that this bill does and this is the list that we do not agree with. I haven't seen any good reasons so far from the two speeches that we've had from the Government side that would convince us to agree with the provisions that are proposed in this legislation. It is very interesting that the member Jan Tinetti who spoke before me was really reluctant when she spoke about the Education Council and the provision that is in this bill that affects the Education Council legislation that passed earlier this week.Yes earlier this week on Tuesday we passed legislation because Government members supported it. It was a Government bill. That was the Education (Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand) Amendment Bill. In that bill the big argument that we heard from the Minister of Education and all the members on that side was that they want to make the Education Council—now Teaching Council—an independent body independent of Government and independent of the Minister. They wanted to increase the membership on it increase it from—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Can I bring the member back to this specific bill. If the member wants speak about the Education Council there is a provision within this bill to discuss that rather than referring to a previous bill. Thank you.Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Yes. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I'm actually going back to state that the big argument we heard about the independence of that education bill from the Minister or from the Government is actually ruled out because of this bill. So the provision in this bill is connected to the legislation that was passed earlier this week. It's important to give that background to those people who are just focusing on this legislation—that the other legislation said that the Education Council is going to be independent and the basis of bringing that mix of elected and appointed members on to that was that it's going to be an independent council.But now in this legislation we have four main provisions and one of the provisions says that the Education Council will have to work within the context of Government policy. So where is that independence that the Minister was claiming in that other legislation when we had the first second and third readings and we passed it through the committee stage because Government members supported that legislation?The independence that was talked about in the other legislation does not exist. I think the Minister must have thought that it would be easy to slip it through in other legislation and then later on he realised that this provision should come into effect when the other legislation that was passed earlier this week will come into effect because it's all connected. So yes he didn't get that opportunity to give that big gap. We are quite disappointed that this provision actually should have been in the other legislation so that we could see the whole picture of the Education Council that the Minister of this Government proposed.But that didn't happen. That didn't happen. What we saw from the Education Council legislation was that big emphasis we had on leadership and governance was taken out and now we understand why because it has to work according to the Government policy. So that leadership and governance that was required which we had put in is actually not required because the Minister doesn't want that. The Minister doesn't want the Education Council to be self-regulated. He's taken those components out. It's all about Government control. It's all about a nanny State approach to the Education Council. We can see exactly the same thing in the other provisions in this bill. It's the nanny State approach.The second thing I want to talk about in this legislation is about getting rid of the communities of online learning provision that was put in place by National in 2017. Yes there was plenty of time to establish communities of online learning. This is about giving access to people those who cannot be physically in a classroom cannot be physically next to a university. They could be living in different parts of our country but they want to access education—this could be part-time or full-time. So why would an education Minister take away access to education from these people those who cannot be physically in a classroom? I simply do not understand. I didn't get any good reason for this to be repealed. We want to see that technology is actually adopted in the education sector. This is a good way that people those who cannot—there are some people who don't want to do full-time studies; they want to just do part-time studies and sometimes it doesn't work with their other commitments. So yes they want online tuition they want online learning. But with this provision that is going to be repealed so people will not have access to online learning because of this provision in this legislation. I think it's because private providers can provide online access to learning. We can see that this Minister is anti - private providers. He's already got rid of partnership schools so he wants to get rid of communities of online learning only to get rid of private education providers. There is another provision in this bill which is about again private education providers. I understand the basis that is given in this legislation that is to make sure that students are looked after well. We want to make sure that all our schools are able to look after students in terms of any physical or emotional harm—that it is kept at negligible. Schools should have systems to control that but what this Minister is saying is that the Secretary for Education will look at this factor while registering the school and if the Secretary for Education thinks that there are some concerns then they can actually cancel the registration.So to me the way I read the bill it appears that it will be really easy for the Ministry of Education to cancel the registration of private schools when we compare it with State schools. Why are we making it easier for private schools to be shut down based on this concern when we compare that with State schools? So again I have this concern that the Minister is definitely targeting private education providers.The fourth provision in this bill which is a very interesting one—and yes we are all passionate about this because this is about children starting school. A fifth birthday is special for every child. It's not special just because it's number five; it's also special because the very next day—if it's a school-going day—the child starts school. There is a lot of excitement in the family as well because they'll take that young one to the uniform shop try the uniform on and take several pictures and the kid is also looking forward to starting school. But now the age of five years is not going to remain connected to the school-starting age. What we did—we wanted to make it easier for schools to make sure that they understand what their enrolment is. We wanted to make it easier for early childhood education centres to make sure they understand what their enrolment is. Also to make it easier for parents from 1 January 2018 we said that if there is a child that is within two months—that is eight weeks—of five years of age they can start school at the start of the term. That was just to make it easy. It's not like four-year-olds or three-year-olds are starting school. There is no harm if kids are able to learn from the earlier age and that is why we want to see them going to early childhood education centres so that they can interact with other children there they can interact with their teachers and they can understand what the learning environment looks like. But now this Minister is saying that actually no they cannot start school at that time; they can start school only after—after—they are five. So there will be cohort entries the first one at the start of the term and the second one sometime during the term. So there could be some children that will have to wait for two to three months to start school after they turn five. How fair is this for children? It's not fair at all. It's not fair at all. We know that some students in year 12 they get enough credits and they start university without doing year 13. So I think that is the next thing the Minister will do: block kids accessing university earlier if they are capable.What I have seen in this whole piece of legislation is actually that control nanny State approach through the Education Council bill which passed earlier this week. Now we see that it is going to work within the Government policy. Then we are seeing another nanny State approach with how they want to control the school entry of children how they want to control communities of online learning because they do not want—actually they're denying access to education access to learning. I just simply don't understand. How can this be an education bill? If you just look at the name of the bill you would think that it is going to improve access to education and make it better for everybody to access education but it's not—it's not. First it was misleading—one of the bills that was passed earlier this week—because we did not see the whole thing in that legislation; it came out in this legislation. The other provisions that are coming are actually denying access to education or delaying access to education: denying when I talk about the communities of online learning the repeal of that provision; delaying when I talk about five-year-old students starting school. So we oppose this legislation. Madam Assistant Speaker thank you.