Carter Chris: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Carter Chris: Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:651;Page:606] 
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Labour—Te Atatu) 
: 
 There has been an interesting and a frank exchange of views up to this point with regard to the Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill. I want to talk to Part 1 which deals with the truancy issue but I would like to preface my comments and then direct some questions to the Minister in the chair the Hon Anne Tolley. I preface my comments by saying I am sure that every person in this House wants to see in school every young New Zealand person who should be in school. That is a desire we all have. However in order to do that we have to engage with the students who are truanting. Very few parents want their children to truant school. I think all of us would be hard-pressed to find even what we might regard as the most difficult parents who do not want their children to succeed. 
However I will concede—and I know this as the former Minister of Education—that a tiny minority of people actively encourage their children not to attend school. There must be penalties for them. Raising the level of fine is not something that in principle we are opposed to. But we in the Labour Party are concerned that parents who themselves are victims of their children’s own behaviour will be impacted on by this legislation. I would not like to see and I am sure nobody in this House would like to see any parent who really wants his or her child to be at school and who is not aware that the child is truanting be hit by this change in the law and get a $3000 fine. We have put up an amendment to require that the proposed changes in fees will only impact on the most uncooperative of parents. I really urge the National members to consider supporting our amendment because I am sure that they like us do not want to see good parents penalised by the behaviour of bad children. 
I ask the Minister whether in addressing the issue of truancy—which is a subject that she has asked me many questions about in my former role as Minister of Education in the last 14 months or so—the increased fines are her only step to address the question of persistent truancy. I remind you Mr Chair and also the rest of the Committee and particularly the Minister that the previous Labour Government took a huge range of steps to try to address truancy. Indeed in 2006 when the Hon Steve Maharey was the Minister of Education we reviewed truancy services— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: The vice-chancellor. 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: That is another subject 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Could Mrs Tolley tell us what a vice-chancellor is? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: I know it has been reported to us by very reliable sources that the new Minister of Education had to ask the Tertiary Commission what a vice-chancellor does. I hope that Mrs Tolley knows what truancy officers do. We reviewed truancy services in 2006 and as a result of that review a whole series of resourcing actions were taken including the provision of both organisational and financial resourcing to combat truancy. That is the only way to deal with the real problem of truancy. The issue is not about parents; it is about children and young people who are disengaged from learning. 
Mr Peachey was a fine educationalist; we have different views but I respect what he did in schools. He was and still is motivated by a desire to have good educational outcomes in our country. He has in the past acknowledged to me and he will acknowledge the contribution made by the setting up of the electronic enrolment system with every school now on it. We put about $6 million into that so that for the first time ever we know exactly which children are in school and which are not. Every school is online and the staff report truants daily into a central computer database in our schools. For the first time ever we put that in so we knew exactly what the truancy problem was. We also put another $2 million into individual schools where there were particular problems that had to be addressed and the schools needed support to do that. Again the issue was not about fining parents because we are talking about a very small number of students here. We are talking about a much larger number of disengaged students. So there was another $2 million of funding for the individual schools that were most affected by truancy. 
We put another $4.5 million into district truancy services so that the contractors and people who work with the Ministry of Education councils and schools could deal directly with the problem. The 89 district truancy services that were set up worked very closely with territorial authorities to try to deal with the problem of truancy. We employed 10 officials—the bureaucrats we hear about from National which wants to get rid of them scale down the bureaucrats and use their salaries to enhance resourcing at schools—at the Ministry of Education to deal with very persistent individual hard-core cases of truancy as well as with children who were under the care of Child Youth and Family. Those are very special cases that needed very sensitive and professional care. 
The Student Engagement Initiative at schools was again very extensively funded with $1.8 million provided to help schools to deal with truancies. We introduced the Youth Apprenticeships scheme in schools. It started off in 10 schools in the time I was the Minister it was in 20 schools and 120 schools will have the scheme in 2009. Those are actual practical things that engage students in learning. Schools Plus was the flagship policy of the Labour Party at the election. We promised to commit $170 million to it in order to explore alternative pathways for learning for young people capture their interest deal with Youth Apprenticeships and set up the institute at Manukau Institute of Technology. Those are real concrete resourcing issues that deal with disengaged pupils. That is how we deal with truancy and get kids back into school. Yes we do need to punish parents but that is a tiny part of the problem. The real problem is disengaged students and how we deal with them. 
I ask the Minister Mrs Tolley how she is going to deal with persistent truants. We have left her a well-resourced sector. We have not solved the problem. We made good progress but we have not solved the problem. It is a really difficult issue in education. We are not unsympathetic to increasing the penalties but again I stress the issue of making sure that good parents are not punished by the behaviour of their children. I urge the Minister to look at our amendment that is on the Table over there. Hopefully she will look at it but I do not think she has done so yet. I am sure that she also does not want to have good parents punished for the behaviour of bad kids. 
I come back to the point I made at the beginning of my presentation that probably 99.9 percent of parents want the best for their children. They want their children to be in school and they want them to be successful. Children who are not in school are mostly absent not because of their parents; they are absent because they are disengaged from learning. The key to solving truancy issues is to engage children in effective learning keep them interested keep them at school liaise with homes and have professional staff in place to deal with that. Schools are really struggling with the truancy issue. As I have said we now know for the first time ever which kids are not at school because of our electronic system ENROL. That will be able to tell Mrs Tolley exactly what the truancy situation really is at the moment. 
I again ask the Minister to please consider protecting parents from the unintended consequences of raising this fine because we do not want good parents to be punished for the bad behaviour of young people.