Mallard Trevor: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Mallard Trevor: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:662;Page:10289] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I will speak to amendments in Grant Robertson’s name. They are extensive amendments that have some very important points in them. 
The first focus which some of my colleagues will also look at is his amendment to insert into Part 1 a new clause 20A “Guidance and counselling” which would amend section 77(a) of the Education Act by inserting “ including guidance and counselling on career choices and career pathways” after “counselling”. The member has taken this approach because of the widespread concern and rumour currently circulating in the education community as to the Minister of Education’s plans for guidance counselling and in particular for career counselling. 
It is the very strong view of members on this side of the house that high-quality career counselling is a fundamental part of our secondary education system in particular. Students need to work hard to identify the pathway that they want to take to take the options that they think are important to assist them along that pathway and not to cut off particular options as they work their way through the system so that they keep their options open. I think that all of us could tell stories—and some of us might even have stories about our families or even ourselves—of people not doing particular subjects late in their secondary school career and as a result being considerably disadvantaged when it came to making choices at university or having to study for a longer period in order to get to that point. 
I think it is fair to say that career counselling career education career guidance has sometimes in some schools been a bit of a Cinderella. It is a subject that has not had quite the attention that it should. It is also fair to say that in some schools—and I think it is less common now—career counselling used to be the place to put teachers who were not confident in the classroom or had spent too long in the classroom. Now there is a new generation of career councillors a new understanding of the subject and there are organisations that give councillors a lot of support in order to make sure that their important work is properly supported even if it is not well understood in schools. 
All of us are aware that some schools are better than others at career counselling at facilitating students’ choices. There are certainly some schools in rural areas that do a very good job as far as rural options are concerned but it is also fair to say that some other schools in rural areas do not provide options and also do not provide students with a steer in a way that is appropriate. 
I know that the Minister of Education has had a flurry of emails on this particular topic from people around the country who have a good understanding of the importance of career guidance. Those people would see a decision not to include in the Act the amendment 
proposed by Grant Robertson—and it was included in Labour’s bill—as an indication that they were not as well thought of as some of their colleagues who teach more regular academic subjects. As I have indicated there is considerable rumour and fear at the moment that the funding made available to schools for guidance and for career guidance is likely to be taken away or somehow reallocated. A very very important area of work which I think just about all members of the House support could very well be lost as a result. 
The second area that I will focus on in my contribution—and I will take a couple of calls now then one of my colleagues will have a go and I will come back on the later points—is the functions of school boards. The bill introduced by the Labour Government Minister of Education Chris Carter was much more explicit with regard to the functions of boards and the things that they should do and the things that were important than this bill as it has emerged from the Education and Science Committee is—in fact as the current Minister of Education introduced it. I am not sure that one could argue with any of the things on Mr Robertson’s list in new section 60AA(1) in his new clause 16A. Section 60AA(1) states that the board must perform the following function: “(a) ensuring the enrolment at the school of all persons who are entitled to be enrolled at the school and apply to be enrolled at it:”. Frankly some boards do not do a very good job at that. Some boards allow systems within their schools that actively discourage students from enrolling at the school. I would be interested to hear the view of Hone Harawira on the schools that occasionally discourage Maori pupils especially those who are not academic from— 
Hone Harawira 
: Not my one—94 percent NCEA. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I have been to that member’s school and it is a good school. I am not saying that the board’s governorship of it was always perfect. I am not saying that its financial controls were perfect. In fact it was pretty good at controlling the spending of the cash but not necessarily at always keeping it in the right pockets. The member probably does not want me to go too far down that track. But the point that I am making to Mr Harawira is that he knows as well as I do that a lot of schools around the country actively discourage some Maori students especially the less academic those from the poorer suburbs and those whose families are associated with gangs. They discourage those kids. Grant Robertson’s section 60AA(1)(a) states that a board must ensure the enrolment of those students. I want to know whether Mr Harawira will vote for that amendment; whether he will vote for boards to take kids from poor homes or whether he will say that they do not have to take them. That will be interesting to see. 
Section 60AA(1)(b) states that the board must ensure that “education is provided to each student enrolled at the school:”. Well that means that the board has to take a much more active interest in the quality of education and whether it is appropriate for each student at the school than some boards have been taking to date. Again I congratulate Mr Harawira because the school whose board he chaired did a very good job for its students in identifying and working on their needs having programmes and recruiting staff. I think it is fair to say that the member concerned was intimately connected with the recruitment of some of the staff or at least one member of the staff of that particular school. The school board appointed good teachers and staff who worked to make sure that education was provided to each student enrolled at the school and they made some real progress. I think it is fair to say that over the years I have had some discussions with the member about his school and about what was and was not appropriate but there was never an argument that the school did not have the kids’ interests at heart that the board was not looking carefully at the school or that it had programmes that did not work for the kids in that school. 
Section 60AA(1)(c) states that the board must promote “a school environment that supports the highest standards of achievement for all students:”. I want to know why National members would vote against an amendment that promotes a school environment that supports the highest standard of achievement for all students. Why would they not support that? What has got into their water? What has made them think that that amendment is not good? Why is the Minister in the chair the Minister of Education saying that she does not want an amendment that is much more likely to lead higher standards than the approach she is taking at the moment? There is much to debate.