Hipkins ChrisCHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very happy to take a call on communities of online learning. It is perhaps a far more controversial part of the bill than the earlier provisions that we were debating although there was some controversy in those as well. I want to canvass some of the concerns that have been raised about communities of online learning and put some of the questions to the Minister of Education about how the Government proposes to address them. The first point that I would note is that there are still a lot of questions to be answered about how communities of online learning—basically online schools—would operate. The regulatory framework as set by legislation for these schools is so much sketchier compared with every other school in the country. Many of the other provisions that we are debating here over an education Act that spans hundreds of pages relate to changing provisions around existing schooling. There are hundreds and hundreds of pages of primary law that relate to how schools should operate and now we are establishing a new category of school in this bill that has only a couple of pages relating to it. The primary legislation relating to communities of online learning is very very sketchy when compared with the legislation that governs the operation of other schools so my first question to the Government is why was all the work on how these would operate not done before the legislation was brought to the House. It seems to me that the Parliament is being asked by the Government to Just trust us that we will do this by regulation." when actually the House has not just trusted the Government to determine how other schools will operate. We have got primary legislation that governs that. In terms of some of the specific concerns that were raised by submitters to the Education and Science Committee the first really deals with people with disabilities and at-risk learners. There was a general concern raised by submitters that online learning would be seen as a dumping ground for the most difficult students and the most at-risk students in the education system—those who are behaviourally difficult to manage within schools or whose additional learning needs makes them more challenging for a school to provide education for. So the first question to the Minister on this particular topic is to ask how the Government is going to ensure that that does not happen—that online learning provision is not seen as the de facto alternative for kids who do not necessarily easily fit the kind of standard mould of the school system. I think that that is a particularly important one. The Ombudsman raised concerns about that along with many of the disability groups during the select committee process and many submitters also noted that through the United Nations conventions that we have signed up to we have signed up to an inclusive education system and online learning providers will need to adhere to the principles of those international conventions. So how will the Government ensure that all of our commitments around equal opportunities in education and support for people with disabilities will be met by the online learning providers? Certainly the primary law around that is less specific. The next set of questions really is around the value of having kids attend a school and the social interactions that come with that. If a child is sitting at home—or wherever they might be—engaging on a laptop how will they be exposed to the types of social interactions that are actually an integral part of the educational process? Education is about learning to read and write do maths and all of those other things. But if we go back to the debate we had in the last theme that we were addressing when we talked about why we have a public education system and the things that we want kids to develop—we want them to have resilience good interpersonal skills and all of those things that we have now inserted into the legislation as being desirable—how will the Government ensure that the kids who are not in a school but who are engaging through an online provider are still getting that level of exposure to other people and to other kids which is also an integral part of their educational journey? Actually some of the kids who might be drawn naturally to online learning provision are often the kids who benefit most from being in an environment that sometimes takes them a little bit outside their comfort zone and forces them to interact with other kids so I would hate to see them being shut out from the educational experiences there. I think the third question I have for the Minister is around kids in isolated and rural communities and how the Government will ensure that again this is not seen as the de facto option for those children. We have got a number of very very small schools in New Zealand and I can see the member opposite Todd Barclay nodding. He has got a number of them in his electorate. Todd Barclay: 69. CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes. But they are very small schools. Some of them have got only half a dozen kids at them and they are the most expensive for the Government to operate. I know that this is something that successive Ministers of Education have looked at and the conclusion they have reached is that actually we can continue to provide those very small schools and fund them because that is the way we ensure quality educational opportunities for those kids. One of the anxieties that was raised during the process was that online learning could be seen as an alternative to the ongoing provision of very small educational providers—small schools—in rural and isolated areas. So I would like some reassurance from the current Government that it will not be seeing this as an alternative. In fact how will it ensure that this does not become the alternative in those areas? We were presented with some very good evidence at the select committee of the online learning experiences from overseas—the United States in particular—where online charter schools have been in existence for significantly longer than anything equivalent to them on this side of the world. It highlighted some successes—there were some successes—but the failures were greater than the successes. That is not to say that we should not pick and up learn from the success stories because there certainly were some but we should also learn from the failures. I was particularly interested in the research by Michael Barbour from Touro University who gave a very detailed summary of the international studies that have been done on online learning provision particularly in the United States. It found that when online learning is done badly it is done very badly and the effect on those children is huge. It found that—I have not got the numbers right in front of me but in terms of their literacy progression the kids who were doing bad online learning provision were behind by about 73 days I think or 78 days out of 180 days in their learning and in maths they were 180 days behind out of 180 days of their learning. In other words their numeracy did not progress at all through online learning provision and their literacy relative to the expectations was significantly below. That was from the bad providers but one of our jobs as parliamentarians is to ensure that we do not end up with bad providers as a result of this legislative change. So I am interested in knowing how the Government will ensure that that does not happen because I think that that is important. Then we come to the regulatory impact statement in terms of what is driving this. The regulatory impact statement states "The Act discourages other providers from entering the market" and the Government uses that as the justification for changing this and yet if we go back to why the original Education Act in New Zealand was passed in 1877 the principle behind passing it was that the public has a right—a fundamental legal right—to a public education. It is not a market place; it is a right. So why the competition? What is the driver behind wanting more competition in this space? If it is simply to modernise The Correspondence School that is something that I can sign up to—no problem. I think the correspondence school legislation is absolutely in need of updating. The correspondence school legislation was passed in the days when the school used to post out workbooks and they would be posted back. Now of course most of the correspondence school provision is online and of course the law needs to be updated to reflect that. I did correspondence. I did correspondence through my local school because that correspondence provision was an alternative—so you could have a wider range of subjects. The school did not have the resources to offer all the subjects so I did history and French. My French was not very good—do not ask me to speak anything—but I did do history successfully through correspondence because my school was unable to offer it. Now kids are doing that online at their local school. That is great. If this is about extending the range of options available to schools in terms of online learning provisions so that the kids still get that social interaction with their peers and the pastoral care that comes with going to school that is something that I can sign up to as well because I think that that would be great. I think that schools are already doing some really good things in that space with sharing teachers through online provision and so on. So I want to know what the driver is behind the legislative change because there is already stuff that is happening. It is not just about modernising The Correspondence School. This bill goes far wider than that and there are real pitfalls in it."