Davis Kelvin: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Davis Kelvin: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:662;Page:10292] 
KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) 
: 
 In talking to Part 1 of the Education Amendment Bill I too would like to talk about the police-vetting measure. We have to ask why we have a police vet and the intent of the legislation is to ensure that learners are not exposed to an unacceptable risk from persons with whom the school or early childhood service causes them to come into contact. Information provided by the New Zealand Teachers Council says about schools that “Before appointing a person who is not a registered teacher or holder of a Limited Authority to Teach to a position at a school the Board of the school or management of school in certain cases must obtain a police vet of the person from the NZ Teachers Council.” This is going to change so that schools can apply directly to the police which I think is a sensible move in that it eliminates the middle man and will speed up the whole process. 
When I was the principal of Kaitaia Intermediate School I was lucky enough to have an executive officer who would do that work for me. I would sign the form and she would send it off. I would basically forget about it for a couple of months until the police vet form would return saying whether the person had any convictions. It is really good that this intermediary step is being taken out and schools can apply directly to the police. 
I would like members to understand some of the difficulties that some schools have especially some schools in the outlying areas of Te Tai Tokerau such as Te Hapua Matihetihe Panguru and Whangaruru. Those sorts of schools have to vet contractors. New Section 78CA in clause 21 talks about the police vetting of contractors and employees who work at the schools. It states “The board of a State school or the management of a school … must obtain a Police Vet of every contractor or the employee of a contractor who has or is likely to have unsupervised access to students at the school during normal school hours.” The problem arises when principals and boards of those outlying areas have difficulty getting a contractor. Te Hapua School is a drive of an hour and a half to 2 hours from Kaitaia which is probably where the closest contractors are if the school needs help with plumbing or a contractor to come in and do painting or electricity work. Quite often it has to get the first person who is available. The school might not know who these contractors are. It is really difficult to get contractors to come up to do a job that might take a couple of hours or a day or two and to make sure the contractors or the employees of those contractors are police vetted. 
I have spoken before about my concerns about police vetting and I have spoken before about a social worker in a town who wanted to set up a mentoring programme. She selected a hundred males whom she felt would be excellent mentors and role models for a hundred boys at risk in schools. As an afterthought she thought she had better do a police vet on those people. She found that 78 of those 100 people had convictions. 
I am concerned that people seem to believe that schools start at 9 a.m. and end at 3 p.m. and that the kids are there only between those hours. Quite often kids stay behind after school for any number of reasons maybe sports maybe extra tutoring maybe just waiting for buses and people such as cleaners who are contracted after hours may have contact with those kids inadvertently. They may be inside a classroom vacuuming cleaning or dusting and the kids are in there doing homework or whatever. So I have concerns that these contracted cleaners may not have had police vetting. 
We cannot tell by the appearance of people whom we employ as to whether they have a criminal conviction. It may be that people who have been contracted into schools as cleaners and who we think are fine and have not had the police vet are not appropriate to be working after hours in the school where they may inadvertently have unsupervised contact with kids. It is an issue I want to raise because I have a dilemma about it. On one hand I want the safety of the kids to be paramount but on the other hand I do not like overburdening principals and office staff with paperwork. Police vetting is another one of those things that at present have to be done. If we can work out a way so that the kids are safe and there is a minimum of paperwork that would make everybody a lot happier. 
In Part 1 new section 78CC states that further police vets need to be obtained every 3 years which I think is sensible. As a principal I had staff members who in between police vets went and got convictions—one was for drink-driving unfortunately. So peoples’ circumstances change and they fall foul of the law. It is really important that schools have that mechanism every 3 years checking that their staff members have the police vet. I also believe that the safety of the kids is paramount. Although police vetting does add a little bit of extra paperwork to the role of the principal or the office staff we have to realise that the safety of the kids is paramount. 
I want to touch on another issue that my colleague Trevor Mallard raised about the function of the board of trustees. There are half a dozen or so National Administration Guidelines such as for finance property and health and safety. The most important one I believe is the first one which is about the curriculum. If we are talking about the functions of the board of trustees then the curriculum is the most important function that a board of trustees can oversee. I was fortunate enough at Kaitaia Intermediate School to have a board of trustees whose primary interest and the item that took up most time in our board meetings was the curriculum. In fact of even more interest than the curriculum was the achievement of the kids at school. That was the focus of our board of trustees meetings every time. That then had a flow-on effect to me as the school leader which had a flow-on effect to the school teachers and that in effect was part of what was instrumental in our school raising achievement—this unrelenting focus on achievement on the curriculum. 
The board would call in heads of curriculum areas to board meetings to discuss what was going on in their curriculum area what their achievement results were how the board could support them and what resources they needed. If we are talking about a quality education system we need to encourage all schools to have the board of trustees’ core function as an unapologetic and unrelenting focus on improving the curriculum and raising achievement. That comes down to the quality of teaching. A number of teachers still do not realise unfortunately that teaching and learning are related but separate things. Even if a teacher has taught a student something that does not mean to say that the person has learnt it. When there is a board of trustees that focuses unapologetically on raising achievement that is when we will see massive improvements in schools. I wanted to touch on that point that Trevor Mallard raised earlier.