Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Madam Speaker. So I rise on behalf of the National Party to speak to the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 3) and to advise that we will be opposing this bill even though there are a lot of things—in fact the majority of the things in it we support but there are a couple of points that we oppose for different reasons.So the bill has a number of parts to it: the school board election process; the child protection for early childhood education changes; some changes in the tertiary area specifically a new framework for wānanga; and also the annual report requirements for universities and some other bits and pieces. But the key messages are really that we don't support the changes in the criteria for the appointment of school boards. We believe that it's absolutely important that the school boards reflect the community in which they serve but the most important thing for school boards is that they have the expertise to effectively run schools so that they can lift the outcomes of Kiwi kids so that they can get excellent and world-class education. That must be first and foremost in the school board's mind. The current law already allows that as far as reasonably practicable every school board should reflect the character gender and the ethnic and social diversity of the school community. Our differing view in the summation of this bill was that the make-up of the school boards should be skills-based and reflect their community and that should be set out in legislation however attempting to list every possible characteristic as this bill tries is not appropriate and in fact can be limiting and problematic. So the legislation we believe should simply state that as far as is reasonably practicable every board should reflect the diversity of their students and school community. So we will be in the committee of the whole House putting up a Supplementary Order Paper to seek to change this to simply as far as reasonably practicable every board should reflect the diversity of their students and school community."The other area that we have some concerns about—and I'll start by saying that we absolutely agree with the changes to enable wānanga to elect to be Crown or non-Crown entities but we believe there were two further parts to this where it should have gone further and that was around the protection of the term "wānanga" and also the names for Crown or non-Crown entities. As it stands they will be called "A wānanga" "B wānanga" or "C wānanga". Quite frankly I think for the point of a few more weeks of consultation the wānanga would have come together themselves and come up with alternative terms. It just feels wrong to be saying "A wānanga" "B wānanga" and "C wānanga".I think perhaps a lot of people won't know of the very proud history of our three incredibly important wānanga and the reason why this Crown or non-Crown entity categorization is really important. Most of our tertiary institutions—particularly our polytechnics—came from things like technical colleges so they were born out of Crown entities. But the wānanga most definitely weren't and they have incredibly proud histories of how they developed.The first wānanga was in 1981 Te Wānanga o Raukawa and they arose from their very strong iwi base who wanted to ensure that tikanga and te reo Māori were protected. So they have that very strong iwi history to them. Te Wānanga o Aotearoa which I had the privilege of working alongside as a partner for over two decades they have a different history again. They are pan-iwi but they started from one single very passionate focused man my respected friend Rongo Wetere who mortgaged his own dairy farm to be able to start up the wānanga in Te Awamutu because he was concerned at the number of young Māori that were being excluded from their schools and that wānanga now is an extremely large entity. At one stage they had over 30000 equivalent full-time students and were the biggest tertiary entity in this country. I think they've settled at around about 19000 or 20000 but still a very large tertiary institution that is run by my friend Nepia Winiata.Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi has another proud history to it that it was started by the wellrespected Sir Hirini Moko Mead who decided in the late 1980s that they should establish a whare wānanga and for five or six years he was passionate and the group around him were passionate about pushing this concept. They opened in Whakatāne with a very modest campus in 1992—just a couple of transportable classrooms—but I can tell you that campus is no longer modest. It's a beautiful campus in Whakatāne which I have had the privilege of being welcomed into and that wānanga is extremely well run by again my friend and colleague Wiremu Doherty.So that's why this is such an important amendment for the wānanga. They didn't start from a Crown entity; they started from the passion and the vision of their iwi or individuals who knew the importance of education and I feel that we haven't done enough in this legislation to recognize that.Now again people mightn't understand that the term "polytechnic" and "university" are protected terms but we haven't been able to protect the term "wānanga". Now it's complex. It's a difficult thing to do because "wānanga" is a very distinctly Māori term. There isn't an English equivalent of it. It's about open discussion and people gathering together and bringing different thoughts and opinions and experiences together. So it's very specific to Māori and so it is used as a verb as well as to describe these three tertiary institutions. But because it's difficult doesn't mean we should have shied away from it because I believe this legislation will be more the poorer for not having that consultation for not allowing Māori to decide how they wanted that protection of the term "wānanga" to play out. So that concerns us that for the sake of a few weeks of extra consultation—and it would have been something that Māori would have worked together over both getting terms for a Crown or non-Crown entity rather than being called "A wānanga" "B wānanga" or "C wānanga" and also come up with a methodology in which we could give the term "wānanga" the protection that it deserves alongside universities and polytechnics. So they are the reasons why we oppose this bill. They are things that perhaps could be fixed as we go through the process but our key concern is around those two matters.I suppose the other concern is that the bill doesn't address any of the major issues facing the education system in New Zealand that's failing to provide world-class education for our Kiwi kids. It seems to be bizarre to be in the House discussing an education bill that doesn't even mention that we are declining in world terms in fact around our maths and our English and how we are getting young people prepared for work. It doesn't say anything about the fact that half of the students are not able to get to the right level for reading writing and maths and that fewer students are leaving school with NCEA level 2 which the OECD says is the minimum required to be able to meaningfully engage with the labour market. So with all those sort of catastrophic things that are occurring in our education space at the moment it seems slightly bizarre to be worrying about the terminology of the make-up of school boards when in fact we want school boards to be the best people there possible to run the best possible schools to give our students the best possible education and opportunities in life and yet it's completely silent on how to get kids back to school how to ensure that our schools are giving worldclass education.So we are opposing this bill but as I said there are an awful lot of things in it that we support but we think it could be a much better bill. Thank you Madam Speaker."