King Colin: Education Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
King Colin: Education Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:661;Page:9648] 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a call during the second reading of the Education Amendment Bill. Education is hugely important for the Government to the extent that we realise that it is the vehicle by which people realise their potential. Therefore it is very very important that we have a robust and reliable system. So I congratulate the Minister of Education on bringing this bill before the House and ensuring that the education system is enhanced. That is what this bill does. 
Members of the Education and Science Committee were surprised at how many parts of the bill needed to be tidied up. As time permits I would like to deal with one or two of those parts because I am sure that my fellow members on the Government benches will also deal with other parts of it. 
Of significance are the changes to the police-vetting requirements. It is quite important to get that balance right so that education is conducted in a healthy and safe environment. The process needed to be robust enough so that vetting all non-teaching staff is completed before an individual has unsupervised access to children. Formerly that practice was conducted via the Teachers Council and it was quite a bureaucratic process. It was deemed within the compulsory school section and in early childhood education that that responsibility should sit with the board of trustees or those with responsibility. I think that will certainly be enthusiastically embraced by schools. There will be an amount of time required so that it can be done in a robust and professional manner. It will save somewhere between $375000 and $400000. Those moves are being tested and are tried and true; they are practised in the United States Canada England and Australia. The measures will provide an effective safeguard for children to learn in a safe environment. 
I want to talk for just a few moments on some of the smaller but very relevant aspects of this bill that improve the Education Act. I will talk about the gap that exists presently within the student loan system that needs to be plugged. Under the current Act it is not illegal to knowingly provide false information. That loophole is closed off by this bill. To make a false declaration will be an offence. On that basis the bill tidies those matters up. 
Without labouring the point too much I say that this Government sees the importance of a world-class education. This matter of matching information between the Teachers Council schools and the Ministry of Education has been languishing as long as I have been on the Education and Science Committee. It is good that Minister Tolley has brought this bill to the House so that we can start to tidy up those matters and start to get some real professionalism in managing education in this country. 
This bill will help to ensure that we have better systems of police vetting better systems of information matching less bureaucracy more teaching and more flexibility given to boards of trustees. One situation that came up which is quite ludicrous when one thinks about it was of a school that was being closed or had chosen to close but had to have an election at a given period of time. It was a very interesting situation. 
I believe that this bill will make a significant difference as every other bill does that goes into the Education and Science Committee. I take this opportunity to acknowledge the fine leadership of the chairman Allan Peachey and also the wisdom of a former Minister of Education Trevor Mallard who articulated some of the sentiments and some of the realism. However this Government sees that this bill will set us up to better implement national standards in literacy and numeracy. This bill will help us focus on teaching. It will help the boards of trustees and principals to implement the assessments in conjunction with national standards. It is sad that we had 9 years of failure by Labour and that it continues in a state of denial in terms of becoming obstructive and encouraging poor teaching practice. It is my pleasure to commend this bill to the House.