Hipkins ChrisCHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): Mr Chairman I was not quite—–The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): The member can speak from anywhere. CHRIS HIPKINS: I know. I was not quite anticipating that but my notes are down here at my desk so I am very pleased to take a call on this particular section. I have only a relatively brief contribution on this around the changing of the rules around school boards of trustees. I realised as I was preparing to speak on this that many of the points that I wanted to raise around statutory interventions regarding boards we had actually grouped into the first theme so I cannot talk about them in this one. But I do just want to say—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Correct. CHRIS HIPKINS: —I will ask for the Committee's indulgence for just a moment—that I support the additional interventions. I think they are a welcome thing. It does actually relate to schedule 2 which sets out the power and functions of a school board of trustees and how it can operate. One of the concerns that has been raised by boards in executing these functions is that if they ask for additional advice from the Ministry of Education the default position has been to appoint a limited statutory manager when many of them have been saying Actually we could execute these functions much more appropriately if there was some gentler intervention available to the Government and to the Minister." and I welcome the changes to that. I have got some questions around the online meeting provisions if you like and the ability effectively for a board to pass a resolution but not in a meeting. Subclause (13) of clause 40 "Meetings" in the new schedule 6 being inserted by clause 147 into the Education Act 1989 says that "A resolution signed or assented to in writing (whether sent by post courier or electronic communication) by all members is as valid and effectual as if it had been passed at a meeting of the board correctly called and constituted." The question that I have got is whether unanimity is too high a threshold for that. School boards under this provision would need to convene a meeting to make a single decision if one member of the board dissented from that decision and it seems to me that that is quite a high threshold. If the decision is a relatively straightforward one and the board is trying to avoid the unnecessary expense and complication—bearing in mind that these are volunteers we are talking about—by passing a resolution by email when for example it is getting a written confirmation of the members' agreement why unanimity? Why not simply say—maybe the threshold for an absentee decision a decision without a meeting should be higher than at a meeting. But if the resolution could be passed by a majority at a meeting why would it need unanimity for that resolution to be passed using a non-meeting mechanism? It seems to me that what we are trying to do here is to not unnecessarily require the volunteer parents who sit on school boards of trustees to attend meetings when there are non-controversial matters say between meetings that could be dealt with by simple resolution—and I have been part of committees where resolutions are agreed to via email. Provided there is written confirmation that the majority of members agree—in fact we do it in some select committee processes in this Parliament—that is a very sensible thing to do. It means we do not have to meet in order to agree on a mere formality. So that is a question—why the majority? The second point that I want to ask is around the combining and splitting of school boards of trustees and how these provisions relate to the provisions around communities of learning which we are going to be debating further. Some of the anxiety that has been raised by people within the educational community is that the provisions in this legislation for communities of online learning combined with the ability of the Minister to combine school boards of trustees could lead by default to the community of learning becoming the default governance arrangement for schools in a particular area. That is an interesting debate to have and I am actually open to the debate. There are a whole lot of reasons why Tomorrow's Schools has led to a sort of silo mentality when it comes to schools. There is an interesting debate about how we break out of that and communities of learning is part of the discussion and this provision allowing the combining of boards is part of the discussion. What I am interested in is where the Government sees those two policies intersecting. Is it the Government's desire to have the ability to create a single board of trustees for a community of learning? It seems to me that the two legislative instruments in this bill are being dealt with separately and it is not always clear how they link. So I would be interested in the Minister's comments on that."