Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
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Education Amendment Bill (No 2) 
First Reading 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 I move  
That the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a first time. 
 At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be referred to the Education and Science Committee that the committee report finally to the House on or before 1 November 2010 and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting except during oral questions and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House despite Standing Orders 187 and 190(1)(b) and (c). The purpose of this motion is to bring forward the report back of the bill to ensure its enactment before the end of the year so that the necessary arrangements are in place in particular for the introduction of trades academies next year. 
This bill introduces legislation that will enable the establishment of secondary-tertiary programmes for students enrolled in school. It will reduce the compliance burden on limited attendance centres protect the sustainability of the New Zealand export education sector improve the law affecting private schools and make minor changes to school enrolment scheme priorities. 
The first area of broad policy change is secondary-tertiary programmes. The bill will make the interface between secondary and tertiary education more integrated to fulfil this Government’s commitment to the Youth Guarantee. It will do this by allowing secondary students to participate full-time in a secondary-tertiary programme while still enrolled at school. The legislation details the process for the Minister of Education to approve the organisations that will provide a secondary-tertiary programme and the process for the Secretary for Education to agree to the details of the secondary-tertiary programme as well as the reporting and monitoring arrangements with these providers. 
The first examples of secondary-tertiary programmes will be trades academies. Trades academies will motivate more students to stay engaged in learning and training by providing them with a greater number of options for study. Trades academies will also provide students with clear pathways by giving them a head start on training for industry-related qualifications and smooth access to employment. To introduce initiatives spanning the secondary-tertiary interface new legislative arrangements are required to allow more appropriate sharing of the responsibilities for students when they are undertaking a joint secondary-tertiary programme. The changes in this bill will ensure protection of the education welfare and safety of students. 
A second area of policy change will reduce the compliance burden for limited attendance centres. Limited attendance centres provide short-term care for young children on a casual basis like recreational facilities or shopping centres. Providers emphasise care rather than education. Many limited attendance centres find the current early childhood education regulations onerous and have ceased providing the service or are operating a centre outside of the licensing requirements. Although limited attendance centres will no longer be subject to early childhood education regulatory requirements they will continue to be subject to arrangements with the operators of the facility local government and other legislative requirements to ensure the safety and welfare of the children in their care. The nature of a limited attendance centre means that parents or caregivers are able to be easily contacted to resume responsibility for their child at short notice. 
At the moment there are few restrictions in education legislation relating to international students who change course or provider. Current refund provisions for international students enrolled at private training establishments penalise those providers who invest in overseas recruitment but have their students enticed away once they arrive in New Zealand by providers who do not invest in marketing overseas but offer much cheaper courses. A number of undesirable consequences are associated with international students changing providers shortly after they arrive in New Zealand. Overseas agents lose their commission which reduces their enthusiasm for referring students to New Zealand in the first place. New Zealand’s reputation and the sustainability of the sector are damaged and there are immigration risks from non - bona fide students. 
This bill removes the incentive for international students to change provider by increasing the maximum amount that private training establishments can retain when providing a refund to international students who withdraw from a course of 3 months or more. The bill will enable the relevant Minister to set through a notice in the New Zealand  
Education Gazette 
 refund provisions for international students enrolled at private training establishments for such courses. This notice will set the period during which international students can withdraw from these courses and receive a refund of their course fees and it will set the maximum proportion of the course fees that the private training establishment may retain. 
This bill also updates and clarifies the law affecting private schools in response to the Law Commission report  
Private Schools and the Law 
. The bill will update and clarify the registration criteria to provide clear standards for prospective private schools. This will ensure minimum standards for private schools’ premises equipment and standards of tuition and it will ensure that all private schools are correctly registered. No regulation currently exists with regard to who can manage a private school. This bill ensures the safety and welfare of students by restricting those persons whose previous conduct or character makes their managing a private school inappropriate. The bill introduces a graduated range of sanctions to apply to private schools that breach the law or their registration conditions and this allows for an appropriate response to minor breaches. 
Finally the current Education Act the Education Act 1989 specifies the order in which school boards must prioritise enrolment applications via the ballot process from out-of-zone students. This bill gives some priority to the children of board members and former pupils who have a historical family connection to the school. Currently the legislation does not give any priority to applications from those students. This bill will improve education law across a range of areas. I am very pleased in particular that it creates greater options for study for students by opening up that secondary-tertiary interface to help fulfil the Government’s Youth Guarantee. Students will find that interface easier to negotiate and that will facilitate their continued engagement in education. I commend the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) to the House at its first reading. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 It is the intention of the Labour Opposition to support the referral of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) to a select committee as long as—I say in brackets—we can get a referral motion that we agree with. Members of the House know that the Education and Science Committee generally works on a pretty much bipartisan basis on technical legislation although we have our differences every now and again. We have a strong preference for not sitting during the sitting times of the House and we generally either arrange our business in the adjournment breaks or deal with things expeditiously as we are doing with Sir Roger Douglas’ bill at the moment. There is an offer to get the bill back by 1 November and we certainly will support a motion to do that but we will not support a motion that requires the select committee to sit during the sitting times of the House. 
This bill is a mixture of technical and political matters. We disagree with some of the things in here and we want to try to sort them out at the select committee but on balance there are some things including things in the private school area that are travelling in the right direction so it would be petty of us not to support sending the bill off. I apologise to a certain extent for focusing on some of the things on which we will seek clarification or will want to oppose. 
One of the areas we want to sort out is the limited attendance centres; I think a couple of points are pretty important. One is that where children are being kept within a gymnasium a shopping mall or a similar type of arrangement there should be some line of sight from the public area to where the children are being kept. I think it is a dangerous situation to have children in a room away from their parents and away from where anyone else can see what is going on in the room with someone who is supervising them especially when that person is not qualified. A lot of centres are set up with a clear line of sight and have windows or other arrangements where the public who are passing by can see in or the centres are in a gymnasium where the children can be seen by the parents who are exercising at the gym. If that is the case I think it is good. 
I have another question in that area that I think needs to be sorted out. I think it is fair to say that I am not quite as anxious about this area as some of the members who were Ministers of Education before me or in between me and the current Minister of Education but I think it is absolutely vital that anyone who is working in one of these centres has a police check. The changes that the Minister has made appear to remove the requirement for the person who is involved to have had a police clearance. The Minister says that it does not. I have read it and I think that it does. We will have that clarified at the select committee. If it is not the intention— 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: It’s not intended. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I am pleased to hear it. We can check that and correct it if it is a problem and if it is not a problem we will not need to do so. 
Some of my colleagues will talk a little bit about the area of secondary-tertiary programmes. I prefer to have less legislation rather than more and my view is that in this area the Government is able to do what it wants to do without legislation. If legislation is blocking it we are actually better to take it out and give a more general power to approve programmes or to fund particular policies rather than try to do it area by area as it appears to be done now. The ability of the Government to spend money in areas in which it has policy should be pretty much untrammelled. We can argue about the policies. In fact I think in this we might be going back and getting closer to some of the work that the previous Labour Government was doing before the election. Of course we cannot criticise the Minister for seeing the light but the real question I have and I will be interested— 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: It was all clear daylight. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: No the trouble is that when one clarifies and clarifies within the law one keeps making it really hard to do innovative things and one runs up against it. I will be interested in the contribution at the select committee of the Hon Sir Roger Douglas as to whether he thinks that this provision is necessary or whether a more general empowering provision would be more appropriate. 
Another area that I will comment on is the enrolment provisions. I think that two loopholes are being opened up in this area by this bill. Mr Peachey and I have had discussions about enrolment legislation in the past. I think it is fair to say that we have different points of view. I will not say that he as a principal was the worst rorter in the system but I would say that every now and again he used to push the limits test the procedures and sometimes use some of the better ideas some of the loopholes and some of the back alleys that some of his colleagues who were principals taught him. That is what happens when legislation has loopholes: it tends to be exploited. 
I think this bill establishes a couple of loopholes. One is the right of a child of a member of a board of trustees to be enrolled notwithstanding where the child lives. I know that this is sometimes a worst-case scenario but when I think about these things my default position is to ask how John Morris would deal with this. He is the principal of Auckland Grammar School. It is fair to say that I actually quite like John. I respect some of his views; I disagree with some of them. I think his students are missing the boat a bit through the overemphasis on foreign exams and their relatively poor performance in Scholarship and I think that they could be doing better. But the point that I go back to is to ask how John would use this legislation. I know what he would do. He would see a good boy in form 2 who he thought could be an important part of his first XV going forward so he would second the kid’s parent on to the board of trustees for a few weeks. That would let the boy into the school and then of course there would be no requirement for the parent to be on the board of trustees. That can happen. Co-options to boards of trustees can happen. I wonder whether as we go forward we will put some requirement that the person has to have been on the board for a number of years. Maybe that should be a requirement. 
I get most interested when I see National tending back to its British Tory ways of inherited rights. Instead of inherited seats in the House of Lords National is promoting in this bill the right to pass on to one’s children the right to go to a school and to one’s grandchildren through one’s children the right to go to that school. Despite the fact that a family might not have lived in the zone for many generations if this system is adopted it could well result in generation after generation of kids having the right to go to a school of their parents’ choice over and above the kids who live in the school’s neighbourhood. Clearly there is still a zone but again we know what happens to zones when there is a favourable system. I think it is fair to say that the Auckland Grammar School zone before the tight legislation was where the headmaster thought it was. That was effectively the way the zone was designed. Zones will shrink in order to create more places for the inherited nobles or the good football players whom people want to import into their schools. I think that area has to be sorted out. 
In summary Labour will support this bill and if we can sort out the referral motion we will support it going to the select committee as well. 
ALLAN PEACHEY (National—Tamaki) 
: 
 I welcome Mr Mallard’s indication of support for the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). I am looking forward to chairing the Education and Science Committee’s consideration of the legislation. I suspect that there are a number of areas in the bill that will become the subject of some quite considerable robust debate and I look forward to that. It can only be healthy. I am not sure whether Mr Mallard was praising me in his comments about my standing as a principal but I will take as a compliment his acknowledgment of my ability to use the system that politicians presented to me in the best interests of the children in the community that I was serving. 
I will talk about enrolment schemes and enrolment scheme provisions because I had the privilege of leading schools through three steps in this process. I will begin with the introduction of Tomorrow’s Schools by the previous Labour Government of which Mr Mallard was a member— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I wasn’t quite a member of the Government; I was just a backbencher. 
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: He was a backbench member of the Government. I thought he might have been a whip actually. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I was a whip. Whips are not part of the Government. 
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: Whips do not count. OK there we go I say to Mr Tremain whips do not count. 
Basically it was left to schools that needed an enrolment scheme. A school had an enrolment scheme only if it was overcrowded or in danger of being overcrowded and that school determined whether the scheme was based on a defined geographical area or on other criteria. Many schools like the school that I led always had a clearly defined geographical criteria because it was important for the board and the community that it was a community school. Towards the latter part of the 1990s the legislation was changed and schools were required to have a geographical zone. It did not matter all that much at the school I led because it had one anyway. 
We begin to get into difficulty when we start defining geographical areas. Members should remember that it is only in respect of schools that are oversubscribed—in other words schools whose style of education is keenly sought after by the community—that those schemes are put in place— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Or areas of rapid growth. 
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: What tended to happen of course was that property in those areas took on a premium. It then became really important to look at the criteria that a school had for taking youngsters from outside that geographical area. Schools had to make individual choices as to what those criteria would be. 
We move to 2001 when the Education Standards Act introduced the criteria and it is those criteria that this bill proposes to change. Mr Mallard is right: whenever new criteria are introduced new opportunities for loopholes to be exploited are introduced. It was no different with the 2001 legislation. I could tell this House about a whole pile of ways that people operated but I will not as I do not have the time. For example parents in particular—and who can blame any parent for wanting to get their child into a top school—use sibling relationships to get their child into a top school. So working around the system is by no means new. However I will keep my personal views on what shape this should take for the select committee process. I am expecting the debate in the select committee to be robust and exciting and for something good to come out of it on the issue of enrolment schemes. At the end of the day the objective has to be to ensure that the maximum number of youngsters can get to the very best schools that are available. 
One of the subtle shifts that I saw over time as a consequence of the 1989 legislation passed by a former Labour Government was that parents were less willing to accept the notion that they could send their kids to a school up the road the intermediate up the road or the high school down the street and they would be happy with that. Those days have long since gone. I believe we face a major challenge in ensuring that good schools are available to the maximum number of youngsters possible. 
I will make a couple of quick comments on the secondary-tertiary interface in terms of technical education. I think it would be fair to say that over the last 20 years New Zealand has not done this very well. I can think back to the early 1990s when there was a huge amount of talk of an interface between secondary schools and the tertiary sector. There was variable performance. One thing that it is very important that people get their heads around is that the nature of an education in technical subjects has changed hugely. The qualities abilities knowledge and skills that youngsters need to succeed in a technical education have changed greatly. I am not sure that our system has changed sufficiently quickly to keep up with that. It is my hope that the provision now to have trade academies and the interface with the tertiary sector will enhance that process. I am bound to say that on a number of occasions in other countries particularly in the United States I have seen schools doing quite a stunning job of the provision of technical education. New Zealand has been well behind that not just in its provision of technical education but also more important in the way that it has thought about technical education and what sorts of youngsters should have access to it. I look forward to that change. Again I believe there will be room for the select committee to debate some of those issues. There are a number of other provisions in the legislation but other members have more than adequately covered those. For the moment I shall confine my comments to those points. Thank you. 
KELVIN DAVIS (Labour) 
: 
 First of all Labour will support the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) to the Education and Science Committee as long as we get some sort of referral motion correct. I was not in the House when that was talked about. I disagree with the previous speaker Mr Peachey on one of the points he made about making sure that as many kids as possible get to the most excellent schools. I think that the aim of the New Zealand education system should be for all schools to be excellent and for all young students to have access to excellent schools right in their own backyard. It should not be just the domain of those who are upwardly mobile to be able to attend an excellent school somewhere away from their own neighbourhood. 
In the 20 months that I have been a member of Parliament this is the third education-related bill to come through the House. The first related to the infamous national standards. Even if we are to believe the hype around the national standards that they will be the greatest thing to lift achievement in New Zealand even if we disregard the Auckland Primary Principals Association stance the Southland principals’ support of the Auckland Primary Principals Association stance the Tai Tokerau principals’ criticisms of national standards the Parliamentary Library research paper that the Minister is quick to criticise and the 37000 petitioners who criticised the national standards even if we believe that the national standards are the best thing since sliced bread we would have expected that the second education bill to come to the House would be the second-most important bill. 
Unfortunately this second piece of legislation talked about principals not having to police vet the contractor who goes out and fixes the light switch at the back prefab. It talked about sharing information between the Teachers Council and the Ministry of Education. That legislation was a big let-down because it did not address what all legislation in this House should be about when it comes to education—that is how we raise achievement as quickly as we can as high as we can. 
I was hoping this Education Amendment Bill (No 2) would address that. I was hoping it would address those issues and those strategies that are known and proven by research to raise achievement the most. This is another technical bill. It does not address the most important aspects of education and it does not look to how we will raise achievement. It does not address professional development or making sure the interface between teachers and students is as good as it can be. That is how we will raise achievement. 
When the Minister was thinking about what she wanted to do to raise achievement I guess she decided that she would look at the limited attendance centres and at the places where parents who go to the shopping mall to get their hair cut or get a manicure or buy the groceries or fix the lawnmowers—the places where they can leave the kids while they go off and do those things. There is no way on earth that that section of this bill will address achievement. It just makes things easier for parents to go about their daily business so they can drop the kids off somewhere and go off to buy the groceries get their hair cut or whatever. 
Louise Upston 
: It’s called common sense. 
KELVIN DAVIS 
: But it is not about education. I support the fact that parents can do that. It is a good idea but it does not raise achievement. The Government is focusing on these technical things yet we are neglecting what it takes to raise achievement in schools. I ask that member how many kids will learn to read write and do arithmetic because their parents can drop them off at some day care at a mall. 
Louise Upston 
: Get the focus on education and don’t worry about the creche— 
KELVIN DAVIS 
: That member opposite proves that this Government does not get education. Those members do not understand what it takes to raise achievement. When I look at the secondary-tertiary programme I must say that I have a concern. Again I think it is not a bad thing and we do support the legislation going to select committee. But instead of just saying that some kids are failing at secondary school so let us move them off into some other area we should be looking at what it is that is disengaging those students from secondary school in the first place. Teachers should be resourced in order to work with those kids. Teachers should be provided with the support so that they can be excellent. It is our responsibility as legislators to provide the conditions where those excellent teachers can weave their magic for the kids. 
We cannot simply say that a child has got to fourth form and he or she is a hard-to-teach student so maybe that child can be pushed off to some technical studies at the tertiary level. We all know that some kids may be better at technical stuff but my fear is for those kids who for whatever reason will be pushed off and their academic abilities not stretched simply because they are hard-to-teach kids. 
We can take the instance of gifted education. Gifted education is so misunderstood particularly in this House. There are a number of kids who present themselves as being not particularly academic when in fact they are gifted. Schools do not have the resources the capability or the technology to test true giftedness. Those gifted kids are sitting in classrooms where they are bored and disengaged. The teacher believes that they are not very easy to teach so maybe they would work better with their hands and they can go off to some technical college. 
My son is 11 years of age. He is in year 7 and he is writing at level 5 of the curriculum which is very high. My son is exceptionally bright but he is not gifted. There are a lot of parents who think their kids are gifted when they are actually just bright. The gifted kids in New Zealand are not being recognised. They might be able to sit for days on end and build the Eiffel Tower out of matchsticks or a Porsche out of lawnmower parts but when it comes to writing a couple of sentences they may not be able to do that particularly well in writing that is very legible. So the teacher thinks they have learning difficulties and might encourage them to go to the technical colleges and do something with their hands. I am scared that we will have gifted kids who are academically bright and who are educationally very very capable who will be pushed to the side. 
I am also worried that Maori kids who may be difficult to teach will be encouraged to move off to technical colleges and will not fulfil their true academic potential. I am also concerned that students from rural areas will be disadvantaged because even if they do want to be in those tertiary programmes they will not be available for those students in their areas. Where I live in Kaitaia there are no opportunities for kids to go off to NorthTec in Whangarei to do part of their studies there. 
Labour supports this bill going to select committee. There are a number of parts to it that need further discussion and I take my colleague Trevor Mallard’s points about the part of the bill where boards of trustees members and former students—old boys and old girls—can send their kids to a school and there is the opportunity for them to jump the queue over other people who live in the school’s zone. I think that these anomalies need to be sorted out. With that I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora. 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker Roy. It is with some reluctance that the Green Party will be opposing the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). There are a number of innocuous provisions and in principle we support the secondary-tertiary partnership that this bill enables. Secondary school is a challenging time for many young people and school in its conventional form is not for everyone. Too many young people become disillusioned with the school system and they leave without qualifications because their interests and learning styles are not taken account of. I have been engaging with secondary school students in a research project about learning models and many from alternative schools—Maori and Pacific in particular—have identified the need for far more diverse and exciting learning models but not necessarily workplace training for all. Recognising this there is still a need to provide for learners who need to undertake workplace training and apprenticeships as secondary-tertiary partnerships do and we see that as positive. We supported the clauses in the previous Education Amendment Bill which allowed this initiative to be developed in Manukau. However we have some concerns about how the partnerships may be developed. 
That is not our major concern with the bill. We cannot support it as a whole. These omnibus bills are difficult because the Government tries to sneak in unpalatable changes behind positive ones. We find elements of the secondary-tertiary partnerships problematic. 
I will take the parts of the bill we are concerned about one at a time. As well as setting up secondary-tertiary partnerships this bill would exempt so-called limited attendance early childhood centres from having to comply with early childhood regulations. The excuse for this exemption is that the kids are there only for a short time and the parents are always close by. But we are concerned that this is the thin end of a wedge. We are already seeing the same Government watering down the requirements for staff to be registered teachers at all early childhood education centres. Our contacts in this sector warn us that this further change could put children and babies at risk and could signal further erosion of the safety and quality of the sector. 
Whether it is for 2 hours or 10 hours standards of care must be met. It may be cheaper for the provider to lower standards and easy for the parents to just drop the kids off somewhere while at the gym or shopping but the Green Party is more concerned about the standards that all children need at all times. We are unimpressed with the undermining of the early childhood education sector in terms of reducing the need for fully qualified staff and we do not support any further weakening of the commitment to high-quality childcare in any creche or facility just because it would suit adults. It will not help the educational system which is what this bill is allegedly set up to do. 
The real minefield in this bill is the proposed enrolment provision changes. Anyone would think that the Government was trying to import private school values into the public sector. There is a particularly odious so-called minor amendment to change the enrolment priorities for out-of-zone enrolment for schools so that children of former students and board members are prioritised. We find that amendment distasteful and think it formalises an old boys’ club in a way that is neither necessary nor acceptable. 
In a change that is blatantly aimed at improving the profits of private training establishments the bill makes it harder for international students to withdraw from their courses within 10 days of starting them by allowing the Minister to limit the refund paid to students who withdraw. The regulatory impact statement of this bill focuses entirely on the security and financial position of the private training establishments. Not once does it consider the experience of students who might arrive in Aotearoa New Zealand and find that the course they enrolled for is not what they expected. It is short-sighted and does nothing to improve the experience for these students or the long-term reputation overseas of our international education centres. 
Other parts of the bill are less objectionable such as those giving effect to the Law Commission’s recommendations about the law regarding private schools. However many useful recommendations have been watered down in this bill once again with the interests of private schools paramount rather than those of students. For example the Government has chosen not to implement the recommendation that private schools be required to comply with standard procedures for disciplining students—suspending or expelling them—because it would be onerous for private schools to have to amend or write consistent guidelines in this area. That is simply not fair for students who may find themselves in the position of being suspended or expelled from private schools without clear guidelines or recourse to that decision. Similarly the Law Commission’s changes have been watered down in respect of sanctions against private schools that fail to comply with lawful registration again with the interests and convenience of the schools paramount in the Government’s mind. 
Although we are broadly supportive of the changes around secondary-tertiary partnerships we are concerned that as drafted in this bill these changes could pave the way for future unacceptable privatisation of parts of our public education system. We opposed the last Education Amendment Bill because it allowed bodies corporate to become statutory managers of schools in some circumstances. We saw this situation as unacceptable because it prepared the ground for public-private partnerships which could see corporations running schools in the same way that has already happened overseas with disastrous consequences in some cases. Now those same bodies corporate will be able to form secondary-tertiary partnerships with other private institutions in the tertiary sector. We are concerned about what this might open up in the future given that they can be the lead provider. 
We particularly object to the bill because of the provisions around enrolment. I support the comments that Kelvin Davis made about elitism and the access of local children to local schools. We particularly support the rights of local children to attend local schools rather than protecting dynasty-based access for the privileged few because a lot of parents and children do not have the choices to move to where the schools are. A lot of them need the high-quality public education sector that Kelvin Davis was referring to. It is not about providing real choice if we undermine the zoning issue and also the issue of local parents having access to those local schools. As somebody whose father went to Auckland Grammar School I do not see why I should have access simply because my father went there. He lived in the zone; I did not live in that zone while I was a high school student. Why should I be privileged over the students who live in that zone? I was on a board of trustees at a particular rural school. Why should that mean that my descendants get enrolment privileges? This is all about setting up dynasties rather than relating to local needs. The public education system is meant to be public it is meant to be open to all students who live in that area and it is meant to be of the highest possible quality. 
Because of the range of issues that we are concerned about in this very broad bill the Green Party will be opposing it with great reluctance because we see the value in some of the provisions. It is unfortunate that we are in the position of yet again having to point out these things because it seems as if nobody else will. We will certainly be raising these issues at the Education and Science Committee and are hopeful that perhaps some of our concerns will be accepted and the bill amended. We are basically concerned that this bill is not about education; it is about things like parents going to the mall. That is not what the Education and Science Committee is there to debate. The issue of whether parents go to the mall and have a nice easy way to drop off their kids is not what we are there to do; we are there to improve the achievement levels the diversity the viability and the accessibility of the public education system for all students. 
We already have gaps in this society between the rich and poor. The Green Party has spoken many times about the gap and we do not want a public education system at this time in history to reinforce that gap in any way shape or form. 
We will watch the bill closely. We will look for good things that we can constructively assist with but at this point we will oppose it because of the issues I have outlined. I do not speak alone; I speak with the backing of the early childhood sector and I speak with the backing of many people who work for the concept of local schools being available to local children. We will watch this space on the issue of secondary-tertiary partnerships. They could be a really good thing and we see their value but they need to be in context and we need to see how they will be implemented before we can show support. 
At this stage we have made our position clear. We also look for ways to constructively improve this legislation. I wish that more of this law was actually about education. It does not seem to be. Tena koe. 
Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS (ACT) 
: 
 ACT will support the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). Having said that I agree a hundred percent with Kelvin Davis when he said that this bill does little and certainly does not deal with the significant problems we have in the education system. Given that it is the third Government bill on education one would have hoped that it would do a lot more. If we were to give it a mark out of 100 I suppose it would get a two or three in terms of importance—if we stretched it. There is absolutely nothing in this bill that will do anything to improve the quality of education. There is nothing in this bill that will do anything to help the 30 percent of kids who at the present time leave school with a poor education and who are unable to read or write adequately. 
The tragedy is that when we look at schools in poor areas we see that that percentage is much higher. It is the poor who are getting the rawest deal. There is absolutely nothing in this bill that will solve the problem we have in South Auckland where 10 of the schools are currently manned by police. I understand that that scheme has been recently moved into the Bay of Plenty area. There is nothing in this bill that will help the children who this year went to secondary school for the first time at a school in South Auckland a decile 5 or 6 school who had a test where one of the questions asked: “If you have 36 apples and subtract 27 apples how many do you have?” and one in four children got that wrong. 
There is something terribly wrong with our education system and it is about time that this House addressed the real issues that we are faced with and not these issues which are largely technical in manner. The fact is that unless a family has the money to shift to another zone and buy a house in it or can pay twice they have no choice in this country. I think we need to do something about that. This bill does extend choice slightly. It allows for the children of parents who went to particular schools to be enrolled at those schools but that in itself will create some anomalies as well. The Education and Science Committee might like to think about that. I think of my own situation where I had a son who went to Auckland Grammar School and a daughter who went to Epsom Girls Grammar School. 
My son’s son will now be able to go to Auckland Grammar School but I take it that my daughter’s son will not qualify. On the other hand my daughter’s daughter will now be able to go to Epsom Girls Grammar School but my son’s daughter will not. 
Overall it is time that we got to grips with the education system in New Zealand. The education system absorbs the total amount of money we raise from GST and I do not think we are getting a particularly good return. In many ways the problems we have now were 70 years in the making and I cannot for the life of me see why we persist with a system that has failed for 70 years. I ask why we do not think again. Thank you. 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Kia ora tatou katoa e te Whare. The end of the Government’s financial year sits uncomfortably close to te Matariki. It is the dawning of the Maori New Year; a time to reflect on the past and to look to the future. 
The essence of this bill on education is that it is as critical to our past and essential to our future as anything else that might arise over the next century. Just over 100 years ago at the Maori Congress in 1908 Hone Heke Ngapua the MP from Tai Tokerau argued for the teaching of Maori in native schools and for Maori to be recognised as a subject for university entrance. Eighty years later the Matawaia Declaration called for the establishment of a fully autonomous and independent Maori education authority to secure Maori control over Maori philosophies and educational practices. Just 9 years ago Tuwharetoa chief Tumu te Heuheu called a Hui Taumata Matauranga to bring together proposals for a separate tino rangatiratanga Maori education authority a new Maori Education Act and a Minister of Maori Education. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: No he didn’t. That’s just not true. He rejected it. Pita Sharples put it up and the chief said no. I was there. 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: Central to all of these themes is our desire to give our kids a good start in life. Mr Mallard should open his ears. At no time did I say he approved it; I just said it was to bring together proposals. If Mr Mallard would just keep his mouth shut and his ears open he might hear and he might understand. 
We want to give kids a range of options for their future within an environment where schools engage with whanau to develop models of success and innovation. In order to ensure that Maori needs are genuinely met we want to see more Maori language teachers in all schools as well. So this bill raised a few hopes given that it targets early childhood secondary and tertiary programmes private schools and international students. But the reality is that every year  
Nga Haeata Matauranga - Annual Report on Maori Education 
 says that most schools are still struggling to meet the educational needs of Maori students. 
The first proposal in this bill is about early education. That is OK because 76 percent of all Maori kids are in mainstream early education centres. A few weeks back the Education Review Office report  
Success for Maori Children in Early Childhood Services 
 noted that only a third of services were helping Maori children to achieve. In other words two-thirds simply did not have effective processes in place to help Maori kids grow or even identify whether what they were doing for Maori kids was any good. So I was disappointed to note that the proposal in this bill was focused more on care arrangements in shopping malls and gyms than on education. We are OK with exempting these short-stop centres from full licensing standards as long as they still meet all the health and safety standards and have proper management in place but it is hardly the change we are looking for to help Maori children to learn. 
The second proposal to provide more opportunities for secondary school students to spend time learning in a tertiary environment or in the workplace is a great idea and one that many wharekura and secondary schools are already embracing. In fact it was the feature story in the 2007-08 nga haeata matauranga. One of Ngapuhi’s boys Sam Henare was head boy of Aotea College out in Porirua and also involved in Youth Apprenticeships. According to Sam the scheme gave him the real-life experience he needed to pursue an electrical apprenticeship—a combination of school the employer and the ElectroTechnology Industry Training Organisation. 
The third proposal is about establishing a fit and proper person requirement for managers of private schools—to make sure that they are not crooked crock or bankrupt. Again it is hardly a seismic shift in educational thinking. Sure some 1500 Maori kids are in private schools and them and their mates deserve to have decent people looking after them. But private schools are doing pretty well actually particularly given the $35 million doled out to them by the Government in 2009. 
The fourth proposal is to refund course fees for international students who leave their courses before they are completed. Good on them but it does not do anything to enhance Maori education. 
The $7 million spent on He Kakano to provide new forms of teaching and learning to lift Maori student achievement is great but teaching Pakeha teachers that they can get more out of their Maori students if they understand them better through Te Kotahitanga programme is a great idea as well. But there is a whole heap more we would like to see too: more commitment to kura kaupapa such as matching the $35 million for private schools in next year’s Budget; a dedicated and successful Maori language teachers recruitment strategy; the development of curriculum based around local hapu and iwi; more structured and positive engagement with whanau; and strong mentoring programmes to increase Maori participation and success in tertiary education to name just a few areas. 
This morning I chaired the Maori Affairs Committee inquiry into the tobacco industry. Two rangatahi spoke to our committee and I invited them to come and sit alongside us during the presentation from Philip Morris (New Zealand). The young man had a wonderful name made famous by the Jim Croce song “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” and he gave a very strong and stirring presentation about the impact of the tobacco industry on him his parents’ generation and his grandparents’ generation. The young woman Mahinaarangi Torrey was also an excellent example of what can be achieved when Maori students are encouraged to believe that their Maoriness really is something special. She was well-educated well-presented well-spoken—a beautiful speaker in both English and Maori—and a credit to her school her whanau her hapu and her iwi. She is an example of what positive education for Maori can mean. 
Although we will be supporting this bill we would have liked to see more emphasis on excellence than on logistics. I would like to close by telling a little story about a Minister of Education who came to Mangamuka marae some years ago and who stood up to talk about schools and Maori education. Maori principals had been there for some hours before he had arrived and their talk had been really positive; it was a great experience. Then the Minister came. He talked about Maori education and he was getting everybody really really depressed. I leaned across to a principal and I said: “How come he’s talking like that?”. He leaned over to me and said: “That’s what they call the deficit model.” 
So when I got a chance to talk I stood up and I said to him: “Minister please don’t ever come to my school because we don’t operate our school on the deficit model. We operate on the basis that excellence should be normal and that everything we do should be aimed towards achieving that not teaching kids that you are dumb because your parents are dumb you’re probably going to be a thief because some of your cousins might have been thieves.” That kind of thinking is very destructive thinking. I am not a principal but my wife was so I was able to sit in and listen to the korero and how depressing that guy was when it came to talking about Maori education. I sincerely hope that we never ever get a Minister of Education like that again. 
Louise Upston 
: Who was it? 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: That Minister’s name was Trevor Mallard. Kia ora tatou. 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to follow the speaker from the Maori Party who spoke so inspirationally about achievement and where excellence should sit. It is a pleasure to speak in the first reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) and in doing so to be part of an energetic aspirational Government that is making a difference. 
It does not take much to figure out the argument from members opposite. They had 9 years in office and they left a wreck of an education system. When members wax lyrically about what should be done we start to understand that obviously they were not here during the wretched dying days of the previous Labour administration. Those members expounded on why there were changes. The point I make to them is that it is the nanny State provisions in the Education Act 1989 that we are trying to unwind. Those members over there mucked around with and created chaos in the education system. 
We have a hard-working and busy Government at the moment. It is improving the education system and moving it into the 21st century. We heard from the ACT speaker before that there is 30 percent underachievement with regard to literacy and numeracy. This Government is very focused on education. It is very focused on the importance of getting the foundation skills right. This bill goes a step further towards making sure there is a step change in achievement. 
Literacy and numeracy are crucial. They are a foundational requirement. For one’s students to have good literacy and numeracy skills one has to emphasise to one’s students the importance of engagement. That is why we started with the basis of national standards and why we have added to that the Youth Guarantee scheme which enables 16 and 17-year-olds to go into tertiary education and to continue to learn and to develop those skills. Unfortunately what we find on the other side of the House is that the Labour Opposition is running nothing more than obstruction to a lot of the incredibly positive projects coming from the Government at the moment. 
So what will this bill do? Is the next generation a step change? I want to focus on trades academies. Trades academies are very important. If we have a problem in this country—as alluded to by the very able chair of the Education and Science Committee Allan Peachey—it is that we have languished when it comes to valuing technical qualities technical skills and trades. When we look at countries in the OECD that we would like to compare ourselves with we see that they are a country mile ahead of us. 
A comment that could be levelled at the education system is that over the last decade we have had a bias towards academia. New Zealand has undervalued the trades and skills. I am enthusiastic about the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) because it builds the framework of the trades academies. Trades academies are very important. They are the link between compulsory education and the tertiary interface. One example comes to my mind from the time we were going the around the country and listening to the people 3 years ago. The message that came through quite clearly is that unless students can see the relevance and the purpose of education they will invariably disengage from it. It is with great enthusiasm that I support the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). The secondary-tertiary interface and trades academies will build up an ability to hook kids into education because they will see the very relevance of being literate and numerate. 
I take this opportunity to talk about two fantastic people who assisted us in developing the trades academies model. They are Stewart Thompson and Stuart Middleton. We have already seen the success emanating out of the Manukau Institute of Technology. This really does interface with an institute of technology and up to 20-odd other colleges surrounding the South Auckland area. It is a great model and one that we wholeheartedly support. 
When I hear other members in the House say that this bill does nothing for education I totally disagree with them. This bill does an enormous amount for education achievement and people realising their goals and ambitions. It values the skills the trades and the technical ability of people who would otherwise be considered to be less than achievers. This bill is a very positive bill. We will enjoy working with it at the select committee. It is good to see that there is a level of collegiality around it. 
Finally I will address the point raised by the Green member who mentioned the private training establishments and not thinking about students when it comes to the overseas student category of the private training establishments. It became very obvious to us—on this side of the House anyway—that a level of enticement was being used by certain private training establishments to attract away overseas students from those organisations that had committed themselves and had built up a good reputation in attracting overseas students. 
I believe that this legislation is very appropriate and that it will endeavour to address the gulling that goes on in terms of the overseas student situation. The bill will reinforce those people who are prepared to back themselves and build up a good international reputation. It is a pleasure to support the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) during its first reading debate. I support it and I recommend that the House does likewise. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 It is an odd feeling for me to stand in this House and say that I support something that Sir Roger Douglas said. He rated the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) at two or three out of 100. 
Louise Upston 
: Out of five it was. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: No it was out of a hundred. Louise Upston is trying to rewrite history on the other side of the House. That is what she wants but Sir Roger Douglas said it was two or three out of 100. As have other speakers from the Labour Party the Green Party and the Maori Party he recognised that this bill lacks ambition. Once upon a time the National Party said it was ambitious for New Zealand but this bill does very very little to be ambitious for New Zealand. It does very little to say: “Education is important. We think it is one of the most important things to unlocking the future potential of New Zealand.” Instead once again National comes to this House with a technical bill that does very little. 
Louise Upston was complaining earlier on about bureaucracy but that is the main achievement in this bill. It is creating a bit more bureaucracy with the secondary-tertiary partnership. That is the achievement of this bill. This bill does not give us a vision for the future of education. The education policy of this Government is hopelessly bogged down in national standards. It is hopelessly bogged down in a policy that principals in Auckland saw as flawed as not given a proper process and as something that parents were not able to contribute to— 
Louise Upston 
: Talked to a parent lately? Talk to a parent; they think it’s great. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: I have talked to plenty of parents I say to Louise Upston all around my electorate. They are concerned that the National Government has become so focused on national standards and so focused on meeting this election promise that it made that it has lost the plot when it comes to quality education. It has lost the plot when it comes to making sure that schools are creating an environment that young people can thrive in. 
I am sorry to say that this Minister of Education Anne Tolley has lost the plot on national standards. Today we discovered that the Parliamentary Library put out a good information paper on national standards. But Mrs Tolley did not like it so it is being pulled. It is being pulled from— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: What? What? 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: That is right. It has been taken down from the Parliamentary Library website because Mrs Tolley did not like it. That is censorship. That is what that is and I believe it to be unacceptable behaviour from a Minister. It shows just how bogged down this Government is when it comes to education. It is totally bogged down and national standards are a flawed policy that it cannot implement properly. 
What we are left with from this Government is a largely technical bill. As we have already said Labour will support it being sent to the Education and Science Committee. We have some misgivings about several areas and Mr Mallard and Kelvin Davis have outlined those but we recognise the importance of putting this to the select committee so that we can sort it out. 
In principle the secondary-tertiary interface is fine. It is important that we support people to find their way through those later years of secondary education when the environment they are in may not be appropriate for them. Obviously when Labour was in Government it had the Schools Plus policy. That policy was designed to work on the issues that are being raised in this bill. It was designed to ensure we were managing peoples’ transition through secondary school into training and on into work and ensuring they had the support to do that. It is all very well to have a well-organised situation for those people but in the end if the money is not there if the funding is not there and if the real support for those programmes is not there then it will not work. 
Unfortunately that is what we are seeing from the National Government. We have seen funding cut for literacy and numeracy programmes. Gateway funding has been frozen; it is stagnant and as a result with the cost increases that are being faced there it is effectively a cut. There will be fewer places available for people who are in that programme. Youth Training funding has been cut by over $3 million this year. We on this side of the House have considerable doubts about whether the Youth Guarantee scheme is really working and whether it is actually getting students into training. The jury is certainly still out on that. The $2.5 million Skill Enhancement programme has been stopped. That was a programme that provided a pathway for Maori and Pasifika students to gain qualifications at level 3. Grants of $2.8 million for at-risk youth have been cut. It is all very well to set up as this bill does a process for managing the secondary-tertiary interface but if there is no funding for those programmes and if those programmes are not being supported properly then what is the point? There is no point in that. 
I pick up the comment that Kelvin Davis made earlier that we need to continue to focus on the quality of schools. We cannot just assume that if someone is not succeeding at school we can create a programme and away that person will go. We need to make sure that schools are being supported to deal with students who are difficult or who are struggling and yes from time to time they will need to move into those kinds of programmes. We want to see that schools are being supported to provide that quality environment and ensure that students succeed. Obviously we can see some of the value of the secondary-tertiary interface. My colleague Mr Mallard suggested that perhaps it is just unnecessary bureaucracy and he asked whether there really needs to be this arrangement. Could it not be done through policy changes? That is something the select committee will be able to look at. In general and in principle we support the notion of supporting people through these kinds of programmes but we would like to make sure that the National Government understands the importance of having secondary schools delivering quality programmes of ensuring that the programmes meet the needs of students and of moving students into those programmes only when that is necessary and perhaps is not being done. 
A couple of the other elements that people have raised here concern the question of the limited attendance centres. As Mr Mallard said that question is one that needs to be clarified when the bill goes to the select committee. We have had an assurance from the Minister today that the concerns Mr Mallard has raised were not intended and that is good but we will need to make sure that the wording of the bill picks that up. I share the concerns of Catherine Delahunty on the particular point about the direction the legislation is showing—the direction away from the quality agenda in early childhood education. Mr Harawira was quite critical before of Mr Mallard as an education Minister but I want to say one thing in this House and put it on the record: there has not been a Minister of Education in New Zealand for a very long time who has paid as much attention to early childhood education as Trevor Mallard has. He made sure that early childhood education was respected was professionalised and had resources put towards it. New Zealand will be far the better in the future for the work of Mr Mallard in early childhood education unless we go further down the path that Mrs Tolley wants to go down of taking away from the quality agenda. Although that particular provision probably is OK with that clarification we are seeing more and more in early childhood education that the National Government does not see it as an important part an important first step in quality education. Rather it sees it as some form of child-minding. That is not a direction we should be going in; we should be continuing on the path that Mr Mallard went down with early childhood education. 
A number of other speakers have referred to the question of enrolment schemes and the proposed additional criteria there. I have concerns about that. It is a difficult area for a lot of parents. People obviously want their children to go to good-quality schools. We all want that and we all want them to be able to go to good-quality local schools. The focus should always be to make sure that excellent schools are available for everybody but the additional enrolment priorities that have been put into the legislation start to skew the playing field. Adding the children of former students is the fourth priority and making the children of board employees eligible is the fifth priority. That is starting to push us into some sort of sense of entitlement which may be based on something incredibly historical if people have not lived in an area for a long time. It also as Mr Mallard says opens up the potential for loopholes in terms of the children of boards of trustees members if those people are appointed to boards for very short periods of time. I do not think that that clause is designed to undermine enrolment schemes but it certainly does not help them and it certainly does not go in a direction that I think is positive. 
Just briefly in the time remaining to me I will refer—and I know that my colleague David Shearer will refer more to this—to the changes in relation to international students and private training establishments being able to recoup some more money. I have two concerns there. Again the first is a directional concern. Steven Joyce came to the Education and Science Committee to talk about Vote Tertiary Education last week. During that appearance he started to talk about trying to rebalance funding to go more in the direction of private training establishments. I think our priority has to be our public education system. Private training establishments have a role in our tertiary education system but I think we have to prioritise public institutions. I am concerned again about a general direction— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Why? 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Because public institutions are available for everyone I tell Mr Williamson. That is why and we have invested in those public institutions over generations to make them good. Private tertiary establishments have a role but they do not need to be prioritised. That is what we are perhaps seeing in the direction of this bill. 
Overall I think this bill has some technical changes that Labour can support but we have concerns about it. However it is simply not ambitious for New Zealand as National would like us to believe that its legislation is. It does not take education anywhere and it continues Mrs Tolley’s unfortunate path of being bogged down in national standards instead of being focused on quality education for all New Zealanders. 
LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupo) 
: 
 It is great to be able to speak on any bill that improves education and the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) is another one that this National-led Government has brought into the House. The point I will make in my opening remarks is that this legislation provides valuable and common-sense changes to back up the massive investment this Government is putting into education. 
If anyone was listening to the previous speaker from the Opposition Grant Robertson they might think that this Government was cutting spending in education. But I put on the record National’s $12 billion spend; the largest spend in education ever—$12 billion. This Government is investing $12 billion in education because we know how critical it is for our future. 
There are a number of changes in the five broad areas that this bill addresses but I will focus on just two today. I will focus on the changes in the limited attendance centres and also on the enrolment changes because that was the subject of a member’s bill that I have had in the ballot for months; I am delighted that it was picked up as part of this Government bill. 
Looking first at the early childhood changes I remind the House that this Government is putting in an extra $107 million this year alone to increase participation rates. But the particular change in this bill looks at—and we need to get this in context—the situation where mum or dad goes to a shopping mall a swimming pool or a gym for a short period of time; for example for less than 2 hours. They want to drop off their children in a supervised area to be looked after to be cared for. When I go to a gym and I drop off my children I do not expect that they will be taught how to read theses on whatever the Labour Opposition think they are going to learn in the short period of time that their parents are at the gym. 
This bill is about common sense. It is about removing PC nonsense and bureaucracy from the education system so that the system can focus on lifting achievement rather than on dotting the i’s and ticking off whether a swimming pool’s creche is licensed. That is just outrageous. So that is where the focus is; the focus is on bringing some sense rather than nonsense into the system. 
I just remind members that these centres are casual. The child is dropped off for less than 2 hours at a shopping mall swimming pool or gym. I know as a parent that that service is really important. It is very valuable and we want to make sure that families are able to have access to it. Parents are never far away; they are within proximity. If we look at the bill we see that the provision is in there under clause 18: “none of whom attends for any period exceeding 2 hours … where the children’s parents or caregivers are (i) in close proximity … and (ii) able to resume responsibility for the children at short notice:”. Parents can easily attend if they need to. 
We are also talking about early childhood centres at churches. One of the impacts of the 2006 changes is that some of those facilities were forced to close. How was that good for parents? How was that good for choice? 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Where? Name one. 
LOUISE UPSTON 
: Mr Mallard talked before two days in a row about the mistakes Labour had admitted to making. So I am thrilled that those members are supporting us today in taking this legislation to a select committee. 
There were petitions up and down the country; there was absolute outrage when that change was made. We are just reversing it and bringing some common sense into the debate. 
I will come to the school enrolment scheme priorities. As I said before that was the subject of a member’s bill I had in the ballot which specifically made changes to improve parents’ choice. I will say a couple of things about it. We are talking about giving out-of-zone students a chance at getting into a school they would otherwise not have any hope of getting into. I will talk specifically about the extension that gives priority of enrolment to children of school board members just like to the children of teachers. That makes sense. There is a connection for the board member there is a connection for the teacher so it makes sense for their children to get priority to attend that school. I will also talk about the children of former students. If we consider former students and their children we see they have a strong connection a historical connection to the school and therefore they should get priority for enrolment. 
There have been some discussions today about the importance of children going to school in their local areas. Well sometimes there is a challenge. If there are no single-sex schools in a parent’s area and that parent wants his or her child to go to a single-sex school there is very little choice for them. There will be some members of this House and some people listening today who do not believe we have gone anywhere near wide enough on that issue. But it is a step for parents. I am on the side of parents and of making sure that they have some choices. That measure gives priority to the children of former students and to the children of current board members as well as to the children of teachers of the school—the existing priority. Those are two important changes. 
I close as I started by just reminding the House that education is a top priority for this Government as it is for me personally. We have invested $12 billion in education which is the highest investment ever. So I am really pleased that this bill is supported around the House. This bill is about common sense. It is about getting value for what we do. It is about lifting achievement so that New Zealand does better. Thank you. 
DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) and I am pleased that Labour is supporting it. But let us face it this bill is not a revolutionary visionary aspirational piece of legislation. This bill tinkers around the edges tidies things up and closes some loopholes. It is certainly nothing more than that and if we look at the five or six things it proposes to do we see that in a sense that is all it does. 
I will pick up on a couple of things that Government members have hit on this evening. Obviously parents should be able to send their kids to the best schools they possibly can but our education system should be about making all schools the best not having super-schools and trying to police entry into those super-schools. It should be about raising the standard of schools throughout New Zealand. 
I have two very big schools in my electorate: Mt Albert Grammar School and Avondale College. They are two of the biggest schools in New Zealand. Avondale College has 2600 students and Mt Albert Grammar School has 2300. Certainly with Mt Albert Grammar School there is a long waiting list to get in and the school takes only a few out-of-zone students. The point is that the schools are good right throughout that region and there are very few bad schools. As a result although some parents choose to put their kids in Mt Albert Grammar School they have the choice of other schools in the area that will give their children a first-class education. 
The other issue I raise is the preoccupation with national standards. Perhaps the only thing people will remember of this Government will be national standards. Let us look at what is happening at the moment in the United States with what we could broadly call national standards. I am talking about George Bush’s No Child Left Behind policy which purports to do many of the same things that this Government’s national standards purport to do. The US is more or less throwing that policy out. It has been loudly and widely criticised and undermined by academics and practitioners alike who are saying that it is not the way to go forward. 
Now the US education system is looking at how much progress children are making from the time they enter school to the time they finish. This was brought up by a head teacher at one of the primary schools in my electorate who said new entrants come to his school with an English reading age of a 3-year-old. His school has to take those kids and by the time they leave that school they will have an English reading age and a speaking age that are appropriate to their age. 
Jacqui Dean 
: National standards! 
Hon Nathan Guy 
: National standards—terrific! 
DAVID SHEARER 
: In other words his school has lifted those kids’ abilities by 2 years. That is terrific. I am pleased that members on the other side of the House think it is good. 
The only problem is that for years 2 3 and 4 that school will be seen to be failing under national standards because the kids will be below where they should be. It has nothing to do with the quality of the school—the quality of the school is excellent. But because of the ridiculous way in which national standards are measured that school will be seen to be not fulfilling what it is expected of it in terms of years 2 3 and 4. That was the concern that that principal raised with me. 
I will speak on two or three of the key aspects of this legislation. One is the secondary-tertiary interface and my colleague Grant Robertson has mentioned it as well. I think this measure provides more opportunity for students. As a former teacher I have seen children who did not cope terribly well at school and had difficulty progressing to tertiary education. This bill enables that progression to happen more easily. An amendment brought in last year allowed the Manukau Institute of Technology to provide a secondary-tertiary programme and this bill amends that provision to make it more universal. I think it was Colin King who mentioned Stuart Middleton who was running that course and showed it to be a very effective way of progressing kids from secondary school to a technical institute. Actually Stuart Middleton is a former teacher of mine. That type of role— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: He learnt afterwards. He got better as time went by. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: He progressed as time went on yes. He has gone on to much better things after that particular experience. 
I raise the same question that Mr Mallard brought up before. Do we need special legislation for this? Why can we not allow this to occur within the confines of the community involved? I think that is an issue we will bring up at the Education and Science Committee as it looks at the bill. 
The second issue in relation to this legislation is that of international students. This bill makes some useful technical changes. It enables a technical institute to bring in fees that will stop the gulling—that is a good term that Mr King used—of students. In other words it will stop them going from one technical institute to another and costing the first technical institute a great deal of money. It also will close the loophole whereby people are coming into New Zealand to enrol in a technical institute and using that as an excuse to enter New Zealand. 
The international student industry is a huge industry for New Zealand. It is a $2 billion industry that has grown incredibly rapidly and it is now extraordinarily important to our trade and our relationships with other countries particularly in Asia. Many of those students who come here to study will go back to wherever they came from—China Korea and increasingly India at the moment—and the connections that they have created here will be fostered through for example business. The real issue is that we are now seeing a reliance on overseas students to effectively subsidise the very institutions that we want to send our kids to. In fact many of our own students find it more difficult to get into New Zealand institutions than overseas students do. Effectively we are using international students as a default way of funding priorities for our educational system. Despite the so-called record amounts of money going into education we are simply not putting enough money into tertiary education. 
Finally I shall touch on private schools and some of the legislation concerning them. The Law Commission looked at this issue under the previous Labour Government in 2008 and made a number of recommendations. The commission did not say that we needed wholesale change but it did say that we definitely needed to lift some of the regulations around who can run a private school and for what purpose. That legislation was brought into force in 1921. It is pretty outdated and it is pretty vague in terms of both the regulations on schools and guidance for schools. Currently there are 97 private schools in New Zealand and this legislation at least addresses some of the shortcomings identified by the Law Commission. 
The great thing about private schools is that they do not have to adhere to national standards. That must be a real incentive for teachers now to go to private schools. They are 80 percent funded by the State. The prominence being given to private schools was reinforced last year when this Government gave $35 million to private schools then promptly cut the amount of money it put into adult education. We can see what is happening in the education system 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki) 
: 
 There are some excellent provisions in the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). First of all introducing secondary-tertiary programmes to give greater opportunities for secondary students to spend time learning in a tertiary environment is a fantastic measure particularly for those young men at school who are turned off education. All they want to do is to get out there and build things or take an engine apart and to then build a career as a mechanic or a builder. I think this is a fantastic measure. 
I completely support the exemption of limited attendance centres from early childhood education licensing standards. Does that not just make sense? 
I support entirely the change in refund provisions for international students. If they change their minds after a certain period of time they can have their fees or a portion of them refunded. I support certainly the updating and clarification of the law affecting private schools. 
This is good legislation. I commend this bill to the House. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a first time. 
Ayes 113 
New Zealand National 58; New Zealand Labour 43; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 5; Progressive 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 9 
Green Party 9. 
Bill read a first time. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister for Building and Construction) 
 on behalf of the  
Minister of Education 
: I move  
That the Education and Science Committee consider the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) 
 that the committee report finally to the House on or before 1 November 2010 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time during a sitting of the House (except during oral questions) and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House despite Standing Orders 187 and 190(1)(b) and (c). 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I have laid on the Table of the House an amendment to that motion. I do not know whether I have to formally move it. It has to be placed on the Table of the House. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I was unaware that there was an amendment to the motion. I have not completed putting the question. Before I put the motion we have an amendment in the name of the Hon Trevor Mallard. Is the member going to move the amendment? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I do not think I have to move it formally. I think it has been moved by placing it on the Table of the House. That is the advice I have received. It has now been brought to the attention of the House. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The member needs to move it. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Just to help my amendment says that after the word “Committee”—and I think it is part-way through what the Minister has moved—the words “and that the committee be instructed to report specifically on whether the provisions in clause 11 could be amended to resolve the outstanding issue relating to the funding of the Performing Arts Centre at King’s High School Dunedin” be inserted. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the motion be amended by adding after “Committee” “and that the committee be instructed to report specifically on whether the provisions in clause 11 could be amended to resolve the outstanding issue relating to the funding of the Performing Arts Centre at King's High School Dunedin”. 
Ayes 58 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Maori Party 5; Progressive 1. 
Noes 64 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am not absolutely certain that Mr Harawira’s vote was either translated the right way or that he was properly cognisant of the way that he voted. I think he voted for us when he meant to vote against us. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: That is for the member to decide. We will not pursue that matter further. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Education and Science Committee consider the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) that the committee report finally to the House on or before 1 November 2010 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions) and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House despite Standing Orders 187 and 190(1)(b) and (c). 
Ayes 69 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 5; United Future 1. 
Noes 53 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Progressive 1. 
Motion agreed to.