Brown SimeonSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Madam Speaker thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Education and Training Bill which I think has been described as a brick. It reminds me of the Yellow Pages—of course those have now ceased thank goodness. But it's a pleasure to take a call on this bill which the National Party does not support but there are parts of it that we do. I'd like to just start by making a few comments about why we're here and why we're debating this bill. The Minister Chris Hipkins in his speech spent the first seven minutes talking about how this is a rewrite of six pieces of legislation bringing them all together and it's about trying to update them and bring them into plain English and all of this. But he took till the eighth minute till he actually referred to the Tomorrow's Schools review. I would have thought that would have been the first thing he spoke about when he came down to the House and said Look we've had a Tomorrow's Schools review. We've gone around the country and we've spoken to people we've sought their feedback and this is the response that the Government is making to that to that review."But no it took till his eighth minute of his speech till he actually made any mention of the review of Tomorrow's Schools which was undertaken by the Government. Why was that? Well the reason is because this bill represents a major back-down by the Government a major back-down by a Government which was intent on centralising our education system and taking power away from parents and from principals and from local communities and centralising that power into hubs which would then control what happens in our schools up and down our country.We don't see those hubs in here. That is because of the advocacy of schools parents and boards of trustees up and down our country who campaigned against the Government's proposals. I just want to put my word on the record to acknowledge the efforts of all those people who worked so tirelessly to ensure that the power would remain in local communities for our education system.On this side of the House we actually believe that local communities matter and that local schools boards of trustees and parents have an important role in our education system and in educating our children for the future. So this bill represents a major back-down by the Government and for that I'm very pleased.I come to some of the aspects of this bill that we cannot support on this side of the House. The first part that I'd like to touch on is the part which changes the purpose for school boards of trustees—their primary objectives. Now under the current legislation school boards of trustees have as their main objective to raise educational achievement in their school. Under these changes they will now have three additional primary objectives including inclusion the physical and emotional safety of their students and Treaty obligations. Now we don't say that those objectives are wrong—in fact they're a very important part of what it is to have a school and what we expect of schools and the role that they play—but essentially what this bill does is put all four of those objectives on exactly the same level. So the objective of educational achievement will go alongside the other objectives of inclusion the Treaty and physical and emotional safety.I think it's important to note the research which was recently put out by The New Zealand Initiative to highlight the reason why it's important that we have educational achievement as the primary objective of our education system and for our schools and the schools boards. It's important because one of the things The New Zealand Initiative did was a survey to try and ascertain some key questions and key answers around what New Zealand's general knowledge was. One of the questions which they asked was: how long does it take for the Earth to go round the sun? Only 53 percent of New Zealanders could answer that question correctly. Which country was the first to give all women the right to vote? Well 85 percent of New Zealanders got that answer correct.Marja Lubeck: Who was it?SIMEON BROWN: It was New Zealand Marja Lubeck—New Zealand. But another question was: in what year was the Treaty of Waitangi first signed? Only 32 percent of New Zealanders actually answered that question correctly. The point that this raises is the point that knowledge is important in our education system and our schools exist for the purpose of educational achievement and raising the educational achievement of the young people who are in their care and that they have responsibility for. I think if you talk to parents up and down the country that is why they send their children to school: for their educational achievement. Those other aspects are important but they should be ranked in order of importance and that is one of the issues that we will certainly be focusing our attention on during the select committee stage of this bill.The second area—and it's been traversed already—is around school boards being responsible for setting the zones. This bill strips away the power from school boards to set enrolment zones for their schools and puts the power to set these enrolment zones in the hands of the ministry. The point that I would make here is that one of the key roles of the board of trustees is to set an enrolment zone to decide what area that school will serve and then to be able to go through the consultation process to listen to parents to listen to the needs of the community and then to set that zone. Of course the ministry already has the responsibility of finally signing that zone off but now the ministry takes the entire process and the power of running that process as well. I know how controversial this can be. There are currently two schools in my electorate which are going through the process of putting in place enrolment zones; it does cause controversy in the community. But when you have such local decisions such as setting a school enrolment zone it should be up to local people to make those decisions to be able to talk to local parents to be able to understand the local streets and the people who live in those streets to be able to hold public meetings and to be able to engage in that process. This bill takes that power and says "No the ministry will do that job better than the boards of trustees." The ministry will come into the community and will tell the community what is best for them; the school will no longer be able to say what is in the best interests of the school community in consultation with families. I think that is something which is a real shame and we will oppose that. I look forward to submissions from schools and parents and boards of trustees from around the country to feed in their views on this particular issue.A third area that I want to comment on briefly is around the changes to the NCEA requirements which are trying to essentially ensure that offshore providers aren't able to provide NCEA qualifications. I think this is something on which there are questions which need to be answered in particular what impact this will have on our export education as a country. That's a significant part of our economy—around $5 billion of income to New Zealand's GDP from export education—and I think we've got to be very careful about these changes and we've got to understand the reasons why and any potential unintended consequences that that might have on the international education that this country does and does very well and which I am very proud in this House to be supporting.Lastly I do just want to touch briefly on some of the changes which we do support and one of those is around refresher courses for teachers who are returning to teaching and to education. I think this is something which when I'm out and about in Pakuranga and you're talking to principals or you're talking to people in the community they raise as something which does need to be looked at because we do need to make it easier for people to be able to return to education return to teaching. It is such a valued role in our community and it is something which needs to be made easier so that we can get the teachers in front of our students in front of our learners so that they're able to provide the teaching and the education that they need.Other changes around renaming the "correspondence school" to the "distance school" I think is a positive change and also allowing more integration there around the online and distance teaching they do online and basically recognising that in this education bill. Also there's changes there around dispute resolution. Whilst these seem to be positive hopefully that doesn't end up being some sort of semi-judicial process.Overall yes there are some changes but as I said at the start this is a major back-down by the Government. They've backed down from one of their biggest reforms they hoped to have in the education system. It's a victory for parents but there're issues in here which we need to continue to oppose and we look forward to the select committee process. Thank you Madam Speaker."