Mahuta Nanaia: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMahuta Nanaia: Education Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee[Sitting date: 27 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:965. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato):This bill is what it is: a razor that takes away another slice of the public education system and another slice of what makes our tertiary institutions really effective and responsive to delivering community education. It is taking away the rights and opportunities of students of staff and of the community to have a say in what is happening at their local tertiary institution. So it is what it is: a razor to further slice and dice the public education system in ways that are not helpful. I am really concerned because I did listen to the response of the Minister—and she carefully went through the purposes of the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand (EDUCANZ) which will take over the Teachers Council—and I am thinking to myself: “You know principals and teachers in all our communities are respected leaders yet they cannot lead their own profession.” That is what the Government is saying: “They cannot be trusted to lead their own profession.”Where is the sense in that? We let health professionals lead the health profession because the care of people is absolutely critical. Yet we cannot let the teaching profession lead its organisation to ensure that the minds of the next generation can be shaped by people who know absolutely what they are doing. In fact I am really concerned listening to the Minister’s explanation of why independent people will be appointed to EDUCANZ because it sounds to me that EDUCANZ will be running the teaching profession like a business. In a similar way to how the Government wants to ensure that charter schools will be there to privatise the education system it seems that EDUCANZ will be there to privatise the way in which the teaching profession operates.We only need to go back to the comments about the difference between a code of conduct and a code of ethics. With regard to the code of ethics it is a lot like how it works in the health profession where you lift up the standards of the profession to a degree where excellence is the threshold. A code of conduct is very transactional. It forces teaching into the mode where you do your job and if you do not do certain things and tick certain boxes well then you may not get your registration. That makes absolute sense when we consider the fact that the Government has been pushing through national standards. Teachers throughout many schools are saying that national standards do not prepare our children for the future in terms of being innovative and creative learners.In fact national standards force young people to learn by rote learning—the bad old days when the teacher stands at the front of the classroom and just lectures to the kids. You have to pass tests and that is the only way that we are assessing learning. Well that is the past. We need an education system that prepares our young people for the future. We need to trust that our teachers are able to arbitrate over their own profession and set good ethical standards and be able to ensure that the profession can be the trusted profession that it always has been in New Zealand.This bill moves away from what I believe is core to what will be a successful public education system. I want to come back in particular to the provisions in the bill from new sections 379 to 387 inserted by clause 38 and make these particular comments. The current Teachers Council has provision for advisory groups for Māori-medium education and early childhood education yet the way in which the bill now reads EDUCANZ will create these boards. There is no guarantee that those boards will make provision for Māori-medium education or early childhood groups. That said the important element of this is that we cannot get away from the things that have been successful. It does not make any sense so I would actually appreciate if the Minister of Education responded to that to give some assurance because it is unclear. She well knows that I was not a member of the Education and Science Committee so the question may be simple to answer and I would appreciate an answer.Also many submissions as I have read in the select committee records show that the education profession itself was not very supportive of EDUCANZ because it believes that its members need to be freely elected—democratically elected—by the profession. That was such an important point that came through from a number of schools and submissions that went to the select committee. Obviously the Government did not take on board those particular recommendations.The other aspect that was commented on—and I think the point was well made by Chris Hipkins our spokesperson on education—was on the issue of the code of ethics. The code of ethics was actually developed by the teaching profession—and I am speaking to new section 387 which is inserted by clause 38—and that is such an important point because again these are trusted leaders of our community who know their profession many of whom have gone through an extensive qualification process. In order to ensure that they can lift up professional standards having a code of ethics is by far the best way to ensure that. In fact when we go and visit our schools principals and teachers will say that the best thing about the New Zealand education system is actually the collegial nature within which it is able to share best practice and learning behaviours and actually build on those types of opportunities. The code of ethics helps drive leadership.I am really concerned that the code of conduct will reduce the way in which teachers are going to be assessed which will build on the narrative that actually the Government’s move towards performance pay based on the code of conduct sounds a little bit not right. I am also concerned that there is a feeling of mistrust in terms of the way in which teachers are now beginning to feel within the schools—and you certainly hear it on the ground; I am sure actually that members of the Government will be well aware of that—and they do not feel that they are trusted any longer by the Government. Some of that may be relevant to the discussion that we have had on the code of ethics.The other part that I would like to comment on is the limited authority to teach. As they currently operate as we all know the many limited authorities to teach that exist within our schools are fulfilling specific skill sets that are missing school by school. This bill will change the way in which you recognise the skill set of an individual and the gaining of the authority to educate and that will allow those people to go anywhere. But the problem with that is that it is harder to assess where these individuals best fit. I would still maintain that the limited authority to teach gives far greater autonomy to schools to be able to determine—unique to their community to their demographic and to the skills that they are able to attract into their community—the type of approach for that school because then that will enable the granting of a registration for that purpose and for a period of time. But if you have these free-roaming people with the authority to educate it is much harder to get a grasp of where they are going and whether in fact they are filling gaps.The biggest concern that I have relates to charter schools and that is covered in clause 4A of Part 1. That is a fact—and we have debated it many times in this Chamber—that charter schools can have non-registered teachers. It seems to me that at a time when we need the profession to lift standards and to be able to ensure that it is in control of setting those standards we are saying that with charter schools they can do whatever they want. As long as the contract between the Crown and the sponsor enables certain conditions to be met the individuals they get to teach and the quality of their ability to teach is actually something that sits very much within the terms of the contract. It cannot be assessed in the same way that we are expecting teachers within the public education system to be assessed and I just think that that is wrong.This bill continues to act as a razor that slices and dices the public education system in a way that is not helpful. It continues to reinforce to the teaching profession that teachers and principals cannot be trusted and that they cannot arbitrate over their own profession and it continues to address issues that I think are not real to the challenges that communities face. Delivering education that is responsive to communities—to the demographic—actually requires a community voice. We know how hard it is within schools to attract people on to the boards of trustees yet in tertiary institutions when we are going for higher qualifications the Government is saying: “Well we’re going to take the community voice out of it. We’re not going to recognise the demographic that this tertiary institution is responding to. There is no need to have those types of views reflected at the strategic level to drive the delivery of tertiary education.”So how are you going to retain the high numbers of people who are not able to get there—and we need them to walk through the door and stay in tertiary education—if you do not have their voice reflected at the strategic governance level? I am not sure but I think that if we peel away all the surface talk of the Government we will find some very challenging statistics for the Government. It is harder and harder for tertiary institutions—