Turner Judy: Education Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Turner Judy: Education Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 23 September 2008. Volume:650;Page:19061. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to speak to the first reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 3) a bill that my New Zealand First colleague described as largely technical. I take exception to that. It actually has a large amount of quite substantial policy change in it. United Future is happy to support this first reading because we think the content of the bill traverses a number of issues that should be considered. However I have to signal that we are unconvinced by some of the solutions this bill seeks to provide. We would like to see some work done on those by the Education and Science Committee and we hope the bill will return to the House with some of those issues resolved. We feel strongly enough about them to say that if they are not changed we may have to reconsider our position on the bill.  
Let us look at some of our concerns. The first part of the bill talks about introducing improved police vetting to keep both early childhood and compulsory sector educational facilities safer. Now that sounds very good. However I have already received as I think many members will have letters from Playcentre New Zealand and other groups that have read the wording of this provision and remain unconvinced that it will not be an onerous provision on them. Playcentres that pride themselves on their open-door policy and their open invitation to parents and extended family members to be part of their child’s education may well be disadvantaged if we are not clear that this bill does not capture them in some way. The information-matching provisions will help the Teachers Council make sure that only registered teachers holding current practice certificates are able to teach in our schools. We think this is a good thing and United Future is largely happy with those provisions.  
Around the issues of accountability for student attendance and engagement in compulsory education we are open-minded about the provisions to clarify the steps a school board of trustees must take when a student is absent without explanation and also to clarify the principal’s responsibility to ensure students get the guidance and counselling they may need if they are going through a difficult time before jumping to exclude children or stand them down for a period. We have some question marks around repealing the ability of the Secretary for Education to provide enrolment exemptions for 15-year-old students. We would like to know more about that provision and we will be very interested to see what submitters say to the select committee about this and how it fits into the Government’s announced policy of Schools Plus. Anne Tolley read out a letter about a young girl about to turn 16 who had the opportunity to take up an apprenticeship. If that fits in with what the bill talks about when it refers to valuing offsite experience as a key criterion to be considered by a board and if obtaining things such as work experience counts then it may be OK but we are really unclear at this stage as to whether this provision will not limit the opportunities for some students in a way that could be unhelpful.  
The other thing we find interesting is that any focus on middle schooling seems to be absent from this section of the bill. One of the problems United Future has focused on is that if we look evidentially at when a student is going to disconnect from schooling lose interest and possibly become truant it is often in those emerging adolescent years—years 7 to 10—when students particularly when they reach secondary school are not coping well with 50-minute periods swapping around and a reduced level of pastoral care from what they were receiving in the primary sector. It can be just too much for some students. We certainly support some of the educationalists’ thinking about middle school students: the need to provide a lot more pastoral care within the high school system and to invest in those students so that fewer of them are disconnecting in the first place. We would love to see whether any submissions are received on this.  
On the matter of school boards of trustees we are unclear as to why there is any advantage to moving away from a set date towards a more flexible arrangement whereby the Minister can determine the date of the election. Maybe there are some benefits that we are unaware of but it seems a little unusual. However we are open to being persuaded on that. The amendment in relation to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is a technical amendment to include private schools in the definition of schools that are eligible to be accredited by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.  
However this week United Future has raised an additional concern that we think could fall within the brief of this bill and we would love the select committee to consider it. Currently the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is not required to accept National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) marks from high schools if the students’ parents have not paid the New Zealand Qualifications Authority fee. It is also unclear whether schools are obliged to hold on to a school leaver’s marks in the hope that somebody will then pay the fee so that the marks can be sent on; and if they are required to hold on to those marks for how long. The real risk right now in New Zealand is that there could be literally hundreds and hundreds of New Zealand students who have completed 2 or 3 years of NCEA and because their parents were unable or unwilling to make that payment those marks could literally be lost within a short time after they have left school.  
We would like to call on the select committee and the Government to consider making it an absolute requirement that all marks are passed on to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and stored there and if it then chooses not to release those marks officially to students who have not paid their fees that could be another consideration. But at least let us make sure that all achievement marks—all unit standards that have been achieved by students—are recorded and held in trust for that student so that he or she can have access to them when that student needs to apply for jobs or for tertiary education. Beyond that if the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is not going to be required to do this then the Government needs to give some very clear guidelines to secondary schools as to how long they are to hold on to the information and even to resource those schools with the storage capacity to hold on to those marks for so many years before they in the end disappear into the ether.  
The third consideration that United Future would like the select committee to consider on this matter is whether there need to be some flexible payment options for students who want to move on to tertiary education. Could the $75 owed by a student to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority be lumped on to his or her tertiary student bill so that it could be paid with that? Could for instance Work and Income be allowed to manage the debt on behalf of such students and subtract it from their parents’ benefit as it does with other debts or are those students allowed to have access to their marks and pay off the bill themselves once they get employment? We think that this is a serious problem and when we talk about the tail of underachievement coming out of New Zealand schools part of that tail could well be hundreds of students who did get some NCEA units have got some qualifications but actually have no way of proving that because the New Zealand Qualifications Authority does not have those marks on record and is unwilling to receive them. United Future would love to see that problem be addressed. We consider it to be a lot more important and a much more urgent need than merely changing the definition of those who are eligible to be accredited by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.  
We are very happy to support the first reading of this bill but there are some serious things we want to see fixed if we are to support it beyond the first reading.