Tolley Anne: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Tolley Anne: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:662;Page:10295] 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 As the member Maryan Street resumes her seat I would like to take a quick call on the Education Amendment Bill. She is obviously unaware that in fact one of her colleagues has a set of amendments that include an amendment in the area of guidance and career counselling. I will go through those amendments from her colleague Grant Robertson and say that the Government will be voting against them for a variety of reasons. If we look at his amendment to Part 1 to insert new clause 5A we see that it is quite unnecessary because it is already provided for by section 41 of the State Sector Act 1988. That is a piece of bureaucracy we do not need as is amending Part 1 by inserting a new clause 5B. The Correspondence School enrolment criteria are already published in the  
Gazette 
. Again that is a bit of bureaucracy that is not needed. We have tried very hard to get rid of a whole lot of bureaucratic requirements in education that duplicate things that are done elsewhere. Interestingly amending Part 1 by inserting new clause 20A and new clause 16A was picked up directly out of the previous Labour Government’s bill that Labour speakers have fondly referred to right through the debate. Well I say to them that this is new legislation that was introduced by a new Government. 
Despite the talk about guidance and career counselling there is no foundation for Labour’s scaremongering that National is going to do away with that. That is just a figment of Labour’s imagination. We do not see that if we put something into legislation it necessarily makes it happen or makes it better. It was interesting to hear Mr Mallard ask of the functions of a board of trustees why anyone would not support it. In actual fact there has been no consultation on putting into legislation those descriptions of the functions of a board either with the New Zealand School Trustees Association or with the many parents who are putting their names forward— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: That’s not true. They’re in a bill that was introduced. 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: It is true. There was no consultation with the School Trustees Association. The first time the association saw it was when it appeared in legislation under the previous Government. Certainly there has been no consultation through this process. There has been no opportunity for any of the parents who might have put their names forward for the board of trustee elections that are happening in a couple of weeks to have any opportunity to discuss the sorts of tight restrictions that these amendments would put on them. 
In fact I ask the Committee what the problem actually is. There is no evidence that the majority of boards of trustees are not focused on the sort of things that we read about in these amendments. In the year to March there were 98 interventions in schools out of over 2500 schools so our schools are working very well. The amendment to Part 1 to insert new clause 60A would just change the names of terms that are still valid. It was a good try by Grant Robertson but we do not see any need to support any of those amendments.