Bidois DanDAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): It's a pleasure to rise and take a call on the Education and Training Bill. I couldn't just believe what I heard over there from the Hon Tracey Martin: that after going out there consulting and putting the Tomorrow's Schools report together this is the best they can come up with. If that's the best they can come up with then I have grave concerns for the future of our education system in New Zealand—we're in big trouble.The other thing I want to take note of is that board of trustee members are volunteers—or not volunteers as the member says. Actually in a week like this which is National Volunteer Week I'd just like to start out by acknowledging the many thousands of board of trustee members—elected or whatever—who give up their time who are volunteers they do not get paid.Hon Tracey Martin: They're paid—they're paid.DAN BIDOIS: Some of them don't get paid. And if they do get paid they get paid a pittance for what they do. So I just think that that statement is an affront to the volunteering capacity of our elected—[Interruption]SPEAKER: Order! Order! I say to the Hon Tracey Martin one of the privileges in this House is for members to make errors all right? They don't need to be shouted down.DAN BIDOIS: So look on to the bill that we've got today and I'd certainly like to acknowledge the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee Parmjeet Parmar and all of the committee members that I now sit on this committee with. I haven't been a part of this submission process but I do want to share with you some thoughts of mine reading through the summary of the bill and the implications for this on our wider education system.Firstly look I've lived all over the world. I've had the privilege of studying at some of the best institutions in the world and I think some of the advantages of New Zealand's education system are as follows: its first is that it's community driven. It's driven by these volunteers or whatever you want to call them—people who give up their time and their effort because they want to see their schools do well. It's decentralised: it's decentralised in powers and it's decentralised in terms of decision making. There's local responsiveness and there's local empowerment that goes along with that. I think that that is a unique feature of our education system in New Zealand and it's something that we should seek to preserve no matter what happens.I think that that is under threat with the bill that we're talking about here today because as my colleagues Parmjeet Parmar and Nicola Willis have pointed out this bill is about centralising power into the Ministry of Education. It is this philosophy that Government knows best and that Government is the monopoly provider of education and education solutions.I also want to take note on how rushed this process has been. Our education system is really important and there are thousands upon thousands of people that give up their time and work in this sector. I would've thought that a proper due process would have been called for in order to get these reforms right because the feedback that I've heard from this sector in Northcote—principals and parents and board of trustee members—is clear. They are sick of the pull of reforms no matter who is in Government. When National is in Government—and I'm criticising my own side here—we go one way and then Labour gets in Government we pull ourselves the other way. For the life of me the one consistent feedback that I've heard from school after school is this: Take the politics out of our education system." So in that vein why did we use the approach that we've taken in order to rush this through in an ideological manner that we have? That is what I ask and it's what my community in Northcote is also asking as well.But let me turn to the bill itself and the select committee process. Here are a few things that have come up that we strongly oppose on this side: the first around the shifting of responsibilities of zoning. So as I've pointed out one of the great features of our system is local responsiveness and local decision-making for their communities. I have had a number of schools with significant pressures on roll growth that want the ability to determine the school zone for their communities. Now we've heard from the Minister of Education this week that they'll still have the opportunity to do that but that's not correct. Now the Minister and the ministry draft those zones for the school.The second area is around removing the board accountability for raising student achievement. I just think that that is again removing accountabilities for school boards to focus on the right outcomes. I say this with the conviction of my own experience because quite frankly New Zealand's education system did not do much for me. But for all those kids out there who are underachieving—Māori Pacific Islander or Pākehā—we have to ask ourselves here what are the incentives that we put in place for school boards to lift student achievement? Now we have a bill that we've got here today that removes the accountability of school boards to focus on that; so we're opposed to that.The third area is the discretionary power of the Minister and the Ministry of Education to grant new licences for early education providers. We think that again that is far too much concentration into the ministry's hands on that. But again I come back to another part of this which is around the process for putting this law in place. We have a democratic process in this House that is built on years of tradition and due process. We have here a case where the select committee process was shortened where we spent less time looking at submissions because our country was in lockdown. I say this because I would have loved to hear from more boards of trustees as a part of this process because let's not forget those boards of trustees they're all parents. They all have kids that go to school and they're all invested in the education system that they serve. So I just think the process for this law was terrible and we should have had a more robust process going forward.National's vision for education in New Zealand is simple: we want to prepare our kids to succeed in the future world whether it's nationally or internationally and that means taking those that underachieve and lifting them up giving them a helping hand giving those kids that probably would have dropped out like I dropped out and saying "You can go to university. You can do well and here's the incentive structure for that in place." We want a curriculum where people are stretched in our education system—whether it be with languages whether it be digital fluency whether it be cultural fluency and we want a system where every kid achieves their God-given potential in this country.There are aspects of this bill that we agree with and I have not decided to focus on that today. But the promises of the Tomorrow's Schools report were clear: let's focus on tomorrow's school the school of the future. I had high hopes as did many in the education sector and parents around the Tomorrow's Schools review. But what we have here is a law that does nothing but to serve to satisfy the ideological bent of the Labour Party of centralising control of the sector of saying that Government knows best not parents and local communities.Again there were other aspects that we approve of but by and large we do not support this bill in the House. I'd like to acknowledge again those in the select committee and I look forward to hearing the amendments in the latter stages of the process. But for now National opposes this bill and we do not commend it to the House."