Robertson Grant: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Robertson Grant: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 24 March 2010. Volume:661;Page:9823. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I want to pick up on the Minister of Education’s intervention which focused on clauses 22 and 23 of the Education Amendment Bill. I will pick up the question of why there is some concern around the idea that we can introduce the concept of a body corporate or some body that is not a person into this role of statutory manager. In my electorate at the moment I am dealing with a particular school that has had a statutory manager appointed. I have been working with the board and with the principal of the school because they have asked me to. They are complex situations as the Minister notes and they are often quite individualised. They are about relationships and more often than not they are about relationships within the board between the board and the principal or around the school and often they require an intervention that is quite lengthy. Although it is a temporary appointment and I accept the Minister’s point in that regard those relationships take time to be rebuilt and there is a need for a lengthy process by which the statutory manager is involved. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Sometimes. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Mr Mallard makes the point that sometimes that is right and other times it can be dealt with rapidly. I guess the overall point is that each situation is individual each school has a situation that will be different and there will be complex relationships that need to be managed. I think it is important that change was made in the Education and Science Committee. The Greens obviously have a view that says the change does not go far enough. From my judgment as I am looking at it it does provide some protection in that regard. Really it is about accountability. It is about being able to say that there is a person accountable for his or her role as limited statutory manager not some kind of entity and not something that we cannot put our finger on and say that that is the person. My understanding of the discussion in the select committee is that it was around accountability that a coalition of different parties from across the House came together to support the changes here because most members of the committee understood that moving to an approach where an entity could undertake this role rather than a person would reduce accountability. 
The other aspect that this raises for me in relation to the Minister of Education’s comments is the importance of understanding the role of the board of trustees in the context of in this case a limited statutory manager being appointed. That is why I have tabled an amendment to reintroduce something that was in the Labour Government’s education amendment bill which was to specify the functions of a board of trustees within this legislation. The Minister described the importance of the role of the statutory manager and the role of the board of trustees which as she said is crucial to Tomorrow’s Schools and that importance actually emphasises why we should include those functions explicitly within this bill. They were in the earlier draft of the amendment bill that Labour put forward and I think this is now an opportunity for the Minister and others perhaps to reconsider removing them from that bill and explicitly outlining them. 
So that members are familiar with what we are talking about my proposal is to include the statement: “(1) A board must perform the following functions: (a) ensuring the enrolment at the school of all persons who are entitled to be enrolled at the school and apply to be enrolled at it: (b) ensuring that education is provided to each student enrolled at the school: (c) promoting a school environment that supports the highest standards of achievement for all students: (d) actively managing and monitoring the performance of the principal:” and I will come to the others shortly. Those first four functions are critical roles. They help explain why a board of trustees is so crucial to the running of a school and why in the context of the changes that have been proposed here to do with it being a limited statutory manager it is important to have the board’s role spelt out like that. I hope that the Minister could perhaps take a call at some point and tell members whether she is prepared to reconsider including those functions of a board of trustees in order to fill out the overall explanation of what we are trying to do here under clause 22. 
I move now on to the section about information matching. I think that clause 76 is an important section because it emphasises the importance of having registered teachers within a school environment. Just to clarify for those members who have not been following this closely we will now have effectively the Teachers Council through its list of registered teachers and the Ministry of Education using its payroll function able to compare data to identify and ensure that every teacher in the classroom is a qualified teacher. 
Sue Moroney 
: Not in ECE though. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Not in early childhood education as my colleague Sue Moroney points out and that is a glaring omission in the overall National education policy. But here we do have it and it is important because the quality of education depends upon—