Hipkins ChrisHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I'll just respond to three groups of issues that have been raised so far. The first is around cohort entry and some concerns that have been raised around first of all the removal of the right for a child to start school on their fifth birthday. In fact that right was removed with the introduction of cohort entry because any school that adopted a cohort entry would effectively force a parent to enrol their child either before their fifth birthday or after their fifth birthday. It would remove the right of that child under the existing law for schools that have adopted the cohort—that right to enrol on or the day after their fifth birthday has already been removed. That was a decision made by the previous Government.I'd point out that cohort entry is voluntary for schools; so far fewer than 100 schools have taken up the opportunity to do that. Most countries of course have got a school-starting age of six. Actually for New Zealand schools the starting age of five—of course our compulsory starting age is six but our optional starting age which is the starting age that most kids in New Zealand start school is actually among the lower of the countries that we would compare ourselves to. If there was huge resistance to this I think it would have been evident in the submissions; in fact the analysis that I have seen from the select committee's deliberations is that there were four submitters on this particular clause and three of them submitted the changes that were being put forward by the Government. So we are actually going back and implementing the advice that was presented to the last Government. There's nothing particularly ideological about that. The advice and the evidence were presented to the last Government and we are implementing it as it was presented to the last Government.Personally I'm relatively ambivalent about the issue around cohorts; I think that is a decision that schools can make. I think that most of the arguments put forward by the then Government and now Opposition have been around the convenience to parents and concerns around parents rather than what is best for the child and so my simple request to schools when they're considering whether to introduce a cohort entry policy is to consider what is best for the children in their area.The repeal of communities of online learning: the Hon Nikki Kaye said that the Government is ripping something away from students in rural areas and from home-schooled students. We can't rip something away if it was never introduced. Communities of online learning (COOLs) have never been introduced. They were not coming into effect until the end of this year so you cannot actually take something away that hasn't ever actually arrived. What we are doing is preventing something from being introduced that has not been introduced already. In terms of the substance of the charge though—that we're taking something away from kids who are going to small schools in rural areas—there is nothing in removing COOLs provisions that stops them from accessing online learning. What this does do is stop them from enrolling directly with an online learning provider instead of going to their small local school. Their small local school can access a range of online learning opportunities and nothing in this bill that we are introducing limits that in any way. The same thing applies to those who are home schooled. Those who are home schooled cannot access online learning at the moment. Nothing in this bill limits that.What it does do though is stop a group of online schools from being established that could be used to off-ramp the most vulnerable kids in our school communities and that is the overwhelming feedback that the last Government got when they introduced these clauses and they completely ignored it. We have listened to that feedback and frankly I am not going to put up with a system where kids with additional learning needs or who are a little bit difficult to educate are simply offloaded by schools and told to go and enrol with an online learning provider. That is the risk of allowing these provisions to go forward and we're not going to allow that to happen.The final group of issues that have been raised around the independence of the Teaching Council—now there's a huge irony in the Opposition now being staunch defenders of the independence of the Teaching Council given that under the law they passed every member—every member—of that council was appointed by the Minister. Every single one of them was appointed by the Minister. So we have a choice here between saying that the council should actually be reflective of the profession and elected by the profession but have to have regard to Government policy when it makes significant decisions about the statutory functions it's exercising and leaving with them the ultimate judgment about that. So they have to have regard to it; they don't have to follow the directions of Government but they have to have regard to Government policy—or the previous Government's regime which said that the Government would control the council completely by appointing every single member of it. I think our position significantly enhances the independence of the council.With regard to the Supplementary Order Papers being proposed by the Opposition supposedly to enhance the independence of the council by for example allowing them to criticise Government policy—the law is very clear now; they can do that now. In fact that was one of the amendments that the then Labour - New Zealand First - Green Opposition argued for when this law change was first introduced by the Hon Hekia Parata. It was not in the law originally; it was something we argued for and with full credit to Hekia Parata she inserted that into the law and that was a good development. It gives them the guarantee now that they can speak out and criticise Government policy and that's a very good thing. Why was this not in the original Teaching Council legislation that the Government passed? That was simply because the Teaching Council legislation that we passed was already introduced prior to the election. It was introduced as a member's bill and adopted by the Government when the Government changed. So we've now had the opportunity to do further work on that. This is a relatively sensible provision and one that actually I think a future National Government if we ever have one—it's not looking very likely at the moment but if we ever did I'm sure that they would want to make use of those provisions as well.Just with regard to the Supplementary Order Papers being put forward on cohort entry the Government will not support those Supplementary Order Papers put forward by the Opposition because they largely contradict the intention of the bill and it's clear that we wouldn't support that because it undoes what the purpose of the bill actually is.