Tolley Anne: Education Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Tolley Anne: Education Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 23 September 2008. Volume:650;Page:19052. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast) 
: 
 I rise to speak on behalf of National to the Education Amendment Bill (No 3). I read in the general policy statement of the explanatory note of the bill which the Minister of Education Chris Carter has just spoken to that the purpose of the bill is “to enhance student safety in both the early childhood and compulsory sectors; and improve accountability for student attendance and engagement …”. The last sentence of that general policy statement states: “These changes will help to modernise and improve education legislation.” If that is the case it is a very dark day for education in this country as we know it. It is a very dark day because typically the current Minister has over-inflated exactly what this bill will do. 
This bill has no vision whatsoever for education in the 21st century. There is no substance to this bill but a whole lot of rules and regulations. It reflects a socialist agenda reaching out to claw back control from schools and communities and to put in place central control over how our schools are run. In the last week of Parliament we get a bill on education and like the Minister the bill is going nowhere. National is not supporting this Education Amendment Bill (No 3) as introduced to the House. 
The Minister stood in this House and said he and Labour want to support young people in school to gain skills and to learn. But the bill and this reheated policy called Schools Plus—which is actually all about the 2002 Mayors Task Force for Jobs policy which has been pumped up and given a catchy new name—show that this Government has no idea about how to keep and support young people in school so that they can develop some skills and get some qualifications. The bill shows that the Government really does not know what to do. Instead of the Government putting some real support behind the many principals out there who are doing amazing innovative things with kids who are enthusiastic dedicated and what is more very successful despite the meagre resources that this Government is making available to them and instead of the Government getting in behind those principals and asking what it can do to help them keep those kids in schools what do we have? We have a bill that is full of rules and regulations telling those principals exactly what they can do but more important what they cannot do. That is Labour’s answer to everything. 
So let us look at what the bill is all about. We have police vetting. That has been dressed up as trying to keep our kids safe in the school environment and we all want to do that. But because this bill has been rushed into the House without any consultation to show that this Minister who has done nothing for 12 months has finally got off his chuff and done something— 
Hon Shane Jones 
: Widely supported. 
ANNE TOLLEY 
: By whom? Here is a press release from the New Zealand Playcentre Federation that states that 11000 volunteers at playcentres alone would need to be checked. We know that the Labour Party does not care about the parents of playcentre kids because it would not even include them in its 20 hours early childhood education policy. It would not even include them in that. It does not think that parents who take their kids to playcentre are worth supporting—[ 
Interruption 
] 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Politics as we all know is the art of the possible and the possible we will explore today is good order. I refer the colleagues on my right to Speakers’ ruling 57/3. 
ANNE TOLLEY 
: The Playcentre Federation has stated that its whole existence is placed at jeopardy by this bill because of the very rushed nature and non-consultative manner in which it was brought to the House. This is a draconian set of regulations. The New Zealand Educational Institute—a great favourite with this Labour Government—is also concerned that the measures being introduced to Parliament regarding police vetting could seriously impact on community and family involvement in schools and centres. So we have a draconian set of rules and regulations that will change the very nature of parental involvement with children’s education at a time when the Government is saying it wants to do all it can to support students to stay in school to gain more skills and to learn more. 
The information-matching programme is the piece of the legislation that we have all been waiting for for 12 months. I was on the Education and Science Committee and I know that the Teachers Council has been asking for this legislation for more than a year. The Minister promised that it was coming. We simply do not know how many unregistered and unauthorised teachers are out there in our classrooms around the country. Why is that important? Well it is important because there is such a shortage of teachers. In fact last year more teachers left their profession than had done over the last few years. Teachers are leaving their profession in droves. Schools are really strapped to get replacement teachers and they are being forced to take teachers who may not be registered or authorised. So data matching is the important piece of this legislation and it should have come to the House well over 12 months ago. 
Let us talk about early-leaving exemptions. Two years ago anyone could leave. It was easy to get an early-leaving exemption. A bit of heat is put on the Government it goes right the other way and it is now getting rid of all leaving exemptions. What a load of rubbish! There has been absolutely no consultation with schools. Principals up and down the country are saying: “What! Where did this come from?”. The Secondary Principals Association president Peter Gall said that some pupils who have been exempted from school have mental health problems but most were “chronic truants whose fit with school just wasn’t right.” We in the National Party understand. We understand like most Kiwis out there that for some students—just a small number of them—alternative non-school options meet their needs better. Those alternatives meet not just the needs of those individuals but also the needs of the rest of their classmates and the teachers whom they share their classrooms with. So not putting in place early-leaving exemptions is a complete flip-flop by this Government and it will have quite perverse outcomes from those that it wants to achieve. 
I have here a letter that my colleague the Hon Bill English received from the parent of a child. That parent was trying to get an early-leaving exemption for his daughter to leave high school to begin a hairdressing apprenticeship in January 2009 when she will be 15¾ years old. She is a good student does not have any problems at school and therefore does not fit the current criteria for an exemption. If the bill comes into place she will not be able to leave at all until she is 16. How ridiculous it is to stop a child from leaving school to take up an apprenticeship for hairdressing which will give her a good career. Under the current criteria she cannot get an early-leaving exemption but we can appeal to the Minister for an exemption; under this legislation she will not be able to leave at all. That just does not make sense. 
That brings me finally to the legislation around what boards of trustees can and cannot do. Why on earth do we have to put that into legislation? The Tomorrow’s Schools programme has now been working for 18 years. It has been working without any legislative detail on what the responsibilities of a board are. The Education Review Office considers that 60 percent of boards are governing well and that only 7 percent are struggling to achieve good governance. Where is the rationale for suddenly putting into legislation the requirements of a board of trustees? I am talking about the requirements around what boards can do what they must do what they are allowed to do and what they can ask the Minister or Cabinet for permission to do. 
I suspect that this is not actually about boards of trustees. It is the dark hand of socialism reaching into schools and saying that Tomorrow’s Schools gave too much power to communities; it gave too much power to parents to decide what was right for their children in terms of their children’s education in their children’s schools. This legislation is reaching out to pull that back because this Government believes that only it and the Ministry of Education here in Wellington know what is right for those children. I am reminded of  
Yes Minister  
and that magnificent saying that the Government knows best. That sums up what this Labour Government is about. It cannot trust parents. It cannot trust communities. The Government knows best.