Sitting date: 10 April 2025

EDUCATION AND TRAINING AMENDMENT BILL (NO 2)

First Reading

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education): I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2).

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: I move, That the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 16 September 2025.

It is crucial that New Zealand has a world-leading education system so our young people can reach their full potential and grow and to lead the life that they want to live. To achieve this, this Government is relentlessly focused on lifting achievement and closing the equity gap so parents can have confidence that their children have the foundations to succeed. This bill makes a range of changes to our education legislation to advance these priorities. They include focusing schools on prioritising student achievement, giving schools and families more time to respond to planned union strike action, and ensuring initial teacher education and teacher discipline and competence processes are fit for purpose. The bill also requires schools to have an attendance management plan, requires universities to protect the freedom of expression of students and staff, and more.

These changes are critical to progressing our student achievement and attendance objectives, developing the workforce of the future, and establishing a knowledge-rich curriculum, grounded in the science of learning. This bill makes a number of changes to school board objectives, including making educational achievement the paramount objective for schools, as it should be. This is in line with the Government's unrelenting focus on lifting student achievement for every child. It's crucial that achievement is at the core of what schools prioritise, because every year 65,000 young New Zealanders start school, and we must ensure that they're getting off to the very best possible start and giving parents the confidence that their children are achieving to the best of their abilities. Delivering a world-leading education doesn't just pave the way for their success; it strengthens our country's economic and social future too.

The bill also makes several other changes to ensure school board objectives are fit for purpose. We're introducing new essential supporting objectives for schools. Attendance goes hand in hand with educational achievement, so we're adding an objective for school boards to take all reasonable steps to ensure students are attending school.

We're also adding an objective to ensure that schools use good quality assessment to monitor and evaluate students' progress and achievement, making it more visible to school boards as a clear focus for lifting achievement. Schools need information about how their students are progressing to help identify when to provide support to keep moving in the right direction for those children.

The bill makes it clear that giving effect to Te Tiriti is essential and key to support student achievement. The bill also makes the requirement that schools are achieving equitable outcomes for Māori students at the top of the list of how schools are required to meet Te Tiriti o Waitangi objective. All tamariki deserve to attend a school where the primary objective is to ensure that they can achieve to the very best of their ability.

We're also replacing references in the Act to the term "local curriculum" with "teaching and learning programmes", ensuring that wherever they are in New Zealand, young people are being taught a knowledge-rich curriculum, grounded in the science of learning.

Alongside the changes we're making to the school board objectives, the bill removes the ability for the Minister of Education to issue a statement of National Education and Learning Priorities, known as the NELPs, and it repeals the related education and learning objectives.

The school board objectives, alongside curriculum statements and frameworks, provide sufficient strategic direction. Keeping these provisions in the Act just adds a layer of additional priorities schools need to pay attention to that end up being an unnecessary additional legislative requirement. We don't want to overburden schools or detract from their focus on educational achievement.

Together, these changes to school board objectives and removing the ability to issue a NELP ensure that we have a more simplified and streamlined set of expectations for schools with educational achievement as their top priority.

Another key change in the bill is extending the amount of notice that unions must provide before striking from three calendar days to no less than seven calendar days. I recognise the right of unions to strike, but we must also prioritise student outcomes. This must remain the central focus of our education legislation.

Three days' notice is often insufficient for schools, parents and caregivers, and whānau to provide alternative arrangements. This can be particularly problematic if the notice is given on a Friday or a Saturday. Schools need time to determine how to manage the disruption to students and their families, including arranging for additional supervision should it decide to stay open. Parents and caregivers also need time to make alternative arrangements should the school decide to close.

By extending the amount of notice that unions must provide from three days to seven days, we allow more time for everyone to make arrangements before the strike happens. This is about minimising the interruption to student learning while upholding unions' right to strike. More notice for schools can reduce disruptions to achievement and attendance from the loss of valuable learning days. Additional time can also reduce the amount of pressure on parents and caregivers.

Developing the workforce of the future continues to be a priority for this Government. Through this bill, we're ensuring initial teacher education, teacher discipline, and teacher competence processes are fit for purpose. The quality of the teacher in front of the class is the most important thing for our kids, and I'm committed to ensuring we attract, train, and retain great teachers.

The Teaching Council plays a really important role in initial teacher education. The bill requires the council to consult with the Minister of Education before making changes to standards for ongoing practice and criteria for the issue of practising certificates. It also requires the council to have regard to the Secretary for Education's advice on changes to standards for qualifications that lead to teacher registration and teacher education programme approvals. Additionally, the bill requires the council to report annually on how it's giving regard to any relevant statements of Government policy. Together, these changes will increase the transparency and accountability of the Teaching Council and ensure that we have excellent initial teacher education. The Teaching Council also plays a key role in ensuring that we have strong processes related to the conduct and teaching practice of teachers. The bill makes changes to the council's disciplinary and competence processes to ensure that the council can perform its functions effectively with more consistency to help achieve timelier resolutions.

This bill also requires all schools to have an attendance management plan which sets out processes and strategies for identifying and responding to student absence. It's crucial that our young people have every chance of succeeding and that there's a strong, positive correlation between attendance and literacy and numeracy scores over years 4 to 10, as well as attainment across NCEA levels 1, 2, and 3. I'm proud of the progress we've made on attendance, with regular attendance in term 3 2024 up 5.3 percentage points compared to the same term in 2023. We're committed to building on this momentum to achieve our student attendance target of 80 percent of students being present for more than 90 percent of the time by 2030. School attendance management plans will include strategies and interventions to respond to students' non-attendance. School responses will be triggered as a student reaches a certain number of days absent over a school term.

In the tertiary education space, this bill requires universities to develop and adopt a statement of freedom of expression and imposes a duty on universities to protect and promote academic freedom and freedom of expression. It also requires universities to publicly report and maintain complaints procedures in relation to those matters. In recent years, some universities seem to have taken a risk-averse approach to discussions about the difficult issues, seeking to protect students and staff from controversial views, but universities should be a place of genuine debate, where diverse opinions can be discussed and challenged.

Finally, the bill makes a number of other changes which help maintain the health of the education regulatory system and ensure that law and practice remain well aligned. The changes in this bill will make a meaningful difference and are part of a wider set of changes that our Government is progressing to improve the education system so all Kiwi kids grow up with the knowledge, the skills, and the competencies they need to grow into the New Zealand of the future. I'm excited by the changes this legislation makes. I commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): This debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 6 May 2025. Thank you for your work this week.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.

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