Rahui Katene - Education Amendment Bill
te-pati-maori
Fri Mar 19 2010 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
Rahui Katene - Education Amendment Bill
Friday, 19 March 2010, 9:56 am
Speech: The Maori Party
Education Amendment Bill
Rahui Katene, MP for Te Tai Tonga
Thursday 18 March 2010; 5pm
The issues affecting the educational horizons of our young people are of the utmost priority to the Maori Party.
And so when this Bill appeared on the order paper today I was pleased that I would have an avenue to talk about the pressing educational issues impacting on the good people of Te Tai Tonga.
If ever there is a need for education amendments to be put, it would be around the availability and accessibility of the whanau of Te Wai Pounamu to Maori medium immersion education, and to bilingual educational options.
Up in Marlborough we saw the closure of bilingual units at Whitney Street School and Bohally Intermediate. In reflecting on their loss, former bilingual unit teacher Nan Kahu Chadwick noted that the unit had been able to teach the students, “who they are, where they come from; and give them a sense of belonging”.
Seems to me this could have come directly from Ka Hikitia, the Māori Education Strategy, which is meant to be about transforming the way the education system performs for and with Māori.
Of course it’s not just the closure of bilingual units that concern us, but it’s the transition for those who have been forced to leave such units and start again.
The catastrophic way in which the former Aorangi students have been treated in Christchurch stands out in my mind.
In today’s Press the Principal of Burnside Primary School, Matt Bateman, describes the “stress on us all” from not having classroom space for a bilingual unit, nor enough time for the transition.
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The former Aorangi pupils have been receiving bilingual lessons in the school hall for nearly a term.
I listened carefully to the Minister of Education at question time today, in responding to the questions of my colleague, Te Ururoa Flavell.
The Minister was asked directly about the levels of commitment from Government to fulfil the requirements in the new curriculum that all students will have the opportunity to acquire knowledge of te reo Maori me ona tikanga.
Is being shunted into the school hall the evidence of that commitment?
And yet, this Education Amendment Bill has avoided the ideal opportunity to address these issues impacting on bilingual provision in the South Island.
While on the topic of Christchurch, can I just mention the crisis situation occurring in Aranui where the school has been providing breakfast for 110 children every day, but has been forced to end because they have run out of donations of food. Trouble is, the essential problems that created the need for the breakfast club in the first place remain.
Food poverty; the fact of children turning up without breakfast, hungry and unable to concentrate, is a key determinant impacting on educational opportunities for our young students.
Mr Speaker, these are just some of the key issues occurring in my electorate – and no doubt every electorate throughout Aotearoa.
Truth be known they are the persistent problems that make it hard for kids to be at school, hard for teachers to teach; hard for schools to succeed.
The issues around information matching and whether the fee for police vetting should be ten dollars or fifteen dollars simply don’t measure up there.
Notwithstanding these concerns, the Maori Party is going to support this Bill today, because effectively we see it as a tidy up Bill, which addresses a host of issues raised in the last few years.
The provisions around information matching are relatively straightforward. We are told that the Ministry of Education is aware that there are unregistered teachers – by the simple process of deduction.
There are more teachers on the payroll then there are registered and authorised. So clearly it is sensible that there be set up an information matching programme between the New Zealand Teachers Council Teachers Register and the Ministry of Education payroll database.
We support the intention of the Bill to have only registered teachers teaching; and of course support also that provision to ensure that our children are at all times safe and protected from harm.
This is where the police vetting issues come in. We always believe that it is of paramount importance that we do what we can to invest in the wellbeing and quality education of all students – whether that be by the provision of bilingual units, or helping out at breakfast time.
This Bill will improve the requirements around the police vetting of non-teaching staff. One of the things that this Bill does is to change the threshold for contractors and their employees to just those who may be likely to have upsupervised access to children during opening hours.
The goal in mind is to put in place procedures by which the police vet only those non-teaching staff that are necessary to do so. I know that this change was one that the New Zealand School Trustees particularly welcomed in that it now means that parents and whanau acting as parent helpers on school premises will not be affected by the police vetting clause.
While we are talking school trustees, I want to raise the concerns that we do have around the new powers to appoint corporates as statutory managers or commissioners of schools.
Many of our kura tell us that one of the awesome things about Tomorrow’s Schools was that it gave them a change to have a shot at running their own school themselves
It’s about supporting schools to determine their own solutions.
The fear that we have with putting the decision in the hand of the Minister, is that the chances are that the schools that are picked will be the ones where the board is comprised of members who may be from communities which lack the specialist capacities inherent in the accountancy or legal fraternity.
And chances are these communities will be low income, high deprivation, and probably many of the people in these communities will be Maori and Pasifika.
The introduction of a body corporate or corporate management model for schools may result in our communities losing their unique ownership of their kura.
We are concerned that in the process of a school going into the transition of coming under management by a commissioner or a limited statutory manager, communities will feel alienated and dislocated from schools – and we could never support that.
This is only the second reading – so there is, we hope, every chance of changes being made to encourage and enhance community confidence with Boards of Trustees.
And while we’re at it, perhaps the Minister could also look at addressing the issues around the implementation of Te Kotahitanga throughout Te Wai Pounamu.
We will support this Bill at the second reading Mr Speaker, and we look forward to some of the unresolved issues being addressed.
ENDS
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