Education Amendment Bill – Third Reading
te-pati-maori
Fri May 07 2010 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Education Amendment Bill – Third Reading
Friday, 7 May 2010, 2:03 pm
Speech: The Maori Party
Education Amendment Bill – Third Reading
Rahui Katene, MP for Te Tai Tonga
Thursday 6 May 2010
I am pleased to take a call on this third reading of the Education Amendment Bill.
In many respects this is a catch-up bill, which addresses some legislative loopholes and policy glitches which have arisen from a host of issues raised in the last few years. It is also an opportunity to update out-dated provisions.
In its scope the Bill provides the means to deal with unregistered teachers, incompetent Boards or issues impacting on the safety and wellbeing of students.
The Maori Party has a keen interest in addressing educational participation and performance – and as such will support any initiatives which seek to raise school expectations about the achievement of all of its students.
Our focus has been on a range of other measures such as :
• promoting whanau engagement;
• reducing teacher-student ratios;
• professional development for teachers particularly in cultural competency; and
• the opportunity to incentivise and reward schools who reduce under-achievement and disengagements.
In this context then, the chance to both improve the safety of children, and reduce compliance costs for schools is something that we fully support.
We will support any initiatives which will create improvements regarding the wellbeing and education of students.
The focus of this Bill, on focusing on the suitability of teachers or other staff for employment in a school, is an important one.
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We are also pleased that increased scrutiny has been introduced to ensure that non-teaching staff would be vetted before they had unsupervised access to children.
These are important safeguards, to keep our children safe.
But I want to digress, and share with this House a wonderful initiative as a way of providing a broader context in which to consider this Bill.
This year, a Maori immersion class Is being piloted at Dunedin North Intermediate, at the southern end of the Te Tai Tonga electorate.
The class, Ka Puanani o te Reo, meets on Tuesdays with one teacher and a resource teacher of Maori, providing an integrated programme around language development, reading, writing, art activities and music.
The distinctive feature of this class is that it is unique initiative in partnership with whanau, schools, Ngai Tahu and the Ministry of Education.
But the spirit of co-operation extends even further, reaching out to welcome students from schools right across the Dunedin community.
Mr Speaker, I wanted to share this initiative because it is an example to me of schools with a deep commitment to the best interests of their students.
It is a model of schools working together, it is a model where success and achievement are intimately linked with the effective participation of all students.
So often in this House, we focus on failure and flaws, rather than breeding success. It is perhaps timely to consider that in the context of this Bill to tidy up areas of neglect in the current legislation.
Notwithstanding this, I do acknowledge that the changes made in this Bill are in response to concerns raised by schools, Early Childhood Education services, contractors and commentators such as the Children’s Commissioner.
We welcome the moves to improve the safety of children, and reduce compliance costs for schools.
We understand that the amendments specifically to do with police vetting has been tested internationally in the United States in England, Canada and Australia and has been found to provide an effective safeguard for child safety.
It is, however, disappointing to note that while the amendments were discussed with a wide range of education sector organisations, such as the School Trustees Association, the Principals’ Federation, the Secondary Principals’ Association; PPTA, NZEI, and the Early Childhood Advisory Group – there were two notable omissions from the consultation process - the Kohanga Reo National Trust and Te Runanganui o Nga Kura Kaupapa Maori o Aotearoa.
Legislative changes which impact positively on the wellbeing and education of students, including the suitability of teachers or other staff for employment in a school, are of utmost importance to all schools – and that includes those in Maori immersion settings.
Finally, I want to support the intention of the Bill to promote an expectation that there will be registered teachers teaching and safe people having access to children.
The Maori Party will support this Bill.
ENDS
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