Sitting date: 18 November 2025

EDUCATION AND TRAINING (SYSTEM REFORM) AMENDMENT BILL

First Reading

Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education): I present a legislative statement on the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: 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 (System Reform) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I would intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 30 April 2026.

It's crucial that New Zealand has a world-leading education system that encourages every young person to reach their full potential, and the bill introduces a set of fundamental, system-level changes that strengthen the structure and accountability of our education system. The bill establishes a new Crown agent, the New Zealand School Property Agency—"the agency", I'll refer to it as—which will have a key focus on maintaining and building the school property portfolio.

Last year, I established a ministerial inquiry into the Ministry of Education school property function. This inquiry was launched after we inherited a school property system that was bordering on crisis. The inquiry found that the current system for delivering school property was not fit for purpose and needs overhauling to give the right level of focus and accountability, improve the decision-making process, and provide transparency.

Since then, we have taken a phased approach to address the inquiry's findings. Clear focus and accountability are essential to ensure efficient delivery and good investment and asset management approach practices. This bill proposes to establish the new Crown agent, the New Zealand School Property Agency, with a board that has the expertise needed to achieve these priorities for the school property portfolio. The agency will be responsible for delivering growth requirements set by the Ministry of Education and will also have the autonomy to plan and deliver maintenance across the property portfolio. This will allow the Ministry of Education to focus on delivering essential educational outcomes for students.

I consider this model provides the right balance of flexibility, transparency, and ministerial direction, while creating leadership and board oversight that supports commercial discipline. This bill progresses a package of changes to reform the regulation of the teaching workforce and help ensure graduate teachers can be confident in the classroom.

The latest report from the OECD's Teaching and Learning International survey shows that 62 percent of graduate teachers and year 1 to 10 students were not confident their initial teacher education (ITE) had prepared them sufficiently in teaching content of all subjects they needed to teach; 54 percent weren't confident ITE gave them the knowledge they needed about pedagogical approaches on how to teach. This reflects earlier evidence from a 2024 Education Review Office (ERO) report that showed only 50 percent of new teachers found that their ITE—their initial teacher education—was effective. The Royal Society of New Zealand's 2021 report also noted that nearly half of all year 4 teachers were only moderately confident in teaching any strand of mathematics and statistics in the curriculum.

That is a failure of the system. Initial teacher education is not properly preparing our teaching workforce. The Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand oversees setting teacher standards and setting requirements for teacher training, and it is clear that it's not working. This bill proposes to shift the responsibility for professional standard setting, and those functions, from the Teaching Council to the Ministry of Education. This includes responsibility for establishing and maintaining the standards and criteria for teacher registration, initial teacher education, ongoing practise, and the code of conduct.

I consider that shifting these functions to the Ministry of Education will allow for better alignment of policy and standard-setting functions and improve overall system consistency and coherence. Separating functions also creates better tensions in the system. This is in line with occupational registration settings in other jurisdictions, such as England and Singapore. The Teaching Council will continue its responsibility to quality assure all ITE programmes. Currently, the Teaching Council has no legislative powers to properly monitor ITE programs. This bill provides it with new legislative powers to power them up—the Teaching Council—to place conditions on new or existing programme approvals and remove approvals following consultation with the Secretary for Education, and monitor and review teacher education providers' delivery of approved programmes, with the power to require specific information from providers as part of these processes. It's a new legislative power.

Under these proposed changes, the Teaching Council will continue its responsibilities for registering and certifying teachers, and competence and conduct processes. To support the council's new scope and ensure it can stay focused on its core functions, the bill will strengthen the council's role in quality assurance of initial teacher education programmes with these new legislative powers; remove its professional enhancement and leadership functions, as these are system-wide functions supported by multiple agencies; and reduce the size of the council from 13 members to between seven and nine members, with a total of three elected members from the sector. I consider these changes will help to ensure the council operates effectively and efficiently and that it's focused on its core role: providing good governance and improved initial teacher education and services to teachers.

Quality teaching must be supported by a high-quality curriculum. The curriculum hasn't been updated consistently over time, which has resulted in infrequent wholesale reform every 20 years. The proposal for curriculum areas to be reviewed and updated regularly over time in an iterative way will keep them current based on evidence and avoid these large, disruptive overhauls we have every 20 years. This has been long been the case in high-performing jurisdictions we compare ourselves to. Additionally, the proposal combines the separate curriculum statements into one, making the requirements clearer for schools.

The bill also replaces a requirement for schools to consult with their community about the delivery of the health curriculum, with a requirement to inform. Last year, the Education Review Office reported that the requirement to consult, often unfairly, places schools in the middle of wide-ranging community views, and managing this is very difficult. With the introduction of a new age-appropriate, detailed, and clear health curriculum, year by year, schools will provide parents with better information about what is taught and how, so parents can make informed decisions on whether their child should be involved in Relationships and Sexuality Education or not.

Roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities across the education system can be at times unclear, fragmented, and have confusing overlaps. This bill proposes to transfer the full set of regulatory functions for registering private schools and licensing hostels from the Ministry of Education to the Education Review Office. This will help reduce duplication between agencies, clarify the role of ERO, and strengthen the approach to keeping service providers and education accountable. In line with best practice, the Ministry of Education will retain the standard- and criteria-setting functions for both private school registration and hostel licensing.

The bill also aims to clarify the current complementary roles of ERO and the Ministry of Education in identifying and supporting schools deemed to be of serious concern. It sets out detailed reporting requirements with clear time frames for both agencies. The bill also provides for the Ministry of Education and the Minister to rely on ERO's judgment and information when determining whether the thresholds for statutory intervention are met. ERO will be expected to provide review reports with the evidence needed to guide the ministry's approach to supporting a school of serious concern, including the most appropriate intervention under section 171 of the Education and Training Act.

Raising achievement starts with showing up to school. The bill's aim to clarify expectations and strengthen accountability is also supported by the proposed changes to tighten how exemptions from school attendance are currently used. Under the proposed changes, principals will only be able to exempt attendance on the grounds prescribed in the rules set by the Secretary for Education. The new rules will provide specific requirements for the duration of any exemption that may be granted and the types of evidence required to authorise an exemption. The bill also repeals the attendance exemption relating to the walking distance between a student's residence and their school.

Finally, the bill makes a number of other changes. A high-performing system relies on good-quality data and evidence to guide decisions on how best to meet the needs of the students. This bill requires schools to participate in studies that monitor the performance of our schooling systems, such as the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment, known as PISA. Currently, the assessments are opt-in, which creates real challenges in ensuring the data is robust and representative. Low participation rates currently put us at risk of not meeting the threshold for inclusion in this and other international studies. Making these assessments mandatory will help with ensuring the participation load is evenly shared amongst schools and we get a truer picture of the state of education in the system, as, at the moment, that load falls on a few schools who always say yes.

The bill addresses a gap by enabling NZQA to include micro-credentials in the reporting requirements for education providers, ensuring the completeness of a student's record of achievement. The bill also supports the next stage in the charter school model by enabling multi-school contracts and creating more certainty for converted charter schools by providing a pathway to close and open as a new State school under circumstances.

This bill delivers a comprehensive package of system-level reforms that clarify roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities, promotes consistency, coherence, and efficiency, and ensures our system is set up to support all students to succeed. I commend the bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Hon JAN TINETTI (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. We've had some terrible bills in the education space in recent times, and yet here we have another one.

Glen Bennett: But wait, there's more.

Hon JAN TINETTI: That's exactly right: wait, there's more. We've got an education profession at the moment that is just disbelieving of how low things are getting in the sector and can't see that anything's going to lift anytime soon. This bill is yet another ideological attack on teachers and the education system as a whole. It undermines the independence of the teaching profession.

I want to actually start right now by saying a future Labour Government will repeal this bill. This is a fundamental shift about who has control in education and about who has the power. Guess what? It isn't the teachers, it isn't the parents, and it isn't the kids. The kids who should be at the centre of the system are certainly not at the centre of this particular bill. This is a fundamental shift that puts the power plainly in the Beehive and into the hands of people that know little about the education system, but have reckons on what it will be. Just listening to that speech by the Minister, there wasn't one piece of evidence, not one piece, that backed up that particular speech that would show a difference within the sector that would raise achievement in our kids. This is, yet again, as I said, another ideological attack on how schools are supposed to operate. The implications for all who are involved in the schooling sector are huge.

Let's talk really plainly here about what is at stake. Perhaps the most troubling things that the Minister talked about were the responsibility of the teaching standards, the registration criteria, the practising certificate criteria, and even the code of conduct moving from the Teaching Council to the Secretary for Education. No longer do we have a professional body that is being designed and co-designed with the sector themselves and working within their own professional realm. That has been taken completely away. What does that mean? That means that teaching standards become political instruments. That means that registration criteria can shift with the ideology of the Government of the day. Rather than being independent as they are now and being sought over and seen by the Teaching Council, they will be at the whim of the Government of the day. People on the opposite side can shake their head, but all they're shaking their head on is their own reckons, not on one single piece of evidence at all.

The education system that we have held so strongly in this country and that, I will say, particularly in the indigenous area is being held up as a gold standard around the rest of the world is at real risk, under this particular bill, of actually going backwards. That is a heartbreaking day to see what this Government is doing to our education system, purely based on their ideological reckons.

Curriculum control under this bill shifts directly into the Beehive. No longer do we have a curriculum, according to this particular bill, that will be standardised across the country, because it talks about a differentiated curriculum based on school size, school location, and school type. What is that about? That doesn't even make sense to what we've known in this country for so long. It has obviously been informed by people that know very little about education, full stop. The work that the Minister talked about, taking help and informing parents, is not co-design; that's being done too. It's not aligned with anything that we know in this country about curriculum, full stop. It is completely a backward step. This is centralised prescription dressed up as efficiency. Once again, I say that a future Labour Government will repeal all in this terrible, terrible education bill.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): It seems like the Minister of Education has not learnt anything from her mistakes, and the mistake that she has made these past weeks is on exactly what it would be like if you piss off the education sector. It seems like we have a Minister who doesn't understand that the very basis of education is that you learn from your mistakes and you don't repeat them again. Yet, here we are, having this bill, the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill being introduced to the House. I love the fact that suddenly everyone in this House is a teacher. I would love to see your teaching qualifications. Show us some qualifications! Otherwise, please be quiet.

Carl Bates: And what are your qualifications?

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: I actually think that having spent years teaching in a secondary school in an international school and also in a university would be sufficient, Mr Carl Bates, because, frankly, that is sufficient.

You know what? If you don't like it, get a doctorate. I think they're great. In terms of this, we have heard from the fact that the Teaching Council is going to have their power removed. We have seen already in the previous bill that the balance of scale is tipped towards ministerial appointees, but, now, we're seeing that has been further reduced from 13 members to between seven to nine members, with only three being from the sector. Most of them are going to be appointed by the Minister, and that is going to politicise the teaching profession. You could dress things up by saying, "We are seeing that things aren't performing." We are seeing the Minister using reports like TELUS 2024. Yet we also have a Minister who likes to cherry-pick information. She never highlights the actual issues in some of those reports but will only use certain data so she can push her own political agenda.

She is someone who, again, like I said, has no background in education and has never set foot in front of a classroom yet thinks that she is better than everyone else. I have said it before, and I'll say it again: it is sheer arrogance.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: And, now, we'll come back to the bill because we're getting a little personal.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: When it comes to this bill, there are also other things. We have the New Zealand School Properties Agency. Now, the problem we're finding with the School Properties Agency—and this is something we will be looking into in the select committee stage—is the fact that the School Properties Agency will come to your school and will make all of the changes and then bill you for it. We are not seeing the Minister increasing the operational fund for schools as a response to this. We're not seeing the Minister addressing the systematic and the longstanding deficit in the funding we're providing, so schools aren't able to do that. If you're interested, the operational fund this year was only increased by 1.5 percent according to the Budget, yet inflation is at 2.3 percent. Therefore, you're not actually increasing the operational funding; you're in fact reducing it by 0.8 percent, and that is according to the Government's own Budget.

The School Properties Agency is going to do all of this, yet we are not seeing them addressing the root cause of some of the issues. We're seeing this open slather allowing the corporatisation, even more than what we're seeing now, in terms of charter schools. We're seeing that the Minister can make even more directions around things in the curriculum so that you don't even need to consult the parents when it comes to health. Well, relationship and sexual education is facing some serious issues because, again, the Minister is being led by other political parties on how they are changing that particular curriculum. We're seeing an overreach going on with an even more punitive effect being done in terms of the Education Review Office. We're seeing with attendance that schools can't have the flexibility of knowing when people are not attending schools. Instead, there is a really prescribed way that you can mark when they are not attending.

I'm sorry, but I'm really glad that the Minister comes from a community that doesn't have instances where a child is not attending school, because their parent is dying from cancer in a hospital three towns away and that's why they're not attending. I'm really happy that the Ministers from East Coast Bays and Epsom are not facing those kinds of challenges we're seeing in rural schools and rural communities. But these are the facts when you're talking to some of these schools on why students are not attending.

Lastly, just to finish, the Minister wants to use the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), but do you know what? You can do all of that, but 75 percent of people don't take PISA seriously. Students don't take PISA seriously. It is not a good measure. The Greens will not support this, because it's not robust.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): I was just listening to that speech, and there's a lot I could say, but the member Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan seemed to think it was a problem that the Minister is influenced by other parties in coalition. Now, think about this for a moment: the whole premise of the member's political party is that one party can influence another in coalition. This shows how a person can be very smart and very stupid all at the same time.

As for his personal attacks on Erica Stanford, our Minister of Education—

Carl Bates: Shameful.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: —really quite shameful. But let me say this: Erica Stanford is reforming education for the better in this country and being more effective than that member ever will be.

Back on this bill. Changing school attendance exemptions is one of the things it does. It ensures that if a principal wants to exempt a student from attendance, they have to do it under guidelines set by the secretary, because the number one thing you can do to improve education is make sure that students are at school. This Government is serious about it. We have significantly improved educational attendance in the time we've been in office, and you ain't seen nothing yet.

Shanan Halbert: You just cut our service—you just cut it.

Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Then there's—oh, Shanan Halbert says "you just cut it."; actually, we just increased educational attendance funding by $140 million. Now, for a guy who thinks the solution to every problem is throwing money at it, I would have thought he'd see that as an improvement. But we're doing more than that: we're changing the rules, we're getting people focused, we're putting in place the Stepped Attendance Response system, and we're ensuring that students are actually at school.

We're making more improvements to our wonderful charter school model, which is announcing innovative school after innovative school in order that those who convert to charter standards have a pathway back, because you should be able to choose and the choice should work both ways. I think that is an exceptional improvement.

I'll make a couple of comments about the property management changes. For too long, there's been a conflict between managing an education system and managing property within the Ministry of Education. Anyone who's an electorate MP or takes an interest in their community will know how bad that problem can get. Having a separate agency with the objective of managing the property portfolio, it creates a tension that is natural and sensible.

There are changes to the Teachers Council to make it properly aligned with the objectives of the Government, on behalf of the people of New Zealand. As an electorate MP who has had people blocked from being teachers on spurious grounds, to the detriment of the community, these changes can't come fast enough.

Finally, this bill transfers functions for private school and hostel regulation from the Ministry of Education to the Education Review Office. However, later this evening, the committee will consider the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill, and these two bills together will ensure that the regulation of early childhood education is also moved to the Education Review Office in line with the findings of the Ministry for Regulation's early childhood education sector review, designed so that we will have a proper tension and separation between the policy shop, which is the Ministry of Education, and the regulator, which is the Education Review Office.

This is a very positive set of changes that a busy Government that has the hearts and minds of New Zealand children front and centre in its agenda is making to ensure that we fix what matters for New Zealand. I just hope that the member on the other side, from the Green Party, can think a little bit about that, rather than his tawdry epithets that belittle him and this House.

ANDY FOSTER (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Minister of Education began by saying that it is essential that we have a world-leading education system. In fact, we've just seen that this House has just passed a piece of legislation to say that is now the pre-eminent objective of our education system, and New Zealand First completely agrees with that.

But the problem is—and we've heard the opposition coming from the Opposition benches, effectively a defence of the indefensible, a defence of the status quo. What we know at the moment is that our education system is failing. It's failing our teachers, it's failing our students, it's failing their parents, and it's failing our future. That is a real, real problem and we need to do something about that.

New Zealand First has always believed that education is a fundamental right and that every child should get access to quality education and also support. We heard from the Opposition benches that no more money's gone into the education system. What was it—$750-odd million went into support for the students that actually needed support. That is a significant investment that teachers have been crying out for, and you can bet your life that parents have been crying out for that for years.

Education needs to ensure that our young people learn the skills that they need to be able to inquire, to be taught how to think, but not to be taught what to think. Education needs to prepare young New Zealanders for life, for work, and to be first-rate citizens, not just of New Zealand, but first-rate citizens of the world—something that we can be proud of, that they can be proud of.

The Minister has talked through the details of the bill, so I'm not going to go through those at the moment, but I'd really strongly encourage both the Opposition and the people who are going to make submissions on this bill to look in the mirror, to think about this, and to think about our young people, to think about their future, and to think about the future of this country, because at the moment our teacher education is failing. The Minister has laid that out very clearly. Attendance levels are poor.

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: What's the evidence for that?

ANDY FOSTER: Still, they're improving—great work is being done by the Minister, Minister Seymour, over there. Student capabilities are failing as well.

Oh, and then, of course, when it comes to property management, how much more efficient now is property management already under this Government to what it was under the last Government? We are making progress. Those are systemic issues, Dr Xu-Nan, that we are working on making improvements to.

So the status quo as it is indefensible. We don't believe that the status quo should stay. This Government and this Minister are making excellent progress and I look forward to submissions. I hope they are very considered submissions on what is good for the future of this country and our young people. I commend this bill to the House.

ORIINI KAIPARA (Te Pāti Māori—Tāmaki Makaurau): E te Pīka, tēnā koe. I'll get straight to it. The Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill does more than mess around with systems; it reaches directly into the whakapapa of our tamariki and mokopuna. Now, there's a proverb in te ao Māori that goes like this: "Ko te manu e kai ana i te miro, nōnā te ngāhere; ko te manu e kai ana i te mātauranga, nōnā te ao." In English, that translates to: "The bird that consumes the miro berry, theirs is the forest; the bird that feasts on knowledge, theirs is the world." Our babies' access to knowledge determines the world that they will inherit.

That is why I must speak clearly and courageously to all New Zealanders about the consequences this bill holds for Māori futures. The Minister and this Government claims that this bill is about improving the education system, but those in the sector—the whānau that we've been speaking to on the daily and those who are succeeding in the current education model, especially Māori—say otherwise. When we look closely, it is obvious: this bill tightens rules, centralises power, expands privatisation, and pushes Māori voices further to the margins. It claims to strengthen education, but for Māori, it strengthens the barriers.

One of the first changes they talk about is strengthening attendance expectations. That might sound simple, but we all know what this means for our whānau: more pressure, more monitoring, and more judgments. Our whānau are not keeping kids home because they don't value education. They are dealing with unstable housing, multiple jobs, overcrowded homes, transport costs, mental health pressures, disability barriers, and schools that often have no reo, no tikanga, and no cultural connection. Supported by research, tamariki attend and succeed in education when they feel safe, recognised, and valued. Attendance is a symptom, never the cause. But instead of supporting whānau, this bill leans further into punishment. Once again, Māori become the target and not the priority.

Another major change is the creation of a new national property agency to control school buildings and land. Most people will skim over this, but Māori providers—including kōhanga reo, puna reo, iwi-led learning centres—know exactly how significant this is. Property access is already the single biggest barrier for Māori early learning. Our whānau struggle to secure buildings, to make compliance, to upgrade facilities, because the system was never designed around Māori needs. Just ask Te Kura Kaupapa Māori ā Rohe o Māngere, who are still waiting for their support and finances to renovate their buildings.

Property access, as I said, is already the single biggest barrier for Māori and early learning. Instead of empowering Māori to own, grow, and protect their own educational spaces, this bill creates yet another layer, another gatekeeper, and another Crown-controlled body that stands between Māori and the land we need to teach our kids. For us, a learning space is not just a building; it is a tūrangawaewae, it is whakapapa, it is identity, and this bill shifts that power even further away from our hands.

Last week, the Government removed Te Tiriti o Waitangi from our education system. They put profits over the wellbeing of our mokopuna with their ECE reforms, and passed the Regulatory Standards Bill to sideline Te Tiriti o Waitangi from all future legislation. What we're seeing here is a staged approach to the roll-out of the Regulatory Standards Bill in education by targeting the most vulnerable—and who are they? All tamariki.

Te Pāti Māori believes that the role of education providers is to educate—not to operate a business, clipping the ticket on the future of our mokopuna, based on right-wing ideology. We know that true success begins with knowing who you are, where you come from, and standing proudly in your reo, culture, and whakapapa. Te Pāti Māori will repeal this bill and will centre Te Tiriti o Waitangi in all aspects of our education system here in Aotearoa. All tamariki deserve high-quality education wherever they go to school, for them, for their future and for all of our mana motuhake. We oppose this bill. Tēnā koutou katoa.

CARL BATES (National—Whanganui): Thank you, Madam Speaker. For parents and caregivers and whānau listening at home, one of the things that they ask, that teachers ask, that principals ask when I go into schools is "Can we make education non-political?" Watch this, this evening, Madam Speaker, and you can understand why we can't, because we have an Opposition that, regardless of the quality that we put forward, stand up to oppose. Māori education this year got $60 million for property development from a National-led Government.

For two terms, the Opposition couldn't sort out initial teacher education. We have 62 percent of teachers coming out of initial teacher education saying they don't feel equipped to teach. Did they do anything? No, they didn't.

It is a National-led Government, once again, that is fixing education in this country. It's about time the Opposition got on board. I commend the bill to the House.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I think we might just turn the volume and the tone down a wee bit.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Might have to ask the man in the box!

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Ha, ha! Thank you, Madam Speaker. I wanted to just make a few comments about the approach that has characterised this Government's stewardship of education in the two years that they've been in office. This bill has a lot in common with a number of other reforms that we've seen come through in recent times. It signals a shift in approach in our education system, from local control, to centralised decision-making; from a system that is led by the teaching profession, by educationalists, to one that is led by politicians and the public servants and policy makers who report to them; from a system that is flexible, to one that is highly prescriptive; from a spirit of partnership, to one of compliance; from public, to increasing privatisation; and from a value base of wholistic wellbeing, to increasingly one of measurable outputs.

It's very clear from the education policies of this Government that they regard teachers and the education sector as their ideological enemies. They are implacably hostile to the people who run our education system and who teach our children.

The effect of what the Government is doing with these reforms goes far further than centralisation. I'm not someone who always instinctively argues for decentralisation; in fact, I'm probably more—and have been—of a centralist than most people in this Parliament. But the effect of the provisions in this bill and a number of other reforms that we've seen from the Government recently are not just centralisation; they veer towards politicisation, and I'm not sure that this country wants to see the education system that's responsible for teaching our kids increasingly politicised where politicians are designing our curriculum, where politicians are setting the standards for how our children learn and what they learn. I think that is a dangerous road for us to go down.

No one in this House pretends that the education system is perfect. Yes, there are challenges. We probably differ on what the precise challenges are and what the solutions are. But we have benefited enormously from a public education system in this country that is led by the experts, the people who do the work, the people who get up every day and go to school or university or polytechs, or any other educational institutions, who teach for a living and who love teaching and who feel passionate about creating the best learning experience for our students. The philosophy that has underpinned our system for a long, long time is that they are the ones to be trusted and empowered to make the best decisions they can for our system.

This bill, like so much else that we've seen in this House recently, has the opposite philosophy. It is pulling key decision-making into the bureaucracy of central government, and, in a number of cases, into the Minister's office. I don't think that is something that the people of New Zealand generally want to see.

This Government's approach to education more and more resembles a kind of Punch and Judy cartoon where the Government vilifies teachers, and paints itself as being the defender of the interests of parents in the system. It is a gross distortion and oversimplification. I would really urge the National Party members to think twice about these kind of reforms, because I don't think they are taking our country's education system where we want it to go.

Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to speak on the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill. There are many elements to this bill that have been well traversed. The thing that I am so excited to see is the property changes because, in my own electorate, I've seen how long it can take to advocate for the right kind of property that's needed. Thankfully, thanks to a listening Minister, we now have 14 more classrooms coming to Cashmere High. I'm very pleased with that, and I commend the bill to the House.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It's disappointing, tonight, to have to speak again on another education and training bill that doesn't achieve better outcomes for learners. In the politicisation of Minister Stanford's approach to mātauranga education, at every step along the way, tamariki ākonga learners have not been at the centre of the debate in this House. Whether we look back to last week when, suddenly, Te Tiriti was removed from board of trustees to charter schools. In fact, when the Government says that they're all about achievement, their approach to education and training and legislative change does not achieve the outcome that they're talking about.

This is a Government that talks down our education system in this country. We have a great education system. Yes, we have areas that we need to improve, but anyone who thinks that our education system is at fault is actually factually incorrect. When the Associate Minister of Education, David Seymour, says that the way to raise achievement is to get our kids back to school, what does a community like mine do when in fact this Government just cancelled our attendance contract? It just cancelled it.

The behaviour that we see from Government members tonight really shows that this is a Government under pressure. They've got their backs up against the wall. I've never seen a Government that hates teachers so much that they would take away their powers, that they would take away the rights, the acknowledgement of the profession, the capability, the evidence that educators provide, and say to them, "We know better." Not only is it "We know better. We are going to change legislation to take it away from independent organisations, like the Teachers Council, and we're going to put it more into the Beehive." More decisions in our education system will be made by the Director of Education and by the Minister of Education, not by the profession themselves.

This is a Government that has taken away localism from our education system. This is a Government that removes the relationship and sexuality guidelines that schools asked for, to create safe and inclusive schools for children that need that support and communities that require it. I have to say, tonight, I am very clear that I will do everything that I can to ensure that Labour repeals this bill. It is an absolute attack on the profession, an absolute attack on the teaching profession. It is ideological, it is politically motivated, and it does not have learners at the heart of their decision making, nor does it have any evidence.

In fact, in the regulatory impact statement (RIS), if Government members take the opportunity to read the RIS, it clearly says that there is a lack of evidence to support what's been put forward in this legislation—a lack of evidence. There's no information there. There hasn't been any time for anyone to confirm and provide information to say that this is going to achieve the desired outcome. To the Government of Ministers, why are you rushing? Why are you not bringing the sector with you? That is very clear. In their heads and in their approach—they've demonstrated it tonight—they think National knows best.

GRANT McCALLUM (National—Northland): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to take the final call on the first reading of this bill. I think that we just need to remember who the education system is actually there for. It's not there for the teacher unions, it's not there for teachers, and it's not there for parents. It's there for the students. What we're here for is to help provide an education system that delivers for the students, and I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is, That the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill be considered by the Education and Workforce Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.

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