Hon Hekia Parata
Minister of Education

11 October 2016

A step closer to increased flexibility for schools

Education Minister Hekia Parata says a Bill increasing flexibility for parents, students, school boards and home-based early childhood education providers has progressed to third reading in Parliament today.

The Education Legislation Bill passed its Committee of the Whole House stage after widespread debate.

“Schools and early childhood education (ECE) providers are seeking more flexibility in how they operate. This Bill will allow schools to vary their opening hours with the agreement of their community, and enable home-based ECE providers to offer out of school care to school-age children,” says Ms Parata.

“The options that this Bill allows for will increase parental choice and give schools and ECE providers the opportunity to cater to the particular needs of their students.”

Other key features of the Bill include:
Enabling a principal to be employed to manage more than one school
Allowing school boards to appoint students of approved initial teacher education programmes to paid trainee teacher positions
Allowing the National Student Number to be used to establish and maintain student identities to support student participation in online learning
Enabling tertiary institutions to sponsor Partnership Schools | Kura Hourua
Allowing the State Services Commissioner to approve generic or specific terms and conditions of employment that are additional to, but not inconsistent with, those in a collective agreement.

“This Bill will improve and modernise administrative and governance arrangements across the education sector and make sure that it responds to what our education system and our young people need,” says Ms Parata.

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