The Bill amends section 127 of the Act on school board objectives with a new section that makes educational achievement the paramount (highest priority) objective.

To meet this objective, a school board must meet a list of supporting objectives. These are generally the same as current objectives, apart from the changes below.

School boards must:

• take all reasonable steps to make sure students enrolled in their school attend, as required under section 36(2) of the Act
• make sure the school’s principal and staff use good quality assessment and aromatawai information to monitor and evaluate students’ progress and achievement, including from any assessment and aromatawai specified in a foundation curriculum policy statement.

The amended section also:

• amends the existing objective that lists how schools are required to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi by moving the requirement that schools achieve equitable outcomes for Māori students (current section 127(1)(d)(iii)) to the top of the list
• replaces the term 'local curriculum' with 'teaching and learning programmes'.

The Education and Workforce Committee made recommendations to extend the start date for boards’ next strategic plans by a year from 1 January 2026 to 1 January 2027. This means that boards will not be required to have a new strategic plan in 2026.  

Boards will still have to prepare their annual implementation plan for 2026 and submit their annual reports for 2025.

The Bill removes section 5 from the Act, which:

• allows the Minister to issue a statement of National Education and Learning Priorities (NELP)
• currently lists some education and learning objectives for early learning, primary and secondary education.

Under section 589 of the Act, unions are currently required to provide 3 days' notice before starting a proposed school strike.

The Bill amends section 589 of the Act so unions are required to give no less than 7 days’ notice of a school strike.

The Bill strengthens Initial Teacher Education (ITE) through greater government oversight of the Teaching Council. The Teaching Council is the regulatory body who sets standards for ITE and approves ITE programmes.

The proposed 3 changes are that the Teaching Council must:

• consult the Minister before changing teaching standards or the requirements for practicing certificates
• consult the Secretary of Education and consider their advice when it is performing its functions relating to standards for qualifications that lead to teacher registration and approval of teacher education programmes.
• include information in their annual reports on how it considered any relevant statements of government policy.

These changes do not change the Teaching Council’s function for standard setting and programme approval. It changes the way the Teaching Council works with the Minister and Ministry of Education.

The Teaching Council is responsible for disciplinary and competence processes for teachers, including those who hold a Limited Authority to Teach (LAT). The Bill proposes changes to the Teaching Council’s disciplinary and competence processes to allow them to perform their functions more effectively.

The Bill proposes to:

• align the powers of competence/disciplinary bodies in regard to conditions that are imposed on practising certificates and LATs for specified periods
• allow the Teaching Council to annotate the public register of teachers or list of LATs for additional reasons
• align cancellation powers of competence/disciplinary bodies
• allow disciplinary bodies to impose conditions on subsequent practicing certificates or LATs
• modify circumstances where teachers can seek voluntary deregistration
• clarify the scope of the prosecution function of the Teaching Council relating to failures to make a mandatory report
• allow the Complaints Assessment Committee to refer a matter back to the Teaching Council.

This proposed change to the Act would require school boards to have an Attendance Management Plan by Term 1 2026. The plan must set out a strategy and process for the school to identify and respond to student absences, with the purpose of returning students to school.

The Bill also creates a new power for regulations to be made about Attendance Management Plans. This allows regulations to make detailed requirements for Attendance Management Plans. The regulations will be able to:

• specify thresholds, based on the number of days a student is absent in a school term, that will trigger schools’ actions and responses to student absence
• prescribe content for Attendance Management Plans, including information about how the school will:
  • identify issues that make attendance challenging for a student
  • respond to student absences at the specified thresholds and causes of student absence
• specify the period in which a board must review its Attendance Management Plan and readopt the plan or adopt a new or amended plan.

The proposed change to the Act would mean that universities:

• are required to develop and adopt a freedom of expression statement that sets out their approach to freedom of expression and is consistent with clear statutory expectations
• have a duty to protect and promote academic freedom and freedom of expression
• are required to publicly report on academic freedom and freedom of expression in their annual reports and to maintain complaints mechanisms.

Section 617 of the Act currently requires the Minister of Education to issue eligibility criteria that must be met by applicants for appointment as principal.

The Bill changes the wording of section 617 of the Act from:

• “the Minister ‘must’ issue eligibility criteria”, to
• “the Minister ‘may’ issue eligibility criteria”.

The International Student Fee (also known as the International Student Levy) is charged to state and state-integrated schools with enrolled international fee-paying students. The fee is intended to reimburse the Crown for costs associated to fee-paying international students in schools. It is deducted from the school's quarterly operational grants on a per-student basis.

The Bill changes the wording of section 523 of the Act from:

• "the Minister 'must' set fees relating to international fee-paying students" to
• "the Minister 'may' set fees relating to international fee-paying students".

Currently, National Student Numbers (NSN) can only be used for the purposes specified in Schedule 24 of the Act. Information privacy principle 13 of the Privacy Act 2020 also requires agencies to outline the group that the unique identifier will apply to, and only assign unique identifiers (such as NSNs or IRD numbers) if the agency needs it to carry out 1 or more of its functions efficiently.

The proposed change is to amend Schedule 24 of the Act to more clearly allocate NSNs for researchers, and for research and funding purposes. This allows the current use of NSNs for the Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF). It also allows retrospective validation to make sure the previously collected dataset could be used consistently.

The proposal is to fix a minor omission in section 398A of the Act, where a heading was not included. The heading – "Conversion to category B wānanga" – was not included in section 398A when Part 4A was inserted in August 2023 by section 10 of the Education and Training Amendment Act 2023. The proposal is to fix this omission.