Tinetti JanHon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Internal Affairs): I'm delighted to actually take a call in this debate here this afternoon and it's wonderful to be back in the House full time and not have other things that are taking my focus away from that. But I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate the new member of Parliament from Tauranga Sam Uffindell on his result at the weekend. It was a wonderful contest and I'm now pleased to put that behind me.I'd like to focus on how we're securing the future of our young people through education. This Government has laid the foundations for rangatahi to be successful through the investments we have made in quality education employment and training but one of the investments that I'm really close to is the work that we have done in the development of the Government's attendance and engagement strategy. There was a debate that happened in the House here on 2 June around that but unfortunately I was on COVID leave at the time. So I'd like to make a few comments about that now and about the strategy that we have introduced as a Government in the last couple of weeks.Firstly I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the work of the Education and Workforce Committee and the members of that select committee in their inquiry into school attendance. The eight key themes that were identified through the inquiry are consistent with the work of the Government that we have been doing over the last four years to turn around the long-term decline in school attendance rates. Attendance rates did start to decline in 2015 and two years of battling a global pandemic with COVID-19 had an even bigger impact. For those of us who have worked in the education sector we know that the solution to this longer-term attendance challenge is not just marking kids present on the roll. Getting our kids through the door is only part of the challenge and only part of the priority for this Government. It's the first step.We have to meaningfully engage our young people in education and their curriculum that they are learning needs to be meaningful. That is why we are taking a targeted-based approach to attendance with the communities who know their kids best and that approach needs to look close and be close to those communities that those young people come from. That is why we are putting the largest-ever investment into developing a world-class curriculum that is meaningful and engaging for those young people and has them at the centre of everything that they do. That is why we have a strong focus on wellbeing culture and inclusion in our education policy.As the select committee report highlights there are compounding issues that sit outside of the education system that contribute to non-attendance such as poverty family violence mental health challenges and transport issues. That is why the Government is tackling these head on through cross-agency work programmes that support families in difficult times and make lasting changes to reduce inequity. In the last few years we have explored more effective ways of getting resourcing to school communities. When COVID-19 hit in 2020 we had the Urgent Response Fund that put $50 million into our schools to address the needs that they were facing straight away. But we knew that this fund was addressing the pandemic right at its height. We knew that a longer-term solution needed to be put in place which is why we introduced our strategy around attendance and engagement last week and set really challenging targets that will bring us back to—David Seymour: 16 percent?Hon JAN TINETTI: Just listen to this. It will bring us back to a level higher than that that the National Government had back in 2015—higher. A very very ambitious programme of work that we have set in place for ourselves but not one that is impossible to reach one that is too important for our young people to get wrong one that will see our young people back in front of their schooling and one that those of us that have been in education know only too well is critically important.The Government is laying the foundations for lifelong engagement and participation in learning through tailoring solutions to communities and reducing the barriers that prevent kids from getting the education they deserve. This Government will face the challenge of school attendance head on and we will turn this ship around. This Government is committed to doing things better for our tamariki and for the future of this country.