Tinetti JanDEBATE ON PRIME MINISTER'S STATEMENTDebate resumed from 22 February.Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Education): I rise to speak on the Prime Minister's statement today with hope and optimism for the direction the Government is taking our country in. We're focused on the issues that matter most to New Zealanders: supporting New Zealand families and businesses through difficult economic conditions accelerating the economic recovery laying the foundations for the future and providing strong and responsible leadership through difficult times especially as we rebuild from Cyclone Gabrielle. But we can't ignore the fact right now that this is only the third time in our recent history that our country has been in a state of national emergency. Given what mother Nature has dealt us many of us are hurting anxious—anxious about our livelihoods anxious for many people that their livelihoods have been devastated. The consequences of climate change are here and they are being felt with great impact. I'd like to echo the sentiments and aroha that have already come from this House and our thoughts are with the 11 people who have lost their lives. Also our thoughts are with their families and their friends as well as with those who are facing the painful wait for their loved ones who are unaccounted for. As the Prime Minister said no words can express the anxiety and grief that you are experiencing. This was not the start to 2023 that anyone expected and the impacts of the Auckland floods and then Cyclone Gabrielle compounded by the war in Ukraine and the ongoing social and economic impacts of the global pandemic mean that this year is likely to be another tough one for New Zealanders. As the Minister of Education my focus will be on ensuring we minimise any disruptions to the delivery of high-quality education and training for our people. This needs to be balanced with ensuring that we are also putting the safety of students and the wider community as the utmost priority. Now Madam Speaker Salesa you know that I have been meeting with principals and sector leaders to hear directly from them on the needs of their school communities and I had a fabulous meeting last Friday with principals in your electorate. The Ministry of Education has also been in frequent contact with my office and all school properties that have been able to be checked and visited by the ministry to assess the damage have been. Repairs and in some cases potential rebuilds will be arduous but I'll ensure that we will be working as quickly as we can to address these issues and the subsequent issues that may come forward throughout the process. I've been advised that as of today we have 47 schools and 89 early learning services confirmed as being closed across the Auckland Northland Waikato Bay of Plenty Hawke's Bay and Gisborne regions. This is affecting over 7000 school students and 2500 children in early childhood education. For the schools that are closed we are working at pace to get educational devices and tools to those children and also to those children where their schools that may be open but they can't get there because of road closures. So far 500 educational hard packs have been delivered to kōhanga reo who have been supplying them to their whānau. Te Tai Tokerau and Auckland teams have stock on hand and they have been taking these hard packs out through distribution to whānau that are in need and this started from last week. We're also distributing hard packs to communities in the Wairarapa. An assessment of requirements across Hawke's Bay and Te Tai Rāwhiti is continuing with an initial supply of 100 early learning packs and 50 primary packs to be dispatched to Gisborne this week. There are also many incredible people who have stepped up in these trying times and as Minister of Education I really want to take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude to the Ministry of Education staff both in Wellington but particularly those on the front line who are based in the regions in the flood and cyclone areas. They have been working around the clock to provide support to both schools and early learning services. What's made it difficult for them is that many of these staff have also experienced devastation of their own yet they continue to put their role as public servants first and foremost and are providing the most outstanding level of service to our schools and students during this national emergency. Some of the stories that I have heard of their own devastation have been really distressing and yet they have continued to carry on every day giving that assurance to those people that need it. Speaking directly to them I would like to say thank you—thank you for your public service thank you for your dedication to our education system and thank you for supporting our schools and early learning services. Our children our young people and our learners are so much better for your dedication. I know that many teachers and principals in affected areas are working tirelessly for their schools and wider communities. These are extraordinarily tiring times and I can only imagine the stress that they are under right now. This is not the start that any of us wanted to the school year. But I also know the resilience that they have. Yes it's stretched. Yes it's been tested in recent times but I have utmost faith in our workforce. We will get through this and I also want to say thank you to our education workforce for everything that I know that they do to deliver for the young people that they have in front of them every single day. I have heard the needs from schools and we are doing everything that we can and as fast as we can to address these. For those schools affected by floods and the cyclone I know it will be hard for them to think of anything else other than the mammoth recovery effort that they have in front of them. But those schools that are not affected I know are standing in solidarity with those that are. As we work as quickly as we can to recover from these weather events we will also continue to deliver on the Government's commitment to a world-class and barrier-free public education system. The Government is focused on making sure our young people are engaged and thriving and as we heard in question time today just this week I announced 82 dedicated attendance officers to work with schools to turn around irregular attendance and increased funding for the Attendance Service to engage intensive support to re-engage the most complex cases. The evidence shows that dedicated resources placed in schools will enable schools to intervene early and turn around persistent absences and we're already starting to see some results—and some very good results—when we dig into the data to see that the percentage of unjustified absence is dropping rapidly between 2019 to now on all four of the measures that we use in our attendance area. I'm really really pleased to see these results happening. We know that we're still going to experience justified absence because we expect our young people to stay home when they are sick but we also know that our schools and our parents are doing a very very good job of getting young people to school when they need to be there. That's not to say that there's not more to do. We absolutely know that there is a lot more to do. As I've said this is a big ship to turn around but we are well on the way to making that happen. What we also need to ensure is that our young people are engaged in learning when they are at school. That's why we are investing in a comprehensive redesign of the New Zealand Curriculum and the first priority subjects are maths and literacy. The new curriculum is clearer about what students need to understand know and do within these learning areas—something that has been a little bit difficult in the past because the curriculum didn't give teachers and the workforce that direction that they'd been crying out for for many years. So this is backed by high-quality teaching resources as well as being based on best evidence and practice. The Government understands that kids will have the best opportunity of attending and engaging at school if we remove the barriers that prevent them from doing so. That is why we have invested in our barrier-free access suite of initiatives such as free healthy lunches free period products mental health and counselling support and bully-free programmes and removing the requirement on parents to pay school donations. As I've said this was not the start to 2023 that we had hoped or planned for. But despite the challenges ahead of us I know that we will continue to be a resilient and resourceful nation.