Hipkins Chris: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: General Debate[Sitting date: 02 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19149. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour - Rimutaka):The Labour Party has a positive plan for New Zealand. While the National members over there are crowing about spending more money on roads they cannot find more money to spend on kids’ education. That says everything about this National Government’s priorities. It is vitally important that we invest in the future of our country through an investment in education. This Government is ignoring the enormous pressure that schools are under financially the enormous pressure that teachers are under and the enormous pressure that parents are under. This Labour Party as part of our positive plan for New Zealand will do something about that. We are not going to turn a blind eye to the fact that schools’ funding is not keeping up with the rising cost of educating children.Today David Cunliffe and I went to Fergusson Intermediate School out in Upper Hutt and we announced that a future Labour Government after the next election will abolish school donations in all those schools where they are willing to accept an extra $100 per child per year in exchange for not asking for donations. Almost all decile 1 to 7 schools will be better off not asking parents for donations and taking the extra $100. It will massively alleviate some of the pressure that those parents face. It will remove the stigma from the children whose parents cannot afford to make the donation. It will ease the pressure on those schools so that they can get on with what they are there to do what they are passionate about doing: educating kids.This is a Government that has got its priorities all wrong when it comes to education and I tell you what we are going to change the focus on 21 September when a new Labour Government takes office. We will reject the narrow focus of the education system that this Government is trying to indoctrinate into the system based on last century’s needs for education. We will make sure that every child in New Zealand is taught a broad and balanced curriculum so that they have the skills they need to thrive and prosper in the 21st century. We will not go labelling teachers as failures in the way this Government wants to do with its low-trust model of education. It seems to think that all teachers are out there to do their very best to fail kids. I actually think every teacher who goes to work every day wants to do the best by kids and the biggest thing that is letting them down at the moment is that they are not being supported in their job with enough resource from the Government to meet the increasing needs that students are arriving at school presenting.The Labour Party acknowledges the enormous pressure that schools are under to meet an increasingly diverse range of student learning needs and we are going to do something about that. We are not going to ignore the snowballing mountain of special education needs that are going unattended by this Government. We heard more reports today that specialist support for students with learning needs is being taken away—another set of reports came through today of yet more support for kids who need it the most being taken away. This Government said that it is going to keep measuring the problem—it is going to measure and assess kids more and more so it can target the resources where they are needed. Instead what we are seeing is that the Government is taking resources away from the kids who need them so it can spend more time measuring. It is constantly focused on measuring and it is not putting any extra resource into the kids who most need it. Well we are going to turn that around. We are going to make sure that those kids get the support that they need—Hon Tau Henare: When is that?CHRIS HIPKINS: When is that? It starts on 21 September I can tell Tau Henare when this National Government is going to get voted out.New Zealanders are going to see the positive vision that Labour has for this country which puts education front and centre of our programme to make sure that we are investing in the future of this country. Every dollar that we spend on education every dollar that we spend giving kids the best possible start in life is a dollar that we are investing in the future of this country.Hon Tau Henare: What happened to you?CHRIS HIPKINS: I got a very good education and I want to make sure that every child in New Zealand gets the type of good education that I was fortunate to receive.I know that a lot of kids at the moment a lot of parents at the moment are struggling. Parents are struggling to contribute to their kids’ education in the way that they would like to. They cannot find the money that they would like to be able to give to their local school so that it can deliver on educating kids in the way that it wants to. The Labour Party is going to do something about that. This Government is ignoring the fact that parents now contribute in the form of voluntary donations nearly $100 million a year. In a supposedly free State education system parents are being asked to contribute by way of donations of nearly $100 million a year. This Government has got its head buried in the sand if it thinks that school funding is enough to keep up with the cost of educating kids. It simply is not. The Labour Party is going to do something about that. We started today and there is more to come.