5. Schools—Industrial Action Teachers' Salaries and WorkloadHon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) to the Minister of EducationSchools—Industrial Action Teachers' Salaries and Workload5. Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) to the Minister of Education: Does he agree with the Prime Minister regarding teacher strikes who said if we had more money we would have put it up there" and what would be the salary increase for primary teachers if the Government had not prioritised free tertiary fees and instead put that funding into teacher salaries?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Yes the Acting Prime Minister is a man of great wisdom and foresight who speaks with great exactitude. To put the current offer into context over the last eight years teachers received an increase in their base salary rates of 1.2 percent a year on average. What the current offer on the table from the Ministry of Education equates to is an increase in base salary rates of 2.4 percent a year on average—double what they received under the last Government despite current inflation being lower than it was on average over those last eight years of course partly because of the spike in GST. With regard to the second part of the question this Government has no intention of returning to the elitist attitude that only those who can afford to pay for tertiary education should be able to participate in it.SPEAKER: Order! The member will now address the second part of the question.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: With regard to the second part of the question it would be almost impossible to make that calculation.SPEAKER: I was Minister of Education I think when the member was at school and it's probably my fault that the maths are like that.Hon Nikki Kaye: Isn't it true that the primary teacher salary package proposal could be paid for twice over if it weren't for him prioritising tertiary students instead of teachers?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I want to be very clear here that the current Government paid for the fees-free policy by cancelling the tax cuts that were going to be put in place by the previous National Government. So the assertion by the member opposite that if we hadn't done that the money would be available for primary teacher salaries is completely wrong.Jo Luxton: Does the coalition Government intend to reverse the fees-free policy?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: To be abundantly clear the coalition Government has no intention of reversing the fees-free policy. All three parties in the Government have signed up to it and are committed to it. It's very unclear what the alternative is because none of the members opposite will say what they are going to do.Hon Nikki Kaye: Does he agree with NZEI Te Riu Roa that the offer of just 12 minutes of time extra a week to work individually with children or plan and assess learning is not good enough and why is he not considering smaller class sizes to reduce teacher workload and help resolve the strikes?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I agree with many of the concerns being put forward by NZEI Te Riu Roa including the fact that we have a teacher supply challenge ahead of us because there was a 40 percent reduction in the number of people training to be teachers under the last National Government. I also agree with the concerns put forward by the NZEI about teacher workload and that was one of the drivers behind the scrapping of national standards—a decision this Government made because they led to a massive increase in teacher workload with no discernible increase in student achievement as a result of that.Hon Nikki Kaye: Does he agree with the Acting Prime Minister who said in relation to primary teacher strikes "striking and putting a whole lot of parents and children at enormous difficulty is not the best idea." and has he asked the Acting Prime Minister to give him some of the hundreds of millions he's spending on diplomats instead of teachers?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: That's a ridiculous question. The Government is going into the bargaining with primary teachers in good faith. Mediation is taking place this week. I do note once again that what they are being offered by this Government is twice the average increase they received under the previous Government. We value the work of teachers. We know we've got a lot of work to do in this area but I note that we cannot undo nine years of damage in nine months.Hon Nikki Kaye: What specific support package has he put in place to help working parents who may have no ability to look after their children if a school closes their doors?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I'm not going to speculate on the strike action at this point. Mediation is under way this week. I hope that that mediation will lead to a positive outcome. The Government does not want teachers to take strike action and we'll certainly be working to avoid that."