Parmar ParmjeetDr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you Madam Chair for this opportunity. When we look at this whole bill there are five main objectives. Part 1 covers some of the things that are to support these main five objectives and there are things in Part 2 that support these five objectives. I want to focus in Part 2 on clause 21(4) because out of the five main objectives one of the objectives I believe is a very important one. We can say yeah it's resolving errors and omissions—we can fully understand that; we have no issues with that—but there is the objective that says that it is to strengthen the quality of school education by removing the provisions relating to national standards and the partnership school model from legislation. In this I'm really passionate about the reporting system in our education system so I would like to talk about clause 21(4) because that is actually to give effect to the policy objective of removal of national standards. I repeatedly hear when we talk about national standards from the Minister that there is no evidence that national standards have improved the performance of students. I actually—CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Dr Parmar we have traversed this discussion quite fully in the previous part. I will ask you to stick specifically to clauses 21 and 22 and your arguments for the discussion on clause 21(4). Thank you.Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Thank you. So what I'm talking about is clause 21(4). In subclause (4) it says In section 43 replace new section 62(2) of the principal Act with: '(2) Monitoring and evaluating must include but is not limited to monitoring and evaluating the performance of the students in relation to—(a) any foundation curriculum policy statements and national curriculum statements in force under section 60A; and (b) any qualification systems referred to in section 61(c) that are offered at the school.' " So this comes to the fact that in the Education Act 1989 section 43 is about requiring monitoring and reporting of national standards and that is where my argument comes—that repeatedly we hear that national standards are not helping in the improvement of students' performance. What I would like to ask the Minister is to give us some evidence because we haven't heard the evidence that the Minister has used to base this argument on. We haven't heard about the evidence. This is a reporting system that we are talking about and what we are saying is that we want to stick to that reporting system but what the Minister has jumped to is the performance of students. So that is another effect that we can see from having a good reporting system. But when the Minister says repeatedly that there is no evidence that student performance has improved because of the system that he is replacing with this new subclause (4) here in clause 21 I want to know what the evidence is that the Minister is basing his—CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Dr Parmar we've had this discussion in Part 1. We are not having it again. Please move on.Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Because this clause 21 and subclause (4) relates to—CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Do I need to repeat myself? We are not having this discussion again. Please move on to other arguments.Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: So I actually thought that it would be good to get that answer from the Minister—that's why I raised this because we are really passionate about this part in this whole bill. Now we also know that yeah we can fully understand that maybe there is no data available because from day one Labour has been against national standards. We know that they wanted to replace national standards with another kind of reporting system that we are seeing through this legislation and this was even before someone could evaluate how that system was going to work. So from day one when someone is totally against a system then we do not know if the time that has been given for the national standards to work was enough for its evaluation and we do not get any kind of answer from the Government on this big change that the Government is making in this legislation which of course is divided in Part 1 and Part 2 to give effect to the objective of the policy. Now the important point here as some of my colleagues have already discussed is clause 21(2) where we are talking about the commencement date replacement and again yes I've heard the Minister—CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Yes and the Minister has answered that question. Thank you. Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: I'm just responding to the Minister. CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I have already made a ruling that I'm not wanting us to traverse arguments that have already been expressed by your colleagues in this part and the Minister has already answered that question. Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Madam Chair I fully appreciate that but then we don't have the opportunity in this debate to actually go back and ask another question on the same subclause to the Minister."