Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Well we've just had five minutes of searing parliamentary scrutiny of the Executive from the Labour backbench MP and Chair of the Education and Workforce Committee Marja Lubeck so it's really good to see that this Government is very focused on that.My pleasure to speak in this debate—unfortunately COVID has ravaged our education spokesman and -woman line up and so I've been asked to step into the breach and it is a great pleasure to do that because there is no more important topic facing this country long term than the education of our children. We're familiar with the concerns that have been raised many times about New Zealand's slide down the international rankings in terms of literacy and numeracy and there's been a lot of debate had as to whether that's important or not or relevant or not. In my time as education spokesperson I was surprised by the number of principals of schools who didn't think that was an issue. The Minister of Education in our session earlier made the point that—spun it in a rather strange way I thought—our relative slump from New Zealand was probably a good thing" because it shows that other countries are improving their performance and maybe we should be celebrating their success rather than bemoaning our demise. And I suppose the question that I have for the Minister is: does he on reflection think perhaps that wasn't a wise comment? And indeed when it comes to the ability of New Zealanders to thrive in the modern world to compete internationally and to be able to reach their fullest expression—whether in work or in their general lives—in terms of understanding the arts and literacy and all the wonders that come with education surely our ambitions should be to retain and regain the very high levels of relative education performance that we have delivered in the past and can in the future so that New Zealanders are well equipped to thrive globally as we have in so many endeavours in so many ways. And so I just give the Minister an opportunity to recalibrate that and raise his ambition and the Government's ambition.In particular on the issue of literacy we note that only 35 percent of 15-year-olds are passing basic proficiency in numeracy and literacy and the Government has recently released its literacy and numeracy strategy. The concern that we have is that it lacks any specific details on what exact strategies will be implemented. In fact a very vague outline leads to the final conclusion that the literacy section explains that there will be an "evidence-based approach". So the relevant question that we have is well what evidence will it be based on and what approach will be followed? And what we'd be asking the Minister specifically on the literacy side is—there's lots of debates about these things. We in this country have followed particularly in years 0 to 2—the very start of learning to understand and to read and to write—we've been using what's called the "balanced approach" for many decades. There's a very I think compelling argument that it has failed us and it has failed our children and is a big part of the reason why we're going backwards. Will he adopt what's called the "structured literacy approach" or the "phonics-based approach" as the standard approach to try and turn that around? I'd be very interested in his views on that—some specificity or are we just going to rather vaguely say we'll carry on with an "evidenced-based approach"? So there's a couple of questions to get the Minister started. One final question of course he might ask his colleague the COVID-19 Response Minister when—and I ask this on behalf of two teenage girls at school—will they not have to wear a flaming mask all day? Because there is nothing more frustrating and irritating for students to have to do that particularly adolescent ones with pimples. In terms of just restoring a bit of fun and life and relaxation and the ability to interact freely when are we going to get rid of those masks?"