5. Question No. 5—EducationHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister of EducationQuestion No. 5—Education5. Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister of Education: Does he stand by his Government's preparations in education for COVID-related restrictions and is he confident that Kiwi schoolkids can receive the best education possible through COVID-related restrictions?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Thank you Mr Speaker. Yes and can I acknowledge teachers and school and early childhood centre leaders up and down the country who have once again gone to extraordinary lengths to support our young people to learn from home often whilst dealing with significant disruption in their own lives recognising that some of our teachers will be home-schooling their own children at the same time as home-schooling the children of others. In 2020 we provided over 36000 fit-for-education devices for years 9 to 13 learners. That met all of the known needs of those students at the time but new demand of course has emerged since particularly with a new year 9 intake in 2021. So we provided additional funding in response to the Delta outbreak and by Tuesday the ministry had shipped nearly 7000 more devices to schools and learners affected by COVID-19. The ministry held in contingency a supply of approximately 135000 hard packs of learning materials appropriate for learners across a range of ages and settings. As of Tuesday 48000 of these had been distributed and the ministry is also printing new material which will be available for distribution by the end of next week. The learning from home TV station was also stood up again within days of the current outbreak emerging.Hon Louise Upston: If the preparations were as good as the Minister has suggested why do we hear principals saying online learning is just a joke" in their community?SPEAKER: I'm not sure the Minister quite has responsibility—I will let him answer but I'm not sure he quite has the responsibility for that.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Under our devolved system of learning schools adopt a variety of different online learning systems and online learning methods. Some schools use online learning very regularly in their teaching; other schools do not use it as frequently or as often. So there is a range of different preparation across the schooling system. The Ministry of Education has been working hard to supplement that by providing hard packs of materials for the learners at those schools who are not as equipped for online learning by supplementing digital devices and internet connections in those communities where they're not as readily available as they could be. But ultimately schools do still pick up the bulk of the work here when it comes to educating young people during alert level restrictions.Hon Louise Upston: How can he say during last year's lockdown "student progress was about the same or better last year" when the Education Review Office reported only 26 percent of senior secondary students "agreed or strongly agreed that they were coping well with their schoolwork while learning at home" during the 2020 lockdown?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: That's a very interesting question from the National Party who have argued for a long time that student wellbeing isn't what we should worry about. We should only worry about the students' results. Because if we look at the students' results they are as good if not slightly better than they had been in previous years. Of course it is difficult to learn from home. One of the reasons the Government places a focus on wellbeing is we recognise that achievement results are not the only thing that's important in the education system and I welcome the fact that the Opposition are now recognising that.Hon Louise Upston: How can the Minister be confident students who fall behind in lockdown will be identified let alone get help when recent official advice says "curricula don't yet clearly signal important markers of progress and when to worry"?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: A lot of work goes into supporting children who fall behind in their learning during lockdown. For example if we just take the students at the senior secondary schooling end of the system summer school is available for them over the summer this year to ensure that if they were a few credits short they could pick up those credits. That was a well subscribed programme. We have also put quite a significant investment—a $50 million investment in fact—into wellbeing engagement and attendance-related initiatives to ensure that those students who became disengaged from learning during last year's lockdown were re-engaged in their learning. And of course that investment is often still being rolled out and will continue to benefit schools and young people following this year's lockdown.Hon Louise Upston: What special preparations have been made to reassure Auckland students facing exams who've missed crucial weeks of preparation?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The member will be aware that the timetable for NCEA exams has been changed as has the timetable for the submission of NCEA portfolios. Additional support will be available over the coming summer as it was over last summer for those students who don't quite get there in terms of achieving enough credits to achieve their NCEA. That's a programme that has proven to be very successful and one that I would envisage we'll continue to offer in the future regardless of whether or not there are COVID-19 alert level lockdowns. Significant work is being done to ensure that students are supported between now and exams so that they can be well prepared for those exams. And again I want to acknowledge the significant amount of work that teachers are doing to support those young people to learn from home whilst they themselves are often living with other realities that they also have to cope with."