Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): I am really pleased to have the opportunity to speak on education in this Estimates debate. I would like to congratulate Ministers Parata and Joyce on increasing the appropriation by 2.5 percent to $11 billion. They are not just throwing money at the appropriation; they are actually targeting it. They have been bold enough to invest in data for example and use that data to enable them to target it at students who need it to get all of the services and the right education for each level right through to the tertiary sector. What we have seen in the past is Governments throwing money at education and thinking they are going to get a better result. Although you may get some minor improvement it is not an investment in the future and we really need to do that. I would like to talk about the communities of learning (COL). We have got a fantastic one in Blenheim. I think every person will fondly remember a teacher who made a big difference for them. The whole idea of COL is to seek out those particular teachers and let their skills and their techniques be shared by others. It is not about just knowing the subject; it is about getting that idea across. As I go around my electorate and visit the schools it is quite obvious it is not the knowledge that the teacher has; it is how they get that across. It is an intangible thing almost but COL is going a long way to actually bridging that divide and getting all the teachers up to that same level. I think it is really brave. It is not the easy path to take by any means and you will not get immediate results necessarily but it is an investment in the future. I congratulate the Ministers on doing that and I think it is fantastic. I would also like to talk about some data—the Minister touched on it before—that has just been released. It was a bold target to have 85 percent of 18-year-olds achieve National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 2 by 2017. In my electorate 86.1 percent have done that so we are ahead of the target. That is a fantastic result and we have got that data now—we can all share in that. This is what education is all about. In every other sector we would measure the performances against one another—that is how you get improvement. If you do not compare and learn how are you ever going to improve? I really congratulate you on going down this path. I think that what we really want instead of the old league tables about how schools are achieving by how many people achieve excellence in NCEA level 3 is to get to a point where we can see that the schools that top the league table are the ones that have students achieve at or above their potential—not some headline number about who passes NCEA level 3 with excellence. I am really looking forward to that day and I hope that day comes soon. I would also like to touch on the tertiary sector and once again I think the Minister has made a bold step by increasing the subsidy in the STEM subjects. What we know when we look at ourselves compared with other OECD countries is that we do not have as many graduates in science technology engineering and mathematics. If we want to keep up with our trading partners if we want to be successful in a modern world we need graduates in those areas. It is really important that we get the investment in the right place to ensure that that occurs. In the past universities in particular have churned out students who have degrees that have much lower course costs because they do not have laboratories etc. which cost a lot more money. Putting that subsidy in or increasing it for those subjects will make it much more attractive for those universities to encourage more students through in those subjects. We will all be the richer for that. We also cannot forget of course apprenticeships. There is an extra $14.4 million to try to achieve 5500 more apprentices by 2020. Last year in fact we had over 42000 apprentices enrol to go through various trades. I think that is a really important area particularly when we have got something like our situation at the moment where we have got a huge construction boom going on in New Zealand. We need tradespeople—they are just as important as university graduates if not more so—in numbers. It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate. Thank you.Votes agreed to.