Yang JianDr JIAN YANG (National): I rise to oppose this bill. Raising achievement for all our students for all young New Zealanders has been National's unrelenting focus since we came into Government in 2008. For that reason we have invested heavily in education. For example in this financial year the appropriations for Vote Education increased by 2.4 percent to over $11 billion which is yet another record. Funding is particularly important for the success of education but that is not the only factor. To have a successful education system we do need many other factors. One other important factor is a flexible innovative education system and making sure we have a system that is responsive to the needs of different kinds of students. For that reason this kind of partnership school is one of many options to make sure we provide choices to some students. The recently introduced Education (Update) Amendment Bill is another example where we are trying to modernise our education system to streamline our management system to make sure that the whole system is there to cater to the needs of some special students. We have a world-class education system and our kids are doing very well. However about 20 percent of our students are not performing very well in the State education system. We need to help those students. That is the purpose. Many of these students are from low-decile areas and from disadvantaged communities. Many of them need help and we need to help those students. Partnership schools are one of the many ways to help students who are not performing well in the State education system and whose parents are unable to send them to a private school. So partnership schools are there for them to consider. In New Zealand we have over 2500 schools. We have many kinds of schools actually at the moment. We have religious schools we have private schools we have coed schools and we have single-sex schools—all sorts of schools. Partnership schools are yet another option. So it is important that we understand that we are not trying to dismantle our public school system. We are trying to make sure we provide another choice for some students a minority of students. We have precedents—in other countries similar schools are doing quite well. The concept of partnership schools represents an opportunity for communities iwi business organisations and other sectors to partner with educators to raise the achievement of some students who are not performing well in public schools. This is yet another option. Also according to this bill there are concerns that students attending partnership schools will be delivered a low-quality education because they have not adopted the New Zealand curriculum. But we have a number of safeguards there to make sure that the educational quality of partnership schools is good—from choosing the qualifications and the assessment framework to reporting publicly the progress against targets annually. Also Ministers have the ability to terminate a contract in cases where there is a breach of contract. So we have a number of safeguards there to make sure that we do have the ability to ensure that we can have good quality in our schools. Also we have to say that the National Government has been making a number of initiatives to make sure we are able to provide more choices for children and to make sure that we have a number of measures to enhance the quality of school education and to raise achievement of students. So National is basically trying to provide a flexible innovative learning environment for students and we are confident in our safeguards.7 Thank you very much.