Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Mr Speaker. Well let me remind the speaker who just resumed her seat Angela Roberts what lifts productivity in this country: it is kids who've got good numeracy and literacy skills. When 2 percent of kids at decile 1 cannot pass a basic foundational test that is going to be the biggest predictor of our future in productivity in 10 and 20 years' time. She clearly just forgot to mention that because it doesn't fit her narrative. Well last week very quietly on a Friday afternoon of a long weekend from this most open and transparent Government ever from what we've come to expect from them on a quiet Friday afternoon they quietly updated a website on the Ministry of Education page. And that was the results of the latest numeracy and literacy pilot. The reason that they did it with no fanfare no press release and no comment from the Minister—either Minister that could have commented—was because the results were appalling. They were abysmal. They should hang their heads in shame at five years of failure in our education system at these horrific results.Only a third of our students would have passed this exam and got their NCEA qualifications. But what's even worse is those kids from disadvantaged backgrounds and decile 1 schools: 2 percent. Pretty much every single student would have failed these basic exams and not gone on to get their NCEA. The sign of a world-class education system is its ability to lift those kids from low socio-economic and underprivileged backgrounds up and give them the opportunities to succeed in life. These results will not do that for these children. Now what did we hear from the Minister on Friday when she was grabbed by the press after this announcement? We got excuses. What we got was Oh well the test questions were not culturally appropriate" and then when asked four times in this House and once on record do you think she could answer the basic question? Just give us one example—in any one of those three tests—that was not culturally appropriate. Well she finally—kind of—got there in the end. But the fact is after four questions she couldn't do it. And do you know why? Because she knows she's on shaky ground. She knows that these are excuses. And what did we get? Well we got a 15-year-old can't answer a question with the word "clue" in it because they may not have done a treasure hunt; so therefore it's not culturally appropriate. The question she should have been asking is: why is it that a 15-year-old doesn't have the oral language skills and the reading ability to understand the word "clue" and know what that means? If I was the Minister of Education the first question I would be asking is: why is it that all 15-year-olds don't have the oral language skills to be able to answer a basic question with a relatively basic word in it? And then I would be saying "This is not good enough we will be putting in place a range of things starting at early childhood education to improve the oral language skills of our very youngest learners so that by the time they get to school they're ready to learn". The next thing I would have said is "Let's get back to basics—Angela Roberts: Oh national standards.ERICA STANFORD: —in our"—not national standards but thanks for the interjection—"primary school and protect numeracy and literacy." The Government were told last year by the Royal Society math report to protect an hour of math a day. It was a report that they commissioned. Have they done that? Of course not—of course not. It's all culturally inappropriate that's the problem. It's not the fact that they haven't actually done anything that they were told to do to improve kids' ability to pass these exams. What we wanted to hear from our Minister is what she is going to do. What we wanted to hear is how she's going to protect numeracy and literacy at primary school to make sure that by the time these kids get to senior school they are at curriculum and they're ready to learn. Let me explain to you what this Government expected of this exam. In Cabinet papers they said they expect that good year 7 and year 8 kids can pass this exam. And here we are with 15-year-olds at decile 1 and only 2 percent of them can pass that exam. This is an abysmal failure after five years in Government five years of managing the education system with frankly a Minister that has been so busy with COVID and now police he's taken his eye off the ball. He's handed the reins to a junior Minister in her second term and we wonder why we get these abysmal results. We can do better."