Macindoe TimHon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Well Madam Deputy Speaker I am one of those people on this side of the House who used to be a secondary teacher for quite a long time but I have to tell Mrs Martin I didn't have a clue what she was talking about then. In fact you'd have to say that there was so much that was muddle-headed in the thinking of the Associate Minister of Education that I really wouldn't know where to start. But I'll pick up on one point because it's a serious point: she suggested in her speech that the existence of trades academies is in some way an acceptable alternative for those who are going to lose their entitlement to attend a partnership school.So let me tell Mrs Martin: I am incredibly proud of the Wintec trades academy which caters for a large number of schools in my Waikato region but that is not a system that in any way at this point would cater for those who are in the partnership school system. They leave an established State or State integrated school for a period of time a couple of times a week in order to go and do the courses that are so valuable to them at the trades academies and they pick up incredible skills so that they then go back to the trades academies understanding the whole value of their education. That is poles apart from what actually happens in the partnership school model. Mrs Martin as an Associate Minister of Education should know that and is incredibly muddle-headed in the thinking.This is a cruel bill it's an ideologically blinkered bill it's an indefensible bill and it should be strongly opposed by all decent-minded members of this Parliament. The Minister of Education's attempt to defend it in his opening speech was pure union dogma. It was most notable by its total lack of focus on children. The needs of children didn't get a look-in in the Minister's speech; it was all about systems and unions and what his close confidants have been telling him and urging him to do. It didn't mention the needs of children at all whether it was those who are in the partnership schools who at the moment are getting a fantastic opportunity to turn their lives around having previously fallen through the cracks and been on a path to a pretty grim future or the younger ones who are in the schools at the moment currently being taught under the national standards regime. Yet surely a bill entitled the Education Amendment Bill should be all about children—our children the young people who need and deserve the best opportunities in life the best teaching that can possibly be provided to them and the best outcomes from those vital years that will stand them in good stead for a lifetime to come.Government Ministers this week in question time have been dancing on the head of a pin when pressed on their attitudes to partnership schools and their determination to close them down. Whether it was the Hon Kelvin Davis the Hon Peeni Henare or the Hon Willie Jackson all of them know that those schools work that those schools have been the only thing that have worked for children for the tamariki in the electorates and the rohe they represent here in this Parliament. I find it extraordinary that they do not have the courage of their convictions to come into this House and to defend the statements that they have made publicly over many many months knowing that partnership schools work.They're not just another option that could be there alongside attending a State school or a special character school; they are for children from backgrounds where there is in most cases no commitment to education and there have been all sorts of things that have been going wrong. Those children have in many cases been brought up in the most deprived of circumstances and as a result there is no culture of educational achievement. The partnership schools are the ones that are focusing on their needs. So that is why I say to Kelvin Davis it is utterly disingenuous of him to suggest that either they should be teaching according to national standards as are the children in the other schools or we have to close them down.Partnership schools are about picking up young people many of them in their secondary school years who have no foundation whatsoever and giving them skills self-belief self-esteem an awareness of culture and the ability to start to grasp how an education can turn them around. The members on both sides of the House can perhaps throw back and forth comments about ideological dogma and all the rest of it but I say as passionately as I can to the Government—and I look at people like Mr O'Connor who with his background in the Police Association and a lifetime in the service I deeply respect. He must know what I'm talking about. He must understand that for those young people this is an opportunity for them not to fall foul of the law and to end up in our criminal justice system and I plead with him to go back to his colleagues and say Think again."I'm aware of the fact that there are others who want to take a call. Can I just close by saying that national standards are not a cure-all they're not the whole picture but they do provide parents with vital information. So when Mrs Martin challenged us to tell us about those constituents who are saying "Oh we shouldn't stop it" I can tell her that I remember talking to many constituents who said if only they had known 10 years ago before the introduction of national standards how their children were getting on in the classrooms around the country particularly in literacy and numeracy which are the absolute foundation for any successful education they would have taken action. But they didn't have the tools they didn't feel they had the wherewithal to go to the schools and say "Well your reporting tells me things are going quite well but actually it's not telling me how my child is achieving in literacy and numeracy" and now it's too late.Again I say to the members opposite don't take away from our young people the opportunity for their parents and caregivers to show that basic concern for the welfare and the achievement of their children by taking away something that helps to measure it something that gives them the chance to find out either that it's going well and this is great they can move on to the next level or that it's not going well enough and remedial attention is required.So I return to the point I started with. This is a cruel ideological bill. It is indefensible. I plead with the Government members to turn back. It is going to have a very negative impact on the children they should be representing in this Parliament."