Tinetti JanHon JAN TINETTI (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. One of my favourite parts of this role—and I'm sure most people in this House's favourite parts of this role—is actually going out and visiting our schools and our early childhood centres seeing the wonderful young people that we have in this country but also our wonderful education workforce and how amazing those teachers are. I know often people say to me I couldn't do that job" and I just know how difficult it is. It is a really really tough job.Lately I've been really concerned as I've been going around schools—and just in the last week I've been in both Dunedin and Auckland schools talking with principals and talking with teachers. One of my biggest concerns is that they feel unsure where things are going. They say "We hear things in the media but we're not really certain when those announcements are hitting us because nobody tells us what's going on. We learn about initiatives in the media." Take for example the Minister of Education talking on The AM Show on Friday when she let it be known that she was cutting reading recovery—thousands of jobs gone overnight; people heard about it in the media. On Monday they got official confirmation of that. That's a really odd way to consult with the sector—that we would actually go through the media to tell them that their job is on the line and then consult with them three days later. I've never heard about that happening within education before but that's the sort of way that things happen at the moment—that this Government is not consulting with schools or with educators about what is most important to them.Then we hear that that there will be no cuts to the front line. Schools are already seeing those cuts impacting upon them. The cuts that have been announced in education are already making an impact on them. When this Government says they are not going to cut the front line they really are cutting at the front line. Take for example when the ministry said "We are no longer going to have student assessment function practitioners." Well if that's not front line I don't know what is particularly when it says on a ministry website "Student assessment function practitioners are based within region as front-line staff to support schools and kura." So they're going against what's on the ministry's website—what already has been identified as front-line staff. Maybe this Government doesn't understand what "front line" means in education.Something else that schools have been saying to me over the last few months is "We're confused about what the priorities are. What is the subtext of what that means?" Last week we heard about education priorities that this Government and the Minister announced. There were six priorities. What do they mean? A prescribed content-heavy syllabus for core compulsory subjects—think the 1990s. The Minister talks about the 1990s as though it's the nirvana of education. Well I can tell you that there were a high number of young people in the 1990s for whom the curriculum completely failed absolutely failed. In those classrooms we did not have the diversity that exists now and it seems that those young people who come from diverse backgrounds are being totally ignored by this Government.There is minimal if any focus on schools. There is a focus on singular silver bullet initiatives such as structured literacy and teacher-led standard mathematics modules. Now don't get me wrong I love structured literacy. I love the results of the structured literacy that our Government introduced under the better structured literacy in the junior years—after we introduced that. I'm always really interested in how the other side of the House has so many arguments about that but go back and read the history of what happened there and you will see that it was us that introduced that programme and even your own Minister says that. So you're arguing with your own Minister if you want to argue that point.But there is no such thing as a silver bullet in education; there are professionals that we need to support. It's those professionals as our educators that we need to ensure have the skills to be able to determine the best way to teach for those young people that sit in front of them. Everything else that these priorities relate to are things such as compulsory standardised testing with a portfolio assessment or exam at year 6. That didn't work out last time with national standards; it won't work this time. Thank you."