Belich CamillaEducationCAMILLA BELICH (Chairperson of the Education and Workforce Committee): Thank you Mr Chair. It's a pleasure to take a call in this Estimates debate for Vote Education as chair of the Education and Workforce Committee. We did have the Minister come and have a hearing with us at the Education and Workforce Committee to cover the three votes that this Estimates covers: Vote Education Vote Education Review Office and Vote Tertiary Education.Now this is a significant Estimate for the Government in terms of the amount of money that this Estimate seeks. I think the overall amount for the three votes is $21.5 billion which is a considerable amount of money. But as you will see I'm sure through the next wee while as we look at what's covered in the Estimates it's of incredible importance to New Zealand.So we looked at three major areas at the Education and Workforce Committee and they were: early childhood compulsory sector and tertiary education. I thought it might be helpful to the committee as part of this debate in my role of going through this report to just outline some of the summaries of the appropriations that are sought under these Estimates for Vote Education.So we had a total of $11586 million for educational services primarily for schools including teacher salaries in early learning providers. And this is aside from teacher salaries school operation grants early learning subsidies and other significant costs including curriculum support and professional development in schools and early learning sectors and school transport services. A total of nearly $3578 million for services to the Ministry of Education including the delivery of school accommodation including depreciation and capital charge and learning support services being the most significant costs. We had $2004 million for capital expenditure to the Ministry of Education mainly related to school sector properties. And $104 million for other educational services mainly for funding to proprietors of integrated schools. We had $77 million for capital expenditure in schools and $59 million for allowances scholarships and awards for students teachers and trainees. So a significant investment sought in these Estimates by the Government.I thought I would just also go over some of the key comments made during our Estimates hearing in Vote Education. So the first area we looked at was early childhood education. We did cover the significant—over $1 billion—expense into the 20-hours free of early childhood education for two-year-olds which was announced in this year's Budget obviously expanding that 20 free hours to two-year-olds from the current three- to five-year-olds. So that was a significant matter that was discussed during the Estimates. We also looked at school attendance which is a matter which is raised within our committee regularly. And we heard from the Minister on the progress that has been made in that area and also that schools are working hard to increase the attendance of school students. We also heard from the ministry that regular attendance was a foundational aspect for student achievement and that there's been significant progress in schools that had a concerted effort in this area and one that we noted was in Northland.We also looked in the compulsory sector at NCEA and the curriculum. We know that NCEA is being updated and we heard from the Minister on that. Obviously there's expenditure associated with these two curriculum changes. We also heard about some schools opting out of NCEA level 1. I understand that this has always been optional but none the less it was covered in our hearing. We also looked just quickly at upgrading small and remote schools alternative education Pacific and Māori education tertiary student enrolments and funding. We talked about Te Pūkenga we talked about other rogue entities and also immigration settings in relation to education. So overall we covered a wide variety of key issues within the Vote Education area including the significant Estimates made by the Government. I look forward to hearing from the Minister in relation to her thoughts and members' questions on the Estimates as presented to the committee.