Tinetti JanJAN TINETTI (Labour): I'm absolutely delighted to be standing here today in the general debate because I'm really excited about our announcements that were made yesterday on the reform of Tomorrow's Schools.Yesterday was a great day for our education system; one I haven't seen and been so excited about since I started teaching in 1990. That's 30 years of the Tomorrow's Schools system that I have been involved in in education. The reform is exciting. It's a major transformative change and the sector is excited. The feedback that I've personally had has been that of positivity. The feedback that I've read about in the public settings has been really exciting.As I've said I worked within that system for all of that time and the last nine years before I came into Parliament were the hardest nine years that I experienced over that time. There were persistent disparities—yes caused slightly by the Tomorrow's Schools system but really exacerbated by the previous regime. Schools were often isolated and unable to access adequate networks of support. I can remember when I first became a principal in 1996. At that time I had wonderful support. Despite what people might say we were actually really well supported in our first years as principals and that was before the first-time principal support programmes came in. We had rural advisers who used to visit us quite often. What happened under the last regime? Those advisers were wiped completely. I never saw those people or any advisory people that would come to me and say Are you OK? Can we support you? How can we support you?" There was a lack of trust in the system that grew over time. But I don't want to actually dwell on the negative; I want to dwell on the positive here this afternoon of what is going on. This is a really exciting time in education. I am really excited to be part of a team that's implementing those changes. We have actually implemented so much already. We've implemented more funding into schools. Despite how the Opposition want to put it we are putting more funding into schools. We're actually increasing that funding to deciles 1 to 7 schools so that they don't need to ask for donations any longer. We know it's exam time at the moment. This is the first time that there's going to be support for around those 168000 students because they don't have to pay NCEA fees any longer—a great support to those parents. Next year we start the free school lunch programme. How exciting is that? I do want to do a big shout-out—I was in Invercargill last week and saw Koha Kai down there and their amazing set-up for school lunches that they do. Those schools that have been told that they will be in the next tranche of the free school lunches already are really really excited because that means that a system that works for them is going to be well-supported by this Government and those children won't be going to school hungry any longer. That's fantastic and it's exciting.We've heard it here this afternoon—we've put heaps more money into property. I can't tell you the stresses that I used to have as a school principal over property. I wondered where I would get the next lot of support from as I watched those school buildings falling down around me. I was trying to make that extra dollar go a lot further and it never ever stretched because I didn't have that opportunity to make more money. It is really interesting when we hear from the other side and they talk about early childhood—you know "These teachers are in a tough way." Yes they are but that's caused because over the nine years of that previous Government they didn't get a funding increase at all. In fact there was a freeze on their core funding for nine years. This Government has put the first lot of money back into the core funding again and the first increase back into that core funding.Really important that we see early childhood as being really important. We heard over there about the fact that we haven't quite implemented the 100 percent qualified target. Who got rid of it in the first place? That was the previous Government that got rid of that target. We will get there. We have done so much already. We have got lots more to do and I am really really excited that we are well and truly on our way."