Martin TraceyHon TRACEY MARTIN (Associate Minister of Education): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Let's just start with cohort entry. So yes that's quite right—the members opposite are quite right—this Government is undoing what the previous Government did.Last night I referred to the regulatory impact statement that was around the implementation of cohort entry. It was provided to the select committee at that time on 5 May 2016. I believe that last night the Opposition said there had been 18 submissions on the amendment bill No. 2—the bill we're discussing now—16 unique submissions two that had been done twice. There were 1852 submissions received on the amendment bill No. 1—1852 New Zealanders submitted on the things that the previous Government was going to put in. Seventy-nine percent of those submitters disagreed with the lowering of the starting age. Did the Government of the day—the National Government—listen at all to those submitters? No they did not. Did the Government of the day—the National Government—listen to the expert advisory panel they had put together? No they did not—no they did not.Here is the regulatory impact statement on the implementation of cohort entry from 5 May 2016. Here is part of what is in that statement: there is an emerging risk … to an increase in government expenditure due to children spending longer in early childhood education (ECE) … In terms of ECE costs we estimate that the value of the saving"—of option D the option chosen by the previous Government and the option we are undoing today—show a saving of ECE money of $11 million. This was not about children. This was never about children. I would urge the members of the Opposition to go and talk to the Brainwave Trust to go and talk to them about the research that they have done about the importance of children being children for as long as they can.I want to now pick up on the concept that we have; it's just been articulated by the member who just resumed her seat. Last night Simeon Brown raved against the requirement that private schools have to be safe both physically and mentally and around the emotional well-being of our students. He raved against it. We've just had Denise Lee take her seat saying that it was the deliberate burdening of private schools. Mr Brown last night said "Where is your evidence? Where is your evidence?" Ms Lee has just articulated that she has literally no idea why that's there. Can I please read from the departmental briefing to the select committee that Ms Lee sits on?The departmental briefing to the select committee that Ms Lee sits on—which apparently she may not have read because she doesn't realise this is in it—says that in the past three years there have been at least eight complaints to the Ministry of Education relating to student safety in private schools. There has been one serious incident where significant concern about the safety of students at a private school was identified. The briefing note reads: "significant concerns about the safety of students at a private school were identified ERO has raised concerns about health and safety matters at the private school over a number of years. The school had continued to meet the registration criteria over this time. Following an incident where a student was seriously injured a multi-agency investigation (involving the Ministry of Education New Zealand Police and Oranga Tamariki) also found further cause for concern about the physical and emotional safety of students at the school."Now I'm not sure—does Mr Brown sit on the select committee?Hon Members: Yes.Hon TRACEY MARTIN: But Mr Brown asked for evidence. Mr Brown last night asked for evidence of why we would be wanting to bring private schools to be safe places for our children. Ms Lee said that she understood there was no reason to do this but that it was a deliberate burdening of private schools. I am highly concerned for what is happening on the Opposition benches of that particular select committee.Let's talk about the communities of online learning. Let's just go back to what is the reality of this situation and why literally there needs to be nothing created. Let's remember that the communities of online learning have not started. Nothing has started. The Virtual Learning Network has not had any contract under the community of online learning because they literally haven't started. How long has the Virtual Learning Network been doing what the Virtual Learning Network does? I'm going to say this too. I find it fascinating that Ms Lee mentioned the Khan Academy—the Khan Academy—and Ms Lee sort of pooh-poohed that the Government would think about the Khan Academy. The Khan Academy was the argument the previous Government used for charter schools! The Khan Academy was brought over—I'm fairly confident they were brought over here. Simon Bridges I believe was sitting on the select committee—or he subbed in or something—at the time that they came to explain Flip learning and how children don't literally need to go to school; they can just go and be on the computer and should they need to find an answer somewhere there'd be a "teacherery" sort of an adult around. They justified charter schools with the Khan Academy. Boy how times change. That's all I can say.Communities of online learning were never needed in the way that they were implemented. That is the reality. There are communities of online learning now. The Virtual Learning Network is one of them. They are currently working. What was needed and here is the thing was a funding model to support them. What was needed was the fact that schools had to take either from their operations grant or they needed to provide a teacher for a point 2 or whatever to trade off against those classes. So did the last Government decide to fund communities of online learning? No they did not. No they did not. They didn't provide any funding model for it. They decided to privatise it. So rather than support the current schools that are actually in NorthNet and HarbourNet and using the Virtual Learning Network they decided to privatise it. One of the other reasons they wanted to move to a community of online learning was around Te Kura which is the correspondence school. It now has this enormous role. Why does Te Kura have this enormous role? Because too many of our children are being put out of our schools and placed on Te Kura. Too many of our children are not being supported well enough for their learning needs inside our school and are being excluded and yet the previous Government even seeing those numbers starting to rise made no attempt to actually better resource alternative learning—for example alternative education. Not a dickie bird—haven't had a substantial rise in any of their income for a large number of years.So people need to calm down. Our children will continue to learn online. There will be numbers of students who will be Skyping out and at Mahurangi College for example we Skyped out around about 15 students. One particular student level 3 Te Reo Māori but wanted to make sure that that was the dialect of her particular iwi so we Skyped her into the East Coast.There is a great capacity inside of this part of the education system and this Government will literally work with the education system to create what that is because the previous Government did not. They did not consult and I find it interesting that Ms Lee again talks about one submitter who was not asked their opinion and therefore this Government didn't take what they wanted to be the case into account when 1852 people submitted when these things were put into place and no school no State school—because Ms Whalley will tell you that they are a school and their schools were consulted and so on. So I'll give the Government this. They went out to those that they wanted to who would give them the answer that they wanted and then that was who they consulted with. But the rest of the education sector did not want communities of online learning. What they wanted was the financial resourcing to support them to expand what they already had perhaps create a staffing component called a mentor teacher because it's very difficult for those students to stay focused and self-moderated and self-motivated when they are doing Skype learning. It is one of the challenges and one of the reasons why what that previous Government did put in place would have been a disaster."