Stanford Erica; Hipkins ChrisERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): I want to ask the Minister whether or not he thinks that his Associate Minister was speaking out of turn—or made promises or comments sorry that perhaps she shouldn't have on the Jack Tame show Q+A on the weekend. Because she was very clear that Reading Recovery would likely be renamed it would likely be a structured literacy approach and it wouldn't continue as the three cueing system as it is. Now the Minister has just said that the Cabinet hasn't made a decision on that. So could he let us know whether or not the comments that Jan Tinetti made on the weekend can be relied on. The comments that she also made were around the fact that the science and evidence that she had seen meant that there wasn't anything else that she had seen that was anything better than structured literacy when she was asked around this. So the question to the Minister is: why on earth if that is the case if that is what the evidence says as Jan Tinetti has said—why on earth are we having a common practice model that the Minister has said today is going to include everything whatever a teacher wants to put in there? It might be three cueing—if I look at the picture guess from the context have a look at the first letter of the word and try and guess it. If all of the evidence and all of the science around the science of reading points to a decoding of the word to learn to read why is it that this Government don't have the courage to stand up and say This is going to be the common practice model." as Jan Tinetti herself said on Q+A when pushed by Jack Tame this weekend? And isn't it the case that the Minister is just trying to keep everyone happy at the expense of teaching our kids to read in the manner in which the science suggests is the best way to teach them to read?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I reject the member's characterisation of what I have said and what the Minister has said. In terms of my confidence in Jan Tinetti I have absolute confidence in her. She is a longstanding well-respected primary school teacher and principal and of course I trust her to make judgments and to make public statements in her areas of delegation and this is one of them. But I've also made it very clear as the Minister of Education that I will continue to trust the judgments of teachers. When it comes to decisions around how each individual child will best learn the content of the curriculum then ultimately the teacher in the classroom is the person who is best positioned to make that. We need to provide resources and support to teachers so they can do their jobs as effectively as possible. But I am not going to dictate to them—in the way the last Government tried to with national standards—exactly how to do their jobs because it doesn't work. So in terms of the question from Chris Penk around growth in his electorate I don't have the 39 catchment plans that are contained within the National Education Growth Plan with me. But they are probably the best place to look for guidance around where we envisage extra schools are going to be required. I will say to him that one of the most tricky things in this area is we know in many cases exactly where we need additional schools but we won't confirm that publicly until we've actually bought the land because it immediately inflates the value of the available land in that area. The ministry are out in the market all of the time buying land. Sometimes people can't visibly see the progress that they're making until the deal is signed. There's often good reasons for that."