Xu-Nan Lawrence; Stanford EricaDr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you Mr Chair. First of all I would like to reject the Associate Minister's claim before. I was asking a valid question—can he ensure"—and I get called xenophobic. But that's OK; I forgive that member.My question is on neurodivergent and disabled students and this is to the Minister. The ministry said in the report that it's challenging to direct an inclusive education system that meets all learners' needs particularly as demand for extra support grows for neurodivergent and disabled students. Along the same vein the Minister herself has also spoken on the inequality for students in Aotearoa. So my question is two questions. How has the data which you mentioned before that we have on neurodivergent and disabled students been improved upon to address a way that ensures these students have what they need? Also how would the Minister and the ministry plan to achieve our Learning Support Action Plan 2019-2025 when expert roles directly supporting neurodivergent and disabled students and teachers and schools will be lost in the Ministry of Education cuts?Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education): Thank you. I'll address the last part of the question first around the shift in resources from the back end to meet front-end need. As I said in my last contribution it is my intention to make sure that we see more resource at the front end where it is needed the most for our teachers our schools and our kids. That has been the entire thinking behind the process that we've been under and it is very far from the truth. And I believe that as Secretary for Education she has been—it is purely operational but it has been my expectation that those front-line services delivering learning support in our schools to our teachers to our kids will not be affected. In fact many of the roles on the front line or a role in the front line will have many more staff added to in the form of curriculum support people directly interacting with teachers on the front line. So in all of this my intention is to make sure more kids are getting more resources and that we're shifting to make sure that they get those.As I said in my previous contribution as well there were a lot of strategies written by the last Government; not a lot of action. Actually you can see the results. Learning support—much worse. Academic achievement—much worse. Kids going to school—much worse. A lot of glossy documents; not a lot of doing. We are interested in delivery and you will see from us a clear quarterly action plan of delivery. I'm meeting constantly with different groups to get their input to make sure that we're on the right track. You will see from our learning support action plan—I won't call it our action plan; it's the same as the last Government's. But our action plan will include deliverables starting with the fact that schools for example have to fill out a million forms through a million different channels to try and access support. We want to streamline things. We want to make it easier for schools to access support.Initial teacher education: in relation to your other question it's so important that actually when you learn to be a teacher you learn about neurodiversity you learn about dyslexia you learn about trauma-informed teaching. It's really important that we ensure that in initial teacher education our teachers when they enter the workforce have that knowledge. I spoke recently to an educational psychologist—an ed psych as they call them—and she said to me "Look our job would be almost redundant if the stuff that we were training teachers to do they were already taught to do at initial teacher education."We really want to make sure for our neurodiverse kids and our kids who have experienced trauma that when a pre-teacher is going through initial teacher education they are armed with that skill and that knowledge before they start teaching. So you will see quite a bit of work from us in our work in that area to make sure that we are better supporting our teaching workforce to make sure that the outcomes for those children are much better."