Parmar Parmjeet; Seymour DavidDr PARMJEET PARMAR (ACT): Thank you Mr Chair for this opportunity. I would also like to join my colleagues in thanking all the members of the Education and Workforce Committee and the chair and of course all the Ministers as well. My question is to the Associate Minister of Education.During the annual reviews we discussed expanding educational options and the Minister talked about bringing back charter schools. I'm quite keen to understand from the Minister how that work programme to bring in charter schools is looking what progress has been made so far and what makes the Minister so confident about charter schools—that charter schools will be able to help students that are at risk. Thank you.Hon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Education): I thank the member Dr Parmjeet Parmar for the question. We certainly did discuss the reintroduction of charter schools at the select committee hearing. I'm very happy to expand on how that work is going and why the Government believes that charter schools are such an important policy to get disadvantaged kids in New Zealand more engaged in education.First of all I can tell the member that along with Minister Stanford and Cabinet colleagues we've been working very quickly to get the basic ideas around policy decisions around charter schools made. And we're doing that in order that we can pass legislation and have the first charter schools open in term one 2025. That is our goal. It will happen fast and it will happen bigger than it has happened previously.Second of all I can tell the member that we will be having two types. There will be those that people are more familiar with from the last time New Zealand had charter schools—those that are new schools started up specifically often with an insight into how to engage children in that community in education that is not available from within the sinecure of the Ministry of Education. We have to go out to the community to find the knowledge to engage the community. But there will also be charter schools which used to be State schools that have converted to charter school status for the reason that they want also to be free to use their autonomy to expand in response to demand to shrink when demand for their education shrinks but most importantly to determine how they run their school inside their walls. And critically they're contracted and accountable for school achievement and school attendance.In many respects you could say in recent years we have got the balance wrong with New Zealand education policy: enormous amounts of micromanagement of what shape classroom they have and how they operate under the Common Practice Model but almost no accountability for whether students actually attend and actually achieve. The charter school policy flips that script and also I hope will solve several key problems with the Tomorrow's Schools model: that we're not very good at making sure schools fail when they fail their students and we're not very good at making sure that schools scale when they clearly have something positive to offer. Failing and scaling: our model is not very good at it. But charter schools will ensure that if a school is not reaching its targets for kids showing up and getting valuable knowledge transmitted from one generation to the next then we're going to find someone else to do a better job.CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): My apologies to the Minister—Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: Not a problem Mr Chair. I was very grateful for the opportunity.CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members the committee is now suspended for the valedictory statement of the Hon James Shaw in accordance with a determination of the Business Committee.House resumed.