Bates Carl; Stanford EricaCARL BATES (National—Whanganui): Thank you Mr Chair. First of all can I just acknowledge my colleagues on the Education and Workforce Committee and the huge amount of work done by them led by our chair. Thank you for the introduction of this annual review to the committee. It was a great opportunity to highlight a huge amount of the positive work being done in the sector during the period but also to spotlight the various challenges that were recognised during the annual review period of 2022 and 2023. As I noted in several of the hearings as a parent of a five-year-old and a nearly two-year-old coming into the education sector it gives some great confidence that these challenges have been spotlit and are being addressed by the current Government. My question however for the Minister of Education is: what student achievement did you note from the Better Start literacy report? Thank you Mr Chair.Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education): Thank you to the member Carl Bates for his question. I've been talking a lot about structured literacy for a long time now. For those of you who are watching at home or up in the gallery—you're not here to see me you're here to see someone else; I know that—structured literacy—Hon David Seymour: Take the chance.Hon ERICA STANFORD: —look—maybe. Structured literacy at its core is as we all know phonics but it's so much more. It is the most useful way of teaching children to learn to read. We know that about 90 percent of kids learn to read using structured literacy. To be fair to the previous Government I think they started to acknowledge that and did invest in structured literacy and I want to give credit to them for doing that because the Better Start Literacy Approach (BSLA) was brought in under the previous Government. Unfortunately we got into this weird argument of Maybe we'll use that maybe we'll use something else." I know that Jan Tinetti the previous Minister is clearly on the side of structured literacy as well—we've had those conversations; we know that that's how children learn to read. But what we see from the evidence that has been born out of the structured literacy approach under the Better Start Literacy Approach is that children gain so many levels of reading in such a short period of time. I was just looking at the Better Start Literacy Approach it's seen an 87 to 96 percent success rate of students reaching the expected level for their year group. I mean it's phenomenal—just in 10 weeks you can raise children's reading levels up so many levels.But I want to give a case—because I was talking just recently to the principal of Maramarua School. Now they have a role of 122 children; 40 percent are Māori students. They implemented structured literacy in 2021 and in 2021 about 60 percent of the kids at school were below or well below their expected reading level; after a couple of years of structured literacy 60 percent were at or above. But I want to talk about those Māori learners because from our Government's perspective we have so much work to do in closing that equity gap. We know that our tamariki Māori in terms of their reading writing and mathematics need so much more support. I want to give you the example of the Māori students at Maramarua School because in 2021 37 percent of Māori learners were at or above the curriculum level for reading but by the end of 2023 68 percent were.I recall talking to Regan Orr the principal of Central Normal School in Palmerston North where he said that after a couple of years for the first time in the school's history their Māori learners were reading at the same level as all of the other children. It's those stories and that evidence the BSLA data that shows us that this is going to be the single greatest tool that we have to raise in literacy in this country. We know that early literacy and being proficient in reading and writing will unlock all of those other areas of the curriculum. It's so important we get 80 percent of our kids to curriculum by the time they finish intermediate so that they can go on to experience success at high school go on to get an NCEA qualification and go on to live the life they want. This is where it all starts.I have to acknowledge the previous Government's role in bringing in literacy and numeracy co-requisites at high school. It showed us that so many of our kids can't read write and do maths at a basic level. But unfortunately that just tells us that we've got a problem. The solution lies in getting in really early. This is where we really missed a trick in the last six years: embedding structured literacy in every single classroom in this country from year one. That is the goal of this Government: to make sure that every single child learns to read using structured literacy. Because the alternative whole word or balanced approach teaches kids the habits of poor readers. Look at the picture guess the word read the whole sentence and think about the context—those are the habits of poor readers. The habits of good readers are sounding out the word looking at the letters sounding them out decoding the word.We know that the greatest results will be for those kids who come from homes where they have no resources to help because wealthy homes will do after-school reading—their parents educated parents will read to them after school because they don't hold down three jobs each. Those kids who come from low socio-economic homes are the ones who will benefit the most from this because we know that 90 percent of our kids will learn to read using this and we are deeply committed to embedding it in every single school in this country."