Hipkins ChrisHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Thank you very much Madam Chair. I've listened very carefully through this debate and I've been waiting to hear the National Party defend their record in Government—talk about all of the things that they did when they were in Government in the education portfolio because this after all is the annual review of their last year in Government. And yet nothing—nothing—from them about what they did in the education portfolio when they were in Government because they cannot find one single achievement to trumpet during their time in Government.Let's run through a few of the things that they might've mentioned had they talked about their own track record in Government. They could start at the beginning with the funding freeze for early childhood education that existed for almost all of the nine years they were in Government. The select committee report makes it clear that even the National members think that the drive to increase participation has been at the expense of quality. Even the National members on the committee agreed with that sentiment expressed in the select committee's report. So they could talk about that.They could talk about New Zealand's plunge down the international rankings when it comes to literacy and numeracy. Perhaps they could mention that and explain why despite all of their hollow rhetoric it is that kids' reading writing and maths in New Zealand today is worse than it was when they became Government 10 years ago. They can't explain that. I'm not surprised they don't want to talk about that.They could talk about the unfunded growth in our schools—the number of kids who are in overcrowded classes because for nearly a decade the previous Government didn't invest enough money in making sure that schools were being funded to cope with growth. They could talk about Novopay. We all remember Novopay. They could talk about their plans to have bigger class sizes—their grand plan to improve educational quality by jamming more kids into every class.They could talk about the shambolic way they handled the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake and the school reorganisation there. They could talk about their drive to close down special residential schools despite a judge telling them that they were negligent in doing so. They could talk about the millions of dollars they've poured into communities of learning for very little educational gain. Funnily enough they don't want to talk about those things because that characterises their track record when they were in Government.But it goes on. They could've talked about the state of the polytech sector. Ah! Now there's a good one for them to talk about. They could talk about that. Eight out of the 16 polytechs in New Zealand had a decline in their enrolments of greater than 9 percent—greater than 9 percent. Why don't they want to talk about that?We've got a crisis when it comes to a skilled workforce in the trades and they don't even want to talk about it—just pretend that it's not happening because it's all happened under their watch. We have a critical shortage of tradespeople and instead they were running the polytech sector into the ground. We've already seen one of them go belly-up completely and some of the others are in serious financial difficulty and they turned a blind eye to that. Why don't they want to talk about that during the annual review process? Because all of these things happened under their watch. All of these things could've been covered in the annual review and should've been covered in the annual review but they don't want to talk about that.They do want to talk about charter schools—their one crowning achievement. And they talk about priority learners quite a bit. Well I have got a message to the members opposite. For this Government every learner is a priority learner. I want them to go out to the public and tell the parents of kids who they have decided are not priority learners why they don't think that their child is a priority learner. Go and tell that to those children's parents and declare to them why the National Party has decreed that their child is not a priority learner.On this side of the House every child is a priority learner. Every school will be a great school. Every child will have the opportunity to achieve to their full potential. We're not simply going to draw a little circle or a little box around a group of children and say that they are priority learners and therefore we should only focus on them. We want every child to be achieving to their full potential.Much has been said about the removal of national standards and the National Party running round like Chicken Little saying How will we know whether kids are achieving without national standards? How will we know whether the education system is doing very well? How will we cope if we don't have a nationally standardised measure of a child's progress?" Well guess what? National standards never supplied that. National standards were not national nor standard and they didn't provide a measure of a child's progress. That's why this Government is very proud to have removed them.Reports relevant to the Education Sector noted."