Simmonds Penny; Potaka Tama; Tuiono Teanau; Tinetti JanPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Mr Chair. I wonder if the Minister could tell us about the modelling that has been undertaken for the pay parity and how many early childhood education centres will be worse off by achieving pay parity through impacting other aspects of provision and operations? What vulnerability for under-twos provision has been exposed by that modelling? And also if any disincentives for employing additional inexperienced teachers and teachers in training if a weighted average of all teachers' salaries is used?TAMA POTAKA (National—Hamilton West): Thank you Mr Chair. To the Minister 50 percent of students did not fully attend school in term 4 2022 and 62 percent of Māori students were not attending school in term 4 2022—20 percent of which were labelled as chronically absent. What is an acceptable full attendance rate for the Minister by Māori attendance and when does the Minister consider that such a rate would be achieved?TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you Mr Chair. Just following on that initial question my understanding is that there are different issues with our area schools as opposed to what's happening in our secondary schools and I wonder if the Minister could give us a sense of which set of issues is closer to meeting the satisfaction of the sector. And my second follow-up sort of question is around the early childhood education wider questions that have been canvassed around the House: how will early childhood teachers be better off if early childhood centres opt in to those pay bumps and what would that mean for the cost of living crisis that many of our early childhood teachers are under? Thank you.Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Education): A couple of questions there or three questions to go through. I just wanted to go back to that first one from Ms Simmonds there. We don't have the numbers of early childhood education (ECE) fees that are not regulated outside of the 20 hours' free ECE. They have not been monitored since 2015 those fees so we can all probably have a discussion around that. We are doing some work at the moment and are out for consultation around the pay parity and we're looking at exactly that. We don't want to incentivise one way of employing younger teachers for example and that's exactly why we're going out for that consultation around having a better way of delivering pay parity with our centres. It's really important that we get the sector input into this and it's really important that we don't do to the sector but that we're working with the sector in that respect which is why we're going out for that consultation. There has been a model that has been shown to them. I'm not actually going to presuppose that that's the model that we'll actually even end up with. It is a starting place for our early childhood sector to be able to look at—and I'm just going to jump there and come over to that one around the pay parity at the same time and I'll come back to the attendance one. So the pay parity: we know that when people are paid more it's going to make a difference not just to that person but it's generations that it makes a difference to. It's not just the worker who's in the centre; it's their children and it's their whānau and so that is why it is absolutely important that we get this right and that we do deliver in this area. So that's exactly why we're going out for consultation on the best model for pay parity. You've asked about what's going to make a difference. Again I know that we all want to have this conversation but there are principles of good faith in bargaining and I know that sometimes other people that are involved in that will lean into that space and talk about that and even talk about it in the media. I'm not going to break those principles of good faith. I think that that's something that I hold to very dearly but I'm always open to having those parties talk to me. So I'm very open to having those parties talk to me and I'm also very open if you have heard something as a member to you feeding that information back to me as well. I think that's really important that we keep those communications because you will all have people coming to you who are teachers that will all have certain ideas. I'm very open to listening to those and hearing them just as I was open when I was in the sector to having pathways to be able to let people know what the issues were. I think that's really important. So please I encourage the member: if you've got some ideas please be in contact and we can have those discussions. Coming back to attendance and around there I want to see every young person attending school every single day—that's the bottom line—but we have set targets. We've set targets of getting up to that 70 percent and then getting up to 75 percent of regular attendance. Do I think the measure is absolutely perfect? No I don't because it's inclusive of medical absence as well. We know that our Māori students have probably some of the highest figures there. Now there's possibly a wider issue there that we need to be investigating as well about what the schooling system is doing to meet the needs of Māori. We need to be absolutely looking into that and when I say we" I'm talking about all of us and that's all of the schools etc. as well. But we want to make certain that people feel like they belong in the schooling system and that they are engaged in the schooling system and to do that they have to be proud of their sense of identity within the system too. That goes for all our cultures in this country but particularly our mana whenua."