Kaye NikkiHon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): I just want to make a couple of points in response to the Minister of Education's comments. The first point is I would like the Minister to consider releasing to the people of New Zealand the time line that he gave us around that Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that went into the select committee. The reality is our committee ended up scrapping with other Labour members to be able to even let the partnership schools know that this SOP had been put into the committee. So that's the first point. It was completely rushed it was something that was going to affect the lives of staff members and it was going to affect the way that these schools ran. The process was absolutely appalling and I challenge the Minister to release that time line so that New Zealanders can actually see exactly what that process was.The second thing is I completely object to the characterisation that the Minister has raised that somehow on this side of the Chamber we are trashing the designated character schools. We are not doing that. We are pointing out that under the model that there was in terms of partnership schools it was a model that was successful. It was successful. We know that because there was an independent evaluation by Martin Jenkins—there were several reports—and it not only showed there were great things happening in terms of children with complex needs; it showed a lift in achievement with many of these children. It showed incredibly good things in terms of both student achievement and staff morale. So our point is we can stand in this House and say that model was working and that model was successful and on the other hand we can say we are very hopeful for the designated character schools but acknowledge exactly what many of these schools have said in the select committee which is that they won't have the flexibility of funding they won't have the flexibility of teaching resources and they won't have the flexibility of management. We are absolutely capable of distinguishing between what was a great model and then what is a model that is going to be very different for these schools. So I absolutely object to the member characterising that somehow we are trashing the designated character schools because we are not doing that.The third point that I want to raise is around this issue of nationwide achievement. Again the question I have for the Minister is that—it is correct that he put through a change to the guidelines around national standards last year. He did not consult with a million parents on that. He did that last year before this legislation came through the House. That is an absolute fact. It is an absolute fact.The second point that I want to make is that he has not clearly articulated and that's why he's got an advisory group—one of the many I think there are 15 now—that is looking at how they might have additional reporting. He has not put a system of replacement in there. Again we have said we were quite happy to move to a system of progression. I know this because I put a Cabinet paper through that said Let's move from national standards to a system of progression." But do you know what we acknowledged? We acknowledged several things. Firstly in order to be able to support schools and not have chaos—I've received the many emails from principals and teachers around New Zealand some of which think they'll still keep national standards some of which don't know exactly what their system will be in the future but they know that parents want national standards—you need to transition a system through. So the smart thing to do would have been to do what that Cabinet paper said last year which is to invest the tens of millions of dollars in ensuring that the progress and consistency tool was up to scratch to invest in other curriculum resources and to agree with the National Party or other people in Parliament on what a decent system of reporting would be. That would have been the intelligent way to go about this but also the thing that would have meant that many other teachers and parents out there could have had confidence in some kind of cross-party agreement around parental reporting. Instead what the Minister did was he scrapped national standards via the advisory guideline last year and this legislation is cleaning that up and it's been a sham of a select committee process when he knows that that decision was made last year.So I did want to address those three issues: that issue of the fact that National are very supportive of what designated character schools are doing but we do believe the partnership school model was very successful; secondly we absolutely stand by our position that is there needs to be accountability around parental reporting and the data and the nationwide picture of achievement; and thirdly we totally object to the process that that Minister created around the select committee and the SOP because it affects a whole lot of schools."