4. Question No. 4—EducationKIERAN McANULTY (Labour) to the Minister of EducationQuestion No. 4—Education4. KIERAN McANULTY (Labour) to the Minister of Education: What steps has the Government taken to ensure children and young people in early childhood education and schools can continue to learn from home while COVID-19 containment and elimination measures remain in place?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I'm very pleased to say that the education sector has been rising to the challenge of COVID-19. The Ministry of Education worked with schools and early learning services to quickly assess the need for additional technological support including additional modems internet connections and devices. The Ministry of Education ordered routers modems and devices in so far as the market is able to deliver them—we do have a supply constraint there. We've worked with telecommunications providers to remove data caps for up to six months so that households can access the broadband connectivity to stream content. As of Friday 24 April we have sent out 170000 hard packs of materials—that's printed materials and other equipment students need to learn from home—and of course we have got two learn-from-home TV channels up and running one in English and one in Te Reo Māori.Kieran McAnulty: How many devices modems and hard packs has the Government delivered to New Zealand homes to date while in level 4 and now level 3?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Around 149500 of the hard packs of materials were distributed during the level 4 lockdown. Further distribution has continued this week so that we're now up to that 170000-plus figure. Overall 10900 packs have been distributed to early learning and 120000 packs for students studying in years 1 to 10. We have 6391 packs so far distributed to those studying for NCEA—that number is the one that has taken the longest to grow and it is now increasing much more rapidly. Around 32500 of the packs that have been sent out are in Māori language Māori medium. And in terms of devices 5338 devices have been distributed by the Ministry of Education—that's on top of the roughly 12000 devices that have been distributed by schools—7595 modems have been distributed and our efforts to get that technology out to people continue.Kieran McAnulty: How many people have tuned into the Home Learning Television channels?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: It'd be fair to say that I've been heartened by the number of people who have been watching the home learning channel. It's good to see familiar faces—Suzy Cato Jason Gunn Michelle Dickinson among others—fronting TV shows.Hon Member: Bring back Jacqui!Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Ha ha! No there are no plans to bring back Play School.SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! Bring back Ms Dean.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I am pleased to say that last Thursday—so overall we've had about a million people tuning into the learning from home TV channels. Last Thursday we had 150000 New Zealand viewers tune into the TVNZ home learning channel but a further 7000 watched it via live stream and of course more people are also watching it using the on-demand platforms.Kieran McAnulty: What support is being provided to assist schools to set up and make the best use of distance learning?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: It is an enormous challenge to get the entire education system working on a distance learning platform in such a short space of time. Around 800 or around a third of schools and kura have been accessing professional learning and development for online learning so that they can sharpen up their skills around that. We've established the connected learning service which has got a help desk and also provides additional support to teachers as they set themselves up for online learning and alongside this we're supporting teachers with online learning resources and advice is being made available in both English medium and Māori medium learning from home websites.