Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Madam Chair. I am going to use my call today to speak to an amendment in the name of Nikki Kaye which we are about to table—just to let you know that it's not on there now but we are about to table it if that's OK? It's on its way down—or if not I can just talk generally. I'm going to carry on. The amendment that I'm tabling is in the name of Nikki Kaye and it prevents the amendment to section 5 to 5B of the Education Act 1989 which would change the requirements of cohort entry so that children can only start after they've turned five. The upshot of this change is that potentially thousands of children would start school after their fifth birthday and we on this side of the House are of the opinion that this is changing—well it is—the starting age of New Zealand children by stealth from five to potentially older than five. As we spoke of yesterday it is our opinion that this limits the choice that parents have. The choice that they make to send their child to school in a cohort entry when they are younger than five could be for many reasons. That could be because the early childhood education (ECE) fees are crippling on them that they need to return to work. The mother or father might need to return to work; perhaps they have other children in school or perhaps this child is just ready to start school as they are in so many cases and as in fact my child was when he was four. It could be a combination of many issues. But when we made the changes to introducing cohort entry we actually backed parents and families to make the choice for their children as to when they were ready to start school. Could I just make the point and this is the point that I want to make to the Minister that we already trust parents and families to make a decision around the starting age of their child up to the age of six. So we put that decision in the hands of parents because we trust them and we back them to make the right decision.The changes that the Government are making would restrict obviously any child starting a few weeks earlier than their fifth birthday. So effectively what we're saying to parents is Hey as soon as your child hits five we trust you. We back you to make that decision but a few weeks prior to five well actually we know best. We don't trust you. All of those reasons you might have whether it be financial or that you believe your child is ready—we don't trust you." We're talking about a number of weeks. We're talking here about a number of weeks and we're not trusting parents to make that choice in this current bill in its current form. Yet as soon as they turn 5 no problem at all. There seems to be a real disconnect there. Suddenly at five we're trusting parents where prior to that we're not. I would like the Minister to speak to that.I went back to the Minister's contribution last night to find out what his reasons were for this. I looked at his speech and he talked about the 2015 Advisory Group on Early Learning; where they said that anything younger than five is too early to start. That was the main reasoning that he gave in his speech last night—it wasn't anything else. So I went and I read the report—the whole report—and I found the part that the Minister was referring to when he talks about the advisory group not wanting that. They do say in here that they're adamant that any downward push on the school starting age is undesirable. However that is actually in quite a broader context because if you read the report it says that they are wholly in favour of cohort entry. Then they make the interesting point that actually schools already have the choice should they want to to use Te Whāriki as a tool rather than the New Zealand Curriculum. So what they're basically saying here is actually there's room to mitigate any risk that a school thinks they might have of kids starting younger than five by using a different curriculum—a curriculum that we use in ECE.So there is that ability to mitigate any issues that the Minister might have by allowing schools to go "Hey look we've got this reception class of new entrant kids. We're going to use Te Whāriki rather than the New Zealand Curriculum." And I want to put that to the Minister. I want to say to the Minister that we're trusting parents from the age of five to make their own decision and yet slightly younger than five we're saying to them "Actually the Government knows best." But I would argue with the Minister—and I'd like him to respond to this—that actually there is the room in the curriculum to use a different curriculum for schools to mitigate any potential issues that the Minister or even the school might have. I just want to say to the Minister: why can't we have a compromise here where we allow parents to make that choice? We let schools use that different curriculum to mitigate any potential risks that they feel they might have and put the decision back with parents."