Davis KelvinHon KELVIN DAVIS (Associate Minister of Education): Thank you Madam Chair. Just in the last contribution we heard I'm pretty sure I heard the member David Seymour say that Māori and Pacific Island achievement is declining. I'm pretty sure I heard that and I'm sure I heard him repeat it a couple of times and that there is an indictment on the previous Government and their education policies. For him to stand there and say that Māori and Pacific Island achievement is declining—Hon Nikki Kaye: 54 to 74 percent NCEA level 2.Hon KELVIN DAVIS: —is the fault of that member over there who's pointing her finger and spouting off. How can she possibly stand there and defend the record of her Government when she's got her own mate over there from the ACT Party standing up and saying that Māori and Pacific achievement is declining?Now it's been 10 years since I was a school principal but when I started in 2001 at Kaitāia Intermediate School we did some testing and we found that 4 percent—4 percent—of our school population were writing at a level that we believed was acceptable. Over seven years we got that percentage up to 80 percent so from 96 percent failure to—let's admit it—20 percent failure which I'm not proud of. But when you hear the member over there speaking—and I'm sorry that I don't know her name—you'd think that there was only one type of school that actually addressed these issues when in fact every single school in New Zealand is doing their darnedest to make sure students achieve. You would think that there was only one type of school and every other school—so basically 99.999 percent of other schools—in New Zealand was failing when they're not. We've got any number of schools that are decile 1 2 or 3 who are teaching those hard-to-teach students and making them successful. Kaitāia Intermediate School was one of those schools well before national standards were even created.I remember in 2007 I had the then MP for Northland the Hon John Carter come into my office and say Kelvin Kelvin when National become Government guess what? We're going to eliminate paperwork." Well how did that go for all the principals and teachers in all the schools in New Zealand because if I thought it was hard enough in 2007 as a principal apparently the paperwork quadrupled overnight when the National Government came in.What happened? They absolutely devastated the teaching workforce to the extent that people don't want to be teachers any more. There is a teacher shortage in New Zealand and it's entirely the fault of the National Government. There's overcrowding in schools and that's entirely the fault of the previous National Government—214 schools were over capacity and a further 488 schools at risk of becoming overcrowded. So what happened? Teachers had to teach in gymnasiums in libraries and in staffrooms and that is not the best for learning. There's a decline in tertiary participation from 2010 to 2015; it dropped from 40 percent to 35 percent.And of course national standards we've heard about them—how National just came along and drew this arbitrary line in the sand and said "Everybody who gets over that line is successful; anyone who doesn't get over that line in terms of their achievement is a failure." What happens is that you have those schools where many kids start just under the line and with next to no effort they get over the line so those schools are doing well. Normally they're decile 10 schools whereas the lower-decile schools start from way down low. Teachers work work work work work and they raise kids any number of levels but still don't necessarily get them over the line. They're said to be failing.It's lucky that we have in the Hon Chris Hipkins probably the brightest and most productive Minister of Education in the last 10 years. He's supporting New Zealanders into tertiary education. We don't want cost to be a barrier to people achieving at post-secondary. Look we're reviewing our education system. We've announced a once-in-30-years opportunity to shape the way our schools are led. I was a beginning teacher in 1988-89 when Tomorrow's Schools was introduced. Things have changed a lot in that time and it's important that we have a new look at the system. And of course as I've said national standards are gone—thank goodness for that."