Dowie SarahSARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): It is a pleasure to rise and take this call in the education debate for Vote Education for the appropriations for 2016-17. What a worthwhile topic to be talking about as a mother: investing more than $11 billion in education to give our children a platform to build on to gain skills to grow to gain confidence to achieve the successes that they want and their hopes and dreams. I think that that is just such a worthwhile portfolio and I am very very proud that this Government has invested more than $11 billion in education.I want to address some of the rhetoric that Mr Hipkins was talking about with regard to early childhood education (ECE). I have two small children and I must say that I am very very pleased with the early childhood education that they have received. I now have one child in the primary school sector and one child who is still going through the early childhood education system. I am very very pleased that this Government has continued with providing the 20 free hours for early childhood education and that we have in New Zealand a 96 percent participation rate in early childhood education. In Southland that is up at 98 percent because we have a labour participation rate—[Interruption]—Ms Curran that is higher than the national average.So ECE provides a very very good platform for our young children before they move on to their more full education journey. You can choose as a parent what registered provider you want to go to and still obtain those 20 free hours of education. You can go to a playcentre which celebrates more free-play concepts. The children are still learning to explore. They are still learning confidence. They are still building relationships. They are building resilience and they continue to grow. Or you can choose a more formal-type system which I have also encouraged my children in like day care. That is a more structured format. They have mat time. It is more like school. In both situations they have achieved. Their results have been very pleasing and my older child who has gone on to primary school has benefited from the ECE system in New Zealand. We have one of the best education systems in the world. The dream of no matter where you are from as a New Zealander—if you can get into education and you have got the tenacity to learn and do well in your education you can achieve whatever you set your mind to. That dream is alive and well in New Zealand and I am very very pleased with that.I want to talk about the expansion of our social investment model and targeting our at-risk people. The Minister has already talked about this and we know that there is a cohort of people—young students—and that if they are in benefit-dependent families then they are more at risk of not achieving in their schooling career. I want to talk about an example in Invercargill. Invercargill Middle School is a finalist in the Prime Minister's Education Excellence Awards. It has basically shoved deficit learning out the door. Katie Pennicott and the principal there Stan Tiatia got together and they challenged the staff to throw deficit learning out the door. What they have done is they have tailored learning programmes to their students. They decided that if they spent that time tailoring programmes for each individual they knew that that individual would achieve no matter what. They have turned that school around. Children have achieved and they have been recognised for that. I want to congratulate them on those efforts.I also want to talk about the school property investment. We often talk about the bigger centres and say that the bigger centres are growing and that they need more schools and more classrooms and more investment in infrastructure. But in Invercargill Donovan Primary School's roll increased by 64 percent in 11 months due to the fantastic leadership of its principal Mr Peter Hopwood. It has received an extra classroom which will be state of the art. It will be a warm classroom. It will be connected to fibre and it will be very interactive in the children's learning.