Strange JamieJAMIE STRANGE (Labour): I'd like the members to picture a bustling urban New Zealand school. A teacher stands at the front of the class of seven-year-old children. All of a sudden a hot air balloon lands on the school field outside the window. The students rush to have a look. However the teacher burdened and exhausted by a regime of constant testing re-testing and assessment calls the children back to the mat and continues teaching to a prescribed standardised test.During the past nine years primary school teachers have felt more like administrators than teachers. There was no opportunity to embrace teaching moments and this was primarily caused by two things: number one national standards; and number two a lack of trust in our teaching professionals.However a new day has dawned. Grey skies have parted allowing the sun to once again shine on our education system. This week the Government ended the failed experiment that was national standards. Every parent grandparent teacher and child will have an extra Christmas present under their tree this year. There will be a small box and inside that box will be a note and that note will say We will once again put children at the heart of our education system."Our teachers are once again being valued and trusted and respected as the teaching professionals that they are. We have a world-class curriculum. Now teachers will be empowered to get on with teaching the full breadth of it.What do parents want? We've heard from the other side of the House that parents want national standards—that parents have always wanted it. Let's have a look at that. What do parents want? The parents I speak to—and I spent six years as a teacher—told me they wanted a diverse engaging education system—a diverse engaging education system—and national standards does not deliver this. In fact it does the opposite. It narrows the curriculum.How do we know that parents want this kind of education system? We know this because in 2012 the National Government talked about removing specialist subjects from intermediate schools and en masse—am I right Mr Hipkins?—the parents rose up and said "We do not want to lose the specialist subjects from intermediate schools." So we know that parents want a diverse education system and that's what we will deliver.I believe that national standards had a number of issues. And it's incredibly exciting to say the word "had"—to talk about national standards in the past tense. Number one as I said before it narrowed the curriculum. It placed extra emphasis on literacy and numeracy to the detriment of other subjects. The last Government were all about literacy numeracy and narrowing our world-class curriculum—areas like the arts which promote creativity teamwork discipline and problem solving were cast aside. Our schooling system must instil a belief in what young people can achieve then give them the tools to be all they can be.National standards promoted dishonesty from teachers and principals. I personally know of teachers who fudged the data in order to make it look like they were doing a good job. And this was done out of pressure to show that they are moving their students. A principal once told me that she fudged her school's national standards reports. After feeling somewhat guilty she confessed at a meeting of other principals what she'd done. And to her surprise the majority of the other principals said "We do the same thing." So national standards—it wasn't standard and it wasn't national as we've heard a lot of times.People become teachers because of a passion for wanting to inspire and shape the next generation. When they're forced to teach only a small percentage of our world-class curriculum it's no wonder they feel discouraged and disillusioned. National standards are not holistic. With testing being done only on literacy and numeracy they're ignoring the whole person—for example they did not take into account any lack of family support whether a student's stomach was full whether they're sleeping well. Instead it was a very specific assessment of their literacy and numeracy skills. Then on their school report they were crudely labelled as either a failure or a success. Ninety percent of an iceberg is under the water. National standards was looking at that little shiny bit on top and judging the iceberg just by that.I'm proud to be part of a Government that has scrapped national standards. My teaching colleagues for years and years have been telling me "Please get rid of them." and finally we've done it. Thank you Mr Speaker."