Willis Nicola; Hipkins ChrisNICOLA WILLIS (National): I've got a number of more detailed questions for the Minister in the chair the Hon Chris Hipkins but before I run through those I do think it's important that we take a slight step back. I put to the Minister when he's looking at the overall appropriations in this Budget in education it's my hope—it's my expectation—that what he is expecting of his department and of the schools that are operating in New Zealand is that every year they will do a better job than the last in terms of ensuring that New Zealand students are achieving more and are progressing better than they have in the past. So my question that I put to him at the outset is: what is it in this Budget that will actually ensure that more children are achieving at better rates than they have done in previous years? Because surely that is the major measure by which we assess how effective a Budget is. Are children actually going to achieve more in our early learning services and in our schools and our tertiary services in the next year and what is it about this Budget that means that will be the case?I want to start with that high-level picture before I then move to some more specific questions specifically around why there has been a reduction in the Supporting Parenting" appropriation down from $26 million in 2019-2020 to $9 million in 2020-2021. Certainly the parents I speak to tell me that it is their view that the foundation for all future learning is particularly what happens in those first thousand days of life but is about the strong family settings and the parenting support that is available for young people. That's also what I get reflected by teachers which is that actually what turns up to the classroom does impact on the achievement they're then able to progress.I'm also very interested in the Minister's predictions about teacher supply in the COVID environment. There are a number of appropriations and initiatives in this Budget which relate to teacher shortages that have been apparent in some geographies—particularly in the early childhood sector. Does the Minister expect these shortages to be better to be exacerbated or to be unchanged by the COVID environment and how might that affect appropriations and the way in which the Government continues its spending?I'm interested in the area of school infrastructure because members across this House like me will be hearing from schools and communities frequently about the delays they see in new classrooms being built and in new schools being built. We often hear that the Ministry of Education is being slow to move. We do see in this Budget additional appropriation for capital spending on school infrastructure but it's one thing to have the appropriation; it's another thing to have the actual delivery of that building. I want to be very specific with the Minister: does he think that the COVID-related challenges in our construction sector in which significant proportions of the construction sector are saying that they are expecting to have to cancel projects to lay people off will affect the school building programme and if those effects are predicted in any way what are they? What can schools expect to see and are there any initiatives under way to address that?I'm very interested in the Playcentre and kōhanga reo funding models. These are left very vague in the Estimates. We know on this side of the House that there have been ongoing challenges with the sustainability of the funding models for those two parts of our early childhood sector and I know from my engagements with Playcentre that they still feel that they haven't actually progressed a funding model that they can see will work for them for the long term. So I want to know what the Minister's time line is on landing those funding models and what they might look like.Then I'm also interested in the issue of institutes of technology and polytechnic viability because yesterday when the Minister was asked about the special appropriation for export education in which additional funds have been appropriated in order to support schools and private training establishments affected by a loss of international students he was quick to say that universities have good reserves and can take the blow. Well is it the Minister's view that institutes of technology and polytechnics also have sufficient reserves to take what may be a significant blow in some regions of our country where the loss of international students will be affecting bottom lines? Centralisation or no centralisation we are told that these individual balance sheets still were being maintained. So I'm interested in an answer to that question.Finally just to allow the Minister to respond to this quick list of questions I do have some questions relating to early childhood education teacher pay and the way he will be monitoring how that appropriation comes into effect but I'll leave him to address those initial questions first.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): There's certainly a lot in there to address and I'll do my best to work my way through that. With regard to student progress yes of course we do expect the education system at all levels to be doing a better job and to be striving to do a better job year on year in terms of student progress and student achievement. The single biggest determinant in school of a child's progress will be the quality of their teacher and all of the international evidence and all of the evidence here in New Zealand will tell us that too—doesn't mean we can ignore the out-of-school factors but it means in school the biggest impact is the quality of the teacher that they have in front of them.Of course the member will be aware that one of the biggest increases in expenditure in this year's Budget is the increased expenditure to meet the collective agreement negotiations that were finally settled last year. Every Minister of Education will tell you that where there's a heated negotiation round it ends up being a very big price tag because even a modest pay increase for each teacher adds up to a very large amount of money for all teachers. So the increased investment in teachers is one of the things that will have a big impact on student achievement.With regard to teacher supply the Government's been working to increase participation in initial teacher education. Of course there are long time frames involved here between when someone signs up for an initial teacher education programme to when they actually make it into the classroom. We also know that again in an economic downturn when there are fewer employment opportunities we see participation in those sorts of programmes going up. So I'm feeling optimistic about that. We know that in terms of existing teacher supply we do have enough teachers in the system now to meet the formulaic entitlement for schools up and down the country. What we don't have enough teachers necessarily to meet are the additional teachers that schools employ over entitlement and of course the COVID-19 situation does have an impact on that because in some cases they'll be paying for those teachers from external revenue sources like international students and so we may see some reallocation of the existing teaching workforce as a result of those changes. Of course I do want to acknowledge that for those teachers there'll be some bumpy times ahead.In terms of the education infrastructure the last Government I think made some good steps in the right direction of providing more capability in the Ministry of Education to help oversee educational infrastructure projects. Up until that time each school managed their own infrastructure projects and if I could say so—and I don't mean this as a criticism of the individual schools—not very well. You know that's because they just don't have the capability in-house to be able to do that well. Sometimes they had a great board of trustees by accident who may have managed a good project but actually by and large the school system is not equipped to manage big infrastructure projects. So having a dedicated team in the ministry is giving us more certainty. We did put more money in during the COVID lockdown to support those businesses who are currently engaged in education infrastructure projects during that lockdown period so that they didn't go broke while they weren't able to be on site so that the works could start again as soon as the lockdown was over—and that has happened—and of course we're continuing to stimulate the economy by bringing forward school infrastructure projects in order to help supply that pipeline of activity for that sector.Playcentre and kōhanga reo funding—been a vexed issue for a long time. I think we made really good progress on kōhanga reo; I think we've got a bit more work to do around playcentres. In terms of polytech viability polytechs have fewer international students than say the universities or private training establishments other parts of the sector relative to their overall size but they won't be immune from an impact from that. The New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology (NZIST) is managing the financial situation of each of its subsidiaries very carefully to help them through and we have put capital injections into the NZIST to help them manage their way through that.Finally there early childhood education teacher pay and how that's going to be monitored: of course we will be looking to make sure that the pay flows through to increased teacher pay. We can guarantee that in one way by increasing the minimum attestation rates which we have done. One of the things that I have asked for further advice on—and more work is happening with the sector on this—is whether it should be just one attestation rate or whether there should be tiers of attestation so that we can monitor and ensure that additional funding for teacher pay goes into paying additional teacher salaries. We haven't made decisions on that yet but it is something that we're exploring with the sector.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): So just to advise you we've got about four minutes left so to get through before we move on to health keep your questions short."