Strange JamieJAMIE STRANGE (Labour): This is a great day for education in New Zealand. As the final speaker on this bill the Education Amendment Bill I'd just like to quickly highlight a couple of key points and just pick up on a few points that we've heard from the other side of the House.But first I'd like to start with the partnership schools. Now we heard from the Hon Nikki Kaye who said that if the National Party gets back into power—if they get back into power—they will restore and expand these schools. Well I'm just sort of curious as to their commitment to these schools because they were in Government for nine years—nine years. I wonder how many schools they brought in. I wonder how many partnership schools. You would have thought maybe what? Two-hundred? Maybe 250? No. A hundred? No less than that. Fifty? Less than that. Twenty? Less than that. Eleven—11 partnership schools in nine years! Do they even believe in this policy themselves? I'm not sure they do.The next point is around national standards. I'd like to highlight one of the key submissions around national standards which came from NZEI. This is what the submission said NZEI is pleased that there can now be a focus on teaching and learning not just assessment and on the broad New Zealand curricula including competencies engagement and language". NZEI also on that point said "How soul destroying for parents with kids with special needs to have them marked against the national standards when there was already so much for them to overcome".The problem with national standards and we heard it from the Minister was that they were neither national nor were they standard. They were not accurate. That's the key point. They were not accurate. I remember speaking to principals who would fill in their national standards data. They would send it off to the ministry and the information would be sent back saying "No you haven't moved the kids enough." and they would send it back; "No you haven't done it." So they actually had to fudge the data in order to get it accepted. And those principals would get together and say "We don't want to do this. We want to give an accurate record." but the system was actually forcing them to fudge the data. So they weren't accurate anyway.Brett Hudson: Forcing them to fudge the data. Why? Weren't they into teaching?JAMIE STRANGE: The members opposite ask about being into teaching. Teachers want to teach the curriculum and the problem with national standards was that it was narrowing the curriculum so that they were teaching maths English and there wasn't enough time in the day to be able to teach the other subjects. The key focus of this Government is to enable teachers to teach the broad aspects of our world-class curriculum.I'll pick up on one final point and that's around the fees-free. So this legislation here supports the introduction of free tertiary education by making it an offence to make a false representation about an application for free tertiary education. For me personally the thing I like about the fees-free the most is the apprenticeship aspect. So what the fees-free policy does is it allows people to have two years free if they're undertaking an apprenticeship. We have a huge shortage of skilled tradespeople in this country and to incentivise apprenticeships like this I think is an excellent policy.So this is a wonderful piece of legislation. It's an exciting day for the New Zealand education system and for me personally one of the key reasons I stood for Parliament was around national standards. So it's exciting to see this removed. It's exciting to see a broad curriculum will once again be taught. I commend this bill to the House."