Delahunty CatherineCATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): I appreciate the explanations. Just to note that Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu when it came to the select committee—the board supported the bill and the teaching staff opposed it. So that was a very interesting experience—that we did not actually hear from the teachers that this is what they wanted. The board might have supported it but the teachers did not want it and they are the practitioners. I found that very interesting.On some of these points around pastoral care we can write the words pastoral care" into the bill but the select committee including the National members—none of us were particularly confident about what that meant. We did have a big discussion about pastoral care and I am really still not convinced. Early childhood education which has got home-based care which is a slightly parallel situation—their oversight issues are ongoing. Their quality issues are highly debated. The need for review continues. I think that we are setting ourselves up here to talk about pastoral care without really describing a sufficiently robust monitoring system. I did not hear about a sufficiently robust monitoring system.On the issue of disability rights and the Ombudsman the Ombudsman came and said to us that he hardly ever presented to a select committee but the communities of online learning (COOLs) issue was of such concern to him that he felt it was necessary because of the risk to children with learning support needs being dumped into COOLs. And this is a fact because it goes through my office every day. There are a number of children for whom the schools are insufficiently skilled they do not understand inclusion and they do not have the resources for those children—9-year-olds 7-year-olds—who have been expelled or suspended or excluded whatever you want to call it from up to four schools. So if COOLs are available for primary schools—and remember that this is also for primary not just secondary—his concern was that those children can be ticked off as not truant and not excluded because they are in a COOL. But the reality is that for primary schoolchildren and for the early adolescents who is going to make sure those kids are doing their thing at home? Who is going to be home with them if the parents have to go to work?One of the things that parents of children with high needs who have been excluded have said to me is that they will lose their jobs over this. They cannot work because their child is not in school. Primary school children need permanent 24-hour-a-day supervision. I just cannot get my head around it. Just to give one example of an older young person who came and talked to us about this—she was one of the few young people who came before the select committee and I was there for all the submissions. She came with the Southern Health School. She said that the problem with COOLs is: "I would have grabbed that. I would have jumped at it." She said: "I was deeply traumatised during my adolescence and if someone had given a 'get out of jail free' card I would have gone: 'No I'm never going to a school ever again. I'm going to stay at home in my room.' "She said: "My parents were so desperate and worried about my mental health that they would have agreed to that. It's not in my interests and it isn't a good idea for me to be out of school all the time and online." She said: "Living online is not living." and now thanks to the assistance of the Southern Health School she is able to go back into society and become a fully functioning member of society. She is studying in tertiary education. It is a real success story because the schools worked with her.This is what we heard over and over again with COOLs—that there is nothing wrong with online learning. There is nothing wrong with blended learning. There is nothing wrong with a digital dimension to our lives which are enriched so much by education. But when it is separated from the school situation and it is not part of that world and when it is a privatised function for franchises to enrol people—and I also met with Gary Miron when he toured here and he showed me the research. It is so patchy that you would expect this bill to be a lot more rigorous.So on those issues pastoral care how do we actually ensure that children who have been excluded because they are supposedly the problem—schools will jump at that opportunity. Some of them are desperate about this. It costs them a lot more money to include at the moment especially if they have not got the skills. So that is why the Ombudsman really challenged us and that is why I am challenging the Minister. How will we make sure that there cannot be the dumping of children with high needs into this environment? How will we? It is not here in the bill. Thanks very much."