10. Question No. 10—EducationPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill) to the Minister of EducationQuestion No. 10—EducationPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Mr Speaker. My question is for the Minister of Education. Does he have confidence—SPEAKER: Order! There are two members who haven't got their masks on. Please put them on. Thank you.10. PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill) to the Minister of Education: Does he have confidence the Government's actions and statements have provided schools clarity about how they can operate under COVID-19 alert level restrictions?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Broadly yes. I'm confident that the Government has appropriately balanced schools' need for timely and clear information with the need to make considered decisions in the interests of all New Zealanders in an evolving situation.Penny Simmonds: Why has the Government still not told Auckland schools with students anxious about exams the date they can reopen?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I've committed to making final decisions around that by tomorrow. No final decisions have been made on that at this point. We're working through a number of details including logistical and practical considerations around having students back on school sites and so I hope to be able to provide as much clarity as possible. We have provided in recognition of the disruption that those senior secondary school students have faced some pretty clear guidance around the additional support that will be provided for those aiming to complete their NCEA—that was provided some weeks ago—and we are now working through further guidance on having a larger number of students returning to school sites. I would note that under our current alert levels there are some provisions for senior secondary school students to be on site where the only place that they can complete assessments and so on is on a school site. There are some limited provisions for that at the moment and I'll have more to say on that in the next 24 hours.Penny Simmonds: How will schools ever get clarity around the impact of lockdown on students' progress when officials say Our curricula don't yet clearly signal important markers of progress" and current assessment tools are of variable quality?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh that's always been the case. In fact there has never been a nationally consistent set of measures of student progress outside of the senior secondary school and some of the measures that have been put in place have proven to be neither national nor standard. They weren't particularly consistent. We do have studies available including the national monitoring project which gives us pretty good and robust information. There are some other sources of information available as well including through some of the digital tools that are available that do provide some aggregatable data that can be drawn on for research purposes in measuring students' progress in some of those earlier year levels.Penny Simmonds: Does the Minister accept the Government's lack of clarity about how schools should operate in lockdown means education is a lottery for students with one Auckland principal calling online learning "just a joke"?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I think the Government's provided a lot of clarity for how schools should operate during alert levels 3 and 4 which is by and large to be supporting young people to learn from home. Whether that's using digital learning platforms or using hard packs of materials the teaching methods that teachers use when using those tools are ultimately up to the judgments of the individual teachers. We don't tell teachers specifically how to teach within their classrooms; we leave that to their professional judgments. Similarly in this environment teachers will be making judgments. In some cases it's better to support students using digital technology; in other cases it is better to support them using hard packs of materials. Those are ultimately judgments for the teachers and for the schools.Penny Simmonds: Why didn't the Government outline schools' options where teachers refused to be vaccinated when they announced the vaccine mandate and instead tell them all to get legal advice?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The last part of the question is not correct. The Government is working through further guidance to schools about what they should do at the end of this year in terms of the employment process for teachers who have chosen not to be vaccinated. That does have some significant impact on the teachers' collective employment agreement. The Ministry of Education are working through that process with the teacher unions at the moment. We needed to announce the requirement to be vaccinated before that process could begin. That process is now being expedited."