Tinetti JanJAN TINETTI (Labour): Nine years of neglect is a lot to turn around but this Government is certainly up for that task. Under-investment has hit many many areas and none more so than education. This Government inherited an education system which has been so undermined by under-investment that it's almost in basket-case territory.I've always been incredibly proud of our education system but it was getting harder and harder and harder to stay positive about where we were heading. A funding freeze for early childhood education for nine years—does that number sound familiar? The whole time that the previous Government was in power there was a funding freeze in early childhood education—for nine years. A focus in that sector on quantity over quality completely undermined one of our most important sectors that we have—in fact our foundational sector in this country.I've never seen morale in the teaching profession as low as what it was in the final term of that Government. We have low morale in our teaching workforce and burnt-out teachers—absolutely horrific levels. What did the previous Government do? They stopped democratic representation on the body that oversaw those teachers.Jamie Strange: Out of touch.JAN TINETTI: Just out of touch with the teaching profession—telling the teachers that they don't matter.A world-leading curriculum that we have had and we are proud of in this country—one that educators hold up as absolutely the most amazing document—is completely undermined because of the introduction of national standards. That became the pseudo-curriculum. We were told at the time that that was because we had to raise the levels of literacy and numeracy. Well how well did that go? Over that nine years New Zealand plunged in the international rankings of the data such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the TIMSS records of literacy and numeracy. It didn't go so well then that introduction of national standards. There are many many many other cases that I can talk about but I don't want to focus on the negative.While the scale of this challenge is incredibly large this Government has a plan and we are dealing with it and boy we have made a great start. We have introduced legislation to reintroduce sector-wide democratically elected members on to the Teaching Council. We have said to our teachers You matter and we value you." and we have done this and sent that as a really clear message to them. We have actually said we value all our children in this country. All of our children are priority learners—every single child. We will fix the broken learning support system in this country. We are not going to create a distraction by having another set of schooling there with charter schools so we are repealing charter schools as well. We have introduced that legislation.We are scrapping national standards—that is the single best thing that we could do in our Government to actually lift education in this country again. We are telling our educators that we will put trust in them and talk to them first before just "doing to" them and putting stuff through urgency as national standards were put through.The one single most important thing that we are doing presently at this time is that we are asking all New Zealanders who are interested in education to join a conversation so we can set the way forward and agree shared priorities across the whole system from early learning schooling tertiary and lifelong learning. We want to talk to people. We want to have that conversation. That is really important. We are not going to "do to" the sectors or to the children or to the whānau; we are involving them in the conversation. I acknowledge all of our coalition and confidence and supply agreement partners on this side of the House in their work in that particular area.We have started working with the early childhood sector to develop a strategic plan—again we are working with the sector. We are focusing on quality. We are bringing them and focusing on that sector making that important and telling them that they matter. In this Budget we will even do more—education will get a long-overdue boost to capital and operating funding. We will once again move towards a high-quality public education system that provides all New Zealanders with the opportunity to achieve their full potential."