4. Education—Partnership Schools and Māori AchievementHon PAULA BENNETT (Deputy Leader—National) to the Associate Minister of Education (Māori Education)Education—Partnership Schools and Māori Achievement4. Hon PAULA BENNETT (Deputy Leader—National) to the Associate Minister of Education (Māori Education): Does he stand by all his statements and actions in regard to Māori education?Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Associate Minister of Education (Māori Education)): Yes in the context that they were made and taken.Hon Paula Bennett: What is his response to Sir Toby Curtis who said in relation to Chris Hipkins The Minister's carrot-and-stick approach may work on his Māori MP colleagues who remain curiously silent." and "I am here waiting patiently for our Māori Labour MP to whisper just one kind word of support."?Hon KELVIN DAVIS: The issue here is making sure that all Māori students across the whole system have access to quality education not just half of 1 percent of the Māori students who attend compulsory education.Hon Paula Bennett: They don't count.Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Well as I said if the member listened the emphasis is on all Māori students and what the Hon Chris Hipkins has done has invited Māoridom through the education summits to actually help co-design the whole system not just a fraction of the system.Hon Paula Bennett: So when does he intend to stand up for the achievement of Māori students who don't want their partnership schools forced back into the State school system?Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Those schools who are now partnership schools next year will have their doors open. The same people who are running those schools will be running them. The same curriculum that was being taught will be taught. The children will wear the same uniforms. Very little is going to change except for a few administration issues. Now let me tell you this: in 2006 and 2007 I was part of a group with the ASB Community Trust to help to establish the A Company academy that's now part of Te Kāpehu Whetū in Whangarei. That school ran for three or four years highly successfully and they weren't a partnership school. They will still be able to run highly successfully when they transition to the State system.Hon Paula Bennett: Does he accept that the very school he has just mentioned will by having to go back into the State sector now have a higher teacher-student ratio and will lose mentors who they can currently employ because they are a partnership school and have some more freedom of funding and those students have been achieving better because of it?Hon KELVIN DAVIS: No. And what the member has just illustrated is the fact that the charter schools were over-resourced in comparison to State schools which is exactly what the State system was saying about charter schools.Hon Paula Bennett: What is his response then to the school who have today made it clear that entering the State system will cause them to lose key staff and that "mentoring of senior students by non-teaching staff had been a crucial element in the students' academic achievements."?Hon KELVIN DAVIS: As I have said we want all schools—all Māori students—to be successful not just a handful of schools. And as I've said the changes that the Hon Chris Hipkins is making to the education system in unwinding the nine years of neglect from the last Government are going to make a massive difference for all Māori students.Rt Hon Winston Peters: If Māori schools was a political preoccupation how come Hato Petera College got wound down?Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Yes it's very sad what happened to Hato Petera College under the previous Government and now it's got to the stage—SPEAKER: Order!Hon Gerry Brownlee: Point of order.SPEAKER: No I think I can deal with it. I was hoping that the member might answer in an area for which he has some responsibility but he doesn't for that."