Kaye Nikki; Tolley AnneHon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. It is actually with real sadness that I rise to take this call on the Education Amendment Bill. One of the reasons that I got into politics and the reason that I am still a politician is that it is ultimately about what Jo Luxton said before: he tangata he tangata he tangata—it is about the people. So to be standing in this House and realising that this legislation will go through and it will be harmful not only to a group of young people who have had complex needs and who have had pretty disadvantaged backgrounds who will not get the opportunity to attend a partnership school in the future but also to a group of parents of which 87 percent in a poll on Stuff said they did not support the removal of national standards who will no longer have the same level of confidence around how their children are doing at school—that does make me sad.Again what our party on this side of the House stands for absolutely resolutely is high standards in education. In order to have high standards in education we do believe in lifting achievement. In order to lift achievement we have to have accountability back to the centre in terms of the Ministry of Education. What the removal of national standards by the Minister of Education overnight effectively late last year—and now this bill condemns the final remnants of national standards—does is it effectively gets rid of the ability to have that nationwide picture of achievement and actually ensure that parents have confidence around that information. It also reduces the ability of us to help disadvantaged children because we do not have the ability now to target our schools in terms of numeracy and literacy.Can I take a moment to acknowledge you Madam Deputy Speaker. Thank you for your contribution in bringing in national standards. It is a sad day I am sure—and you cannot say this from the Chair—to see this happening in the House.The second thing about this bill—again in line with the removal of accountability and the removal of the ability of the Crown to help teachers and parents lift achievement—is the removal of partnership schools. Many New Zealanders have approached my office. They have been there online. They have gone on and supported students like Parris Bryant and asked the basic question: why? Why is this happening? Why is this Parliament passing a bill that would remove a model that has helped so many disadvantaged students? Why? Labour did not campaign that they were definitely going to get rid of partnership schools. We know for a fact that we had Kelvin Davis out there who is now still the deputy leader of the Labour Party saying that he would resign if effectively partnership schools closed. That has not occurred.We had Willie Jackson—in fact perhaps I should quote what Willie Jackson actually said at the time in terms of partnership schools. He said and I will take his quote I truly believe in the partnership school model." Well there are a whole lot of other New Zealanders that believe in this model: the parents of Parris Bryant the people that I will name now who set up these schools—Alwyn Poole Karen Poole Raewyn Tīpene Nick Hyde. There are some incredible New Zealanders who have put their heart and soul into this model and it is delivering results. People like Sir Toby Curtis came to the Education and Workforce Committee and they pleaded to the Prime Minister "Please show some aroha. Please listen to us." They went so far—Lance O'Sullivan Dame Iritana Dame Tariana Pem Bird Sir Toby Curtis. These are the giants of education and they said "Please stop this."They went further. They went to the Waitangi Tribunal. They lodged a claim and they said "Please please listen to us." But the Government didn't listen. Not only did the Government not listen; it denied that a formal claim had been lodged. The Minister has now admitted that error but they issued a press release in the last 24 hours pleading to the Prime Minister "Please intervene. You've effectively terminated the contracts of these schools but why? Why do you have to pass a law to remove the model when we have a Waitangi Tribunal claim live?" All they want to do is sit down and have a discussion about how these schools have helped Māori and Pasifika students in particular. But no the Government is pushing this through. That for me really sums up some of the education agenda. We on this side of the House—I meet with parents and teachers all across New Zealand—want to work in good faith in terms of the education agenda but it is really really hard when we see ideological decisions like this around national standards and partnership schools being pushed through.I want to come back to national standards because it does cut to the heart of the right of parents in our education system. You know what parents say to me—and we actually put through a decision last year to say we would enhance national standards and move to a system of progress reporting—is they basically want to know how their children are doing in some core areas. We passed that decision but we accepted that actually it would take a couple of years to design the tools and to support schools to make that change. But instead we saw late last year national standards via the National Administration Guidelines changed and now this legislation being pushed through.What that means to the parents that write to me is that if they don't have confidence in the achievement there is no ability of the Crown at an individual school level to get that benchmark of nationwide achievement. It has massively reduced the ability of the Crown to as well target and that is why we absolutely oppose this bill and will be putting a number of amendments through in the committee stage of this bill to demonstrate to New Zealanders why we believe actually that teachers and principals should be accountable and that we should provide information back to the centre around achievement. We make absolutely no bones about that.Finally I want to acknowledge that in the bill there are provisions there around statutory declarations and fees-free and I know that my colleague Simeon Brown will talk to that. There are provisions around improving reporting in our schools and of course National supports that but we are opposing this legislation and we are absolutely gutted about the process. I want to talk briefly about that because we accept that Governments come into power and they do make decisions. Even if they don't have the support of a whole lot of parents—87 percent on a Stuff online poll said that they wanted to keep national standards—even if these partnerships schools are going well we accept that they have the right to scrap these partnership schools. But what I can't accept is the atrocious process that has happened around this legislation.I want to acknowledge Mark Patterson. I want to acknowledge the New Zealand First Party for supporting National when we went to the Business Committee and we said "Please we've had amendments that affect these schools and people's individual lives. Please just let us go and have a decent consultation on that." New Zealand First supported us in that letter to the Business Committee and I want to acknowledge them for that but I also want to acknowledge that we nearly ended up having this debate at a time when the select committee was going to be in Auckland. So it is really good to acknowledge that my colleagues have now been able to come back from Auckland to be here and participate in this incredibly important debate. That would not have been the case unless we effectively had filibustered the bill last night and the Leader of the House I acknowledge then accepted that actually to not have the permanent members of the Education and Workforce Committee speaking in this debate would be a very bad thing.So finally I do want to just leave this call in this debate with some of the memories that I have now from visiting partnership schools and meeting those children. I have not really protested as a member of Parliament and I did. I walked down Queen Street with these children and you know what a number of them said to me? They said to me "Many people in my life have let me down and I can't believe that this Government would be scrapping our schools which have been the one thing in our lives that have been really positive. We don't understand that." And I said to them "Look there is hope. There will be a National Government in the future and we will bring those partnership schools back and we will expand those schools and we will also ensure that there is accountability around achievement."DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the Hon Jenny Salesa. Before I do could I just ask Chlöe Swarbrick not to stand in the aisles over here please. And the noise over here was pretty tough when someone's speaking in the House."