Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Chair. I'd just like to ask the Minister a few questions about the Ministry of Education workforce. It's reported that the workforce there has gone from 2632 four years ago to last year 3486 and I wonder if the Minister could just give an idea to people of what is it that all these extra people working at the Ministry of Education are doing. The Minister's just been talking about how that's separate from what is going on with self-governing schools. Every dollar that he pays people working in the ministry presumably are not in the schools or maybe they are. I don't think it's clear how he's taken on an extra 900 people.The next question is what does the Minister believe is the Government's strategy to start getting value for money in terms of achievement? If we look at Progress in International Reading Literacy Study TIMSS Programme for International Student Assessment any sort of standard global comparison not only are New Zealand students less able in English maths and science—or at least in reading mathematics and science—than they were at the start of the century they've been declining in almost every test that's been taken by New Zealand students for 20 years and yet this is at a time when expenditure on education in each of these Estimates every year has continued to go up each and every time. So I think people would be interested to know: is it a priority of the Government to ensure that reading mathematics scientific literacy are actually important priorities; and if it is what are they doing to ensure that New Zealand's performance starts to improve again so we get closer to where we were at the beginning of the century when we actually spent less money and got better results?I just want to come back to the Ministry of Education staff. I just wonder about the standards of conduct and behaviour he expects from the staff. Would the Minister be surprised to learn of an email where ministry staff made light of parents of a student with learning disabilities losing their support and what would the Minister say if an email like that happened to emerge as it may well do in the very near future?I also just want to ask a little bit about attendance. What does the Minister believe is the problem with attendance? Or does he believe there is a problem and if he does does the Government have a strategy for making sure kids are actually at school? Because if you're spending $15 billion on education it's very important that kids are actually there. It's difficult to learn when it's at school which some of my colleagues demonstrated to varying degrees but it's impossible to learn if you're not there.Finally just around the Minister's comments on the different models of early childhood education (ECE). We've got $9 billion in these Estimates going to ECE—$9.2 billion I think—there's a requirement to pay more. The Minister's alluded to being possibly aware of a problem that some of the smaller-scale ECEs are less able to average out the unders and overs as he calls them. I just wonder is the Minister aware that there are smaller ECEs some that have approached me who said We can't make this work. The numbers will not add up for us based on the funding formula that we've been given on the one hand and the payment for staff that we're required to make on the other." They're between a rock and a hard place. They also said to me "Actually I happen to be from a relatively wealthy area where we probably can raise our rates but in poorer areas we are going to have to either reduce our standards or close which nobody wants."So a number of issues there: number of staff; what their roles are; their conduct; what is the strategy for raising achievement levels that have been declining all century if the Minister cares about those tests; is that connected with attendance; and finally is he prepared to make any tweaks to the ECE funding formulae because some of the smaller operators seem to say they're between a rock and a hard place."