Mooney JosephJOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you Mr Speaker. The National Party supports this bill which largely proposes technical amendments that tidy up the principal Act. It is however another fix-up of this large Act that the Government pushed through in 2020 last year. We acknowledge fix-ups are needed from time to time and that they should be amended as soon as possible which is why National supports this reading. However these continual fix-ups do take up the time of the House do take up the time of officials and do take up the time of the Minister of Education that could be better spent dealing with big challenges in the education sector. I note for example that 60 percent of students are not attending school regularly and it would be nice to see attention in this House on how to address that issue. I note also that New Zealand's primary school competence in reading mathematics and science has plummeted to their worst recorded level ever. Just over four in 10 students are meeting minimum levels in maths. Just over two in 10 are meeting minimum levels or expectations when it comes to science. And at least a third of maths teachers in New Zealand not just in primary schools but also in secondary are not trained in mathematics. I would hope that we will see some action from the Minister on these key things to address as one of the biggest ways to ensure that our young people will have a good opportunity because we all know that with a good education comes good opportunities for employment and good opportunity to advance for people's future. So that is a key thing that we want to see from the Minister. I'd note with the students not attending school regularly just going around schools in my electorate that there is limited support extra learning support for children who have neuro-diversities both in assessing students who have and also providing support to them. Neurodiversity is acknowledging that everyone's brain works differently and views learning through a strengths-based lens. Ten percent of the population globally has dyslexia which is irrespective of language culture and ethnicity. I note that dyslexia is not an indication of intellectual disability. Individuals with dyslexia have brains which process auditory and/or visual information in a way that's different from those with what we call neuro-typical brains. I'd like to see the Minister providing extra learning support for those students. Fortunately folks with dyslexia have the ability to learn in a different way. It's still a very effective way but they need the right support to do so. And if they don't do so that dyslexia is unfortunately linked to poor educational achievement low self-esteem poor behaviour and feelings of frustration. You know I just link that potentially I'd like to see some action from the Minister in seeing whether there's a link between that type of neurodiversity as well as others like dyspraxia dyscalculia dysgraphia that is seeing our students not engaging in their school learning and not attending school regularly. I just note that a study was done on 120 learners in prison and nearly half—49 percent—showed evidence of significant dyslexia and 82 percent had only had two years or less of secondary school education. So if we really want to ensure that we look after our learners and make sure that they deliver at the schools to have good opportunities for them we need to provide the right tools to ensure that the teachers can teach them in a way that works for the way their brain works. So I do support this bill. However I do hope to see some more substantive action from the Minister.