As a committee, we asked well over 1,000 written questions of the entities, and also of Te Pūkenga. Unsurprisingly, the dominant topic of our annual review was COVID-19 and, as we noted in our written report, COVID-19 has had pervasive effects on the education sector, impacting NCEA exams, student and staff wellbeing, and much more. We asked the Minister of Education and the ministry about the impact of closed borders on the supply of teachers, and we asked about the equitable access to digital technology because, with the disruption of COVID, widespread adoption of online and hybrid learning had to become necessary. The ministry informed us of the work that they were doing in that regard, and that included hooking up 40,000 households to the internet, providing 50,000 devices to students, and providing hardcopy materials where that was appropriate. 