{"id":252569,"date":"2026-01-26T14:52:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T14:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/252569\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T14:52:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T14:52:13","slug":"as-erica-stanford-defends-her-rapid-reforms-in-our-schools-critics-say-theyre-too-experimental-whos-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/252569\/","title":{"rendered":"As Erica Stanford defends her rapid reforms in our schools, critics say they\u2019re too experimental. Who\u2019s right?"},"content":{"rendered":"

First, she came for cell phones in schools. Then she abolished open-plan classrooms, Treaty of Waitangi obligations for school boards, the skills-based learning curriculum, NCEA \u2026 <\/p>\n

\n All have fallen beneath the scythe of Education Minister Erica Stanford. The National MP has introduced a structured literacy programme and set new
\n expectations for teaching maths and literacy in primary schools. Her ministry is rewriting the Years 1-10 curriculum, the mathematics curriculum and the sex education curriculum. It is creating an expanded curriculum for special- and high-needs students and adding financial literacy to the social sciences.\n <\/p>\n

Stanford is restructuring the Teaching Council, the regulatory body for the profession, creating a new school property agency and designing a new personal development programme for teachers. She has compressed a generation of reform into two years. <\/p>\n

She insists she\u2019s moving quickly because public education is in a state of crisis; that every year, the system is failing thousands of children. But the speed and scale of the changes have drawn criticism. The Post Primary Teachers\u2019 Association worries Stanford \u201cconcentrates power in a way that is deeply concerning\u201d and that her approach is \u201ca radical departure from decades of collaborative curriculum development\u201d. Labour warns parents their children are being used as guinea pigs in a political experiment.<\/p>\n

What is Erica Stanford doing to New Zealand\u2019s public education system? Why is she doing it? And who is behind her?<\/p>\n

\"ListenerListener illustration<\/p>\n

Reading revolution<\/p>\n

In 1983, the Robert Muldoon government rolled out a new national literacy programme called Reading Recovery. National had campaigned on it in the previous election, promising to fix the falling standards of New Zealand literacy. The scheme was designed by Marie Clay, a developmental psychologist at the University of Auckland. Children who needed help with their reading received 20 weeks of daily sessions based on Clay\u2019s theories of language development. During the 1980s and 90s, it was exported around the world. The US Department of Education rated it one of the most effective schemes for general reading achievement. Clay became one of New Zealand\u2019s most celebrated and influential social scientists.<\/p>\n

Reading Recovery followed a \u201cskills-based\u201d approach to literacy. This aligned to a broader movement in late 20th-century pedagogy: educational progressivism. This rejected the traditional teaching methods that had dominated classrooms since the 1800s, which saw children as homogeneous empty vessels to be filled with the wisdom of their teachers via rote memorisation. <\/p>\n

We never knew why it was that we used to chant our times tables. Now we have the data and the brain science to show us.<\/p>\n

Erica Stanford<\/p>\n

Students who struggled to learn under these conditions were stigmatised as failures. Educational progressivism celebrated diversity and difference. Classrooms became spaces for children to develop their own approaches to learning, their own strategies for problem-solving, situated in their own cultures, identities and developmental stages. Instead of telling children they had failed, schools needed to adapt to each child and find a way for them to succeed. <\/p>\n

Reading Recovery became a flagship project for the movement. Parents and teachers were astonished at how well it worked. But during the decades, criticism of its effectiveness grew, and in May 2024, Stanford closed it down in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

If you ask academics, policy experts and politicians what the education system is for, many talk about the importance of critical thinking \u2013 of teaching children how to teach themselves, of preparing them to live together in a diverse and changing world. They stress the importance of the Treaty of Waitangi, of equity and inclusion, of treating teachers as professionals rather than mere vectors for a pre-written curriculum. <\/p>\n

These are the tenets of educational progressivism. For many decades this has been the dominant ideology behind New Zealand\u2019s public education system, across both National and Labour governments. <\/p>\n

But if you ask Stanford and her advisers about the purpose of education, their answers are radically different. When Stanford was an opposition MP, she read US educational theorist ED Hirsch\u2019s 1996 book, The Schools We Need: And Why We Don\u2019t Have Them. It\u2019s a sustained attack on the theories and accomplishments of educational progressivism.<\/p>\n

\"CoreCore values: Stanford at the Core Knowledge conference in Florida last year alongside ED Hirsch, whose arguments have influenced her reforms. With them are Northern Ireland Education Minister Paul Givan, far left, and former British minister of state for schools, Nick Gibb. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

When the Listener met Stanford in December and asked her about the purpose of the education system, she replied, \u201cFirstly, making sure that every single child can live up to their full potential and live the life they want and have all of the opportunities available to them. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe second thing \u2013 and this is what\u2019s driving a lot of what I\u2019m doing \u2013 is that equity piece. Your means shouldn\u2019t determine your destiny, but they do in New Zealand. If you are from a low-decile area, the chances are that your life outcomes will not be as good. We have to change that. That yawning achievement gap between the haves and the have-nots is completely avoidable, and totally unacceptable. We can change that.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a neat encapsulation of Hirsch\u2019s thesis. He argued that under progressivism, schools prioritised vague skills \u2013 \u201ccritical thinking\u201d, \u201cproblem-solving\u201d \u2013 but failed to teach the core knowledge required for basic literacy and numeracy. Students might be taught to solve multiplication through skip-counting or finger-counting \u2013 whatever strategy worked for them \u2013 but those skills were not transferable to more complex problems.<\/p>\n

In contrast, students who memorised their times tables \u2013 knowledge-based learning \u2013 could retrieve answers automatically and apply it to more advanced topics. The story Hirsch tells is that most middle-class children arrive at school with a grounding in reading and counting \u2013 and if they struggle, their parents help them out or hire tutors. So the failures under the progressive approach fall most heavily on underprivileged students lacking those resources. <\/p>\n

But because educational progressivism is so closely linked to left-wing ideology its disciples believe unequal outcomes must come from society, not from problems with the school system itself. For Hirsch, they are blind to its flaws.<\/p>\n

\"SpaceSpace invasion: Stanford is clamping down on open-plan classrooms, despite evidence that good design and acoustic measures, above, can overcome noise and other issues. Photo \/ Heath Boot<\/p>\n

Failed romance<\/p>\n

Nearly all of Stanford\u2019s reforms align with this critique. For her, the progressive project has obviously failed. \u201cIt sounds well meaning: child-centred learning, child-led learning, let their little minds enquire their way to mastery; they\u2019ll come to school and tell you what they want to learn.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut this romantic view of education \u2013 that children will self-discover their way to success \u2013 has been failing our kids and baking in intergenerational poverty.\u201d <\/p>\n

Her knowledge-based, curriculum-rich approach is aligned with the traditionalist movement: a reaction against the ideology and perceived failures of progressive education.<\/p>\n

This war is sometimes summarised as \u201cthe progs versus trads\u201d \u2013 although, confusingly, the modern trad movement is preoccupied with cognitive psychology and quantitative analysis rather than the Victorian-era chalkboards and gowns the term suggests.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people might say it\u2019s old-fashioned,\u201d she says of her approach, \u201cbut it\u2019s based on science. We never knew why it was that we used to chant our times tables. We knew it was important; we didn\u2019t know why. But now we have the evidence and the data and the brain science to show us. We have limited short-term memory, which is why we have to have a range of things in our long-term memory like our basic facts.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I\u2019ll tell you one more thing. In Australia, with a government of a completely different colour, a Labour government, they are doing exactly the same thing. There is cross-party agreement across the ditch because they are also following the evidence, the science and the research. That\u2019s exactly what we are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shock and awe<\/p>\n

The Aotearoa Educators Collective was founded four months after Stanford was sworn in as minister. Among its core principles:<\/p>\n

\u2022 The primary responsibility for schooling is to create critical creative citizens invested in participatory democracy, with capacity to combat social injustice.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Success at school cannot be reduced to achievement in literacy and numeracy.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Schooling has responsibilities to promote the promises and obligations embodied in Te Tiriti o Waitangi.<\/p>\n

The collective is the tip of the spear for educational progressivism in New Zealand. One of its most eminent proponents is Peter O\u2019Connor, professor of education at Auckland University and a fellow of the Royal Society Te Ap\u0101rangi. He\u2019s dismayed by both the direction of Stanford\u2019s reforms and the velocity of change.<\/p>\n

He argues Stanford has inflated problems with the system to justify a radical ideological agenda. \u201cThere isn\u2019t this crisis in literacy and numeracy that\u2019s taken hold in the public imagination because it\u2019s been repeated so often.\u201d <\/p>\n

For O\u2019Connor, what\u2019s really happening here is \u201can undermining of public education, and it\u2019s wrapped around the language of crisis. It\u2019s a neoliberal tactic. Have a crisis; have a solution. Overwhelm the system with shock and awe so it can barely respond. And bam, there you go. The sector\u2019s been completely thrown by the scale and the speed at which things have happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also critical of the unilateral, micromanaging style of Stanford\u2019s approach. \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ve ever had a minister of education who has been so down into the minutiae of actually writing curriculum \u2013 which is something that she\u2019s done. Working out what words can be in a book.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a National government, a minister of education, it\u2019s a little nanny state, really. We have curriculum documents now that basically spell out what teachers will do nearly every second of the day. There\u2019s a vision about what education is that drives all of this. Which is very narrow, very constrained, very ideological in its perspective.<\/p>\n

\"PeterPeter O\u2019Connor: Believes Stanford\u2019s reforms will be thrown out with a change of government. Photo \/ Ingenio <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd principals feel cut out. You saw that with [more than 1500 schools] saying, \u2018Well, actually, we do want the treaty to be central to schools.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

For O\u2019Connor, Stanford\u2019s shift away from treaty obligations is the absolute wrong direction. Culturally responsive education makes a difference, he says. \u201cIf you want to lift M\u0101ori and Pacific achievement \u2026 it\u2019s about culturally responsive pedagogy, not drilling kids with facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

His advice to Stanford is to work with the sector and reach agreement about how the system should work. \u201cEducation systems that do really well have a consensus around what schools should be and could be. There\u2019s no consensus any more.\u201d<\/p>\n

The man behind the curtain<\/p>\n

For many traditionalists, consulting with the sector and reaching consensus is the last thing you want to do. Michael Gove \u2013 former UK education minister and one of the high priests of the modern trad movement \u2013 famously criticised \u201cthe Blob\u201d, an amalgam of Whitehall mandarins, education academics and teaching unions. Gove claimed the Blob set education policy in the UK regardless of the government of the day by dictating what counted as evidence and what was considered consensus.<\/p>\n

In his view, education reform could not be conducted incrementally or via bipartisan agreement because the Blob would absorb and neutralise it. He transformed the British school system, driving through his policies \u2013 many identical to Stanford\u2019s \u2013 via a coterie of high-powered special advisers, including Brexit architect Dominic Cummings. <\/p>\n

The staff at New Zealand\u2019s Ministry of Education seem to live in fear of Emma Chatterton, a former National Party candidate who works as a senior ministerial adviser in Stanford\u2019s office, while the unions and academics have reservations about the shadowy influence of an external adviser, Michael Johnston, who works as a senior fellow at the New Zealand Initiative.<\/p>\n

Children are essentially being used as a guinea pig, as a political experiment for somebody\u2019s ideology.<\/p>\n

Willow-Jean Prime<\/p>\n

Johnston met the Listener in the NZ Initiative\u2019s offices, a bright, well-lit space overlooking central Wellington. He trained as a cognitive psychologist and before joining the right-wing lobby group was an academic at Victoria University of Wellington. \u201cI did three years as associate dean during Covid and that was the end for me. I just had enough of it all, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n

His role at the NZ Initiative \u201cenables me to bring really good research evidence to bear on educational policy. And to the extent that I have some influence, it\u2019s gratifying to be able to help develop that policy and help implement it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2023, Johnston published a report titled \u201cSave our Schools\u201d, which called for a knowledge-rich curriculum centred on disciplinary subjects such as maths and literacy. When the government changed, Stanford appointed him to chair a ministerial advisory group tasked with reviewing curricula and teaching methods. <\/p>\n

Following this work, he became a member of the ministry\u2019s curriculum coherence group, advising on the development of knowledge-rich curricula across all school subjects. Last November, he was appointed to the Teaching Council, provoking outrage across the sector. <\/p>\n

The Post Primary Teachers\u2019 Association complained of a power grab in which a \u201cselect group of people hand-picked by the minister\u201d would drive an ideological agenda. In October, Newsroom reported that Johnston was booed and heckled at the UpliftED education conference.<\/p>\n

\"ScourgesScourges of the left: Former UK education secretary Michael Gove and the NZ Initiative\u2019s Michael Johnston, whose advisory role in Stanford\u2019s reform programme has drawn fire from academics and teacher unions. Photos \/ Getty Images; Supplied<\/p>\n

For Johnston, consensus is complicated. Many within the sector can\u2019t see its problems because they\u2019re inside it, and much of the opposition to Stanford\u2019s reforms is political. \u201cWe\u2019ve now got a generation of teachers who were themselves educated under a system that looks similar to what we have at the moment.\u201d They\u2019re not familiar with the data documenting the system\u2019s decline, he says. And many academics bring their own ideological biases into the debate. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s any secret that academics are left-leaning as a culture.\u201d <\/p>\n

He hopes consensus emerges after implementation. \u201cI find it hard to imagine that they\u2019d want to reverse the structure of literacy changes, because I think primary school teachers are pretty supportive of that. And to be fair, it started under the previous government. Erica Stanford put it on steroids and made it compulsory but it was already happening and for a very good reason. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe curriculum, gee, who knows? It\u2019s hard to imagine you want to go through all that again as well. But I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor \u2013 who describes the New Zealand Initiative\u2019s views as \u201cso fringe that no one, except possibly Erica Stanford, would ever have taken what they said seriously\u201d \u2013 is more sceptical. He predicts that when the government changes, there will be yet another reversal. \u201cIt\u2019ll all be tipped up again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fear and drift<\/p>\n

Stanford is indignant at the suggestion she\u2019s conducting a fear campaign, becoming even more animated from an already high-animation baseline. \u201cWe have been floating downwards for the last 20 years and the only reason we really knew it was because of the international benchmarking tests. PISA, PIRLS, TIMSS. The other big indicator, of course, was the [literacy and numeracy assessments] that the previous government brought in and I think it absolutely shocked everyone how bad it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"GraphGraph \/ NZ Listener<\/p>\n

She also points to a 2021 Royal Society report that found systemic flaws in the way maths was taught in schools. It raised grave concerns about the \u201cmathematical content knowledge\u201d of the teaching workforce, and recommended change at all levels of the system.<\/p>\n

Stanford is scathing about Labour\u2019s lack of response. \u201cThe Royal Society made 14 recommendations. None of them were put in place. The New Zealand Principals\u2019 Federation that same year after some pretty bad international results said, \u2018Hey, maths is in crisis. Here is what we need.\u2019 Nothing was done. <\/p>\n

\u201c[The Education Review Office] has been saying and putting out reports around initial teacher education, around assessment and a whole raft of other things. Nothing has been done. We have a 4000-strong ministry and a previous government with an absolute majority. Name one thing that they did in education to raise achievement. <\/p>\n

\u201cAll the warning signs were there. They had 14 recommendations in the 2021 report. We have already knocked off, I think, 10 of them in under two years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Labour staying schtum<\/p>\n

Labour considered education reform in its first term, with then-minister Chris Hipkins promising a \u201csystem-wide reset\u201d. National\u2019s national standards assessment scheme was scrapped. NCEA and the de-centralised \u201cTomorrow\u2019s Schools\u201d model were reviewed, but few changes were made. What will a future Labour government do with Stanford\u2019s reforms?<\/p>\n

Willow-Jean Prime, the party\u2019s education spokesperson, shares the concerns of unions and academic critics. \u201cWhat we are seeing here are fundamental changes to our public education system \u2026 that are being ideologically driven, not driven by evidence and not driven by proper consultation and collaboration with the sector and the experts.<\/p>\n

\"Discontented:Discontented: Secondary teachers in Auckland during nationwide protests in October. The PPTA is especially critical of Stanford\u2019s changes to the Teaching Council, which sets teaching standards. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cParents should be concerned that their children are essentially being used as a guinea pig, as a political experiment for somebody\u2019s ideology.\u201d <\/p>\n

She\u2019s especially concerned about the NZ Initiative\u2019s influence on the new curriculum and its links to a wider right-wing reform agenda that, she argues, is being imported into classrooms with little local testing or consent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a curriculum that has been written for Kiwis by Kiwis. It is very clear that this is somebody else\u2019s curriculum being imported.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what will Labour change? Prime pledges to restore the budget for the school lunches programme and to block the expansion of charter schools, both of which come under Act leader David Seymour\u2019s purview as associate education minister. <\/p>\n

What about Stanford\u2019s reforms? \u201cAt the beginning of 2026, as we head into the election, we\u2019re obviously not making any announcements right now. But any changes should have genuine sector consultation and collaboration, respecting and trusting our sector and the experts. In terms of any sensible improvements that the minister\u2019s making, if it is evidence-based, if it is supported by the sector then we\u2019ll engage constructively in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recovery position<\/p>\n

When Stanford defunded Reading Recovery, it provoked disbelief from supporters. Countless teachers and parents around the world had witnessed the transformational impacts of the programme. How could anyone claim it didn\u2019t work? But research here and overseas had raised doubts, culminating in a large-scale US study in 2023 which found Reading Recovery students showed initial gains in reading ability but the gains not only disappeared but became statistically insignificant and negative in later years.<\/p>\n

This connects to the traditionalist critique of the skills-based teaching approach favoured by progressives. By teaching children to develop alternative literacy strategies \u2013 looking at pictures, guessing words from context \u2013 they could generate the illusion that children were learning to read. But they lacked the knowledge to decode the actual words, and when the pictures disappeared and the texts became more complex, the students were lost and never caught up.<\/p>\n

This is a depressingly common phenomenon across all policy domains: a seemingly promising scheme yields promising results in trials but fails to deliver over time and at scale. It\u2019s called the fade-out effect, and it\u2019s one reason politicians and other policy\u00admakers should be cautious about claims that programmes are evidence-based or backed by science.<\/p>\n

In late 2025, Stanford highlighted results from a maths acceleration trial involving 1500 Year 7 and 8 students who were significantly behind, claiming students in the trial made an average of 1-2 years\u2019 progress in just 12 weeks. <\/p>\n

To many education experts this all sounded bleakly familiar \u2013 near-miraculous results from limited trials \u2013 and raises the question: is Stanford fixing the education system broken by her predecessors, or repeating the same errors of the past and breaking it again in novel ways? <\/p>\n

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