Erica Stanford has had more impact on the school system than any education minister in decades.
In less than three years, she has overseen the rewrite of every school curriculum, dug a grave for the NCEA qualification and mandated the structured literacy approach to teaching children to read in every primary school.
Stanford has effectively seized control of teachers’ standards, excised school boards’ Treaty of Waitangi obligations and increased learning support funding – and that’s not even half of it.
There is also banning cellphones from classrooms, mandating an hour a day of reading, writing and maths, and accelerating the school building programme.
On top of that, there’s the work of Associate Education Minister David Seymour and Tertiary Education Minister Penny Simmonds.
Between them, they’ve re-introduced charter schools, slashed the cost of free school lunches, brought a tougher approach to school attendance, dismantled mega-tertiary institute Te Pūkenga and moved the year of fees-free study from the first year of study to the final year.
The government now finds itself in a position of unprecedented control over the various levers that influence the school system, but has it strengthened the education system, as Prime Minister Christopher Luxon claimed earlier this year?
Stanford told RNZ there were early signs of improvement in maths, writing and five-year-olds’ ability to read.
Anecdotally, there was certainly talk of improvement, especially in maths and early reading, but evidence was sketchy at a nationally measurable level.
The strongest proof came this week, with the New Zealand Council for Educational Research’s analysis of the past 15 years of results from Progressive Achievement Tests (PATs). It showed maths and reading skills improved in the past couple of years, and at a reasonbly sharp rate this year.
The study also showed that, for maths and reading vocabulary, the improvement began before this government’s tenure, and it did not attribute the improvements to any particular cause.
Other studies – the Curriculum Insights study of children in Years 3, 6, and 8, and the OECD’s PISA tests for 15-year-olds – showed, for the most part, statistically insigificant changes.
The main area of improvement in schools that might have been influenced by the government was attendance. Last term, 64 percent of children attended regularly – the best term 2 result since 2020 and a bounceback from post-Covid lows.
Meanwhile, 19 percent of school-leavers last year had no formal qualification – one of the worst figures of the NCEA era, and likely driven by must-pass online reading, writing and maths tests introduced by the previous government.
Expecting clearly measurable changes to children’s achievement from the government’s actions is unfair – principals and teachers told RNZ it was too early to expect to see change.
They said schools were still coming to grips with the first of the new curriculums and many teachers continued to do things their way, until they were ready to change. Rather, this term of government has been about laying foundations.
Primary schools have worked with a new English curriculum since the start of 2025, although many shifted or started to shift to the structured literacy approach for teaching children to read under the previous government.
They’ve also got a new and more-difficult maths curriculum backed up by free workbooks, which is expected to bring measurable improvements in primary school maths achievement.
The remaining Y0-10 curriculums have been rewritten, with a focus on knowledge and clear progressions from year to year, for introduction next year and in 2029.
The final senior secondary curriculums are yet to drop, but the drafts are out and the government has sketched the broad outline of the qualification that will replace NCEA from 2028-2030 – exams in every subject, no mixing-and-matching of different subjects and new vocational subjects developed with industry.
Learning support funding has increased, but teachers don’t believe last year’s boost of $747m over four years has been as “seismic” as the minister declared at the time. The government initially raised spending by six percent and, by 2028/29, the learning support envelope will total $1.67 billion, 14 percent more than the 2024/25 starting point.
Special schools are being expanded for the first time in years and charter schools are back, with 19 open and more due to start next year.
For the most part, the charters appear to be boutique schools, but with more of a focus on neurodiverse and other disenfranchised learners than last time the model was tried. The exception is Aotearoa Infinite Academy – the online school on track to become one of the biggest.
The government has shifted control of teachers’ professional standards and standards for initial teacher education to the Education Ministry.
Early childhood education regulations have been rewritten and the funding system is under review.
Independent polytechnics have been re-established as mega institute Te Pūkenga is dismantled – a change helpfully cushioned by a surge in domestic enrolments and the return of valuable foreign students.
That’s a lot of change and it doesn’t cover everything this government has done. In many cases, the foundations have appeared shaky.
The primary school maths curriculum was changed late in 2025, even though schools had already been using the supposedly final version for nearly an entire year.
Teachers have told RNZ that structured literacy helps more children learn the basics of reading, but some also warn that it comes at a cost to comprehension and enjoyment of reading.
Draft curriculums were condemned by subject experts and teachers as overcrowded and containing errors.
The shift to mass-provided school lunches was dogged by complaints.
Criticism has been a big feature of the government’s reforms – it has not brought the school and early childhood sectors with it, and there have been remarkable levels of opposition.
Nearly every regional principals association in the country and subject associations spoke out against what they saw as badly drafted new curriculums.
More than half the country’s schools publicly declared their opposition to the sudden removal of their Treaty of Waitangi obligations. Others told RNZ they shared the sentiment, but did not speak out, because they did not want to appear “political”.
Nearly every education peak body opposed the government’s takeover of teachers’ registration and the Teaching Council standards body.
Much of the school sector’s response can be characterised as backing some or even much of what the government is doing, “but not like that”.
The government would have more support without culture-war moves like reducing the importance of the Treaty, omitting climate change from the curriculum in Years 0-10, only to reinstate it (sort of), and ditching the Aotearoa New Zealand histories curriculum.
There might also be more support, if peak bodies felt they had more or even some input into the government’s plans. Subject associations told RNZ their members contributed to curriculum work, but could see no evidence of their input in resulting drafts.
In early childhood, many in the sector fear the current funding review will recommend watering down or removing incentives to employ fully qualified registered teachers, and decoupling their pay rates from those of school and kindergarten teachers.
Early-years teachers aren’t the only ones worried about ECE. An experienced school principal warned the government’s education ambitions would fail without more attention to quality in ECE.
“If you nail ECE the rest will fall into place,” they said.
Despite the lack of widespread and strong support, teachers and principals spoken to by RNZ do not want to abandon the changes altogether, if the election brings a change of government.
They say the sector has been through too much turmoil and it would be better to continue with modifications than to switch horses altogether at this late stage.
They made an exception for the deletion of boards’ Treaty of Waitangi obligations, arguing they were the cornerstone of equity in schools and must be restored, and the Teaching Council changes.
The Labour Party has clearly heard the same message – its policy would freeze the NCEA reforms and any curriculums that have not yet been introduced, and check with the sector how they want to proceed.
Education Minister Erica Stanford told RNZ the government had to move fast to raise achievement and close equity gaps.
“There is no time to waste when around 60,000 children start school every year,” she said. “The work is not finished, but the early signs show why this government has been so relentlessly focused on evidence, implementation and getting support into classrooms quickly.
“We have made enormous change in three years, but these reforms now need time to embed and deliver their full impact. We cannot afford to put that progress at risk.”
The past three years have left the school sector poised for consolidation of reforms that will lead to an unprecedented standardisation of what is taught, when it is taught, and how it is taught.
Depending on who you listen to, it’s either a step back to teacher-led 1950s-style lessons or a shift to back-to-basics learning that too many children have been missing.
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