David Seymour disputes ‘overstep’ during teacher-only day crackdown, says ‘overlap’ is better term

Associate Education Minister David Seymour says he did not overstep during the teacher-only crackdown announcement last year - but there might have been an overlap.

Yesterday, Education Minister Erica Stanford suggested her associate had not run the announcement past her before making it.

“I think he knew at the time he was overstepping the mark somewhat because it is my decision – I am the Minister of Education, and when we are rolling out a new curriculum, we have to have curriculum days.”

Speaking to Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking, Seymour said “overlap” would be a better word than overstep.

“We have a set of rules that are very clear, we work very well together, but of course, there are always people that try beat these things up.”

Seymour disputed claims he ever said he was in charge and said he always said Stanford was the only person who could decide when schools closed.

He also said the “overlap” did not happen knowingly and last year he was making “observations” - not telling people what to do.

Seymour announced a crackdown on teacher-only days in September last year as part of wider plans to increase attendance rates.

He said teacher-only days were not something schools could take “willy-nilly”.

“We are saying teacher-only days are at the discretion of the Minister of Education; they are not something you can just take willy-nilly because if the teachers aren’t showing up, it’s pretty hard to motivate the students to show up.”

Seymour said it would be more difficult to encourage students to attend classes if the “school then decides to close itself on days it should be open”.

“That’s why we are enforcing the rules. If you want to have a teacher-only day, then you need to get the permission of the Minister of Education. It’s actually always been the rule, we’re just enforcing it.”

The issue came up during Stanford’s interview with TVNZ’s Q&A as she was discussing the new school curriculums.

She said it was important teachers had teacher-only days to go through that curriculum before teaching it to students.

“We are trying to keep them to an absolute minimum but my message to parents is during those times, those teachers are looking at the new curriculum, the year-by-year, knowledge-rich curriculum that is now internationally benchmarked ... they will be unpacking it all on those days.”

Stanford also spoke about the Government’s aspirations for increasing mathematics achievement rates for students. She told host Guyon Espiner, filling in for Jack Tame, the aim was to raise the success rate for Year 8 students to 80% by 2030. It currently stands at 22%.

“Today we have a year-by-year, internationally-benchmarked, knowledge-rich curriculum that lays out what should be taught and when that teachers love.

“We have resources to support the implementation of that we have never had before, that [with] the feedback we are having, teachers are loving.”

Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.