Education Minister Erica Stanford in her Beehive office. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Some Cabinet ministers end up spouting the gobbledegook of their own officials, but not Erica Stanford.
If she resembles anyone in her role as Education Minister, it is more that of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon in terms of her energy levels, buzz words, targets and a focus on outcomes.
She is sitting on the sofa in her Beehive office – she never uses the desk – explaining how much research she did into education as an Opposition MP before getting into Government in November.
She read every piece of education research she could get her hands on, studied what was happening overseas and engaged extensively with the sector to find out what bugged them so when she arrived in Government she was ready.
“We had huge clarity of purpose, and we knew there needed to be pace – so purpose, clarity and pace. We knew what we needed to do,” she said.
“We knew the goal we needed to get to. We knew the six steps we needed to put in place to get there. Now every single policy we are bringing forward will touch one of those priority areas, driving towards that outcome.”
The way she puts her priorities is: a clearer curriculum; a better approach to literacy and numeracy; smarter assessment and reporting; improved teacher training; stronger learning support for students with additional needs; and greater use of data and evidence to drive improvement.
Stanford is one of the stars of the Luxon Cabinet so far – sharing equal top billing with Chris Bishop and Simeon Brown in a recent Weekend Herald report card.
It was evident at the recent National Party conference that Luxon rates her too, using an ambitious plan to accelerate changes to the Year 0-8 mathematics curriculum as the centre-piece for his conference speech.
His confidence in her was evident from the outset; when Luxon took over the National Party leadership in 2021, he gave her Education and promoted her from place No 25 to No 7 on the front bench.
As a minister, she also has responsibility for Immigration and is the lead minister for the Government’s response to the Royal Commission on Abuse in State Care.
In education, her focus is the compulsory sector; David Seymour has responsibility for early childhood education and Penny Simmonds for tertiary education.
Stanford has a lot of changes on the go, including the shift to structured literacy next year (where the emphasis is on sounds and phonics to learn reading), and bringing forward curriculum changes in maths to next year.
She calls it structured maths in which the curriculum sets out what to teach, at what year and how to teach.
In many cases, schools are buying off-the-shelf resources from private providers to help with step-by-step teaching and from next year, they will be available to schools for free.
So is this a revolution?
“It is a small revolution but I wouldn’t want to overcook it. We have had decades of an experiment, a liberal experiment, of a child-centred, play-based, project-based, open-plan experiment that has not worked,” she said.
“We absolutely need to have a shift back, a pendulum swing back to a knowledge-rich curriculum with evidence-based teaching practices. We are assessing our kids’ progress along the way to make sure they are on track and they are not falling behind and when they do fall behind, we intervene early to make sure they are catching up.”
There was also change at the Ministry of Education. She had been surprised at the number of times there was no evaluation of the outcomes of things it was spent money and now there would be.
“What we have had is this snowball of band-aids, that’s what I call it, that’s growing and growing and growing and we never stop doing anything because we actually don’t know if it’s working or not.”
Stanford, who just turned 46, has experienced the education system as a pupil, a university student and as a parent of two kids, a son in Year 8 ( what used to be called form 2) and a daughter in Year 12 (form 6).
She was one of those kids who thrived at school. She was at primary school in the 1980s when Michael Jackson and Kylie Minogue were on her shopping list – cassettes, of course.
By the time she reached Rangitoto College, her music tastes had expanded and she was playing the bassoon.
“Rangitoto College for me was the place where I found my people, my passions – debating, orchestras, hockey, the muso crew I hung out with. You’ve got to find your people at school. It’s very important.”
She is coy about the bassoon but then admits there was a clip of her on Instagram last year playing the instrument for the first time since leaving school.
In it, she is led on the piano by her trusted education adviser Emma Chatterton – who stood for National in Remutaka against Chris Hipkins – and who remains in her ministerial office as an adviser.
She said Rangitoto’s reputation for excellence came down to the leadership of its principals, the late Allan Peachey for most of the time she had been there – he went on to become an MP – then David Hodge, who died in 2022, and the present principal, Patrick Gale.
“You walk into any school – you can tell by the leadership the results of the school because that is the job of the principal to drive teaching and learning and improvement and results,” said Stanford. “They were excellent leaders so excellent outcomes.”
Her father, a pilot who emigrated from the Netherlands as a child with his family, and mother had known the value of education, said Stanford.
“There were incentives for doing well. They were always involved.”
Her mother sat with her every day after school while she did her homework. That rubbed off on Stanford who does the same with her kids when she can, although with her being away so much, her husband, Kane, has taken over much of what she did.
“I used to cook before this job and now my husband has learned to cook and he is amazing. Even when I have time off, he cooks now. He does everything, the kids, the after-school activities, the lunches, the cooking – everything.
“Although I have to say, on a Sunday before I leave, I clean the whole house, all the toilets, all the floors, all the laundry, everything. It’s the thing I still do because I feel guilty about the fact I am never home.”
Stanford studied politics at Auckland University, then worked in an export company, television production and as an electorate agent for National MP Murray McCully before taking over his East Coast Bays seat when he retired in 2017.
She roped him in early on this year to do a review of school buildings.
Most of what Stanford has announced as Education Minister has been well-signalled and in line with expectations, such as the move to ban cell phones, to have an hour a day for reading, writing and mathematics and the move to structured literacy across the country from 2025.
The exception was the mathematics move announced by Luxon at the National Party conference.
That is more controversial because it is bringing forward to 2025 changes to the maths curriculum which, under the last Labour Government, had been due to begin in 2026.
The teacher union NZEI expressed concern about the speed of change.
Labour’s education spokeswoman and former minister Jan Tinetti has also expressed misgivings about the speed.
But Stanford justifies it after seeing some “horrific” results of where Year 8 students were in mathematics. She interrogated the people who had run the assessment and was satisfied it was as bad as it seemed.
“My stomach just dropped. DPMC [Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet] had never seen anything like this.
“I saw the boss [Luxon] in the Koru Lounge and said ‘I’ve got a problem, but don’t worry I’ve got a solution.’ And I’ve also found the money.”
Luxon called a meeting of senior officials in his office to discuss the results and the plan. It was agreed and he announced it at the conference, about three weeks after the results landed.
Yes it was fast, said Stanford and perhaps the ministry was not used to acting so swiftly.
“But in light of those results, I can’t look a parent in the eye and go ‘we’ll get to it next year.’”
“We don’t have time to waste.”
She said the equity gap was increasing because rich families were putting their kids into after-school tuition and the kids of poorer parents who couldn’t afford tuition were relying on the school system.
Latest PISA data drew attention to a huge gap in New Zealand between the haves and have-nots in educational outcomes.
“Closing the equity gap is so important and you have to do that through evidenced-based practice and the right resources.”
“The big thing now is everything lives and dies on actually implementing the plan.”
Since the announcement, she has been meeting with sector groups to find out what else they need to implement the plan successfully.
“I understand that having two new curricula areas in one year for our teachers is massive. It is overwhelming which is why we are providing all of these resources for the teachers: guidebooks, workbooks, resources and professional learning but I know it is a big ask, so what more can we do?”
“It is so crucial that we have a knowledge-rich curriculum that lays out every single year what has to be taught and it is really important for things like English and maths where you have to build mastery over time…”
When the curriculum was full of general competencies to be taught over several years, some competencies could be repeated and some missed out altogether.
“Things can get lost. You are leaving learning to chance,” she said.
Some schools had created their own local curricula and year-by-year sequence who do it “brilliantly well,” she said.
“Other schools don’t have that resource and haven’t managed to do that so you have a postcode lottery between schools. It’s not good enough.”
“We don’t have time to use professional learning and development to dig our way out of what we are in.”
Every report had already said that primary teachers lacked the confidence to teach mathematics.
“It’s not their fault. We didn’t have a high bar to get into initial teacher education and then we actually didn’t do anything much at initial teacher education to build confidence and capability in mathematics.
“So I have now a workforce, not all of them, but a lot of primary school teachers lack confidence and capability in maths. It is going to take us 10 or 15 years to turn that around with just professional learning and development alone.”
That would happen and $20 million had been budgeted for professional development in structured maths.
“I need to accelerate kids’ learning tomorrow.”
Mathematics programmes were running right now in schools setting out step-by-step what should be taught and when and supplying detailed workbooks for teachers and students.
“Every single child in this country will have access to one of these programmes – schools can choose – there will be a number of providers they can choose.”
Stanford said she worked hard to keep the education sector on side. She was running principals’ forums and often gave out her phone number to call if they felt the need to.
She said whenever she went into secondary schools, principals told her they spent a lot of time teaching basic facts and times tables because the kids were so far behind.
That had to be turned around if New Zealand wanted to produce people who solved climate change, and build the Rocket Labs and Fisher and Pakyels.
“They all have the capability – all of these kids.
“Every kid is good at maths, every single kid- they just to have the right ingredients and that is the attitude we have to get into the system. Anyone can be good at maths.”
So was she good at maths?
“I was not good at maths,” she said. “I tried but I grew up thinking I was bad at maths.
“Actually, I probably wasn’t bad at maths but I got it into my head, this Kiwi disease that we have, that we’re bad at maths. We’re not bad at maths. We just to have the right things in place and that’s what we’re focused on doing.”
Kerikeri Primary School got a shout-out in Parliament last week from Stanford for the improvements it has made in maths teaching.
She used it as example of a school that had used a private provider to help with step-by-step maths teaching and which had astonishing results. Stanford calls the approach structured maths.
Every school will have access to a range of similar private provider resources in order to help meet the new Year 0 to 8 maths curriculum which will be in place from next year, after Luxon announced it would be brought forward a year.
Kerikeri School principal Dr Sarah Brown told the Herald on Sunday that the school, which has 22 classrooms, started using the structured maths approach in 2020.
“Our academic data around maths wasn’t great and I could also see inconsistencies in the way maths was being taught across the school and I wanted a consistent model with a clear scope and sequence.”
“It has been a game-changer,” she said.
The school is 44% Maori and the gap between the results of Māori and non-Māori had been closed, she said. Maths was now the favourite subject of many children.
“If you ask our teachers what is the curriculum area they want to keep doing, it is maths.
“Every fortnight I have student council meetings and I am saying ‘tell me what you enjoy about school’ and maths is No 1 on the hit parade. They love it.
“The teachers are excited, the children are excited.”
Ironically, the interview is interrupted by a pupil bringing her maths work to show the principal.
Before deciding which provider to use in 2020, the school sent surveys to a lot of other schools asking for their experiences and settled on a provider called Pr1me.
The school trialled it for six months before deciding to go ahead. Like other providers, it comes with plans, workbooks and teachers for teacher and practice books for pupils.
She said not much professional and learning development had been needed because it was so explicitly detailed about how to run lessons.
For those who were hesitant about it, Brown said it was best to keep an open mind.
“Many of us were hesitant about structured literacy and we are reaping the benefits from it now. Let’s be open-minded about it and give it a go.”
The new maths curriculum has gone out for consultation and work is under way on which providers will be accredited to be freely available for schools.
Alongside the maths curriculum announcement, the Government has budgeted $20 million for professional development.
It has raised the level entry criteria for teacher education to NCEA level 2.
Audrey Young is the New Zealand Herald’s senior political correspondent. She was named Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards in 2023, 2020 and 2018.
Expectations tempered around return to surplus in 2027/28.