Barry Soper: Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent on Erica Stanford revealing a planned boost to education funding

A $131 million education boost aiming to lift maths results and teachers' confidence teaching it has been revealed.

Funding's going to new workbooks and digital tools, as well as a Year Two literacy check and Year Five maths check.

Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent Barry Soper says Erica Stanford's responding to the needs of teachers, and ideally they'll support these changes. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Barry soapers with us Allo Barry.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Good afternoon, Heather. All right, so Erica Stanford, wuld you
make of it? She's such an enthusiast, isn't she that?
Particularly about education? She clearly loves the portfolio and you'd
have to say it's done pretty well in it as well.
These statistics over the past two years have changed quite considerably,

(00:21):
and she was asked today whether the teachers would be
feeling overloaded with this new series of packages that she's announced,
one hundred and thirty one million dollars worth, and she's, well,
the ideas essentially came from the teachers themselves. They're not compulsory.
They don't have to do it. So if you get
the trade union whinging about teachers being overloaded, the teachers

(00:45):
don't have to carry out these changes, but for the
betterment of their children, if they are genuine teachers, that's
exactly what they will do, and not being compulsory. To
that end, Stamford paid tribute to those the school frontline.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
At least eighty five percent of teachers have changed their
teaching practice and literacy and maths. That is an enormous
achievement in a very short space. Of time. So all
of the teachers and the principles out there have worked
so hard to implement these changes. Your professionalism and your
dedication to your students is reflected in these early results.
We did not expect to see results like these so early,

(01:23):
and it is one hundred percent because of the work
that you have done in the classrooms. Of that we
thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
So it's quite entast enthusiastic. I mean, it's interesting. When
I was thinking about the importance that education has played
with some governments. I remember that to David LONGI he
appointed himself Minister of Education and Prime minister he was,
of course, and you know he brought in Tomorrow's schools.
They lasted for quite a while, but in the end

(01:50):
they sort of faded. But tomorrow Schools is it's still
their concept. Their concept is exactly the same. It's not
quite what it was that and David longboarded him. Do
you like Winston Hanker for nineteen ninety two when we
still owned the VNZ Do you think all of those
were the good old days? They were? Well, of course
they were the good old days. You know, there was

(02:12):
the financial boom of the eighties, the rogenomics period and
essentially though, when the B and Z was involved in
that financial issue and during the nineties, particularly after nineteen
eighty seven, they were making bad loans. And you know,

(02:34):
Peters of course, is essentially just doing what he does best,
filling town halls, largely preaching to converted. But the sermon
from the pulpit yesterday didn't wash with the Prime Minister,
who was adamant it just simply won't happen.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
I just wanted to think about the proposal on the table,
which is a proposal to go by a private company
for a minimum of at least thirty billion dollars of
which would mean that we would go into the market
and borrow more money at a time when New Zealand
has doubled its borrowing as a percentage of the economy.
Thank you to labor. You know this in many ways
there's a labor nationalization policy. If you think about it,

(03:13):
that's what's been proposed. So I'm just saying to you
it isn't going to happen. It makes no sense.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
So there you go. That's off the table as far
as he's concerned. It's interesting, isn't it though? The Kiwi
Bank that was brought in after the B and Z
was sold to the National Bank of Australia for this
very reason that New Zealanders wanted there the funds from
the bank will remain in this country. And that was
old Jim Andersen's idea. It was implemented by Michael Cullen

(03:40):
who was Gregg drag kicking and screaming through the front door.
He didn't like the idea. But Kiwi Bank is growing
quite considerably now and obviously looks as though it's going
to get more capitalization. But look the B and Z.
You remember, it's interesting when Winston says they want to
buy it back because in that ninety ninety election leading

(04:02):
up to it, Jim Boulder said there'll be no if
SnO but snow. Maybe's superannuation sir atax introduced by the
lave of government. It'll go well. When they looked at
the books of the B and Z it was three
hundred and eighty million dollars. They had to cough up
for that, and after several more interventions they got up
to a billion dollars. So that's what happens when you've

(04:22):
got a bank. Maybe it was controlled by the government, yes,
because it's government. Nothing that the government runs runs as
well as when it's vately run well. We've seen that happen.
We although Kiwi Bank is doing, you know, better than
certainly what the B and Z was doing at one point.
Keewe Bank is tiny, honest, yeah, tiny compared to the

(04:43):
ben Z. I remember being very disappointed when it was sold.
It was the people's bank and people were proud of
the Bank of New Zealand. So there was a lot
of nostalgia there with the Bank of New Zealand. But
you know, it just went by the wayside as did
a lot during that time. Now it's being run really
well and it's doing that.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Barry, thank you very much appreciated.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Barry Sofa, Senior political correspondent.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
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