Erica Stanford: Education Minister on the results of structured literacy in primary schools

The Education Minister's confident successful primary school literacy results aren't just low hanging fruit.

Results from the new phonics literacy programme show 58% of students are at or above expectations after 20 weeks.

More than 40% of students exceeded expectations in Term 3 – more than double the first term.

Erica Stanford says they're tracking where they hoped.

But she told Mike Hosking this couldn't be achieved by just anyone and required a government who was prepared to follow the science.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So you can't argue with the stat I don't think
we're rolling in education at the moment. Turnarounds on the
new PHONICX Literacy program shows as term three fifty eight
percent fifty eight of the new entrants or above expectations,
which is up from thirty six, and term one forty
three percent exceeding expectations, which is double term one. Erica
Stanford's the Education minister back with us, very good morning
to you.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Good morning mate.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Did you have numbers by way of expectation or you
just didn't know?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
We knew what we were probably going to see because
I had looked at schools who had already done this
for the last five years, and looked at the ADATA,
and we knew this is where we probably would be tracking.
But when you are rolling something out at scale across
the entire country and training over thirty thousand teachers in
a brand new way of teaching reading, you just don't know.

(00:48):
So when we did see these figures come in, it
was a it was a good day.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Mike, is exactly is there more where that came from?
Do you think, oh, there's a huge amount.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
This is only one very small snapshot of ourt little
wee tiny five year old if they just start school,
we track them through so we test them again on
the same test at forty weeks and then of course
from next year twice a year every year and reading, writing,
and maths, there will be a progress monitoring check in.
I dare not call it a test, but we will

(01:17):
be essentially assessing every child from year three to make
sure that they're on track with their reading, writing, and maths,
and that includes high level literacy like comprehension and those
other What we.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Got yesterday, though, is that low hanging fruit? Would you
expect something if you change it up and it's simple
and it's easy to do or not?

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Sorry I say that again?

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Is it low hanging fruit? In other words, you're always
anyone could do this?

Speaker 2 (01:41):
No, not anyone could do this because for decades we
have been following the three queuing men of look at
the picture, guess the word, and the previous government would
not put the little line in the sand and say
we're not doing that anymore. We are going to switch
to phonics and sounding out the word and learning the
code and under standing a letter makes a sound. Now

(02:01):
you can't get these results unless you are a government
that's prepared to stand up and say we're going to
follow the science and the evidence. James Chapman and New
Zealand has been fighting this for thirty years. It looks simple,
it looks easy. People are like, oh, it's just phonics.
But unless you have a government that's prepared to say
we're not going to look at the picture against the
word anymore, you don't get these results. So no, it's

(02:22):
not easy.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
So the kiapoins thing you referenced in the press conference yesterday,
where did that come from? And why weren't we doing it? Anyway?
Because the question that came out to be kipoy answer
was a good one. Why aren't we or haven't we
been doing it?

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Because we New Zealand was the home of balanced literacy
and reading recovery, which was look at the picture and
guess the word. And we grew that movement and spread
it around the rest of the world. And we've been
hanging on to it desperately, even in the face of
declining data and evidence to show that it didn't work.
And I don't honestly, I don't know why, because there
are people who have been fighting it forever. But principles

(02:56):
like Jason Miles at Kayapoint and many others took that
step and did it themselves anyway, which helped me give
me the confidence in the data I needed to do it.
But look, I can't answer why we haven't done this earlier.
It's just honestly, it probably needed a government that was
prepared to, like I say, put that line in the sand,
and we did that.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Appreciate your time very much. Eriicon stand for Education minis.
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