Erica Stanford: Education Minister on the $131 million investment in maths, reading, and writing education

Erica Stanford insists her curriculum reform adds sunlight and accountability to the sector.  

In a pre-Budget announcement, the Education Minister has announced $131 million to help improve students' reading, writing, and maths. 

It'll also include more professional development for teachers and school leaders in those areas. 

Stanford told Mike Hosking New Zealand's been in a black hole for some time. 

She says students aren't proficient in basic timetables, facts, or reading until they get to high school, and are struggling. 

She says we've been in the grip of a liberal education experiment that states assessing young people is bad for their mental health – which is ridiculous. 

Also in the announcement was a pledge to give schools more maths and literacy resources, and 36 extra maths intervention teachers.  

Stanford told Hosking more teachers are added every Budget, and she'd fund more if she could. 

She says they'll take small groups struggling with maths out of classes to get them where they need to be, and it's never been done before.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Come on, mate, these thirty six teachers. Is that based
on need or is it based on budget? And you
would buy more if you had more?

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Dae, Oh, look, I would buy more if I could.
They're amazing. It's not just thirty six. It's taking us
up to one hundred and seventy nine. I add more
every single budget. These are intervention teachers we've never had before.
So they take small groups who are struggling in maths
just to get them back up to where they need
to be and then return them to class. We do

(00:28):
it in literacy as well. We've got three hundred and
forty nine of those around the country and now one
hundred and seventy nine of these amazing maths teachers who
take small groups.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Of what was announced yesterday, how much of the piece
is about competency and confidence of a teacher in the
classroom to deliver what you're trying to do?

Speaker 2 (00:47):
A lot of this is about investing in our teachers
in explicit teaching practice and understanding the science of learning,
so how young people's brains work. You know, there are
incredible teachers all around the country already doing this. We
just want to make sure it's consistent and I know
that the sector are really excited about some of this
new professional learning and development that's coming. They've done the

(01:10):
first round in structured literacy and structured maths and then
this is the next rollout and we will do this
every single year to back the profession because they are
the most important thing to raising student achievement.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Do we have Yes, there are competent teachers, of course
there are, but there are also some incompetent teachers. How
hard a hall is this? I mean it's easy to
give a book, but if the teacher is no good,
I mean, were we behind the times? Are we getting
on top of it? Where are we at?

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Look, there's no doubt that there we do have a
problem with maths competency in New Zealand and the Royal
Society Math Report in twenty twenty one outlaid that it
said that just under fifty percent of teachers felt only
moderately confident teaching any strand of maths. And they have
to be generalists. They've got to teach maths in art
and science and English and everything, and it is you know,

(02:00):
it's on us. And they have been failed by initial
teacher education that didn't give them the maths training that
they needed. So we are fast tracking that competence. You
know when you mentioned the books we put in, Yes,
we put in workbooks, textbooks, but they go alongside teacher
guides and it's helping to boost confidence and competency in mathematics.
And that's why you saw yesterday that huge increase that

(02:23):
we weren't expecting in year six maths achievement by six percent.
And I put that down to those prime math books,
the Oxford Maths books, the mass No Problem math books,
because it does give the teacher a lesson by lesson guide,
not only helping the children but fast tracking their competence too.
And that was the whole point of that.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Explain to me. The timestables division checks at year five,
the literacy check at year two. Why wasn't somebody checking anything.
I mean, that's not rocket science, is it.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Well, because we've been in the group of a liberal
education experiment that says that, you know, assessing our young
people is bad for their mental health, which is ridiculous.
And so now we've had this black hole where we
didn't know that our young people didn't know, the Timestables
didn't know the basic facts, weren't on track with reading
until they get to high school and sit in CEA
turns out, Oh whoops, can't read and write, can't do maths.

(03:15):
You have to have a bit of sunlight and accountability
in this sector. And this is the first time we
have had not only those you just mentioned that I'm
putting in, but actually of today, we have a twice
yearly reading, writing and maths assessment from year three to
year eight. That has never happened in our history of
our country before. It's underway right now, and we did it.

(03:36):
If I told you this, Mike, three years ago, that
we were going to have a nationally consistent assessment and
year three to eight twice a year, I would have
been laughed out of the room. But we have it today,
and we delivered it and parents will now start to
see those results.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
You also announced over the weekend. We haven't talked since
since this the A to E thing, and the union
said yesterday the union said doesn't suit all students. How
much pushback are you getting from those sort of people
if you can't, I mean, if you're going to push
back against A to week, do they push back against everything?
With the God's sake, Gerrick or it's not hard, I know.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
But they're the unions that cried well right, they're saying
no to everything. They are a very small but quite
vocal minority. But you know the awful thing, Mike, I'll
tell you a story if you don't feel will indulge me.
You know, I rang a principle the other day and said, look,
I'm making an announcement. Can I put your name on
a list of people that the media might speak to?
Because typically, and it happened on TV one last night,

(04:28):
they go to all the union lackeys every single time
the union X union bosses ex union members and they
interview them. I want them to interview someone who is
an amazing principle doing excellent things, who loves what we're doing, which,
by the way, is the majority. Do you know what
she said to me? She said, I can't. I'd love to.
I love what you're doing, we're backing it, but I can't.

(04:49):
I cannot handle the awful backlash that I will get
by putting my head above the parapet. We just we
don't want to deal with it. And you know what,
isn't that an awful awful thing to say? You know
about the state of play education in New Zealand, whether
the union voices a minority drowning out those amazing people
who are doing excellent work.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
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