Erica Stanford: Education Minister on the re-prioritising of funds from an unaccredited te reo programme into the maths curriculum

The Government's re-prioritising funding from an unaccredited te reo programme for teachers into new maths curriculum resources and teacher guidance.  

The Education Minister says there's no evidence the te reo programme directly helped student achievement, and it's more than double the cost of similar courses.  

Primary teachers can select resources this year for delivery in term 1.  

Erica Stanford told Mike Hosking they always knew they had to provide high-quality resources like lesson plans and workbooks for the new maths curriculum.  

She says many schools who can afford them already buy them, they're now making them free of charge for every child in every school.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So another thirty million heading towards the classroom. Today, the
government is announcing further support for teachers worried about new
Maths curriculum. The finding has been reprioritized, The funding has
been reprioritized from a scheme that offered free to Rayo
lessons for teachers. The funny thing about that was it
was unaccredited and cost double that of similar courses. So
a little bit of a waste of money, it seems.
Education Minister Erica Stanford with this good morning, good morning.

(00:23):
That money you've found, How much of that's out there
if you look hard enough, that's just sloshing around doing
god knows what.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
I think there's plenty of money in education for us
to reprioritize and too things like literacy and numerous eat
and I'm make sure that our kids are getting the
very best and we're raising achievement. I go through line
by line the last budget. I'm doing it again this
budget to reprioritize into evinced based initiatives work for our kids.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
And what's the thirty million this time?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
By Well, we said that in August with those pretty
awful Maths results that came out in the twenty percent
of our kids are at curriculum by the time they
leave intermediate. We set at that point we launching on
new campaign. We're bringing forward the Maths, the new Math
curriculum for next year. We're investing in professional learning and development.

(01:10):
But we always knew that we needed to provide high
quality curriculum aligned resources to schools. So I'm talking about
lesson plans and teacher guides for teachers and high quality
workbooks for our kids. Many schools who can afford them
already buy them. We are now making them free of
charge for every single child in every single school.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
The specialist nature if you like, of maths. How difficult
is this potentially making it for you?

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Look, it is difficult for our primary school teachers to
be experts and everything mathematics and science and art, music
and English. It's a monumental effort every day for them
to deliver those multiple curricular areas, and we need to
make sure that we're supporting them with high quality PLD
and all of these high quality curriculum aligned resources. We

(02:00):
don't know.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
So what you seem to be saying, correct me if
I'm wrong, is that if you need it, you will
get it. If they're genuine. And what I can't work
out is how much of what they need is based
on need versus the union's going, I just want more money.
I just want more money. I just want more money.
And that's my singular solution to everything.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Well, look, there's multiple parts of this. He just need
lots of support from the government and from the Ministry
of Education, whether that's PLD or resources. Of course, they
will always talk about teacher pay, and we've made sure
that we've said every teacher bargaining around where we'll pay
teachers more. But it's also important because they also talk
about their day and the workload on them, and I

(02:40):
want to take that away. That's why we have a
curriculum that is year by year that is highly specific
about what needs to be taught, so that they don't
have to create that themselves. We're providing them should they
need it, with lesson plans and high quality resources so
they don't have to go and spend hours and hours
after school every day finding their own. So this is

(03:00):
all designed to support them and to take away some
of that load because they, as I say, it's a
huge effort to be across all of those curricular areas,
find resources for all those areas. We're making it easier
so we've got better outcomes for our kids.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Good stuff, good luck with the Erica Stamford Education Minister
since twenty nineteen. By the way, the one hundred million
dollar funded this initiative isn't accredited more than double the
cost of similar courses available, and evaluation of the program
found no evidence that directly impacted progress or achievement for students.
The review also couldn't quantify what impact the program had
on Tayo Mara use in the classroom one hundred million dollars.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
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Speaker 1 (03:40):
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