Erica Stanford: Education Minister on the roll out of NCEA Level 1, her relationship with the teachers' union

The Education Minister says she has a great relationship with the teachers’ union, despite some disagreement. 

A PPTA survey shows a majority of teachers are unhappy with the NCEA level one roll out. 

It comes as the organisation has its conference this week, with Minister Erica Stanford speaking yesterday, defending the controversial move to remove te reo funding for teachers. 

She told Heather du Plessis-Allan most of teachers' concerns are with NCEA changes, which are the previous Government's fault, and she agrees. 

LISTEN ABOVE 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So teacher unions are having another crack at the government's
overhaul of the curriculum. The PPTA has got its annual
conference on this week and they've released to survey revealing
that most of the secondary school teachers there aren't happy
with the NCEEA Level one roll out with us now,
as Education Minister Erica Stanford, Erica, good.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Morning, good morning, he of the how I see, I'm well.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Thank you. I see you had to go and chance
to them yesterday or the other day. Did they give
you a warm reception? Was it a bit rough.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yesterday? And actually it was an exceptionally good conception. I
had a great time. They were wonderful. I going very
very well with Chris Abercrombie and the PPTA, and to
be set at them technically, the grumblings that they're having
at the moment is not with a curriculum, because there
is no curriculum. It's with the NCEEA changes to Level one,
and that is aimed at the previous government, and I

(00:45):
agree wholeheartedly with them. When I came into office last year,
I saw some results that showed that well over half
of schools felt not prepared or only somewhat prepared for
next year's level one saw this and then I started
building calls from Principles and Features saying we don't know
what to teach next year because there are no subject

(01:05):
learning outcomes, we don't have any exemplars. So we had
six weeks to scramble with the subject associations to write
subject learning outcomes over Christmas. Associations did an amazing job
and push ENZQA to get those exemplars ready that weren't
going to be ready till May. This was a disastrous
rollout by the previous government of NA. Well, we did

(01:30):
those subject learning outcomes and we did the exemplars and
the the sector of the pustle next year to make
a few changes which we have around the types of
assessments we've moved to do that. The bigger problem has
only really come to light at the back end of
this year with the fact that they don't like the

(01:52):
big slots of small smaller, fewer, sorry larger fewer, bigger
standards rather than smaller and fewer stands, which we moved
away from. So I've been in contact with the lots
of Principles and they said there's nothing much you can
do for next year. But I've put together a group
of experienced principles from around the country who are now

(02:12):
at working at pace on MCEA changes and what we
can do. I've also asked to Ero to write a
full report on what happened with Level one rollout and
INCA overall. It's coming to me in November, but I've
seen the early indications and it's pretty damning.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Okay, well, best of luck dealing with this. Eric is Stanford,
the Education Minister. For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast,
listen live to news talks that'd be from six am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.