Erica Stanford’s Takeover of New Zealand Education Continues

The overhaul of school reviews might sound like a technical change — clearer reports, simpler grading, more transparency. But the new ERO reporting system risks doing something far more consequential: turning complex, community-based education into a simplified ranking exercise that reinforces inequality rather than addressing it.

Well, who would have thought it? I’m about to toss some more praise to Erica Stanford. She has consistently shown how a driven minister can achieve a great deal. It’s just a great pity that her focus has been so destructive – just imagine what she could have achieved if she’d been as enlightened as Steve Maharey, or going back much further, Peter Fraser, Minister of Education in the first Labour government. 

Her latest move is to ensure the Education Review Office’s criteria to reviewing schools has been adjusted to focus on her curriculum agenda. 

She has certainly been working very hard to close down all opposition to her plans for New Zealand education. Taking control of the New Zealand Teachers Council so she ensures teachers are forced to comply – done. Changing the nature of ERO’s investigation into school performance – done. Naming (and shaming) principals of poorly performing schools – done. 

As I’ve not had anything to do with an ERO school review since I retired, my knowledge of ERO is dated. However from what I’ve read in compiling notes for this article, I think that little has changed.

I contend that ERO has contributed little of value to New Zealand schooling since its establishment in 1989.  We can establish this by a little thought experiment – let’s pretend that ERO never existed.  What will the effects have been on schooling? 

Nothing of any significance in the great majority of schools – their absence would have not made any difference. I’d argue that a well functioning school has nothing to learn from ERO and that an ERO visit is merely a chore to get out of the way, so the focus can return to real issues. In many cases ERO’s visits actually interfere with a school’s operation.

Back in my principal days, a mentor of mine referred to ERO as “the Spanish Inquisition” while I used the label ‘Education Gestapo.’ I doubt if things have changed.

This was especially so in the 1990s, when their focus was on compliance, working on a strange belief structure that if a school was totally compliant with all the designated policies (of which there were many), then quality education would follow. So, preparing for an ERO visit was a matter of ensuring the school had all the policies in place, often to the extent where we’d phone up neighbouring schools to ‘borrow’ policies that hadn’t yet been developed. Or writing a policy the night before a visit, which I did once, and enjoyed telling the reviewers about it!  Nothing they could do, as the policy was in place so they could tick that box. 

When a Labour led government was elected in 1999 the new Minister of Education, Trevor Mallard, set up an enquiry to review ERO and the results couldn’t have been more damning.

There was a brief time about 2007 when ERO were marginally helpful, note that this was during Steve Maharey’s time as Minister of Education. Things reverted to type when the government changed at the end of 2008, and the coming changes will take us further into the pit.

I need to point out here that it is obvious that some kind of school review system is needed to ensure high quality schooling is provided across the country, it is just that ERO is the wrong model. There is a real place for an agency to work with schools, to review how things are going, to acknowledge the successes and to develop plans to address any issues. After all, given the ERO staff visit many schools over a year, they undoubtedly see many wondrous things happening, yet they are (or were?) forbidden to offer any advice or suggestions to schools, a waste of a resource in my opinion.

So how will ERO’s role change in 2026? Erica clearly has looked to the OFSTED system being used in England, known for terrifying school head teachers and school staff, to the point where a headteacher took her own life due to stress of an OFSTED visit. 

From review to ranking

Starting in term 2, ERO reports on schools will change to a grading system,

A, B, C, D: New School Reports will mark schools for parents

‘The same marking system used to assess students is being rolled out for schools themselves.

From the end of next month, the Education Review Office will publish clear, colour-coded assessments after visiting schools. These assessments, called School Reports, are being simplified and overhauled to make it easier for parents to work out how well performing schools are.

The new system will mark every school on 14 different areas. The grading system is effectively the same as the classic, A, B, C, or D used in any test or assignment.

A school could be given the equivalent of an A for “excelling”, B for “doing well”, C for “working towards”, or D for “improvement required”. The School Report will then give an overall view of how the school is going on those 14 assessment areas.’

Further: 

“The reports would not require new tests or information from schools, but they would change how the Education Review Office (ERO) reported those results and data. The current reports were not clear enough, Stanford said.

“They’re difficult to understand, they’re complex, they’re wordy. They don’t have, in them, the key information that parents are looking for about reading, writing, attendance, maths and wellbeing,” she said.

The new reports would provide grades for student achievement and progress, literacy and numeracy, attendance, staff leadership and teaching practice, school assessment, governance and equity.”

Why this will hit poorer communities hardest

On the surface, this would appear to be reasonable if all schools were equal in terms of children’s socio-economic backgrounds. However we know this is not the case and the majority of schools serve communities that are suffering from inequality, a factor which has been clearly established as the main determinant of educational progress. This immediately means schools in lower socio-economic areas are immediately disadvantaged in comparison to schools in well off areas. Because you’re not measuring schools — you’re measuring the inequality they’re trying to overcome. I worked in schools in communities at both ends of the socio-economic scale and the difference was extremely noticeable. 

‘ERO chief review officer Ruth Shinoda said the new School Report avoided giving schools a “single-word judgement”, so that it wouldn’t create a clear ranking of schools.

To come up with the new reports, Shinoda said ERO spoke to 100 parents, 12 schools and principals from across the country.

From that, she said it was clear that ERO had been using too much jargon in its old reports – which meant very little to parents.’

Rubbish. The new system immediately opens the door to ranking of schools.  But there’s more here – ERO developed this new system on the basis of very limited consultation – 100 parents, 12 schools and principals.

And yet they claim this is a representative sample? If a school based its decisions on such a restricted data range, ERO would land on it like a tonne of bricks. 

Claire Amos, Principal of Albany Senior High School, has written an in-depth article on this, which I recommend you read in full.

New ERO Reports – opportunities, concerns and “unintended” consequences

Yesterday the Minister of Education, Erica Stanford, and the Acting Chief Executive and Chief Review Officer at the Education Review Office (ERO), Ruth Shinoda, came together to launch the new look ERO Reports. Both spoke to how they worked with parents (100) and schools (12) to co-design these reports. They talked about how they were designed to make the reports more accessible for parents. They talked about how they would make it easier to resource and support schools in need. Whilst all of these things may be correct, they do not take away from deeply felt concerns and what I can only hope is unintended consequences of these new reports.’

Claire then links to the ERO website which explains in detail what is entailed in the new reporting system. 

Claire also expresses her concerns about the so-called consultation:

“First concern is in regards to who was consulted. Great to see schools and parents have been consulted, but can we get reassurance that this is a diverse range of contexts and communities? Have they seen the full suite of examples? Reading the examples makes me think not.’

She goes on to discuss the reporting systems – as this is quite detailed I recommend you read it for yourself.

Following that, she raises two key points of great concern:

‘Does this really help parents appreciate the context and challenges that each school is navigating, or does it create a handy “cheatsheet” for parents to assess the quality of the school? I would suggest when the full report is 12 pages long, the latter is most likely true.

I also have real concerns about the reinforcing of unconscious bias that will be further entrenched by examples like the ones above. We already had issues with parents assuming decile was a proxy for quality and combine that with a profile of the Principal we have a toxic cocktail of tired assumptions being amplified by careless example design.’

She raises another point that I hadn’t noticed:

‘I also do not buy any of the narrative about these new reports being necessary in order to provide data needed so that MoE can provide necessary intervention, further resourcing and support. Let’s be clear, there is absolutely no good reason to make this information public in order for MoE to have the information they need to provide greater resourcing and support. Unless you really believe a public flogging is necessary to raise standards?’

There’s the agenda right out in front – using the threat of a negative report against schools. 

In previous articles I have drawn readers’ attention to Erica being influenced by English education, from people such as Michael Gove and Nick Gibbs. Why did she decide to look to England? There are many academics, principals and teachers  in New Zealand who could have provided her with all she needed. 

Actually the answer is obvious, she wouldn’t have got the support she needed, in fact the opposite would have been the case. But England? They’ve been pursuing this kind of education for a couple of decades now and the results have been lacking.  In fact, as Claire writes:

‘I am also deeply concerned that this change is yet another reform that references the UK as a source of inspiration. We have seen this with our move to a more standardised “knowledge-rich” curriculum, we have seen this with greater mandates around an hour of reading, writing and maths a day. We have seen this with the moves to more standardisation, more testing. The Minister has been open about the influence of former UK Schools Minister Nick Gibbs whose reforms are actually now being wound back.’

A few months back this article appeared in the Guardian.

“England curriculum should focus less on exams and more on life skills, finds review

Experts say pupils should spend less time in exam halls and more time on activities like life skills, sport and work experience

A review of England’s curriculum has recommended reducing the amount of content and emphasis on exams and instead focusing more on life skills and “enrichment”.’

And also:

‘“Some of those other really precious and important things that schools do around enrichment, life skills, support for young people’s confidence – those things are being squeezed by the sheer volume of content in the national curriculum at present,” Francis said.’

But Erica knows better, so onwards we go.

Claire continues:

‘Which brings me to what I can only hope are the “unintended” consequences. The media framing of these report cards straight after they were announced were incredibly telling. These report cards are absolutely and instantly seen as a sorting hat, a league table to “sort the wheat from the chaff” which is interesting considering our state schools are so clearly zoned and school choice is really just an option for the affluent. Oh yeah, but that is changing with in the influx of charter schools isn’t it? Hmmmmm.’

She concludes with these two paragraphs. Ponder on the points she is making. Is this what you want for our children?

‘This is not the way to achieve substantive equitable outcomes, it is however a great way to peg one school against another, to ensure we give parents the power to avoid schools and reinforce tired and damaging assumptions made based on a colour coded report card so as to ensure under-resourcing of at-risk schools (as funding is tagged to roll numbers) until they are potentially swallowed up by “high performing” charter schools.

On a personal level I am both angry and sad. I am angry that once again simplistic solutions are being framed as a solution to complex issues and (some) of the public lap it up, as the marketing sounds so sensible, and I am sad because as an experienced educator who wants a system where every young person feels like they belong, I can see the absolute sweeping damage this will do to schools and communities who either embrace the challenge of meeting complex needs or simply reflect the deep and complex challenges of the communities and students they serve.’

Brie Elliot has also provided her take on this:

‘ERO has changed the way schools are publicly reported on – and the new model looks a lot closer to England’s Ofsted-style report card system than people are admitting. Critics in education are warning that this kind of model increases pressure on teachers and principals, encourages performative compliance, and risks reinforcing inequity rather than improving schools. 

That matters even more when ERO’s own example of a “school of concern” is a higher-EQI school – even though EQI is supposed to reflect barriers and support needs, not school quality. In other words: if the defence is “well of course that school looks worse, it has a high EQI,” then you’ve already proved the problem. We are turning barriers into stigma. 

And the fact a principal has now created a formal template to review the ERO reviewers themselves should ring alarm bells. If schools are going to be publicly judged, the people judging them should be open to scrutiny too… on context, culture, Te Tiriti, trauma, and whether they’re using real professional judgement instead of just ticking boxes. I’ll link that template in my bio. If ERO comes to your school, use it. If you safely can, publish your review of the reviewers too – or send it to me and I’ll help amplify it. Accountability should not run one way’.’

She discusses this in a video posted on Facebook. 

The real effect of these reports is simple: they turn schools into something to be compared — and judged. Based solely on their performance against the set criteria which will reflect Erica’s education agenda. There’s no room here for innovative principal and teachers to develop alternative learning programmes that meet the needs of their school communities and children. In the past, even in the worst days of the 1990s, this was always possible and some extremely creative schools were the result. 

Over many decades this was the strength of New Zealand primary education, especially before the neoliberal takeover in 1990. The result was that New Zealand primary education became world renowned, and innovative teachers like Elwyn Richardson and Sylvia Ashton-Warner had international recognition. Those were the days.

Now this will not be possible. Schools will be forced to be compliant, to play the game by ERO’s rules, as the consequences of not receiving the right colour codes could be disastrous. In spite of the many failings of earlier manifestations of ERO, there was always scope in their reviews for them to take account of issues outside of their agenda and for them to acknowledge school successes separate to their review criteria. It appears that this is no more. 

Observant readers may have noticed that this school review system is just a grown up version of the newly mandated reporting for children. When you limit the reporting to a few narrow criteria, you run the very real risk of missing out on many other equally or more important features. This is all in the name of restricting education to a very narrow focus on the basics, which as I and others have mentioned many times, is actually the goal of right wing governments all over the world.

And note that Erica has not yet moved on early childhood education, however that is most definitely in the works.

I’ve been impressed with the start made by new Labour Party education spokesperson Ginny Andersen, and we must also remember that Chris Hipkin’s mother, Rosemary Hipkins, is a well respected education researcher and a contributor to the Aotearoa Educators Collective.

There is hope for the future, two ticks in the right boxes is all it will take.