Why is Erica Stanford Importing One Size Fits All Curriculum Ideas from Overseas?

In a recent article “Why Is the Government Implementing New Zealand Initiative Policies?” I explored the influences of the New Zealand Initiative on government policies, especially in Education.

Minister of Education Erica Stanford has proven close ties to the New Zealand Initiative, especially Dr Michael Johnston, and her wide ranging changes to the provision of education in New Zealand very closely follow Johnston’s recommendations.

BUT:

There is a lot more behind Stanford’s drive to reshape education than just the New Zealand Initiative, and this is even more concerning.

Stanford has tapped into an international education movement and is busy implementing their education agenda here. I’m sure that people didn’t know that by voting for National in 2023, they were voting to sell out our unique education to meet an overseas agenda.

Let’s unpick this.

Earlier this year Stanford posted on her Instagram account a photograph of her with former Conservative Secretary of Education Michael Gove. Gove was Secretary of Education in the first years of the Cameron government and he caused mayhem to the schooling in UK. In 2011 I was in regular contact with a number of British teachers so I heard plenty about the ideologically driven destruction he caused. Anyone who views Gove as a role model seriously lacks judgement of character.

A thread about Gove’s influences on education was posted on BlueSky by Sandra Leaton Gray, Professor of Education Futures at the UCL Institute of Education. 

I’ve selected a number of these (and highlighted a few) that have relevance to New Zealand. I’ve also added a few comments. 

Read through them and spot the similarities to Stanford’s policies.

• Michael Gove reshaped English education more than any minister since 1944. His reforms continue to structure the present despite many changes of Government.

• His project was clear; a knowledge-rich curriculum, tougher examinations, and rapid academisation These reforms were presented as “rigour”, but they centralised authority and intensified pressure on schools.

Note: Academy schools are the UK’s version of charter schools. As with Seymour’s proposals, many schools were not given any option but to become academy schools.

• The paradox was autonomy that was not autonomy. Schools were promised freedom, yet the conditions of that freedom were tightly controlled by Whitehall.

This has parallels with the introduction of ‘Tomorrow’s Schools’ in 1990. Schools were promised freedom to implement their own ideas and values based on the wishes of their communities, then Wellington got so scared by that that they introduced compulsory School Charters that locked schools down, taking away most of the so-called freedoms.

• This origin is telling. Redistribution gave way to approved forms of evidence. Instead of directly addressing material inequality, the money was invested in testing pedagogy.

For example, National Standards back in 2011.

• The emphasis was on phonics, feedback, mastery mathematics, all methodological interventions rather than structural reform. Poverty, workload, and regional inequality remained at the margins.

• After 2019, EEF increasingly presented the knowledge-rich curriculum as a project of social justice, arguing that the disadvantaged require access to “powerful knowledge”

• Yet this framing introduces contradictions. Literacy trials show that phonics can raise scores, but gaps persist because poverty and home resources are untouched. Mastery mathematics delivers small gains, yet regional divides between London and the North remain entrenched.

• In other words, we are fixing the wrong problem. Curriculum and pedagogy are treated as levers for equality, while the material conditions of inequality go unaddressed.

• The lesson is stark. Whether traditionalist or progressive, no curriculum or assessment reform will reduce inequality unless redistribution, workload and accountability are addressed directly. Without structural change, we are rearranging the system while leaving its inequalities intact.

• The danger is not Gove’s reforms alone, but the diminishing of debate they produced. When evidence and equity are deployed in particular ways to defend the same narrow political script, real alternatives are rendered invisible.

•  Meanwhile in England, child growth is faltering under the weight of poverty and poor nutrition. Studies link early income poverty to long-term cognitive deficits of up to 13 IQ points. No curriculum reform can compensate for malnutrition.

• Until material inequality is confronted, “rigour” rests on fragile foundations. That is Gove‘s legacy.

Stanford, and the current government, are taking New Zealand education, particularly primary schooling, down this road, to meet an ideological agenda that has little basis in evidenced based research. 

A key statement is that addressing inequality (including providing healthy and tasty lunches, unlike Seymour’s slop) is a vital first step to enhancing education achievement – something which was recognised by the first Labour government with their state housing, family benefits paid to mothers, free medical care, milk in schools, and free dental care for children. 

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a similarly visionary Labour Party in 2025?

This isn’t the first time a National party Minister of Education has gone to worship at Gove’s feet. Back in in 2011 either Anne Tolley or Hekia Parata made the same trip.

If the link to Gove isn’t enough to raise your concerns, there’s more. 

Recently Brie Elliot posted another video on Facebook.

Knowledge-Rich or Culture-Poor? A Look at NZ Schools

“They’ll tell you Kiwi education is in crisis… but the facts tell a different story. NZ beats Australia, Finland, and the UK in reading. So why are we importing a one-size-fits-all curriculum from overseas? Let’s unpack the Hirsch/Gibb playbook and why Te Tiriti o Waitangi matters more than ever.”

Apologies again for those of you who have stayed out of Zuckerberg’s clutches and therefore can’t watch this. 

Here is a transcript of her video – again I’ve highlighted some sections and added comments.

“Our education minister Erica Stanford just took a trip to Florida to meet the people behind the ‘knowledge rich curriculum’ craze in late June 2025.

Stanford shared a stage with a lineup of global ‘edu-celebrities’.  The Core Knowledge Foundation’s national conference panel was titled ‘No boundaries, Just possibilities:  A worldwide Call for Action for Knowledge Building in Education.’

Her fellow panelists:

ED Hirsch Junior – he’s the father of the knowledge movement  – think fact before feelings 

Sir Nick Gibb, the UK‘s former school minister known for pushing phonics and declaring dead, white men vital curriculum content

Gibb has continued Gove’s work.

Robert Poncio, a big in the American enterprise Institute, where knowledge is power means exactly their knowledge

 And could it get better:

Paul Givan from Northern Ireland was there saying his reforms closely follow Stanford’s playbook .

So why are we talking Shakespeare and structured literacy?  Because Stanford is pushing the same knowledge rich science of learning agenda back home and she’s not whispering it. She’s broadcasting it.

She’ll tell you that Kiwi education is in crisis. 

Here’s what the facts say.  New Zealand is above the OECD average in reading writing and science, we out performed the UK Australia and Finland. We’re behind top performers like Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea 

Is it a crisis or is it a convenient excuse to import a one size fit all curriculum? 

This is where Te Tiriti comes in.

The Education and Training Act 2020 makes it very clear – schools and boards must give effect to  Te Tiriti which means embracing tikanga Māori and Maatauranga Māori and te Reo Māori in your curriculum.

You cannot import a strait jacket curriculum without accounting for that.

So if this knowledge bandwagon sidelines Māori knowledge, boards have both a legal and moral duty to fight back. 

Reading this, I think we can expect a change of legislation to remove this requirement in the not too distant future.

Knowledge rich curriculum doesn’t sound bad until you realize it’s a British Americana type import that sidelines Māori knowledge and acts like Māori stories are completely optional.

Do we want UK centric facts or do we want knowledge that’s rooted in our land, our language, and our treaty? That’s the real question.

So Erica, if you are gonna copy and paste policies from overseas conferences, maybe you could start with a country like Finland, where they actually invest in teachers in public schools properly, and trust their educators, instead of importing a British bloke’s obsession with Latin verbs.

Because here’s the thing, Te Tiriti is not a line in a history book. It’s a legal promise and last time I checked, there’s no clause in The treaty that says replace local values with a curriculum from the UK.

 If we want kids to succeed maybe let’s try listening to the communities that we actually have here. 

Wild idea I know.”

I remember the days when New Zealand primary schooling led the way, when overseas educators would come here to see what we were doing. 

Now we are reduced to mindlessly implementing an overseas derived curriculum that will disempower Māori voices, or as Elizabeth Rata says, to recolonise our curriculum – bringing back a curriculum based on a white, predominantly male, Anglo-Saxon world view, a conservative world that dislikes change and that is fighting to retain the dying hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon/western dominated world that is in its death throes.