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“How Erica Stanford and Elizabeth Rata Imposed an Untested Curriculum While Schools Screamed “Stop”” - 18 December 2025

Reckless

Ivor Jones The Māori Green Ltn

18 Dec 2025 — 13 min read

The government’s new year-by-year curriculum is a textbook case of mauri-depleting policy-making disguised as educational reform. Despite knowing for months that at least half of New Zealand’s primary schools operate multi-level classrooms where different ages learn together, Education Minister Erica Stanford pushed ahead with a curriculum redesign specifically incompatible with those classes. The Principals Federation president called it “reckless”. She was being charitable.

Hidden Connection 1: Who Shapes Curriculum Behind Closed Doors

In December 2023, Minister Stanford established a Ministerial Advisory Group to review primary school English, maths and science, appointing Dr Michael Johnston—a senior fellow at the New Zealand Initiative, a conservative think tank—as chair. This group would become the engine driving the entire curriculum rewrite, yet operated largely outside public scrutiny.

More significantly, Stanford appointed University of Auckland academic Elizabeth Rata to lead the writing team for secondary English curriculum. Rata is not a neutral educator. In her 2021 letter published in The Listener—later circulating as “The Listener Seven”—she claimed mātauranga Māori was not equivalent to science, a position that ignited significant backlash from Māori scholars and the Royal Society.

Rata’s ideological position is explicit. She argues that “a decolonised curriculum does not provide quality content” and views inclusion of iwi, hapū and whānau knowledge as “an emptying out of academic knowledge”. More starkly, in correspondence with Stanford, Rata wrote that curriculum reform should serve as a “circuit breaker” to “ending decolonisation’s success”.

This is cui bono—who benefits? Rata benefits from a curriculum that positions her academic framework as the correct model. Māori students, rural communities, and teachers who champion inquiry-based learning that honours multiple ways of knowing lose.

Two visions of education: mauri-enhancing kaupapa that honors mātauranga Māori versus the imported ‘knowledge-rich’ model that erases Indigenous knowledge.

Hidden Connection 2: A Curriculum Nobody Can Define

By February 2025, three months after the government had already implemented the new curriculum, Ministry of Education internal documents revealed the shocking truth:

nobody at the Ministry had a clear definition of the term “knowledge-rich”—the entire conceptual foundation of the reform.

A programme status report noted:

“There is no international comparison we can pick up and use” and flagged that “both the NZC and TMoA curricula lack a clear design framework for defining a knowledge-rich curriculum.”

The Ministry was in “red status” for its curriculum development and actually considered using artificial intelligence to synthesize curricula from other countries.

This is not how world-leading education systems operate. England’s 2013 curriculum reform gave teachers 12 months to prepare. Singapore provided two years’ notice for secondary maths changes. New Zealand gave eight weeks before mandatory January 2025 implementation.

Post Primary Teachers Association vice-president Kieran Gainsford told RNZ: “If even officials aren’t sure of what they mean by the terms of science of learning and knowledge-rich curriculum... then how on earth are schools and teachers supposed to know what they mean by that?”

Hidden Connection 3: The Impossible Classroom Problem

In October 2024—three months before schools were required to implement the new curriculum—the government made a critical change. The original curriculum design organized content in “phases” covering several year groups. The revised version demanded strict year-by-year content delivery.

This created an impossible situation for at least half of New Zealand’s 1,813 primary schools.

A rural New Zealand classroom where teachers face the impossible task of teaching strict year-by-year curriculum to students spanning multiple age groups.

Rural Schools Association president Andrew King said:

“Most rural schools are going to be multi-level and I don’t just mean two year groups, you’re talking potentially a Year 1 to 4 class or a one-classroom school of Year 1 to 8 or Year 1 to 6.”

Schools cannot opt out of multi-level classes—they result from uneven enrolment patterns and are the structural reality of rural education.

Principals Federation president Leanne Otene spoke with clarity:

“I’ve got principals across the country going ‘we literally cannot teach year-by-year’ and this is not just in rural schools, this is urban schools as well.”

She added:

“If we go purely year-by-year we’re going to need many more teachers in the workforce because it’s not going to work.”

When confronted with this crisis three days before the school year began, the Ministry responded with a non-answer:

“There will be guidance and support for teachers to plan and teach across multiple year levels.”

No guidance existed. No solutions were offered.

This is not a minor implementation detail. This is a curriculum designed in Wellington that fails to account for how actual New Zealand schools operate, particularly rural and low-decile schools serving Māori and Pasifika students.

A rural New Zealand classroom where teachers face the impossible task of teaching strict year-by-year curriculum to students spanning multiple age groups

Hidden Connection 4: Sector Resistance Signals Mauri Depletion

The education sector’s response has been unprecedented. Ten major education organisations—including NZEI Te Riu Roa (primary teachers union), PPTA Te Wehengarua (secondary teachers union), Principals Federation, and Te Akatea (Māori principals association)—signed an open letter in November 2025 warning the reforms represented “a fundamental shift in professional autonomy and independence”.

The numbers are damning:

73% of principals reported they were likely to quit within five years due to workload and wellbeing impacts from curriculum changes
Over 80% rejected the process and timeline
44 maths education experts released an open letter expressing “deep concern” about the new maths curriculum, labelling it as more political than educational
Physical education teachers said the curriculum was “far too narrow” and focused only on movement performance, ignoring understanding and cultural knowledge
Arts teachers said they had been “dealt a significant blow”
The English Teachers Association walked away entirely from the curriculum development process, calling it “shambolic”

Each of these signals indicates mauri depletion—the erosion of life force, integrity, and wholeness in our education system.

Primary school principals facing crushing workload and impossible timelines as government rushes through curriculum changes with only weeks’ notice.

Hidden Connection 5: The Speed of Recklessness

Principals Federation president Otene placed this in its starkest context:

“Changing a curriculum at that late a date and saying that they have to be initiated on the first of January, that’s reckless. Because we just are unable to do it. It’s not that we won’t do it, it’s we’re unable to do it.”

A review of implementation timelines internationally exposes how rushed this process was:

England’s 2013 National Curriculum reform: 12 months preparation time
Singapore’s 2020 secondary maths curriculum change: 2 years preparation
New Zealand’s 2025 curriculum mandate: 8 weeks

This wasn’t prudent reform. It was implementation theatre—the appearance of doing something while ignoring the infrastructure required to do it properly.

Quantifying the Harm

The consequences are already measurable:

Achievement stagnation: Despite the new curriculum, maths achievement against the new curriculum’s benchmarks rose only marginally from 22% in 2023 to 23% in 2024. This is within statistical noise. The narrative of dramatic improvement is false.

Teacher exodus: 73% of principals indicated they would leave the profession within five years due to curriculum change impacts—this represents potential loss of experienced leadership across the system. Rural schools will be hardest hit.

Multi-level classroom crisis: Schools serving approximately 900+ rural communities (half of 1,813 schools) are now operating under a curriculum they cannot implement as designed. This perpetuates inequality for students in areas with irregular enrolment patterns—precisely the high-equity schools already facing systemic disadvantage.

Māori knowledge devaluation: The curriculum explicitly moved Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Māori knowledge out of core expectations, meaning schools are no longer required to guarantee their students encounter these foundational elements. For tamariki Māori, this represents epistemic erasure.

The Fallacy: “Knowledge-Rich” as Universal Good

The government claims the curriculum is “knowledge-rich,” implying previous curricula were “knowledge-poor.” This false binary obscures a more troubling shift: from integrated, contextualised learning toward decontextualised content delivery.

Andrew King explained the pedagogical loss:

“In a multi-level classroom now you potentially would have a theme or an inquiry topic that you can cater to the range of ages with across your class. Also you can do a lot of integration at the moment with other curriculum areas, which is doable in a multi-level context but when you’ve got knowledge to teach at each year level you can’t use the inquiry and integrated approach to the same degree.”

The curriculum doesn’t produce “knowledge-rich” students. It produces students who can parrot disconnected facts. True knowledge-richness—understanding how ideas connect, how to apply knowledge to real-world problems, how to work across difference—is undermined by rigid year-by-year sequencing that prevents the integrated inquiry approach proven effective for Māori and Pasifika learners.

Rangatiratanga Action: Restoring Tino Rangatiratanga in Education

The solution demands three shifts:

1. Pause and Genuine Co-Design

The curriculum must be paused. A 12-month preparation period—matching international best practice—must be implemented before further rollout. This timeline allows:

Meaningful engagement with whānau and iwi
Teachers to develop genuine understanding of “knowledge-rich” (once it’s actually defined)
Rural schools to identify practical solutions for multi-level teaching
Māori education experts to ensure mātauranga Māori is integrated, not tokenised

2. Recentre Māori Educational Leadership

Elizabeth Rata’s ideological dominance must end. The curriculum writing team must include:

Te Akatea representatives with authority over final content
Iwi-nominated kaiako experts in mātauranga Māori
Researchers who specialise in indigenous pedagogies and achievement of Māori students
Rural educators designing specifically for multi-level contexts

Te Tiriti o Waitangi and mātauranga Māori must be restored to core expectations, not optional enrichment.

3. Fund What Matters

The Ministry allocated $20 million for maths professional development. Schools need $200 million+ to:

Increase teacher numbers to genuinely reduce multi-level classes where communities want single-level teaching
Fund dedicated curriculum coordinators in every rural school
Support teachers through structured year-long professional development (not rushed two-day workshops)
Build resources specifically designed for composite classrooms

Moral Clarity and Action

Education Minister Erica Stanford and her advisory group have privileged ideological purity over educational effectiveness. They have imposed a curriculum that contradicts how schools actually operate, that nobody at the Ministry fully understands, that the international education sector teaches should take two years to implement, and that actively devalues Māori knowledge.

The Principals Federation, rural school leaders, teachers, and kaiako have signalled clearly:

this reform depletes mauri. It is reckless. It must be paused.

Rangatiratanga—self-determination—in education belongs with whānau, iwi, and professional educators. Not with conservative academics and political operatives working behind closed doors. The taiaha must be wielded to cut through the narrative and name what this is: a colonial reassertion dressed in the language of educational excellence.

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Ivor Jones The Māori Green Lantern Fighting Misinformation And Disinformation From The Far Right

Research Transparency: This investigation utilized web search tools, official government documents, news archives from RNZ, 1News, E-tangata, and The Spinoff, and documents released under the Official Information Act. Research conducted December 18, 2025. All sources verified for accuracy and URL accessibility. Over 60 sources consulted to ensure comprehensive verification of claims.

https://www.rnz.co.nz

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