Mark Potter Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
Labour's education minister and an education union say National's new education policy is a return to national standards that lacks a funding plan.
In the Hutt Valley on Thursday afternoon, National's leader Christopher Luxon revealed more details about the party's plan to rejig the curriculum for primary schools to focus on maths, reading and writing.
It includes developing a library of new resources for teachers like lesson-plans, with yearly benchmarks of learning rather than in three-year chunks.
Children would also spend an hour every day on each of maths, reading and writing, tested twice a year on those from their third year of school.
Luxon and National's education spokesperson Erica Stanford were adamant it would not be a return to the National Standards approach the party introduced in government in 2010, which were ended by the incoming Labour government in 2017.
"It's not about turning the whole thing upside down, it's making sure we build on what's there and we're crystal clear - I make no apologies about it, I'm brutally honest to say - we're going to do maths, reading, writing and science and prioritise those things over everything else.
National Party leader Christopher Luxon. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
"National standards was something quite different ... it had some good parts in making sure parents knew where things were at, but the feedback from teachers was it was a massive burdensome overload of workload on them.
"We're not talking about testing, and standardised testing, we're talking about standardised progression assessment."
Stanford said the National Standards approach had relied on teachers' judgement to assess where children were academically.
"What we want to be able to do is to use a world-leading tool that adapts the questions during the test to children's abilities to find out where they're at - that teachers, by the way, already use for the most part."
Erica Stanford Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Education union NZEI's president Mark Potter was not impressed.
"To mandate an hour each day for each subject is not how children ideally learn and the evidence is quite clear on that," he said.
"Where's the new ideas? No principal anywhere has said 'let's not do reading, writing and maths', it's like asking the All Blacks to have their goalposts painted a different colour of white and thinking you've made a change."
He said the extra tests and rigid requirements did resemble a return to the National Standards approach and would just put more pressure on teachers.
"What we are seeing is the idea of setting standards and testing children to that and what that creates is a high-stakes education and learning environment - which is not good for children - and to start with seven-year-olds, my goodness, we should not be doing that that early."
"What they're going to do is increase bureaucracy in education yet again at a time when ironically National says it's trying to cut bureaucracy out of other areas."
He also disagreed with the idea of one-year curriculum bands.
"If you actually understand how children learn, it sounds crazy because not every child is ready in that particular window of time to learn that particular skill.
"It's only going to create another high-anxiety point for children in education."
He agreed something needed to be done to arrest declining literacy and numeracy, but what was needed was investing in teachers and supports.
"There is a more complex community of children coming to the schools with more complex needs and more demands on the teachers, so what we need is investment in teachers, the support staff and the specialists - especially in the learning support area."
Labour's Education Minister Jan Tinetti said National's plan for the curriculum would be another major disruption to learning on top of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"We've had disruption after disruption over the last three years and we are working on a curriculum refresh and National want to throw all of that up into the air."
She highlighted a lack of focus on how the changes would be funded.
Education Minister Jan Tinetti. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
"They haven't said how much their changes will cost, or how they will resource them or what their commitments to teachers and their pay is. I'm really concerned about it because the sector doesn't seem to have been involved in the development of this."
Stanford argued National's approach would be building on all the feedback that had been provided, and the changes could be made quickly.
"I've talked to curriculum experts around the country in different subject areas and I said to them do you need six months, do you need a year... they said to me 'Erica, you put the right people in the right room, we can have it done in two weeks.
"I'm not going to give them two weeks of course, but you can create a really great curriculum in a very short period of time."
Tinetti, a former principal, ridiculed that.
"I'm sorry, that's just impossible. You cannot do a curriculum rewrite in two weeks - that's the biggest laughable thing that I think I've heard in education ever. The curriculum is not something to be taken lightly, you need to make sure that it is based on evidence, you need to make sure that you have got the sector with you, you need to make sure that you are trialling it.
She said the current curriculum refresh was being rolled out in stages: The Aotearoa history and social science curriculums were already available; English, maths and science were set to kick in next year; and the final areas like arts and languages would be complete by 2026.
The government announced its update to the 2007 curriculum in 2021. Tinetti said she was comfortable with the timeframes, and said National's focus on the curriculum showed they did not understand education.
"What they are saying is they are expecting every young person to learn within their timeline, they're expecting to increase the number of standardised assessments ... that smacks of National-Standards-plus."
She also echoed the comments from Prime Minister Chris Hipkins about taking a bi-partisan approach to the curriculum, and she wanted to hear from National about their suggestions - but had not been approached by them.
"I do put a challenge out to National - let's have a conversation around this, we should be able to talk about this in a way that doesn't make it so political.
"I haven't had those conversations which, I'm really wanting to have those conversations with National around that."