Tinetti Jan; Stanford EricaHon JAN TINETTI (Labour): Thank you Mr Chair. We've just heard from the chair of our select committee and I'd like to say thank you to her for chairing those hearings so well. A lot of the work that was undertaken during this annual review stage was about the compulsory sector and the schooling sector and we heard a lot as the chair of our select committee has just said around achievement. So I want to focus my first part on asking the Minister some questions around that.You mentioned Minister in your hearing with us around the ministerial advisory group that you have around curriculum. And of course there's been a lot of work done in the last short while—last couple of years—around the curriculum refresh. I'm really wanting to know because the sector has been reporting about how they've been well engaged with on that process they're enjoying that process they like the curriculum work and the direction that's going in. Just really wanting to know when the public is likely to hear a report back from the ministerial advisory group on curriculum.And if they're making significant recommendations which I'm sure that they will be having read some blog pieces by some of those members recently around changes what work is the Minister thinking about to ensure that there is sector consultation that will happen given that some of those peak bodies are complaining that they feel that they are not being consulted in recent times?Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education): Thank you. Well I'd like to point out—well firstly can I say thank you to the Education and Workforce Committee; a committee I've been on for many years and thoroughly enjoyed. And can I just say thank you to the chair Katie Nimon for doing an excellent job and to the members of that committee for what was a thoroughly enjoyable hearing that we had.This debate is about the annual review so really we're looking back at the previous financial year so I will mostly limit my comments to that. This is not forward-looking. We can talk about that in the Estimates.But if we're going to talk about achievement in curriculum—and the previous Minister mentioned curriculum and also achievement—I think the key thing is to note that those two things are intrinsically linked. From my perspective looking back the fact that we have had a curriculum that has been very vague high-level and devoid of knowledge has been a real problem for New Zealand. I think our decline in our standards started from 2007 when we introduced that curriculum. So ensuring that we have a knowledge-rich curriculum that lays out year by year what must be taught in what order is really important to get consistency across the country.We have had this devolved curriculum really down to individual schools to create which is a huge impetus on our teachers when they have got a huge workload to then also have to write the curriculum. And to be fair to the previous Government and the previous Minister I think that that was acknowledged as well. So the work that was started unfortunately not completed or well-completed over that six-year period but I think we're on the same track which is we have to have a knowledge-rich curriculum that lays out year by year what the key core content is that must be taught so it doesn't matter where you go to school in this country and what your family circumstances are you get access to the same knowledge skills and competencies. So I think we're on a similar page there.What I would say is when I look back to the work that was done there were some pockets of really good work especially I would say in the maths curriculum—we're not terribly far off. And I've said publicly that we will keep a similar structure that we will keep to similar time frames but what we're looking at is a very incomplete curriculum. If we look at English there have been no year-by-year progressions done; we look at other learning areas and the progressions aren't there year by year.What we're also concerned about is that the previous Government didn't ensure that it was internationally comparable as well. We are focused on making sure that those documents are internationally comparable that they lay out year by year what the core content is that must be taught no matter where you go to school so that every child has access to the same learning. So that's where we will start from.The ministerial group hasn't reported back yet. It's outside the parameters of this debate but I would say that the work that is under way is very much in train it will be internationally comparable it will be based on the science of learning and it will be knowledge-rich in its content while keeping those competencies and skills alongside to make sure that our kids are geared up to live the life that they want where they get a world-leading education.Hon JAN TINETTI (Labour): I'll just point out that it is within the parameters of this debate because the Minister did bring it up herself within the annual review hearing that she had with the select committee.I just really want to focus on the fact around why when there were expert groups that have been putting together the curriculum and working through that and making certain that the sector is on board does the Minister feel that a new group was needed of alternate experts and whether they had so-called better expertise than the experts that were already there?And that being the case one of the aspects that we did talk about too was the common practice model in the annual review. Those experts in this new ministerial advisory group are looking at that common practice model. Will the Minister be releasing the one alongside that that was ready to be released in October so the public can see the difference between the two and see the similarities as well?Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education): The role of the ministerial advisory group was to advise me on where we're at with the curriculum and the advice you will see in the report that's not yet released will quite clearly show that there will be some changes that need to be made. The groups that we now put together—the expert writing groups which are different groups—to write that material will be brought together from a range of expertise from around the country to make sure that the advice of the ministerial advisory group is followed.And you won't be surprised to hear that we need to make sure it's based on the science of learning that it's year by year that all of the core content is there in a structured way especially in things like mathematics and literacy which are so important that we do things in the right order. And the member will well know with structured literacy for example when you are learning to read and you're learning how the English language works there is a certain order and it's exactly the same in mathematics. So that work has been done. As I said the year-by-year literacy progressions were not done so we have to do them. So that's what we will be doing. And we're bringing in expert writers from around the country to make sure that that happens. The second part of the question was around the common practice model. I've made comments in the past about the previous iterations of the common practice model that I saw. It was incoherent it was based on competing ideologies it was not based on what the latest research and evidence in science and cognitive research says which is the science of learning and how the brain learns to acquire knowledge. Our curriculum will be based on that. It will include the concepts of the science of learning and it will include a common practice model within it so there is one single document. But I'm not very interested in going back and looking at documents around the common practice model that frankly were substandard that were incoherent and that had competing ideologies. I'm interested in the latest research and science and evidence which shows us clearly how the brain learns to read and write and do mathematics in a structured explicit way based on the science of learning.