A Reflection on the $67 Million Dollar Structured Literacy PLD

by Rebecca Thomas

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I’ve just sat through two days of Ministry of Education-funded Structured Literacy PLD. I went in with an open heart, hopeful that this explicit, cumulative, systematic, diagnostic approach would serve my community. I wanted to believe the promise: that this was about equity, about helping all students learn to read and write. But what I experienced left me asking: at what cost?

Day One: The Death of Imagination

An hour in, I began to see why any schools who loved Teaching to the North-East had lost their way. The apparent lack of power-sharing opportunities, the absence of co-constructing learning from students’ prior knowledge in non-dominating learning contexts—it all seemed impossible to embed without the presence of pedagogical imagination.

The session unfolded with a certain rhythm—backed by the ‘science of reading,’ framed by gold-standard evidence, laced with learning theory models that made the content feel polished, persuasive, almost inevitable.

I scanned the room and saw two kinds of faces. Some were nodding, pens poised, echoing choral responses with practiced ease, ready to adopt the methods wholesale. Others, like me, sat quietly shifting in their seats, lips pressed together, questions forming but left unspoken—because the space wasn’t built for dialogue.

It struck me how quickly the mood was interpreted as success. Heads down after lunch, everyone diligently on task—this was read as eagerness, as engagement. But when, I wondered, did a quiet classroom become the benchmark for learning? Since when did silence signal understanding?

It’s a big jump to go from the sometimes appropriateness of a group of people sitting quietly and politely being told things by someone else, to assuming that such forms of teaching are somehow the dominant or the mandatory forms of teaching in places of education - Guy Claxton

I couldn’t help but feel the weight of it: the sense that we were being shown what to think, not invited to think together.

Don’t get me wrong—I understand the urgency and severity of our literacy crisis. I see students struggling daily with basics they should have. Catching our kids up to speed is serious and necessary, indeed.

However, I keep circling back to the question I first raised when we saw Dr. Nina Hood’s video during the Science of Learning MOE launch back in June 2024:

How can an understanding of the science of learning help us give practical effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi?

During this structured literacy training, I held that question quietly in my head as the days progressed. But it felt like the room had moved on—absorbed in scope and sequence charts, decodable texts, and sound packs. That wero, that challenge, seemed to fade into the background.

And yet, as I sat there, I realised something: the very act of questioning—of wondering if this was the whole story, of noticing whose knowledge was missing, of holding space for discomfort—was itself the beginning of a Te Tiriti lens. To question is to resist the idea that there is only one way. To doubt is to stay open. To ask “who benefits?” is to hold the system accountable.

Maybe it’s in these quiet moments of curiosity, of critical reflection, that we begin to honour Te Tiriti. Maybe that’s where the door opens—not in the diagrams and the models, but in the willingness to ask: Is this enough? And who gets to decide?

Day two: Where was the play?

In my mind, there were so many opportunities for playfulness—even while learning the foundational skills we were being invited to teach. Couldn’t we play our way to proficiency, rather than march in lockstep toward it? Does playfulness add to cognitive load, or does it make relationships and meaning more memorable?

Where was the joy in the room? Where was the manaakitanga, the warmth, the shared laughter? Where was the ako—the learning with and from each other, the making of words from sticks in the ngahere, or chalk on the footpath? Where were the pūrākau and whakataukī that root us in this whenua, that remind us of our stories, our whakapapa?

Instead, it felt like we were being handed a one-size-fits-all literacy kit—sealed tight, pre-packaged, ready to roll out to every classroom, as if learning were a factory line and children identical widgets needing identical fixes.

The Missing Heart

The more I sat through the training, the more I felt: this wasn’t just about literacy. This was about control. About standardisation. About squeezing the messiness and magic out of learning in the name of “evidence-based best practice.”

And here’s the thing: all these models—the Reading Rope, the Simple View of Reading—are just that. Models. Theories. Frameworks. They’re not truth, they’re tools—maps, not the territory.

But does backed by neuroscience mean right? Does most researched mean best?

What about kaupapa Māori ways of knowing—the relational, the holistic, the deeply human approaches to learning that have nurtured knowledge for generations in Aotearoa? What about indigenous frameworks of learning that haven’t had the same escalated research behind them—because research funding flows through the systems of colonial power that decide what counts as valid knowledge?

Are we so quick to discard everything else because it doesn’t fit neatly into a diagram or a peer-reviewed paper?

But we know better than that, don’t we? We know literacy is not just a worksheet or a sound wall or a phoneme flashcard. It’s a conversation. A story. A song. It’s critical thinking and creativity, critical literacy and the courage to write something that didn’t exist before.

I thought of Guy Claxton’s warnings—how an over-reliance on cognitive science models can lead us to mistake the map for the territory, the brain for the mind, the technical for the whole.

Claxton reminds us that the “science of learning” isn’t a fixed, settled thing. It’s not the gospel truth. It’s a patchwork of theories, evolving and contested. To pretend otherwise—to build whole education systems on neat diagrams and binary models—is not just misguided, he says, it’s seriously damaging.

There’s no such thing as THE science of learning - Guy Claxton

I’ve written before about this, how the “science of learning” can become a curated story rather than a search for what is best for our tamariki. We must keep asking: Whose voices are missing? Whose knowledge is privileged? Who benefits?

I thought of the English in Aotearoa voices, too—who remind us that literacy is not just about decoding words but about making meaning, thinking critically, and telling stories that matter here, in Aotearoa, on this whenua, in this time.

I thought about Te Tiriti. About mātauranga Māori. About the way we tell stories, together—on the marae, in the kitchen, out in the ngahere. The way learning lives in relationships and in whakapapa.

I thought of the danger of turning writing into a mechanical task—sentence diagrams, grammar drills, a checklist of features. As if a poem is just a sum of its clauses. As if we can teach voice by dissecting the parts of a sentence. Where is the joy in that? Where is the child who writes because they have something to say, something to question, something to dream into being?

The risk, as I see it, is that we’ll teach our children to decode but not think.

To sound out words but never speak up.

To read but never question.

To write but never create.

And in an AI age—where words are everywhere, generated at the tap of a button, but meaning is scarce—this is a recipe for disaster.

We don’t just need kids who can read the words. We need kids who can read the world. Who can ask the hard questions. Who can write their own stories, not just retell someone else’s.

That’s the literacy we should be fighting for too.

I know this is a complex, sometimes heated conversation—one that stirs deep passions because, at the heart of it, we all care fiercely about our kids. I want to acknowledge that the facilitators, the experts, the advocates of structured literacy—they’re working with the best intentions. I know there are real concerns about gaps in teachers’ knowledge, and I agree: literacy is a human right, and every child deserves the chance to learn to read and write with confidence.

But I also believe there’s space for reflection. For holding questions gently, not as criticism, but as an invitation: Can we do both? Can we teach foundational skills and nurture joy, playfulness, cultural identity, and critical thinking?

These aren’t easy questions, but they matter. They matter because the choices we make now shape the kind of learners—and the kind of people—our kids will become.

It’s Not Either/Or—It’s And/And

Perhaps refusing to see these ideas as opposing forces— instead, hold them together. It’s not either/or. It’s and/and.

Can we hold the truth that foundational skills matter and that they are not the whole story?

Can we hold the truth that phonics is essential and that we also need to nurture creativity, critical thinking, and cultural identity?

Can we hold the truth that research-backed models have value and that they are shaped by particular worldviews, and that indigenous ways of knowing have just as much validity—even if they’ve not been funded, published, or scaled up by a colonial system?

Can we hold the truth that handwriting has its place and that AI and digital tools can reduce cognitive load and unlock new possibilities for students?

Can we hold the truth that structured literacy can help some learners and that a one-size-fits-all approach risks marginalising the richness of what makes literacy in Aotearoa ours?

This is the both/and we must keep alive in our classrooms, our staffrooms, our policy tables. Because if we teach as if the science is settled, as if literacy is only about the code, we risk raising a generation who can read the words but never learn to write their own stories.

Let’s teach the foundational skills—yes, explicitly, systematically, intentionally—but let’s not stop there. Let’s draw on their critical thinking, their stories, their questions. Let’s remember that the goal of literacy isn’t just to read the words—but to read the world.

The Final Question

The $67 million question isn’t just about structured literacy. It’s about what kind of literacy we value—and who we want our students to become.

It’s easy to fall into binaries: either we teach phonics, or we teach creativity. Either we follow the research, or we honour relational ways of knowing. But maybe the real challenge—the real wero—is holding both.

We need to ensure our kids have the tools to read and write, yes. But we also need to keep asking: What stories will they tell? Whose voices will they carry? Whose knowledge will they honour?

Let’s hold the science and the stories together. Let’s advocate for a literacy that is Te Tiriti-led, culturally grounded, joyful, creative, and critical.

Because if we only teach our children to decode, we risk raising a generation who can read the words but not write their own stories—or imagine new ones into being.