ERO give me a crayon, I’ll do your report

by Rebecca Thomas

Term 2 is coming. And with it, a new way of being seen. A colour-coded system. Designed, we are told, to bring clarity.

But clarity for who?

Because for those of us already ostracised by society — already excluded from funding, from support, from the quiet benefits others don’t even realise they have — this doesn’t feel like clarity.

It feels like exposure.

It feels like a colour-coded league table for communities who have already been measured, judged, and found wanting more times than we can count.

Do you remember that PLD?

The one where we were told not to put students’ names on the wall with their levels beside them. Not to rank them. Not to display achievement in ways that leave some feeling less than. Because we know what that does.

We know that kind of public comparison butchers self-esteem. We know it invites teasing. We know it creates apathy and builds resistance.

We were told clearly: don’t do that to children.

And yet, somehow — without real notice, without meaningful consultation, without sitting in the reality of places like this — decisions have been made that mirror that very same thinking.

Just at a system level.

A public, colour-coded judgement of schools.

The very thing we were taught was harmful.

When the System Decides to Look

We have always been visible.

Just not always understood.

But this is different.

This is a system preparing to look at us — not in paragraphs, not in the careful language educators use when we try to explain complexity — but in something sharper. Simpler. More public.

A rating.

A judgement that will sit at the top of a report like a headline.

Before anyone reads a word about who we are, they will see how we scored.

Who will want to send their kids to a school that looks like this?

Because that’s what this becomes.

A first impression.

A label.

A quiet decision made at the kitchen table without ever stepping through our gates.

But that colour-coded block system isn’t really who we are — just how the privileged few have decided to represent us. If the measuring scale was more in line with heart, empathy, understanding, and effort, it would look quite different.

I was going to ask what a Te Ao Māori lens would look like.

But then I stopped.

Te Ao Māori would never contemplate something so deeply offensive in the first place.

The School That Says Yes — Under a New Lens

We already know what the data will say.

In fact, I could save ERO the fuel costs, our staff the stress, and the electricity bill from hours spent under laptop light uploading evidence into folders.

Give me a crayon and I’ll colour in the boxes for them.

Better yet — give them to the kids. Let them colour in boxes labelled empathy, care, and heart.

Because this is what it will say:

Achievement — below.

Attendance — below.

Progress — not where it should be.

None of this is new to us. We live it every day.

But what is new… is how it will be framed. Because under this new regime, context does not sit beside the data. It doesn’t even sit behind it. And if we’re honest — ERO don’t seem to care. Because most people will never read beyond the coloured squares.

What Happens When “Yes” Gets Measured

We are the school that says yes.

Yes to the child who arrives mid-year with no records that make sense.

Yes to the student who has already learned how to be unwelcome.

Yes to whānau who have been told, in quiet ways, to try somewhere else.

We do not filter. We do not select. We do not protect our data by protecting our intake.

And now, we will be measured alongside those who can.

There is an unspoken trade-off being manufactured into our education system.

Some schools maintain calm by controlling who stays while others hold the complexity.

We are the ones who choose to hold it.

We hold the interrupted learning.

The behavioural histories.

The attendance patterns already fractured.

And in doing so, we let go of something else.

We let go of clean data.

And when they come in Term 2, I will write it all down.

I will share what happened to the school that says yes.

And the hundreds who have told me I speak the truth will recognise this too —that the colours only reflect one reality, one version of Aotearoa.

The version they have chosen to see. The version they have decided to measure. The version of a community they are willing to shame.

What the Colours Will Never Say

The colours will say we are struggling.

And in many ways, we are.

But they will not say why.

They will not say:

That we are teaching students who have already been excluded elsewhere. That we are rebuilding engagement that was lost long before us. That trust in education has been worn thin through generations of racism and systems not designed for the communities we serve. That progress here often starts from a place the system does not measure.

They will not say that “below expectation” can still mean growth.

Just not fast enough for the graph.

Leadership in the Middle of It

And in the centre of all of this — leadership.

New.

Learning.

Carrying more than the role description ever suggested.

Trying to build coherence in a place where unpredictability is constant.

Trying to improve outcomes while holding onto humanity.

Trying to lead a school that refuses to become something it is not — even when the system might reward it for doing so. Because there is always that quiet question sitting just under the surface: Would things look better if we said no more often?

The Question We Don’t Want to Ask

What would happen if we stopped being the school that says yes?

If we tightened enrolments.

If we excluded faster.

If we protected our data instead of our kids.

Would the colours change?

Probably.

But at what cost?

Where would the forgotten children go?

What This System Might Miss

This new regime may bring what they call clarity. But clarity is not the same as truth.

Because truth, in places like this, is layered.

It lives in the small shifts.

The student who attends three days instead of none.

The child who stays in class for twenty minutes longer than yesterday.

The whānau who answers the phone this time.

The message that comes back — even if it’s just a thumbs up.

These are not headline gains.

But they are everything.

This is one of those weeks where the future feels like it’s already written.

Where you can see the judgement before it arrives.

Where you know the colour before it is printed.

And still — you have to show up tomorrow and teach like it hasn’t already been decided.

What I Need You to Understand

If you read one of these reports later this year, and you see a school in orange or red, pause.

Ask yourself what sits behind it.

Ask what that school might be carrying that others are not.

Ask whether you are looking at failure — or at a place doing the work the system has distributed unevenly.

Because if we are not careful, this new way of reporting will not just describe inequity.

It will reinforce it.

We Will Still Say Yes

Nothing about this system changes who we are.

Tomorrow, we will still open the gates.

We will still take the enrolment others hesitate over.

We will still choose restoration over rejection.

We will still believe that belonging comes before achievement — because without it, achievement rarely comes at all.

We will still say yes.

Even if the system marks us down for it.

And maybe that is the quiet anger and heartbreak in all of this.

That the very thing that defines us —

the thing that matters most —

may be the thing that costs us the most

when the colours arrive.