“Everyone” is a Big Word, Erica — Especially in Structured Literacy
- Oct 13
- 4 min read
by ELV
Tonight we were told the government’s mandated structured literacy reforms are “working for everyone, in every school, in every setting.”
The evidence?
A jump in phonics scores from 36% to 58% after 20 weeks of schooling. Fewer students needing targeted support. An increase for Māori, Pacific, and low-decile learners.
Cue applause. Confetti. Headlines.
And yet — beneath the polished podium and the press release — the truth is this:
The data hasn’t been read correctly.
And Minister Erica Stanford doesn’t seem to understand what she’s looking at.
Again.
Let’s not forget — this is the same Minister who stood in front of the country and admitted:
“As a parent, I didn’t understand NCEA. After years of helping my daughter through it, it didn’t make sense to me that E is better than A.”
Yes. That’s the Minister responsible for overseeing the future of education — publicly confused about one of the most basic features of our national qualification system.
Now, she’s doing the same thing with structured literacy.
Simplifying. Misinterpreting. Selling certainty she hasn’t earned.
Only this time, it’s not her own daughter’s grades at stake — it’s every five-year-old in Aotearoa.
What she’s holding up as proof is nothing more than a premature, misinformed performance.
And those of us who live in classrooms — who understand learning as more than a score — are deeply concerned.
What Are We Actually Looking At?
Let’s rewind.
The test being celebrated is a phonics screening check — a tool designed to measure a child’s ability to sound out both real and nonsense words, identify letter-sound correspondences, and decode unfamiliar combinations like splog or nemp. That’s it. That’s the scope.
What it doesn’t measure is far more telling: it doesn’t tell us whether a child understands what they read, whether they can make meaning from stories, whether they enjoy reading, whether they see their own culture reflected in the texts they engage with, or whether they feel safe, confident, and connected in the literacy space. In short, it measures mechanics — not meaning.
And yet, Erica Stanford is holding this one-dimensional tool like a universal wand of proof — as if it explains everything about teaching, learning, equity, and success.
It doesn’t.
Here’s what any academic — or even a halfway critical Year 13 student — would spot:
There’s no data from before the mandate to compare against.
There’s no control group taught using other methods.
There’s no tracking of comprehension, language development, or engagement.
What we have is a snapshot of phonics improvement over time — which is entirely developmentally normal. Of course children who’ve been in school longer perform better on decoding tasks.
This is not evidence that structured literacy is the reason for improvement. It’s what happens when children grow, settle, and learn in any reasonably supported environment.
This is not science — it’s spin.
What does it prove?
That children tend to improve in phonics the longer they’re at school.
That Term 3 data includes more children (so, more chance of higher scores).
That teachers are working hard to implement mandated programmes.
But it does not prove:
That children understand what they’re reading
That reading for pleasure is increasing.
That equity is being achieved.
That the structured literacy approach is the reason for any gains.
No honest researcher would hang certainty on a single spike in data without asking who else held the needle.
Data deserves respect — not distortion.
But instead of holding space for complexity, Erica has taken a single, skill-specific score and turned it into a banner of political triumph.
“Structured literacy works for everyone.”
“All deciles. All ethnicities.”
“We’ve cracked it.”
This kind of messaging doesn’t empower teachers or uplift learners. It masks reality, silences critical questions, and undermines the profession.
“It’s Working for Everyone”?
Let’s Talk About That.
Let’s dissect that claim, piece by piece.
“All ethnicities”? That’s not how equity works.
Māori learners went from 25% to 43% — and Erica calls that equity?
Let’s spell it out: more than half are still below the expected level. That’s not a success story, it’s a surface-level statistic dressed up as a breakthrough.
Erica, equity isn’t about a percentage going up — it’s about whether the systems that caused the gap in the first place are being dismantled.
They’re not.
You don’t get to stand at a podium and declare “it’s working for all ethnicities” when the outcomes still fall hardest along the same old fault lines. That’s not equity — it’s wilful misreading of the data.
“All deciles”? Too early to call.
Low-decile schools: 18% to 35%. That’s progress, yes — but two-thirds still below.
These schools face complex challenges: high transience, linguistic diversity, poverty, and under-resourcing.
Many were already using rich, relational literacy practices — now replaced with rigid mandates.
Let’s not flatten their contexts for a press release.
“Everyone”? That word erases the exceptions.
Neurodivergent learners struggling with rigid readers.
Children from oral cultures whose storytelling strengths go unseen.
Bilingual tamariki being asked to park their home language at the school gate.
Until the margins say it’s working, you don’t get to claim it is.
When you tell a nation “we’ve solved literacy,” you:
Shut down real debate.
Sideline teacher expertise.
Dismiss cultural and linguistic diversity.
Punish schools who want to innovate or adapt.
And worst of all?
You tell children who aren’t thriving that they’re the problem — not the system.
At Engaging Learning Voices, we believe in evidence — but not as a blunt instrument. Not as a political trophy. And never as a substitute for deep listening.
If you want to bring data to the table, Minister, it must be:
Longitudinal
Transparent
Contextual
Co-designed with teachers and communities
Until then, we’ll keep calling this what it is: A performance of progress.
Not the real thing.
We’re not here to tear anyone down. But we will call it out when data is misused to prop up premature policy claims.
We’ll Keep Listening — Not to the Microphone, But to the Margins. And we’ll keep asking: who is literacy really working for — and who’s still being left behind?
We look forward to the upcoming ERO report, which we hope will bring greater depth, transparency, and methodological clarity to the conversation. But without baseline data, longitudinal tracking, or comparative analysis, it too risks drawing conclusions that are not supported by the evidence.
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