Evidence That the Architecture for the System Reform Bill Was Decided Before Parliament

by ELV

When the architecture comes first: the senior decision-makers linked to procurement planning that pre-dated the System Reform Bill.

Why this Bill matters — and why the process should concern every New Zealander

You may be aware our dear Erica has asked Parliament to push through the Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill on 18 December. An inspired choice of timing, really — when schools are closing, educators are exhausted, and most of the country is trying to switch off.

Jessie Moss has already explained the Bill clearly across multiple platforms and highlighted just how important it is for people to make a submission. She’s right. Not because submissions are fun, but because this Bill represents one of those moments where silence allows the scaffolding to set.

Let’s spell out to you what this Bill does. It significantly expands Ministerial power over schooling — from how principals determine attendance exemptions, to how quickly the Ministry can intervene in schools deemed “of concern” following an ERO report. It opens the door wider for charter schools to operate more like franchises. It strips or reassigns roles that currently sit with professional bodies. It allows curriculum direction to be shaped with far less obligation to consult.

And tucked among it all is a line that should stop every board member in their tracks:

the Minister may make “national performance measures, which are targets against which the performance of boards can be measured.”

That is not subtle. That is the machinery of National Standards returning under a different name.

There are plenty of reasons educators, whānau, and boards might object to this Bill. But the strongest submissions won’t just say we don’t like this. They will say something far more difficult to dismiss: this was not a fair or honest process.

Select committees take process failures seriously because process failures threaten Parliament’s authority. They go to the heart of whether consultation was genuine, or whether the public was invited in after the real decisions were already made.

And this is where the SMART procurement trail matters.

Appendix A Procurement Plan Assessment and Aromatawai Tool Final Signed Redacted.pdf

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Follow the money, the scale, and the sequencing

Normally, when a government wants to change the law, the order is clear:

policy intent → consultation → legislation → implementation.

What is unusual — and deeply concerning — is when the implementation is designed, funded, and contracted years in advance, and only later is Parliament asked to supply the legal authority that makes it all work.

The Official Information Act material around the SMART (Standardised Assessment and Aromatawai Tool) shows a procurement process that was never framed as a small pilot or optional classroom support. The numbers alone tell a different story.

The procurement planned for approximately 540,000 students, undertaking around 1.6 million assessments each year, delivered twice annually across Years 3–10, with a national rollout from Term 1, 2026. This scale closely aligns with the total number of learners in New Zealand across those year levels nationwide, signalling that the tool was designed from the outset for whole-of-country coverage, not selective or voluntary use (decided in 2024).

It was supported by whole-of-life cost modelling and a long-term Software-as-a-Service contract of up to nine years. Whole-of-life cost modelling requires assumptions about sustained, high-level use. The presence of long-term WOLC in the SMART procurement indicates that near-universal participation was assumed, not merely possible.

Those figures matter. You do not design infrastructure at that scale — nor lock in long-term public spending — for a tool that schools may or may not choose to use. This was a system built for system-wide uptake.

The documentation also makes clear that SMART was designed to provide system-level monitoring, centralised reporting, and longitudinal data, not merely to support classroom teaching. Change-management planning for schools began before Parliament had debated — let alone approved — the legislative framework now said to authorise this work.

This procurement did not occur on the fringes of the Ministry. The OIA trail places the work firmly within Ministerial and senior Ministry governance, with briefings and public responses linked to the Minister of Education, Erica Stanford, and senior Ministry officials including Pauline and Ellen appearing across the documentation relating to procurement oversight, risk management, and communication. Names are redacted in places, but the accountability lines are clear: this was Ministerially relevant work, not a rogue operational experiment.

At the time, the SMART procurement raised significant questions. Public answers to those questions were limited, and concerns about transparency remained unresolved. It was clear there was something the Ministry did not want examined too closely.

What did not become fully visible until mid-December was how neatly the final piece clicked into place.

The Bill supplies the missing authority

Section 90 of the Bill (page 22) explicitly empowers the Minister to set national performance measures — defined as targets against which boards are measured.

That authority does not function in a vacuum. It requires standardised, comparable, national assessment data. And that is exactly what the SMART tool was built to deliver.

Seen together, the picture sharpens:

• a national assessment platform,

• procured at scale,

• funded through long-term public commitment,

• designed for system-level monitoring,

• with rollout planned before legislation existed,

• followed by a Bill that legalises mandatory participation and board-level performance targets.

This is not coincidence.

It is sequencing.

And sequencing is a matter of democratic integrity.

Why this matters

This is not simply a debate about assessment. It is about how decisions are made.

For Māori, the implications are particularly serious. Aromatawai is relational, contextual, grounded in whakapapa and place. It cannot be meaningfully co-constructed once a national digital architecture has already defined the parameters. Consultation after procurement is not partnership — it is adaptation.

For educators, system-level monitoring inevitably shapes behaviour, regardless of stated intent. We have lived this before.

For boards, national performance measures transform governance into compliance, and data into leverage.

And for the public, the concern is straightforward: was Parliament asked to decide the direction — or to legitimise it after the fact?

This analysis does not allege criminal intent. It does not need to. What it raises is something Parliament takes seriously: predetermination risk, retrospective authorisation, and the erosion of good-faith consultation.

That alone is enough to justify scrutiny.

That alone is enough to submit.

When procurement commitments precede legislation, the submissions process becomes one of the few remaining mechanisms the public has to interrupt inevitability.

What to say in your submission (summary)

If you have the energy to write a submission — even a short one — these are the strongest concerns to raise:

1. Process integrity Raise concern that procurement, funding, and system design occurred before Parliament debated or approved the policy, creating a risk of retrospective authorisation.

2. Sequencing Note that the SMART assessment architecture was operationally committed to years in advance, reversing the normal democratic order of law-making.

3. Predetermination risk Question whether consultation could genuinely influence outcomes when scale, contracts, and rollout timelines were already locked in.

4. Section 90 and board accountability Highlight that national performance measures require standardised data, directly aligning with the prior procurement of a national assessment platform.

5. Te Tiriti concerns State that co-construction cannot occur after architectural decisions are made, particularly in relation to aromatawai.

6. Ask the committee to pause the Bill and require full disclosure of procurement assumptions, timelines, and decision-making before proceeding.

You do not need to allege motive.

You do not need to shout.

You only need to say: this is not how fair law-making works.

Submissions exist for moments like this — when the public must remind Parliament that architecture should never come before consent.

Questions the Select Committee should be asking

Readers may wish to include one or more of the following in their submissions:

1. On what date did the Ministry first commit public funds to the design or procurement of a national standardised assessment system?

2. What assumptions about school participation rates underpinned the whole-of-life cost modelling for the SMART assessment tool?

3. Would the procured system be commercially viable if school participation were voluntary?

4. What alternative policy or assessment options were considered before procurement specifications were finalised?

5. How were Te Tiriti o Waitangi partnership obligations met where key architectural decisions preceded consultation?

6. What advice, if any, was provided to Ministers regarding the risk of retrospective authorisation of procurement decisions through legislation?

7. How can Parliament meaningfully alter policy direction if contracts, funding commitments, and rollout timelines are already in place?