From Classrooms to Boardrooms: Who Erica Really Serves

by Rebecca Thomas

Erica smiles from flattery

This year, in the Mood of the Boardroom survey, CEOs crowned Education Minister Erica Stanford their number one Cabinet performer. Higher than the Prime Minister. Higher than the Finance Minister.

A strange accolade when you think about it — for a Minister of Education at a CEO business showdown.

So why does the boardroom love Erica?

Education, rebranded for business

It’s not that CEOs care deeply about curriculum detail. They aren’t losing sleep over whether Shakespeare is compulsory, or whether a maths workbook sits unopened on a child’s desk.

They care because Stanford has made education legible to business. She has:

• Standardised the curriculum in a way that looks familiar to global investors: structured, sequenced, measurable.

• Bought in offshore tools like SMART testing and glossy maths workbooks — contracts, suppliers, procurement deals.

• Poured money into property — $700m on school buildings, $413m brought forward to keep tradies working, boosting GDP figures on paper.

• Streamlined governance by side-lining consultation and “cutting through” public service processes — a move CEOs read as “efficiency” and “decisiveness.”

  
  

These are not the investments of an educator. They are the investments of a portfolio manager.

And that’s the point. They serve her career ladder, not our classrooms.

Standardisation, offshore contracts, ribbon-cutting property spends — these are neat wins she can package for CEOs and investors, the very people whose applause fuels her rise. They give her headlines, survey rankings, and the image of “decisive reform.” But every step up her ladder has come at the cost of teachers, tamariki, and whānau who were never consulted, never funded, never heard.

• Positioning for clout: topping the Mood of the Boardroom survey puts her above the Prime Minister and Finance Minister in business eyes — political capital she can spend in Cabinet.

• Building her launchpad: education becomes her stage to audition for higher office, even hinting at her own Prime Ministerial ambitions.

• Choosing showmanship over need: she invests in contracts and buildings that look good on balance sheets, instead of classrooms that desperately need people.

• Silencing consultation: she cuts through teachers’, principals’, and Māori voices, because listening would slow her climb — and compassion doesn’t earn her points in a boardroom where CEOs value efficiency over humanity.

She was simply the wrong person for the wrong job.

Economic capital, not human care

Erica’s reforms fit perfectly with a worldview where education is economic capital.

• A skilled, compliant workforce pipeline.

• A curriculum legible to international comparators.

• A system that reassures investors New Zealand is “lifting standards.”

  
  

That’s what CEOs see — a minister who speaks their language, who makes schools look like spreadsheets, who turns children into data on a growth chart.

And that’s why the accolade matters so much to her.

Not because it reflects classroom reality — but because it validates her strategy in the circles she values most.

The grinning minister

So yes, Erica beams when business leaders praise her. She jokes about the “target on her back.” She glows at the thought of being Education Minister for ten years, maybe even Prime Minister one day.

It’s about boardrooms.

Her plan has always been egocentric — to craft an education portfolio that serves her ambitions, not the needs of tamariki.

Being crowned number one by CEOs is more important to her than sitting down with teachers who are striking, principals who are desperate, or support staff who can’t survive on their wages. She claims to care deeply about educators, but when the applause comes, she saves her biggest smile for the people she considers truly matter: investors, employers, and business leaders.

That’s why CEOs rank her top.

Not because she’s strengthening education, but because she’s strengthening her own pathway to power.

Even Audrey Young, in the Herald, noted that Stanford’s popularity is stronger in the boardroom than in her own caucus. Some colleagues see her as unwilling to delegate, not a team player — a minister whose style is as centralised as her reforms.

It tells a story when you prize applause from CEOs over trust from colleagues, and rankings from business over voices from classrooms, your power rests on shaky ground.

Because “boardroom darling” is not the same as “public servant” — and no ranking can hide that truth.

The other side of the ledger

Step out of the survey and into the staffroom. What do you hear?

• “We’ve been offered 1%.”

• “We can’t find relievers.”

• “We’re striking because no one listens.”

  
  

And on the sportsfield in Term 4 — come rain, wind, or shine — you’ll find me at every break. Not because it earns me a ranking, but because I know my kids need more than curriculum content.

I’m out there teaching them how to lose a game without losing their temper. Teaching them it’s OK to lose. Teaching them to work as a team, to ref a game without me, to have agency over their futures, to learn how to make decisions.

Because if we don’t teach them these skills, what will we raise instead? More selfish, hot-housed, self-motivated individuals — the very kind of leaders who one day could ruin our country, who could hinder a whole generation of kids.

Educators don’t want Stanford for ten more years. Many don’t want her for another ten minutes.

Because they know what CEOs don’t: when education is reduced to economic capital, the humanity is stripped out. Teachers, principals, and support staff are left burdened in a system hollowed by contracts.

The final question

What does all of this tell you?

It tells you she has treated education like a business plan to serve her own career path.

It tells you she has prioritised applause from CEOs over the pleas of classrooms.

It tells you that figures like Elizabeth Rata and Michael Johnston have also been played — puppets in a larger strategy to entrench her “knowledge-rich” vision and cement her own legacy.

And it tells you something else too: Stanford’s history in comms and media strategy has always been her secret weapon. She knows how to spin a headline, how to ride out outrage, how to glow under the spotlight. She’s spent her career mastering how to play the message.

If she wasn’t good at it, why do you think she beat Luxon and Willis at their own game?

This isn’t just charm — it’s predation. It tells you she is a predator of power, feeding off opportunity, sharpening every narrative to strengthen her own ascent.

Because education has been twisted into a prop for her ambition. Everyone has been played. And the people paying the price for that self-obsession are our kids, our educators, and the future politicians and policymakers who will one day be left to undo the damage.

This is not about vilifying Erica Stanford. It’s about pulling back the gloss so we can understand why teachers feel frustrated, exhausted, and ignored. It is not us who are the problem. Our needs simply don’t compete with the priorities of those who crave power and applause.

We deserve leaders who serve people, not CEOs.

She was simply the wrong person for the wrong job!