How the Ministry Collapsed Trust in Our Curriculum Process

by ELV

What was once co-designed is now being shredded — and the Ministry’s name is on every balloon.

We are loving the open letters and the passionate campaign to refuse to teach the shocking curriculum. It’s heart-warming to see some of us trying to make the best of it—trying to hold the line while everything around us spins. And still, Erica continues to tell lie after lie, removing herself from any wrongdoing, deflecting blame like it’s sport.

As we consume story after story, from brave educators speaking truth to power, We can’t help but wonder: What has happened to our Ministry of Education in all this drama? The agency meant to protect, guide, and walk alongside us—where did it go? What has it become?

What do we do when we can no longer trust the Ministry of Education?

This Ministry—our Ministry—was meant to walk beside us. It was supposed to be a kaitiaki of equity, a steward of our collective aspirations for tamariki. But in recent months, it’s become something else entirely. First, it acted like a bloodhound—sniffing out every signal from the Minister, charging forward without question. Now, it’s being offered up as the scapegoat.

And the sector?  

We are living the fallout. 

Here’s what that actually means.

It means schools caught in limbo—trying to plan for a curriculum they’re not sure they can trust. It means teachers turning up to staff meetings with weary eyes, unsure how to answer their colleagues' questions because they too feel blindsided. It means school leaders doing quiet risk assessments on whether implementing the 'refreshed' curriculum now will make things worse later.

It means communities feeling the tension—not just educationally, but emotionally. The unease has seeped into our staffrooms, whānau hui, and classrooms. When the profession is fractured, the atmosphere changes: educators feel like they’re being monitored, not supported. PLD facilitators are fielding subtle-but-pointed phone calls from Ministry officials—were the right buzzwords used? Was the messaging clean? It's not professional learning anymore; it's script delivery.

All of this in service of managing the messaging of a Frankenstein curriculum—stitched together, animated by outsiders, and now limping into our classrooms. The Ministry has become Mary Shelley's ghostwriter, quietly editing out the human fingerprints of real educators to make sure the word count matches the memo. 

This is what the fallout looks like: for some, it's morphing into a culture of tight-lipped compliance. For others—the brave few—it’s becoming a culture of principled defiance. Both come at a cost. And the damage this does to the ecosystem of education is real, and will be long-lasting.

Because once you destroy trust, what you leave behind isn’t neutrality—it’s a vacuum.

One that will take years to fill, and even longer to believe in again.

Remember when this government took office? We didn’t just witness a change in direction—we witnessed a purge. Good, committed people inside the Ministry were pushed out under the guise of restructure. And it wasn’t just poor taste—it was deeply personal. We know. We had friends in those roles. People who had given decades to the kaupapa. People who carried the weight of authentic partnership and community trust.

That was the moment something toxic began to take hold inside our Ministry.

Redundancies swept through—not always quietly, and never without consequence. Institutional memory was lost overnight. Trusted relationships, built over years, were severed with a single email. Many of the very people who had walked the long and complex road of curriculum partnership—those who had held space for difference, for mana, for Tiriti-led design—were quietly moved on.

And what moved in to replace them?

We are living that answer now.

This isn’t about slamming the Ministry for the sake of it. ELV has never been in the business of takedowns. In fact, some of our earlier blogs—almost pro-MOE and certainly pro-Te Mātaiaho (which, let’s be honest, is rare for our usually critical lens)—were shared around MOE offices with pride. There was a time when we were walking toward something together.

We do not position ourselves against the Ministry lightly, or carelessly, or with any sense of victory. But we must start questioning their recent behaviour—under political orders or not. Because somewhere in those offices, behind the silence and the bureaucracy, there are still humans. Humans who must feel the fracture. Who must see that this wrongdoing—this betrayal of trust and partnership—is undeserving of our nation and devastating to their relationship with the profession.

We’re not just disappointed. 

We’re heartbroken. 

Because we believed this could be done differently.

And some of us still do.

Now, in their place, new structures and external influences are stepping in.

Australian consultancy Learning First, led by Ben Jensen, has officially been engaged by the Ministry of Education to advise on curriculum development. In The Press on October 28th, it was confirmed that Learning First had been hired “to provide advice on writing clear and specific content across the curriculum.” Jensen noted that his company began its work around August 2025, offering benchmarking insights from high-performing English-speaking education systems.

In addition, we are reliably informed that Mr Jensen has also been personally involved in ‘training’ Ministry staff. This is not speculation. It’s fact. And still, when pressed on the backlash around the curriculum refresh, Minister Erica Stanford told the public she “doesn’t know who wrote it.”

That statement should stop all of us in our tracks. (You can watch her say it here in this report.)

Because it leaves us with only two conclusions: either the Minister is actively deceiving the public, or she genuinely believes that distancing herself from authorship—despite well-documented facts—will somehow shield her from accountability. Neither explanation reflects the leadership our sector deserves.

This isn’t about political allegiance as some people are convinced the purpose of the backlash is. It’s about professional integrity.

Minister Stanford has lauded the refreshed curriculum as a bold new step—yet when the sector pushes back, when curriculum writers themselves say they no longer recognise their own voice in the final documents, she claims ignorance. What kind of Minister launches a system-defining curriculum and then denies knowing where it came from?

She knows. 

Or she should know. 

And if she doesn’t, that is an indictment on her leadership.

Meanwhile, educators across Aotearoa are being asked to implement a curriculum that has clearly been shaped by international actors. And yet there has been no transparent acknowledgment of the scale of Learning First’s influence. No admission of the figure this consultancy must have had in reshaping our direction. What were they paid? What authority were they granted? Why were New Zealand voices overwritten by international benchmarks?

Some of us warned this was coming. When we wrote The Shitshow, We called it what it was: a Frankenstein’s monster. Pieced together from parts that don’t belong to us, bolted with the language of evidence, and animated by the illusion of consensus. But make no mistake—this creature does not reflect the beating heart of our education system.

And so, the questions mount:

• Who really wrote the curriculum?

• Why is the Minister pretending not to know?

• What happened to the authentic voices of New Zealand educators?

• Why won’t the Ministry or Minister own the Australian influence?

  
  

We are left with a Ministry that’s caught in a double bind. Once the Minister’s loyal bloodhound, it now takes the blows for every unpopular policy, every clumsy rollout, every reshaped curriculum that lands flat with the profession. We are supposed to believe the Ministry is both powerful enough to override the profession and directionless enough to act without ministerial oversight. 

That contradiction is absurd. 

And insulting.

This moment matters.

Because when trust erodes between the Ministry and the profession, it doesn’t just create tension. It fractures the relational infrastructure of our entire system. It undermines reform. It isolates teachers. It breeds silence where courage should thrive.

And here's the deeper harm: Erica Stanford hasn’t just burned political capital. She has shattered something far more vital—the trust educators have long tried to rebuild with the Ministry of Education.

A trust that was fragile but hard-earned.

A trust born from years of consultation, collaboration, and curriculum co-design with iwi, kaiako, and subject associations.

A trust that recognised that real change cannot be delivered to the profession; it must be created with the profession.

The historical relationship between the Ministry and educators has been complex: at times paternalistic, at times promising, often hard-won. From the reforms of Tomorrow’s Schools to the co-design of Te Mātaiaho, we’ve swung between compliance and partnership. But trust? That has always been the currency. 

Without it, no reform sticks. 

No vision holds. 

And no system thrives.

When that trust is broken—when educators don’t believe the Ministry is acting with them, for them, or even telling them the truth—what we’re left with is professional withdrawal. Educators stop leaning in. Schools go into self-protective mode. And tamariki, as always, pay the price.

So what do we do?

We speak.

We remember who we are.

We ask the questions, even when they’re inconvenient.

We refuse to let our curriculum be rebranded into something unrecognisable, built in boardrooms offshore. 

We demand transparency. 

Accountability. 

Truth.

We’re not angry. 

We’re awake.

The Ministry has gone from bloodhound to scapegoat. But despite all this, the sector continues with honesty, professionalism, and care. We keep going. Not because we agree, but because we believe our learners deserve better. And that belief is what will carry us through whatever comes next.