How to Vilify Educators Before a Nationwide Megastrike?

Land a glowing ERO report that evaluates how effective this government is — and how much support they’ve supposedly given teachers.

by ELV

Once upon a time, the Education Review Office told stories.

They were not fairy tales, but careful chronicles of how learning was lived — each school its own chapter, each child a line in the nation’s unfolding book.

Back then, an ERO report was an independent, honest voice — not an evil stepmother’s looking glass. It spoke of context, relationships, and local curriculum — of whānau engagement, Māori achievement, wellbeing, and the subtleties of pedagogy.

The language was descriptive, sometimes dry, but it was ours.

The new report, A New Chapter: How Well Are the Changes to English and Maths Going?, reads less like an evaluation and more like a press release.

Its opening line — “Domestic and international evidence shows that significant improvement is needed…” — could have been lifted straight from the Minister’s speeches. The rest is in harmony, a chorus of compliance dressed up as “evidence-based insight.”

When ERO writes recommendations like teachers “need more support to teach maths,” it’s like watching someone mislabel the wound.

Teachers have been telling anyone who will listen — and plenty who won’t — that what they need is time, trust, and people.

Not more modules.

Not another webinar.

Not another hour of reporting the hour they’ve just taught.

To pretend that the profession’s exhaustion is a knowledge gap rather than a system failure is to ignore every cry from the staffroom wall. 

This isn’t a call for more PLD; it’s a plea for oxygen.

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The Language They Used

Once upon a time, an ERO report spoke plainly.

A 2017 national evaluation would write, “Teachers report difficulty accessing PLD due to limited resourcing and distance.”

No gloss. 

No choreography. 

Just truth told in a straight line.

Now, in 2025, truth must first curtsey before entering the room. The same message arrives dressed for Cabinet: “While positive about the support they have received, leaders and teachers report some significant barriers…”

It’s the new ERO dialect — a kind of bureaucratic bilingualism where every crisis must first be translated into optimism. Words like “significant barriers” are wrapped in a positive tone; “limited access” is reframed as “early signs of progress.”

Amidst the glowing language and “nearly all” claims, there are still small sentences that breathe truth about how the new curriculum is landing in classrooms— tiny pockets of reality that escaped the final edit:

“They are uncertain about adapting for neurodivergent or disabled learners.” 

“They want further guidance for when and how to escalate support.” 

“Leaders shared that PLD and resources for Māori-medium provision do not reflect the breadth of settings students are learning in.”

These lines don’t sing; they sigh.

They are the quiet evidence of teachers doing impossible work in a system that still asks them to translate, adapt, and make do. Rumaki teachers literally translating English-medium materials. Neurodiverse learners still waiting for resourcing that meets their reality.

And then, almost apologetically, ERO adds:

“Some settings are managing to make it work.”

That’s not a story of success — it’s a story of survival.

The report began with confidence — “domestic and international evidence shows…” — but by the middle, certainty dissolves into “works best when supported” and “with support, it is possible.” That quiet turn of phrase is where the truth hides.

If equity were being reached, there’d be no need for so many 'ifs'.

The facts remain:

Teachers of rumaki still translate their own PLD.

Neurodiverse learners still wait for adaptation.

Rural schools are still missing from the table where the evidence was set.

The reform may be evidence-informed, but it is not yet equity-delivered. Until the phrase “with support” becomes “with justice,” we are not there yet.

The conclusion of 'A New Chapter' reads like the closing scene of a government fairytale — triumphant, confident, and utterly certain of success.

The Data They Used

Six thousand three hundred voices counted — yet only thirty-six classrooms seen.

Over half the responses came from parents, not teachers.

Thirty-six schools cannot speak for two thousand, and fifty-four observed lessons cannot define a nation’s pedagogy.

When the loudest data come from surveys written by the same Ministry being evaluated, independence becomes questionable.

“ERO Evaluation Partner judgments: 432 schools.”

It sounds official — as if four hundred schools were rigorously studied. In fact that is also what Ruth Shinoda ERO's Head of Education Evaluation Centre said on RNZ this morning.

“We used a range of evidence: we went to over 400 schools across the country.”

They didn’t.

These are recycled metrics from ERO’s new partnership model — administrative judgments repackaged as research.

Then there are the 5,728 Ministry check-in surveys — the Ministry marking its own homework — and an “in-depth literature review” that simply reaffirms the government’s own talking points.

This isn’t fieldwork; it’s feedback.

When recycled surveys and curated reading lists are dressed up as data, research becomes reassurance.

A real set of data would look different. It would sit in the classrooms it claims to represent — hundreds, not dozens. It would listen to teachers first. It would name inequity where it lives and celebrate success where it grows.

Buried deep in the report is a quiet confession: eighty-four kura and rumaki declined to participate. Not from disinterest — from lack of resourcing.

The report says they had “not yet made sufficient changes,” as if the delay belonged to them, not the system that left them translating policy into te reo Māori by hand. This is the linguistic sleight of hand that hides inequity behind politeness. Instead of saying we failed to equip them, ERO says they were not yet ready.

The truth is, they were never given the same starting line.

A World of Decline for NZ?

We aren’t alone in this 'global decline'. Nearly every OECD country slipped in reading and maths between 2018 and 2022. Some fell harder than us: Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands — all down more than 25 points in maths.

COVID-19 is part of the story, but not the whole one. The cracks were already there. A few nations held their ground — Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Chinese Taipei — not through mandates, but through trust, equity, and strong teacher infrastructure.

The lesson isn’t mandate more — it’s support better.

The bar graph being circulated comes from PIRLS 2021, testing Year 5 reading comprehension.

What’s missing is context.

The data was collected during the height of COVID, when Aotearoa had some of the longest school closures in the OECD. Many students learned from borrowed devices. Parents juggled jobs and schooling. Intervention programmes were paused. Meanwhile, England and Singapore had reopened or had robust national online platforms.

The 32% of NZ students below the “intermediate benchmark” were not non-readers — it’s a midline, not a fail mark. PIRLS only tests reading in English, excluding ākonga in rumaki and bilingual settings, and ignoring oral-language and cultural strengths.

The graph hides the why — the growing inequality, attendance challenges, and resource shortages shaping literacy outcomes. Used without that story, it becomes ammunition — a crisis graph repurposed as proof that “teachers aren’t teaching right.”

Read honestly, it says the opposite: inequity, not incompetence, drives the gap. Literacy progress stalls when wellbeing and resourcing fall behind. Until policymakers read those realities between the bars, they’ll keep using numbers to justify reforms that never reach the children who need them most.

ERO uses the NMSSA chart to claim that “the system has failed to improve” — turning statistical stability into rhetorical urgency.

Rather than asking why achievement held steady through curriculum churn and global disruption, the graph is framed as proof that teachers have stagnated.

In truth, it shows consistency under pressure. Teachers have kept learning afloat through a pandemic, attendance crises, and workforce shortages. That’s not a flatline of failure — that’s a lifeline of professionalism, proof that teachers have held the system together while everything else changed.

The Final Reflection

Teachers are not failing. They are carrying.

This report — dressed in data and dipped in optimism — tells the public that the system is thriving and teachers are supported. But teachers know the truth: we are surviving on professionalism, not policy.

A truly independent ERO would have said that. 

Instead, it showed only what the Government wanted to see.

So let’s return to where this story began. How do you vilify educators before a nationwide megastrike? You release a glowing ERO report. One that paints a picture of progress, harmony, and national satisfaction — a profession apparently “embracing change,” “teaching with confidence,” and “receiving the support they need.”

But if teachers were truly experiencing that kind of progress, would they be striking?

Would classrooms across Aotearoa be running on relief teachers, caffeine, and sheer willpower?

Would principals still be working twelve-hour days to keep the lights on?

Would neurodiverse learners still wait for aides that never come?

Would Māori-medium kaiako still be translating English resources by hand?

You can’t claim a profession is thriving while it’s on the verge of walking out.

You can’t celebrate teacher “buy-in” when the same teachers are crying in carparks or leaving mid-term.

The ERO report might say “momentum is strong,” but the ground-level truth is fatigue — deep, moral exhaustion.

The timing of this report is no accident. 

Released just as educators prepare for collective action, it softens public empathy — it tells parents and policymakers that the system is fine, that teachers are fine, that reform is working.

It reframes resistance as ingratitude.

But here’s the truth: no one strikes out of comfort. They strike out of care. They strike because they’ve given everything and still can’t meet every need.

So when ERO calls this “a new chapter,” perhaps they’re right — but not in the way they think.

This is the chapter where teachers finally stop being characters in someone else’s story and start writing their own.

The Plain Truth:

This new ERO report isn’t research — it’s spin.

Only 36 classrooms were observed.

The surveys came from the Ministry itself.

It says teachers are supported when they’re actually exhausted.

And it’s being released right before the strike — to make teachers look ungrateful.