Spoiler Alert: Erica’s Next Move Isn’t the Win She Thinks It Is

by ELV

People have been getting in touch with ELV asking what we’ve done to our Minister.

Where is she?

Why has she ghosted the media?

Why has she vanished from the front of the waka she keeps steering into rocks?

Despite lacking the guts to face reporters after Willow-Jean Prime served her a Te Tiriti reality check (a moment that finally gifted our exhausted educators a much-needed laugh), she hasn’t disappeared.

She’s simply gone underground.

While the public sees a Minister Missing in Action, we know exactly what she’s been up to — hiding from the cameras while tinkering furiously with Education Acts and legislative rewrites, as if she’s auditioning for a backstage role in her own downfall.

And she has been peddling the same tired mantra to the Ministry of Education — the line they’ve repeated so often it’s starting to sound like gospel:

“Teachers will just get on with it. They’ll make it work. They have to.”

After months of being shouted at, some MOE staff have begun believing it.

Worse — they’ve begun taking that pressure out on our small rural schools.

Schools who’ve endured six months of visits, strategic rewrites, assessment oversight and ERO preparation, only to have MOE staff crash Board of Trustees meetings to scold them for “not doing enough”.

Mixed messages doesn’t begin to cover it.

The Ministry Overreach

Let’s point out the irony, just in case anyone has missed it:

This same Ministry — the one storming into BOT meetings uninvited, rewriting strategic plans, scolding rural principals, and sending frazzled officials into schools under political pressure — is about to become the new gatekeeper for teacher registration.

Because apparently, we can trust them… right?

If a Ministry that already oversteps its role with boards, interferes in school governance, and can’t keep its own political masters from meddling —if that Ministry becomes the body deciding who gets to teach, who stays registered, and who is “fit” to stand in front of a classroom— Well, what could possibly go wrong?

This is exactly why the Teaching Council existed: to keep registration at arm’s length from political winds, ministerial moods, and Beehive panic cycles.

But now those powers slide quietly into MOE hands — the same hands currently slamming doors open, gate-crashing meetings, and pressuring ERO for tidy data drops.

And somehow, we’re meant to believe this won’t end up being used the same way everything else is being used right now: as an outlet for ministerial damage control.

The Minister’s Ego Is Now Steering the System

And all the while, educators are left wondering: What is she plotting now?

Well, here’s your spoiler.

Rumour has it the Minister is on the hunt for a “win” — some shiny number she can spin into competence. And conveniently, ERO has a report about to drop on “Phones Away for the Day.”

Isn’t that lovely timing?

No doubt she stamped her feet to get it rushed forward — and forgot to say please in the process. Because when you treat people like that, they eventually spill the beans. You can’t bully people into loyalty. You can’t grow trust by intimidation. You just make them ho-ha — and they whisper.

This frantic grasping for data isn’t about protecting children. It’s about protecting her ego — an ego currently sporting the brightest political bruise in the country.

Her Te Tiriti blunder didn’t stay contained within the Beehive.

No — it travelled.

It floated across the Tasman on the same breeze that once carried Learning First drafts into our curriculum.

For once, Australia isn’t laughing at us as a nation. They’re laughing at the circus our government has turned education into.

Journalists, edu-watchers, commentators — all quietly chuckling at a system that can’t seem to read its own legislation, then sprints for the exits the moment anyone asks a real question.

And when a government finds its own policy mishaps echoing across the Tasman?

It doesn’t pause.

It doesn’t reflect.

It doesn’t steady itself.

It lashes out — and the pressure rolls downhill onto the very people trying to hold the place together.

Now MOE staff are snapping at rural principals who’ve done nothing wrong.

ERO teams are being leaned on for early data drops.

Officials are walking on eggshells to avoid triggering the next outburst.

Instead of leadership. we get fragility wearing authority like a borrowed blazer from Bangerz.

The Manufactured “Success” to Come

And since we’re all adults here, let’s ruin the next big 'surprise'.

We can already predict exactly what this ERO report will say:

“Mobile Phone Ban Improves Learning!” 

“Classrooms More Focused!” 

“Students Settled Without Phones!”

Groundbreaking.

Revolutionary.

Utterly predictable.

But here’s the part they hope the public won’t notice:

• There was no baseline

• No control group

• No pre-ban achievement data

• No longitudinal design

• No real science

Just vibes and a Minister who desperately needs something — anything — that looks like success.

Most primary kids didn’t have phones anyway.

A ban didn’t magically catapult reading and maths scores for students who started high school without phones. And there’s no scientific way to attribute any change to the phone ban because they never measured anything properly to begin with.

But the spin machine will roll out anyway:

• “Kids seem more settled”

• “Yes, we implemented it”

• A few graphs with tiny blips and giant captions

• Surveys with no comparison

• Insights packaged like evidence

And science?

Real science?

The kind Erica adores when it’s packaged as the “Science of Learning” — tidy, palatable, compliance-friendly?

Funny how her devotion disappears the moment science becomes about measurement, not messaging.

When the evidence might challenge her narrative, suddenly:

• Data is optional

• Baselines are “noise”

• Methodology is a luxury

• Scrutiny is an inconvenience

Because in this world, we don’t get the Science of Data.

We get the Science of Whatever Makes the Minister Look Good Today.

And Then There’s Her Australia Obsession…

This week she confidently announced social media restrictions and bragged we are “lagging behind” Australia.

Remember though that Australia’s under-16 social media ban hasn’t even begun.

It doesn’t start until 10 December 2025.

There is no data, no outcomes, no evidence — nothing at all to “learn from.”

So when Erica talks about “world-leading” approaches, remember:

Copy–paste is not world-leading.

Rushing a flimsy ERO report to save face is not accountability.

And distracting the public with phones and bans won’t fix the cracks she keeps widening across the system.

And if you want a perfect illustration of how ego, money and audience shape who she shows up for — here are two very recent examples.

Example One: 53,500 People in the Rain — and Not a Minister in Sight

Just weeks ago, 53,500 New Zealanders signed the petition to save Outdoor Education in NCEA — one of the biggest education petitions this decade. 792 heartfelt letters were delivered alongside it.

And who fronted up in the wind and rain to accept it on the steps of Parliament?

Willow-Jean Prime, soaked to the skin, umbrella battling sideways gusts, standing with the kaiako, students, guides, whānau, EONZ reps and actual subject experts who live this kaupapa every day.

And our Minister?

Nowhere. Hiding upstairs, warm and dry, while the people who teach tramping, river safety, environmental stewardship, teamwork and hauora stood shivering for their subject’s survival.

Example Two: The B4-16 Rich-Lister Lobby Arrives — and the Red Carpet Rolls Out

But when the B4-16 lobby group turned up — the high-flyer mums with polished media kits, designer umbrellas and boardroom Rolodexes — suddenly Erica was available.

Suddenly the doors opened.

Suddenly, the cameras were welcome.

Because this wasn’t the grassroots; this was:

• Cecilia Robinson — My Food Bag millionaire, Tend co-founder

• Anna Mowbray — ZURU Toys multimillionaire

• Anna Curzon — former Xero Chief Product Officer

• Malindi MacLean — CEO of Outward Bound

• And a circle of well-connected, corporate parents claiming to speak “for all families”

Not outdoor educators.

Not digital-safety researchers.

Not youth workers.

Not rangatahi who actually live online.

Not Māori or Pasifika advocates whose communities will feel the sharp edge of digital exclusion.

Just privilege.

Just access.

Just influence.

And that is who gets ushered inside for a tidy photo-op — while 53,500 ordinary New Zealanders were left standing in the rain.

She can run from the media,

hide from the rain,

cling to the rich and court their cameras

—but she cannot outrun the mirror she’s made.