Education has been described as a passport to the future – as endless generations of New Zealanders can testify. Its transformational powers have the ability to pivot students from lives of disadvantage to futures of opportunity and prosperity.
That’s no doubt what was in the mind of Nelson Mandela, when he said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
But that’s also why extremists attempt to capture education and turn it into an indoctrination machine to radicalise children with their brand of social justice poison.
In New Zealand, education has been captured to deliver a range of ideological outcomes, including climate extremism, gender zealotry, and Treaty activism.
While some may argue it all started going wrong back in the 1980s under Labour’s “Tomorrow’s Schools” reforms, when they became self-governing and vulnerable to capture, it was the introduction of the new New Zealand Curriculum by Helen Clark’s Labour Government in 2007, that escalated the decline.
Launching the initiative to replace our knowledge-rich curriculum with an experimental “outcomes-based” system, the Prime Minister said, “This curriculum represents a shift away from focusing on knowing facts and figures to knowing also how to use knowledge effectively and apply it outside the classroom.”
Strongly ideological, the new curriculum aimed to remove perceived elitism from the education system, by replacing the traditional emphasis on knowledge, with a child-centred approach that not only focussed on skills and competencies but changed teachers into ‘facilitators’ of learning with the freedom to develop their own curricula.
At the time, critics warned the new system, which had only been adopted by a handful of countries, would lead to a fall in academic standards. Most countries, including the US and Australia, abandoned the programme once the dire warnings began to materialise.
Replacing knowledge with skills, left students at risk of finishing school with a range of eclectic proficiencies, but without the basic knowledge to read, write or calculate properly.
This has contributed to the deteriorating state of New Zealand education: declining international test scores, falling levels of basic skills, increasing numbers of school dropouts, and excessive political influence.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which assesses 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics, and science every three years, provides an objective means of assessing the achievement of New Zealand students compared to those in other countries. In 2000, the first year of the assessment, New Zealand ranked third in reading, third in maths, and sixth in science. By the latest tests in 2022, our rankings had fallen to the lowest ever – tenth in reading, eleventh in science and twenty-third in mathematics.
When it comes to measuring basic skills, achievement in level 1 of the NCEA produces a picture of decline: in 2000, the overall rate of success for all students was 87 percent, with Asian students ranking at the top with 92 percent, European students with 90 percent, Pacific students with 78 percent, and Maori students with 74 percent.
By 2024, the overall success rate had fallen 8 points to 79 percent, with Asian students down 3 to 89 percent, European students down 4 to 86 percent, Pacific students down 5 to 73 percent, and Maori students down 6 to 68 percent.
The statistics for students leaving school without transitioning into employment or further education are also grim. In 2000, around eight percent or 40,000 young people were not engaged in education or training, and by 2024, the number had increased to eleven percent or 60,000.
When it comes to political indoctrination, the outcomes-based approach to education left schools vulnerable to capture. As a result, they not only turned into conduits for progressives to push identity politics, but they also became central to the culture wars.
In the lead up to the introduction of the new curriculum in 2007, the Treaty of Waitangi had been sidelined. But as a result of intense lobbying by tribal leaders it was not only re-introduced but was elevated into a ‘guiding principle’.
Its influence was further extended through the Ardern Government’s new Education and Training Act 2020, which specified that Boards were responsible for implementing a radicalised agenda that focussed on Maori rights, Maori language, and Maori culture within the country’s early childhood education centres, primary and secondary schools, and tertiary institutions.
These changes misrepresented Matauranga or Maori ‘knowledge’ as science, Tikanga or Maori ‘custom’ as law, and they forced Te Ao Maori or a Maori world view to dominate the sector.
Once the 2020 election gave Labour the power to govern alone, their secret He Puapua agenda to replace democracy with tribal rule was fast-tracked. With progress in education deemed to be too slow, Letters of Expectation were sent by then Minister of Education, Chris Hipkins, to educational agencies demanding action:
“I am writing to convey the Government’s priorities for the education system, and my expectations for your role in achieving these. I expect the Board to honour and give effect to the Crown’s Te Tiriti responsibilities. This means bringing Te Tiriti to the forefront of the Education and Training Act…”
That opened the door for a radicalised coterie of influential separatists to embed their anarchist agenda into the minds of our children.
This has been achieved by replacing official references to the ‘Treaty of Waitangi’ in legislation with “Te Tiriti o Waitangi” – a corrupted translation of the original Maori version of the Treaty, which has transformed an agreement for nationhood into a weapon of subversion to deliver tribal rule.
Through an Orwellian sleight of hand, references in legislation to the historic ‘Treaty’ agreement that gave New Zealand Parliamentary Sovereignty, Property Rights, the Rule of Law, and Equal Rights, have been manipulated through ‘Te Tiriti’ to elevate Maori into a ‘partnership’ with the Crown. This has created an effective ruling class, giving Maori priority status and a right of veto in Government decision-making, as well as allowing their language, culture, and World View to dominate.
Fortunately, the brilliant analysis of “Te Tiriti o Waitangi” written by Sir Apirana Ngata in 1922 enables us to understand the deception. He sets the record straight by clearly showing that the original Maori version of the Treaty established the Queen as our Sovereign, protected private property rights, and gave Maori the same rights and privileges under British law as every other New Zealander.
What is now so disturbing, is that even though the Coalition Government was elected on the promise of replacing race-based rights with equal rights, and stopping all work on He Puapua, they are not removing those dangerous Te Tiriti provisions from Labour’s 2020 law, through their replacement legislation, the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2).
That means that unless the public response through the Select Committee process – and through lobbying Coalition MPs – is so intense that they wake up and realise they must honour their election pledge, the education system will continue to endanger New Zealand by undermining our democracy and grooming our children for tribal rule.
At this stage, the Bill is still in front of Parliament, but once it reaches a Select Committee* and submissions are called, the public will need to get involved if there is to be any hope of freeing education from the grip of tribal leaders who are intent on destroying democracy from within.
*Please note that on the left-hand sidebar of the NZCPR homepage at www.nzcpr.com (opposite the weekly poll) all new Bills that are open for public submissions are listed. Once the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) reaches a Select Committee, it will appear there, and all submission details will be available by clicking the link.
Public input is also being sought by the Government on their major curriculum reform programme, that aims to replace the disastrous 2007 outcomes-based approach to education, with a knowledge rich curriculum for New Zealand.
This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator is Auckland University’s Professor of Education Elizabeth Rata, who, as one of a group of 20 or so experts involved in the reform of the English curriculum, explains what’s going on:
“The 2007 New Zealand Curriculum allows teachers and schools to decide what to teach. In this localised curriculum there is no prescribed content, no nationwide standardisation nor effective quality control. The result is increased inequality. Students in schools committed to high quality academic subjects continue to achieve. Students in schools that offer little more than socio-cultural beliefs and practices are denied the education needed for full inclusion in modern society.
“The Minister of Education is determined to introduce a knowledge rich curriculum for all New Zealand students. It is a standardised curriculum which ensures that students across the country receive the same high-quality knowledge. That knowledge consists of academic subjects with content selected for its value and justified for its veracity. Furthermore, the content must be designed so that it is coherently organised and built progressively from the most basic to the more complex.”
While the changes being proposed will deliver a knowledge-rich curriculum that focusses on English language and literature, Professor Rata makes the point that the success of the curriculum revamp is not yet assured as those pushing decolonisation and Maori supremacy will do everything they can to undermine the reforms:
“In the coming months, the public will be consulted on the draft English curriculum. This is right and proper – it is not a curriculum for teachers alone, but for the nation. It is here, in the national discussion about the subject of English that I predict a simmering conflict will surface. Some, like me, regard school English as the study of language and literature in the English language. For others, English is the tool of the capitalist coloniser, intent on locking the colonised into a permanent state of subjugation. Their demands are for the decolonisation, then indigenisation, of the entire education system.”
We have, of course, experienced conflict over curriculum reforms before. Back in 2021, the Ardern Government, at the behest of tribal leaders, transformed history into an indoctrination tool for Maori sovereignty.
Describing that draft curriculum, historian and former Labour Minister Dr Michael Bassett did not hold back: “A finer assemblage of mumbo-jumbo would be hard to find. A careful reader examining the underlying intention behind it all will conclude it is to re-name the country Aotearoa, eventually dropping any mention of New Zealand, making Te Reo compulsory for everyone, and handing control of the country’s identity and intellectual life to the Maori Council.”
With changing the history curriculum to restore balance a Coalition commitment, we can expect controversy over that as well.
But back to English.
Professor Rata is urging as many New Zealanders as possible to engage in the reform process by sending in a submission on the Draft Education Curriculum by June 13 – full consultation details including links to curriculum documents can be found HERE.
With opponents of the curriculum changes likely to mobilise an army of submitters against the reforms, Professor Rata is encouraging everyone interested in education to submit in support – and, as a helpful guide and resource, has published her own excellent submission on her website HERE.
While the education reforms now being introduced by the Coalition, to overhaul the curriculum and the law will improve standards and give Kiwi kids a better opportunity to build decent lives for themselves, it remains unacceptable that provisions are being left in the legislation to empower He Puapua and race-based rule.
The weaponised ‘Te Tiriti’ provisions in New Zealand legislation are dangerous and should be purged, starting with education.
All references to ‘Te Tiriti’ in the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) and the 2020 Education and Training Act must be removed. Not to do so will condemn our children and grandchildren to an uncertain future, where democracy may well give way to totalitarian tribal rule.
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THIS WEEK’S POLL ASKS:
*Would you like to see all references to ‘Te Tiriti’ removed from the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No 2) and the 2020 Education and Training Act?
*Poll comments are posted below.
*All NZCPR poll results can be seen in the Archive.
THIS WEEK’S POLL COMMENTS
| Yes, but all references to the Treaty should be removed from ALL legislation. Taking it out of education law is only a first step. | David |
| I find it appalling to read how Labour sold out the country to activists wanting to subvert democracy and replace it with tribal totalitarianism. But how is it that so few people understand what’s going on? | Bryan |
| Erica Stanford and her team are making great progress considering the hostile environment in which they are working. But they need to do more to ensure they sweep away all opportunities for a cultural takeover. Our kids are too important not to do a thorough job. | Shona |
| What’s wrong with the Coalition – are they really so gutless that they won’t do the right thing because of fear of a pushback from iwi, or are they genuinely ignorant about what’s really going on??? | Paul |
| Why aren’t the media informing us about all of this? Oh, I forgot, funding from the Public Interest Journalism fund that turned legacy media into tribal lapdogs, continues on until 2026! In their wisdom the Coalition didn’t axe it. How dumb is that! | Tom |