Maiki Sherman revealed last night that Erica Stanford has been using her personal email for work, including for highly sensitive government documents.
Despite Luxon claiming it was no big deal, and only done in limited circumstances (mainly tech related, he claimed), 1News revealed hundreds of pages of offending material over many months.
Stanford later admitted to 1News it wasn’t only due to technical matters at all.
Luxon tried to paint it all as small fry (“I’m very relaxed about it” he repeatedly says in the video) and claimed Chris Hipkins used to do the same thing.
Except Hipkins - and journalists - noted Parliament technology has been significantly upgraded, so that point was no longer relevant.
In addition, Hipkins was not regularly conducting official business ala Stanford.
Sherman has a second report on this being filed tonight.
But to be honest, what shocked me about it all was seeing the instructions/advice Stanford was getting - and accepting.
Take this quote from Atlas Network linked New Zealand Initiative, Michael Johnston - who Stanford hired to chair her NZ curricula advisory group:
"Teachers are not necessarily experts in the subjects they are teaching - often for example physics may be taught by a maths teacher or a PE teacher."
The question we all need to ask is:
“Would Einstein agree?”
I certainly couldn’t do it.
There is more.
A redacted source writes to her with advice on how to manage the Ministry of Education, positioning them almost as adversaries:
Reflecting an extraordinary level of influence from unnamed external parties.
And here:
Stanford responds within 2 minutes on Gmail -
“Thank you, we need to do some work in this area so I’ll check him out….Once Budget madness is over I’ll get a time to zoom. E.”
Entitlement from the sender, and an immediate, acquiesing obesciance from Stanford.
It’d be good to know who the sender was.
Who is Bennett?
Bennett is a former nightclub manager on the Soho social scene…
Following this he trained as a teacher of religious studies and philosophy in East London.
This formed the basis of his writing about teaching and classroom behaviour.1
Bennett was hired by the UK Tory party to help with “bad behaviour in schools” in 2015.
He’s been called “Tory Tom” by a UK principal, and “accused of promoting “barbaric” zero tolerance regimes and sending children out of the classroom rather than trying to support them.”2
School performance and behaviour is an important topic, but influenced by many factors: including school resources, teacher to student ratios, parenting, culture, poverty, mental health resources, individual student attributes.
It therefore requires a multi-faceted approach.
Last year, Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, UK, reportedly reacted to Bennett’s comments with:
“It would be helpful if, rather than sniping from the sidelines, the DfE committed time to developing a better understanding of the factors driving this challenging behaviour and then provided the investment needed to produce solutions.”
And Niamh Sweeney, deputy general secretary at the National Education Union (NEU), said:
“Supporting positive engagement isn’t as simple as just setting boundaries, although that is clearly one part. Poverty and mental health issues do create barriers to learning, and can affect students’ aspiration and motivation to learn.
“Tom Bennett may want to disregard the impact of poverty or emotional difficulties as a factor, but those working in schools want to see the level of child poverty and family need reduced.”
Bennett’s a bit of a Debbie Downer too, in my view, telling Brits in 2017 that play and enjoyment isn’t part of serious learning.
Child and youth issues are important to address, but one can’t ignore empirical research, or the other factors at play:
For example, our recent statistics show 27% of Aotearoa tamariki experience food poverty, that’s up from 21% last year and higher than even 2019/2020.
At least 15,000 teenagers in NZ work up to 50 hours a week to help with putting food on the table.
School lunches for students has been a disaster this year, with more official food safety cases in one term than the prior 7 years combined3
Families with children with disabilities are feeling punished and under pressure from government cuts, while homelessness spiked up to 53% in major cities in a few months.
The government’s also steered $153 million of taxpayer money away from the public school system to fund private charter schools.
We also learned the 215 charter school students were given $10 million of taxpayers money for the first year.
While Erica Stanford broke her promise to principals and teachers to fund learning aide resources in our public system.
The Coalition is funding $46,500 per student in charter schools versus just above $9000 in state schools
As the UK professionals note, boundaries is one part, but it’s not the only factor at play when it comes to performance and behaviour.
Poverty and mental health issues do create barriers to learning, and can affect students’ aspiration and motivation to learn.
National Removes Te Tiriti o Waitangi from NZ Curriculum
Erica Stanford removed all references to the Treaty of Waitangi in her new curricula.
She also has a habit of calling opposition female MPs “stupid bitches”.
Last week, her Associate Education Minister, David Seymour told Mayors to help him with school attendance, after earlier mocking Councils for not focusing on garbage collection and other “basics”.
Matt Doocey went out of his way to hide 1500 critical vacancies from a mental health report.
And Luxon downplayed Stanford’s repeated breaches of the Cabinet Manual, saying she was a great Minister - just as he downplayed Seymour’s police interference in the Philip Polkinghorne murder case, just as he downplayed Seymour’s lies to the NZ public, just as he downplayed Andrew Bayly telling an ex-serviceman to f*** off for working late.
Bad behaviour comes in many forms.
Perhaps Bennett could apply his skills to the Tories, and leave the chidren to holistic measures.
Related Article:
Point In History: Emails
England’s School Behaviour Czar
i.e. that’s the last 28 terms prior!
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