Australian firm's involvement in school curriculum rewrite comes under scrutiny

The involvement of an Australian company in the rewrite of the school curriculum came under scrutiny at the Education and Workforce Select Committee.

Education Ministry officials told MPs the firm - Learning First - helped find content for the new maths curriculum, but did not write it.

They also told the Education and Workforce Select Committee New Zealand companies were not offered the job because the ministry was already working with Learning First.

Meanwhile, Education Minister Erica Stanford said she could not remember if she had coffee with the head of Learning First before or after the company was given the contract.

The responses were made following questions from Labour education spokesperson Ginny Andersen during the select committee's session for scrutinising the government's recent Budget.

Andersen asked why a contract for benchmarking the maths curriculum against curriculums in other countries was given to Learning First and not to a New Zealand company.

Stanford said she was not involved with contracting decisions but there were very few people who could compare curriculums internationally and provide an accurate benchmark of where New Zealand should sit.

Andersen said the New Zealand Council for Educational Research could have done the work and would have loved to bid it but did not get the opportunity.

She said the benchmarking contract was not put out for open tender.

"No New Zealand company even got a look in. Why," she said.

Education Ministry deputy secretary Pauline Cleaver said the ministry had been working with Learning First already and procurement was based on the availability of a provider who could do the job in the required timeframe.

"We wanted to make sure that the changes that were being recommended to be made to the maths curriculum through that first year of use were going to continue to be internationally comparable," she said.

Andersen asked if Learning First wrote any part of the curriculum.

Cleaver said the company helped find content from other places with knowledge-rich curriculums but the writing was done by the ministry.

More intervention for struggling schools

Stanford told MPs the government would intervene faster in poorly-performing schools and stop students' family means from becoming their destiny.

Andersen said schools in South Auckland were worried changes to Education Review Office reports would result in their schools being "ranked" badly compared to other schools.

Stanford said there would be no ranking and the changes were aimed at identifying "schools of concern" so they could be helped to improve.

She said governments had waited "way to long" to intervene in schools and too few improved following an intervention.

"We need to act more quickly because we're waiting way to long to intervene," she said.

"The reality is in this country your means do determine your destiny. We have to shift that and part of that is being open and transparent about the state of education," she said.

Education Review Office acting chief executive Tim Fowler said the government's Budget provided more funding so ERO staff could be on-site more frequently at schools that needed to improve.

Fowler said he was confident the office's evaluations were accurate.

Most charter schools meet targets

Associate education minister David Seymour told the select committee five of the first seven charter schools exceeded attendance targets in their first full year of operation.

Seymour said one of the schools that fell short, Christchurch North College, was set up by a group of state schools specifically for students who had disengaged from schooling.

"That school, every term new students enrol who are not in the habit of going to school so even though they've made great progress with individual students in their first year, their average has been weighed down by inducting those new students each term," he said.

He said the schools were expected to perform at least as well as state schools with similar student backgrounds and five of the seven had exceeded their targets.

One of the schools that did not meet the achievement target, Mastery School, was for students with significant learning problems such as dyslexia, Seymour said.

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.