Erica Stanford

I've been on the ground listening to the profession for the last few months, especially the Auckland Primary Principals who went out and surveyed all of their members last year for me and provided really good feedback.

So I asked the Ministry for advice earlier this year.

I received it in early April, but I'm wanting to back our teachers to make sure that we get the phasing right.

Well, we all really have prioritised certain subjects.

So obviously literacy and numeracy.

So English and maths were first out of the blocks.

And you'll remember we brought maths forward slightly because of the results.

Science is a core subject, as you know, required all the way through right up until year 10.

and we'll be making some announcements about science next week.

Social science, the reason that social science is the one that you would prioritise, and this is part of the feedback from the profession as well, is that it's massively knowledge rich.

So you've got lots of strands in there, world history, New Zealand history, geography, civics and society, financial literacy, and

Knowledge is so important for young people in their critical thinking and importantly, their comprehension of what they're reading.

So a really knowledge-rich topic was important to prioritise.

But I've been dealing very closely with the local principals associations and ran this through them to make sure that this sort of re-phasing was right and we've got the subjects in the right order.

The social science and science will be gazetted for use from next year, so they'll be required.

Those other ones in 2029, yep, they will be after this election, of course.

I still plan to be the Minister of Education, Mike, because it's really important to me that we get these reforms through.

Parents are already saying to me, they stopped me in the street and they're like, we are noticing a difference.

They're seeing what I'm seeing in the early results.

and that achievement is improving.