Here is another set of written questions submitted in the House to the Minister of Education, with their replies. These ones are focused on the provision of the Ministry-funded resources (textbooks) to support the revised maths curriculum.

To me, they unwittingly reveal a pattern regarding procurement that, at best, plays with the intent of procurement rules, and at worst completely subverts their intent. This is of significant concern, because it is a pattern that has been apparent in other agencies with this government, and suggests a willingness to disregard the policies, processes and rules that allow for the democratic functioning of government.

The replies also betray a contradictory logic that is driving the thinking and actions of the Minister and Ministry. We are to believe that this is a crisis particular to our country (incorrect), that is so acute (urgent!) it can only be solved with a speed that negates the potential for consideration, consultation and testing (foolish), built on a narrow curriculum and an invented pedagogical approach, supported by textbooks with no independently verified evidence base of success. Couple this with the deliberate cuts to initiatives with proven track records in lifting the achievement of Māori and Pacific learners, and a picture is emerging of a motive that is driving these education changes that is nothing to do with the kind of outcomes most parents would wish.

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Question: Do schools have to use one of the new maths resources; if not, can they use a resource that is suitable for their school?

Reply from the Minister: No, schools do not need to use the Ministry-funded resources. However, any other resources they choose to purchase will be at the schools’ own cost.

Schools will need to be confident that any other resources they choose to use will support their students’ progress and achievement in the revised Year 0 to 8 maths curriculum, which is required to be taught from the start of 2025.

My thoughts and comments.

A reasonable assumption one can make, based on this reply, is that the Ministry-funded resources will reflect the revised maths curriculum tightly, because the Minister is drawing a direct connection between the use of those resources and student progress and achievement in that curriculum. However, the revised curriculum was completed after the procurement process, which raises questions around the level of insight or input those commercial providers had into the final version of the curriculum. 

Note, too, the use of the word ‘revised’ instead of ‘refreshed’. The work done prior to the Minister taking office was characterised as a refresh and the Minister herself has been keen for the sector to see this work as the logical end-step of this process — that is how the limited consultation with the sector has been justified. But revised carries a different sense of action, one that hints at the possibility of wholesale change. And, indeed, this is what has happened. Given the curriculum sets the regulatory framework for teaching and learning in a school, and in this instance the teaching and learning framework for maths, the limited consultation constitutes a violation of democratic due-process. The previous refresh work underwent that process, which is why it took the time it did.

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Question: What research, if any, has the Minister used to show the selected maths resources will be suitable for all New Zealand schools?

Reply from the Minister: The 2021 Royal Society Te Apārangi Expert Advisory Panel on Mathematics and Statistics report, Pāngarau Mathematics and Tauanga Statistics in Aotearoa New Zealand, included recommendations for schools and kura to have equitable access to a suite of high-quality resources to support teaching.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) encourages the use of textbooks as part of a holistic approach (including curriculum development, teacher training and student engagement) to support the development of mathematical competencies in students necessary for the 21st century. For example, Singapore is a top performing jurisdiction in maths achievement and its comprehensive approach, like our plan, includes a rigorous and well-structured curriculum, high quality textbooks and resources, effective pedagogy, teacher training and professional learning and devleopment, and nationally consistent assessments.

Suppliers were selected based on how well they could incorporate the revised maths curriculum and the principles of the science of learning in their resources, and whether they could deliver on time and at scale.

My thoughts and comments.

The Royal Society report recommended the Ministry of Education (MoE) develop resources for teachers, not source commercial textbooks with no testing, so the Minister is being disingenuous in her reply here. The Singapore MoE develops their own resources for teaching and carefully tests them. So, if she was genuine in her desire to model our approach on a top performing jurisdiction, one would think that slow and rigorous approach, led by the MoE, would be what she invests in. Instead, we have sourced commercial textbooks with minimal tweaks, all of them from companies based off-shore, purchased in a rush. Not only that, the money to pay for them — $30 million — has been taken from the Te Ahu o te Reo Maori program. Millions of dollars of public money is going off-shore.

Relevant here is a consideration of how Singapore has become a top performing jurisdiction, according to PISA. In the OECD Education GPS analysis of Singapore’s 2022 PISA data, they made these observations:

• The gap between their highest and lowest scoring students increased from 2018.
• They have the largest share of students (50%) in the top quintile of the socio-economic scale.
• They have one of the longest learning hours/week in the OECD.
• They have a high amount of homework, compared with other jurisdictions (2 hours/day).
• They ability stream.
• Their students are less physically active after school, and their levels here are well below the OECD average.

Clearly, there are factors beyond textbooks contributing to their performance. Many of those factors sit beyond what happens in a classroom and are more in the realm of what we are prepared to do to kids to get top results (eg, reduce their opportunities to be physically active) which is an ethical question, and the socio-economic and cultural makeup of our country, which is a political question. We mustn’t ignore, either, that Singapore is experiencing an increase in students reporting to their Institute of Mental Health for school-related stress.

Incorporating the science of learning seems to have been a criteria for selection. As Guy Claxton’s webinar for the AEC made clear, there is no ‘the’ when it comes to learning science. There are many learning sciences, and recent advances in cognitive science ask deep questions about our assumptions about what school should do. Indeed, the version we are having mandated by virtue of it being written into the heart of the revised curriculum is heavily culturally loaded, reflecting cultural notions of how a learner should behave and the kinds of learning that is valued. I think it is no accident it reflects very strongly the images of learning in an English public school. As Guy continually says, science cannot tell you what to do — that is the realm of ethics, values, philosophy and religion: these are all reflections of culture. I encourage you to look beyond the headline use of that word science and reflect on the ethical and cultural underpinning of ‘the’ science we are being sold, because the argument of those selling it to us is that it removes all need for ethical and cultural consideration (except their own, of course, which is unspokenly held to be superior, as proved by science). This is not true. It is an argument being used as cover for the reassertion of a racist education system, re-made in the image of the privileged.

The changes introduced to the PLD model go against what the evidence says is effective. We now have a model that relies almost exclusively on workshops and minimal 1-1 contact time with teachers. The assumption seems to be that a few staff meetings, a prescriptive curriculum and textbooks will be sufficient. It won’t be.

And, another reminder that if it’s structured maths the Minister is referring to here when she writes “effective pedagogy”, there is no evidence base for it, with it being primarily an invention of her own making.

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Question: What was the procurement process used to buy for the new math resources for school?

Reply from the Minister: The Ministry of Education (the Ministry) recently held a closed tender to supply maths workbooks and resources to schools from the beginning of the 2025 school year. Due to the timeframes and urgency required to procure these resources, the Ministry approached a selected number of providers to ensure a rapid turn-around in commissioning the design, production and delivery of the resources.

The providers approached by the Ministry were selected because their products were already working well in schools, as well as having a proven track record of supplying at a national scale.

My thoughts and comments.

This reply confuses me slightly, because it seems to imply that two main criteria drove the selection of the textbook suppliers: urgency and track-record. How can those criteria enable the supply to schools of resources that will be effective in addressing the problem in maths achievement the Minister identified in crisis terms? Surely, for a problem of the scale she identified, what is required is an approach anchored in evidence and tailored to our kids? This is especially problematic when you consider that:

• Oxford University Press, one of the chosen suppliers, has never been used in NZ before. So they weren’t approached because they were already working well in schools. 
• There is zero evidence anywhere of any of the textbook schemes working well in schools — none have been independently assessed.

So what was the basis for identifying ‘working well in schools’? What schools were included in that evaluation? It can’t have been an overly rigorous process, given the timeframes. And how can this even be a relevant criteria, given they can only have been working well against a curriculum that will not be used from 2025, and in some cases having no previous track record of use in Aotearoa New Zealand? In other words, these ‘working well’ textbooks were only working well when not aligned with the revised curriculum. All these questions work to create the potential for an impression that a favoured group had an ‘inside lane’ when it came to being selected to tender.

The closed-tender is problematic, and fits a pattern of questionable procurement practices under this Minister. (You will recall an opt-out procurement process was used to recruit people to the curriculum writing groups and it caused significant disquiet among the MoE procurement team at the time.) There are very clear procurement rules that Ministries must adhere to, and they set out when an opt-out, closed-procurement may be utilised. I am not sure that this, or the curriculum writing groups, meet the threshold for a closed procurement process.

More than that, and this I think is significantly alarming: I can find no evidence of this procurement being advertised on GETS (Government Electronic Tender Service). This is mandatory, unless very specific exceptions apply. The closest one of those exceptions for this circumstance is, to my mind, 14.9.a Emergency, but the rule states “A genuine emergency as defined by MBIE’s Quick Guide to Emergency Procurement. Urgent situations that are created by an agency, such as lack of advance planning, do not constitute an emergency.” The situation with regards to the maths resources is one created by the agency (well, the Minster, really), and so is not a valid reason to run a closed tender and not advertise on GETS. Here’s why that’s a significant problem:

• GETS was developed as a way to help the government meet its obligations under our various free trade agreements. This not being advertised on GETS means the only maths resource providers aware of the opportunity were those invited to tender for it. Who missed out as a result?
• The reliance on urgency worked to implicitly select out local suppliers, who don’t have the capacity of large, off-shore commercial textbook suppliers, and the MoE because of the regulatory requirements it is beholden to when developing curriculum and curriculum resources, making it more than likely that the millions of dollars being spent would go off-shore.
• If exception 14.9.a Emergency is not valid here, was the procurement undergone in a lawful way? For instance, are there any other suppliers in countries we have free trade deals with who may have tendered but couldn’t because it wasn’t advertised when it should have been?

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Question: How did the Minister become aware of the selected providers of mathematics resources as part of the Make it Count maths action plan?

Reply from the Minister: I received the following update from the Ministry of Education providing the names of the selected providers:

• 15 October 2024 – Rapid Response: Providers for maths resources and the products and services each of them will provide.

My thoughts and comments.

So, this is before the revised curriculum was finalised. How could they be assessed on their ability to reflect it?

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Question: Why were the new math resources provided by international commercial providers and not developed by the Ministry of Education in partnership with New Zealand mathematic researchers?

Reply from the Minister: I am advised by the Ministry of Education (the Ministry) that, in order to deliver maths resources to schools for the start of the 2025 school year, it was necessary to run a procurement process to select readily available maths resources suppliers.

The successful suppliers were those that best met the selection criteria.

My thoughts and comments.

So, we have an implicit reliance on urgency again, and that urgency meant the MoE was automatically excluded from work it is not unreasonable to assume it should be doing. I cannot escape the impression that the MoE has been reduced to a procurement centre under this Minister. I will not reiterate the problems with this, beyond pointing out that it’s no way to develop the support needed for a system supposedly in crisis.

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Question: Did the Minister make any recommendations to Ministry of Education officials about suitable providers of the math resources before, during or after the Request for Proposal had closed; if so, how did the Minister become aware of those providers?

Reply from the Minister: No. I approved the criteria for selecting maths resources though the procurement process, but I have not made any recommendations about suitable providers before or during the procurement process. I was made aware of the approved providers once the procurement process had been completed. From talking to principals and teachers I was aware of some of the resources schools are using.

My thoughts and comments.

This is a problem. I have it on good authority that it is highly unusual, indeed it’s atypical, for a Minister to be involved in criteria approval. It is an act that is operational, not one for a Minster, whose role is governance. It opens the Minister up to questions around her input into the development of the criteria. Were there various iterations of the criteria, as there were for the development of the scope for the Ministerial Advisory Group (which changed markedly after the Minister’s input)? If there were, was the Minister involved at any point? Did the Minister refuse to approve the criteria until it reflected her will? To what extent did the Minister’s approval create tender conditions that favoured particular kinds of suppliers over another? The continual use of urgency as a key factor in this process at large and the way that acted to exclude potential suppliers in Aotearoa New Zealand, including the MoE, is, I think, a clear example that this is the case.

In this response, the Minister also acknowledges an awareness of some of the suppliers invited to tender. Remember, a knowledge of resources already working well in schools influenced who was invited. Did she make even a casual comment of this nature to MoE staff about any of the eventually successful tenderers? I think it would be naive to think that a comment by the Minister regarding something she’s seen working well, given her prominent role in shaping the public perception of the need for these changes and their urgency, would not have an impact on who the MoE considered.

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Question: Is the Minister aware of any research basis and randomised control trials that exist to show the efficacy of each of the mathematics textbook schemes being introduced in New Zealand; if so what are they?

Reply from the Minister: I’m not aware of any randomised control trials for any textbooks.

My thoughts and comments.

It’s not because these don’t exist. For instance, Singapore — the jurisdiction the Minister holds up as an example worth emulating — carefully tests the resources (including textbooks) they develop. But the very fact the Minister is unaware is worrying given her operational involvement in the development and resourcing of the curriculum, as well as the setting of the criteria (why wasn’t this one of the criteria?).

Even more worrying is she has been happy to proceed, spending millions of dollars from the public purse, with resources that are untested. How does she know they will lead to the outcomes that are, apparently, so urgently needed the MoE has had to run irregular procurement processes? Someone has given her or the MoE the idea they will. Who? When? How? This is, to my mind, an irresponsible use of public funds.