Commentary by ‘Alapasita Pomelile
When it comes to our children, parents deserve both a voice and transparency. This week, New Zealand’s education system has fallen short on both counts.
The headline story is a leaked video in which a senior Ministry of Education official, leading work on the secondary school curriculum, told staff not to record in writing that material had been passed back and forth with the Education Minister’s office, because it could be requested under the Official Information Act. The Ministry says the comments did not meet its expectations and has begun an internal review. Whistleblowers have since claimed the practice was routine. The Chief Ombudsman has requested an urgent meeting with the head of the Ministry and is considering a broader investigation. Education Minister Erica Stanford rejects any suggestion that her office sought to avoid scrutiny under the OIA.
The allegations need to be thoroughly investigated, and the Ombudsman is the right office to do that. New Zealanders should be able to trust that public officials are complying with both the letter and the spirit of the Official Information Act.
But the controversy comes at a significant moment. A quieter change has already reduced parents’ voice in one of the most sensitive areas of the school curriculum.
Until July, every school board was required to consult its community at least every two years on how health education, including relationships and sexuality education (RSE), would be delivered. That requirement reflected a simple principle: when issues involve sexuality, values and family beliefs, schools should work in partnership with parents, not in place of them.
Parliament has now replaced consultation with notification. Boards need only tell parents what will be taught at least once every three years, or when the curriculum changes. They are no longer required to seek parents’ views or respond to them. They must describe the content and resources they’ll use, but they are not required to hand over detailed lesson plans.
The Government argues that this change makes sense because a national curriculum now sets out what is taught each year. The Education Review Office also found that many schools were not conducting consultations properly and that some meetings became contentious. Fair as these points are, they miss the purpose of consultation.
Consultation was never simply an administrative exercise. It recognises a basic principle: parents have the primary responsibility for raising their children, and schools, and the State, should work alongside them, not replace them. Several leaders of the parties that voted for the change have told us they support parental consultation. Their MPs voted to remove it. It was also parents’ concerns, reflected in the coalition agreement, that led this Government to withdraw the previous RSE guidelines.
A letter every three years is not a partnership.
What happens in the classroom matters. We commend some of the changes in the new curriculum, such as sex education starting later and opening with a clear statement about the legal age of consent. But from Year 9, students are also taught how to access confidential sexual health advice, while relatively little is said about commitment, stable relationships or marriage. Reasonable people will disagree about the balance of that content.
What should not be controversial is parents’ right to know exactly how it is being taught, including access to lesson plans, teaching materials and classroom resources, not just a brief summary.
That’s why these two issues are connected.
When local consultation disappears, one of the few remaining ways for parents and the public to understand how curriculum decisions are made is through official information requests. If Ministry staff were instructed to keep discussions with the Minister’s office off the written record, that avenue of transparency is weakened as well.
Parents risk being shut out both at the school gate and in Wellington.
We have seen no reported evidence that the RSE curriculum was shaped this way, but the concern remains. Curriculum content can be changed by future governments of any political persuasion. The safeguards that allow parents to see, question and challenge those decisions should not depend on who happens to be in power.
There is history here. In late 2012, the Ombudsman found that the Ministry of Education had wrongly advised Christchurch principals not to use the Official Information Act during the post-earthquake school closure process. A formal public apology did not come until 2017.
If the Ombudsman’s inquiry proceeds, it should be broad enough to examine all curriculum work, including the recently finalised health and sexuality education content. The Ministry of Education should publish the feedback it received on the sexuality education curriculum and explain how that feedback was considered. Schools should make sexuality education lesson plans and resources available to parents on request. And Parliament should restore meaningful consultation on relationships and sexuality education, even if consultation is no longer required for other parts of the health curriculum.
Disagreement over what should be taught in RSE, and when, is unavoidable, but it isn’t a licence to shut parents out. Surely we can agree on something more fundamental: parents have a right to know what their children are being taught, a right to be heard, and a right to expect transparency from those making these decisions. Those principles should not change with the government of the day, or depend on whether it’s an election year. They are the foundation of trust between parents and families, schools, and the State.
Before you submit, check the curriculum wording against the published text on Tāhūrangi, and be ready to back up the party leaders’ comments if an editor asks.
