Rata And The Erasure Of 'Student-level Factors'

In response to the Parliamentary Written Question (PWQ) about "What evidence, if any, has the Minister received that shows that the “greatest impact for reading” for Māori students is Structured Literacy?" – a claim she made on Q&A on 10 August – Stanford referred to the evidence base for Better Start Literacy (BSL).

There are a number of articles, much of them finding similar things: BSL works to develop phonemic awareness in young learners (aged 5-7) and, in the 2025 article 'Evaluating the large-scale implementation of structured literacy teaching in New Zealand: Evidence from the Better Start Literacy Approach' it found that BSL “counters factors usually associated with student achievement, such as socioeconomic status”.

Another article from 2025, 'The Impact of a National Implementation of Tier 2 Structured Literacy Teaching for Children in Their First Year at School', found that “After 40 Tier 1 lessons, 10,532 children exhibited stronger scores on phoneme awareness and phonics measures compared to children of the same age who had not participated in BSLA”. 

Sounds good.

However, what was also found, and noted in the first referenced study, is that 

“BSLA teaching does not entirely discount the importance of skills at school entry, as these remained significant in the final model ... research suggests that student-level factors account for more of the variance in literacy achievement than school-level factors, and that foundational literacy skills are the strongest predictors”. 

How significant, you ask? Well, depending on the particular literacy skill being assessed, somewhere between 72.9% and 75.3% of the variability in reading levels was found to be due to student-level factors: "sociodemographic and socioeconomic status". Or, poverty and culture. 

Can it be said the BSL is the answer to Māori underachievement if it accounts for less than 30% of the variance in reading achievement of 5-7 year olds?

Why does this matter?

It is clear that Rata has her eye on Te Whāriki. We need to be alert to signals from Stanford that Rata's drive is having an impact. One thing that Stanford has shown repeatedly is a determination to ignore the student-level factors that we know, and BSL research has quantified, impact hugely on learning.

So, I think we need to be alert to Stanford starting to use phrases like 'school readiness'. There have been hints that this is happening. For instance, when launching the Kōwhiti Whakapae resource, Stanford positioned it as a tool to help ECE teachers "drive better literacy and numeracy outcomes for young learners". The Ministry was committed, she said, "to making the most of data and evidence to drive student achievement."

No mention of the 72%+ data point.

And even these words about this tool and the step it signals regarding the potential direction of ECE under Stanford weren't enough for Rata, who sent a letter to Stanford calling for the scrapping of the resource, calling it a "political document which promotes identity politics". What was needed, she wrote, was an ECE curriculum focused on "the knowledge and skills needed by young children as a foundation for future schooling. That foundation requires specific teaching".

And here is the danger. Yes, while to this point student-level factors have been ignored, and interventions focused on what is done in the school, I think we must be alert to the student-level factors being addressed in an unexpected way. That 72% plus data-point is too strong to ignore.

In her opening address of the panel discussion at the 2018 Festival of Education at Auckland Grammar, organised by the New Zealand Initiative, Rata brought up the long tail of underachievement. She said that the orthodox way of thinking about that was to build a system's cultural responsiveness*, but what if that wasn't the answer? What if, she asked, what was actually needed was less of the home culture? 

At what point will Stanford's wilful blindness about the home culture of the child turn and become Rata's drive to erase it? Will school readiness act as the justification for the denial of identity? Was the move to ban te reo from early readers an indication of the turn happening?

We might look at that 72%+ data point and think, as Jan Tinetti tried to point out in select committee, that addressing poverty and cultural alienation is the place to start. This Government has no plans for that, aside from increasing them. Their answer is erasure and assimilation. 

ERO, when reporting back about ECE, "recommended putting consistent expectations in place for students and tracking their progress against them, increasing teachers' use of effective practices and supporting parents and whānau to develop language at home." 

It's easy to start in the home when the kids are young. Remember what Rata said about the curriculum: it is a tool to stop decolonisation's success. Could it be that soon, in a world of student data reaching into the ECE sector and driving teacher-practice, that whānau will need to place emphasis, in their homes, on the knowledge and skills Rata says are required if they want their kids to be ready for school?

Is this the future of Te Whāriki? As a tool for the reassertion of cultural dominance.