Te Tiriti At Risk Of Removal From the Education and Training Act.

Is Erica Stanford woke for keeping reference to Te Tiriti in the amendments to the Education and Training Act? That’s a question that has been vexing a number of people on the right.

On 4 July, 2025, Michael Johnston went on The Platform to defend her from that accusation. His defence wasn’t that keeping reference to Te Tiriti is essential, but that Stanford was being politically sensible to not remove it at this point. He pointed to Stanford saying in “another interview” that Te Tiriti “would be considered under” Minister Goldsmith’s “omnibus reform of legislation”, so avoiding a “fight with the school sector” is the right thing to do while she focuses on driving curriculum reform.

Of particular note, in his defence of Stanford, Johnston challenges anyone to go and look at the new English and Maths curriculums and “find any evidence of woke material”. Make of that what you will.

Why should we be alarmed?

In case you need reminding, Johnston was Stanford’s choice to be MAG chair despite the recommendations of the Ministry. That very same MAG,

• gained oversight of curriculum writing groups within the Ministry two weeks after its first meeting,

• wrote curriculum documents despite being told that was the work of government,

• presented those documents to ERO as the curriculum during the QA phase of the curriculum development process,

• and saw a number of people move from being MAG members to being key personnel on the ‘official’ curriculum writing teams (I say ‘official’ because the Ministry, despite officially putting them together, was operating under instructions from the MAG, who got to choose who was on those teams),

• has a key member, Rata (who we can only assume made the MAG on either Johnston or Stanford’s recommendation, as she wasn’t on the suggested MAG member list provided by the Ministry) on record as wanting to use curriculum to “end decolonisation’s success“.

Let’s lay this out. Plunket’s main criticism of Stanford is she has missed an opportunity to make good on the Government’s promise to remove reference to Te Tiriti in legislation. Johnston’s argument to that is, essentially, keep the faith – look at what she’s done already with the curriculum, and remember what she has said about Goldsmith’s work.

So, we should be alarmed because here we have a close aide of the Minister, who has successfully directed curriculum change as ‘directed’ by Stanford, suggesting they’re not done yet.