Ministry of Education (Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga)

We want to help the people who are designing funding and so on we are seeing some green shoots there as well so for for some time many of us in the education space have been calling attention to the way in which we measure success particularly across part-time full-time and on-campus and off-campus learning modes and and the need to take more holistic metrics into account when we're looking at student success.

So our Ministry of Education here in Aotearoa New Zealand over the last 18 months or so has been listening to that.

So we're seeing some really positive signals in the latest tertiary education strategy where there is reference to a distance travelled metric.

which would, we think, add real value for learners and for institutions and providers who are very committed to a very diverse and open cohort of students.

And it signals, I think for us, a willingness on the part of the Ministry of Education and other policy agencies here in New Zealand to really think more expansively about access, openness, scalability.

Finally, Punya, we also talk about equity and the importance of equity alongside quality and access in the Takena Accord.

The equity piece is really important here in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Both sides of Parliament get LGFA up and running.

Worked recently for Erica Stanford on taking school property out of the Ministry of Education, trying to set it up as a separate entity.

Working with the Department of Conservation on...

Keep doing that.

Now, these are schools achieving significant, really impressive improvements despite facing the same old socioeconomic challenges.

What's been going on at Auckland Girls Grammar for them to make such a massive jump? So it should be gold for the Ministry of Education to highlight this stuff.

Don't just publish the results, go and find out what the hell it is that those schools are doing.

Find out, repeat it, mimic it, and put it into every other school.

Okay.

So how many people do you think, in education broadly and p- particularly in the Ministry of Education, are now convinced like the rest of us that these open plan classrooms are a failure? And the reason I'm asking you this question, Erica, is because it's, it's, it's fine that you're putting walls up, but the minute that you are out of office, are they gonna go back to that nonsense again?

Look, I don't think that they will.

Um, there are, to be fair, there are some schools, and I visited one with Nicola Gregg on Friday last week, uh, who are quite happy with their open plan classrooms.

Erica, thanks as always.

Appreciate it.

Erica Stanford, Ministry of Education.

Right, let's talk to Air New Zealand next about this awesome new little automatic rebooking system they've got.