Erica Stanford Ascends

Summary:

Stanford reveals it will take five years (“it’s a lot of work”) to implement the new education curriculum, and doesn’t appear to even consider options such as teacher resources, class sizes, poverty, or making the profession more attractive.

She ignores data that shows educational standards declined significantly, and started trending downwards during John Key’s tenure.

Stanford does confirm she has instructed NZQA to have all internal/external assessments marked by AI in 3 years. And claims AI is ‘just as good’ as humans.

Separately, Jamie Beaton appeared on Q&A on Sunday to criticize NCEA, a day before Stanford’s announcement.

Beaton’s company, Crimson Education, has had a litany of scandals including a bombshell USA Today investigation, and John Key has been with Crimson since 2019. National List MP Nancy Lu is also connected.

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Last year I predicted Erica Stanford would be a leadership candidate for National, and repeated the same yesterday.

And watching Erica Stanford take centre stage on right wing podcasts and in front of the media throng, reminded me of that ambition.

A reality TV producer for many years, Stanford is now East Coast Bays MP in Auckland.1

Stanford was also a very passionate equity rights advocate in 2020, standing alongside her colleagues to praise Labour/Green’s bill as doing the right thing by her children, and grandchildren to be.

She then voted for its repeal this year.

Stanford is notorious for calling opposition MPs “stupid bitch” - in the last instance, Jan Tinetti received that pleasure, merely for asking about National’s cuts of rural bus routes that have left many families stranded, and even Federated Farmers striving for a solution.

But that’s all water under the bridge now.

It’s Stanford’s ascension time.

On a friendly right wing podcast, Stanford ignores data that shows the trend of decline started when John Key was Prime Minister.

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