Being Extra-Critical of the ‘Teaching the Basics Brilliantly’ Reforms: Lessons Learned from National Standards

There is currently much uncertainty and upheaval in Aotearoa New Zealand’s education system, including: a major curriculum ‘refresh’; the introduction of structured pedagogical approaches; re-writing secondary school qualifications; the (re)establishing of charter schools; mandatory standardised testing; challenges to Initial Teacher Education, and much more. Although some of these education policy reforms are more controversial than others, and some potentially more benign than others, all of them carry a number of hidden ‘dangers’. In this commentary, I discuss the need for teachers to take a more critical perspective of neoliberal education reforms, particularly those that create and maintain processes of privatisation. Here I draw on Martin Thrupp’s research and advocacy to demonstrate how the recently announced ‘teaching the basics brilliantly’ policy package paves the way for further privatisation of public education, why teachers need to ‘raise their heads’ to the dangers of privatisation, and how teachers can become more critical of education reforms and how they impact their teaching and their students’ learning.