Meet the man behind the Government’s education policy

Analysis: “Shortly after the turn of the millennium, the gurus of progressive education coined the term twenty-first century learning,” Michael Johnston wrote in a piece for the New Zealand Initiative.

In the article Epitaph for a dumb idea published on the think tank’s website last month, Johnston went on to describe Ministry of Education officials as “twenty-first century learning illuminati”, and pushed back against the move towards skills-based curricula and self-directed learning.

“Unhappily for the priests of twenty-first century learning, it looks as if they will soon be defrocked. The counter-reformation is underway,” he concluded.

Then in an interview with The Platform last week, Johnston said: “I think by and large the ministry has been in the grip of an ideology for a long time; an educational ideology that is not consistent with the evidence.”

When Johnston, who is now leading Erica Stanford’s Curriculum Refresh Ministerial Advisory Group, spoke to Newsroom he stood by his assertion, but said his article was supposed to be a satirical piece – “I’m not usually quite so flippant,” he said.

Newsroom asked how Johnston would describe his ideology. “I try not to take an ideological approach; I try to take a scientific one,” he responded.

Since coming into power, Education Minister Erica Stanford has slowly but surely unveiled where education policy is heading: in a new, old direction.

In her list of education priorities anounced last week, Stanford spoke about establishing a “clearer curriculum”, which was “knowledge rich” and “grounded in the science of learning”. She also named implementing “evidence-based instruction in early literacy”, which was followed by a $67 million pre-Budget announcement on rolling out a structured approach to literacy. She promised improved teacher training , as well as changes to targeted learning support and consistent data gathering, assessment tools and reporting.

During the post-Cabinet press conference where she announced her six priority areas, Stanford also said: “One of the things we’re going to be looking into is the evidence behind open-plan learning.”

Those who were following closely noted striking similarities between what Stanford announced and the policy agenda put forward by right-wing think tank, the New Zealand Initiative.

Johnston, a New Zealand Initiative (NZI) senior fellow who leads its education workstream, has written articles about how NZ schools should adopt a structured approach to literacy; he’s written a paper called Who Teaches the Teachers, in which he calls out the current state of initial teacher education; as a cognitive psychologist, he espouses the benefits of the science of learning; and in his research report No Evidence, No Evaluation, No Exit – Lessons from the ‘Modern Learning Environments’ Experiment and subsequent articles, he was critical of so-called modern learning environments or open-plan classes.

Meanwhile, in 2020, his NZI colleague Briar Lipson wrote a paper called the Education Delusion, which also blamed the “flawed philosophy” of child-centred learning for declining achievement in Aotearoa.

While there was no suggestion of any wrongdoing by Johnston or the NZI – in fact, one educator who spoke to Newsroom suggested they were just “making hay while the sun shines” – many voiced concern at the outsized or disproportionate influence one man, one think tank, and one ideology was having on the direction of Aotearoa’s education system.

“The current over-reach of a small group of researchers at the expense of the wider professional and academic field is cause for concern,” Aotearoa Educators Collective spokesperson Maurie Abraham said in a statement, following Stanford’s education priorities announcement.

Those who spoke to Newsroom said while Labour tried to consult with everyone – ultimately resulting in very little progress – Stanford had chosen advisors from a narrow pool of people who held a similar ideology to her, minimising teacher and student voice in her policy design.

Others described Johnston’s research as “fringe”, saying his narrow focus on scientific theory didn’t take into account the realities teachers faced in the classroom.

One expert pointed out that not all research was created equal. 

While the previous National government relied heavily on the work of John Hattie, the rigorous nature of his research and methodology was highly respected across the sector.

One education expert questioned part of Johnston’s methodology in his report Who Teaches the Teachers. For part of his evaluation of what was being taught in university teaching courses, Johnston looked at university websites, reading the course descriptions posted online.

Another educator who spoke to Newsroom questioned Johnston’s conclusion that modern learning environments were bad, when what his research actually found was there wasn’t enough evidence to say open-plan classrooms were a good thing.

Another person with knowledge of education policy development said often the NZI approach to education policy was: X + X = bad.

Johnston is a cognitive psychologist by training. It’s the area of psychology that deals with human information processing; memory, attention, thought processes, language and visual perception.

He worked as a postdoctoral fellow in literacy and dyslexia at the University of Melbourne. When he returned to New Zealand, he spent six years at NZQA as a psychometrician, helping design the way external exams were marked. Johnston then joined Victoria University of Wellington’s Faculty of Education, looking at educational assessment, curriculum design, and the interface between learning and assessment. He finished up at Victoria as Associate Dean, before joining NZI about two years ago.

Johnston and Stanford met while Stanford was National’s education spokesperson in opposition.

“I had conversations with her for a good long time before she became minister, when she was in opposition,” Johnston said, adding that he wasn’t the only one she spoke to.

“I was pretty impressed with the amount of homework she did in opposition to prepare for the role. And so we had numerous chats over that time,” he said.

Apparently, Stanford was impressed with Johnston, because one of her first acts as minister was to appoint him as chair of her Ministerial Advisory Group tasked with revising the primary school English, maths and statistics curricula.

Stanford’s proactively released ministerial diaries (November to February) shows she met with Johnston twice, both in his capacity as advisory group chair.

Stanford’s diaries show she’d also met with teachers’ unions and education officials. But the diaries didn’t capture unscheduled phone-calls and texts, or casual conversations at events.

While he wasn’t able to talk about the advisory group’s work, Johnston said since Stanford became minister the pair had spoken about “structured literacy and curriculum design and assessment, all sorts of things”.

Johnston said he was pleased with the direction this Government was headed. “Research published by me and others at the initiative is strongly in agreement with that direction.”

While Johnston said he believed his work on education policy wasn’t influenced by ideology, the NZI was broadly accepted as a right-wing, pro-free-market think tank.

Johnston’s education policy research, and this Government’s general direction on education, also bore similarities to that of the Conservative Party in the UK.

In a speech delivered in 2021, the UK’s then-Schools Minister Nick Gibb spoke about the importance of a “knowledge-rich curriculum”, criticising what he labelled “21st century skills” and saying “this notion of ‘generic skills’ is one of the most damaging myths in education today”.

In July 2022, Christopher Luxon visited Michaela, which is often described as Britain’s “strictest school” – it doesn’t allow talking in the hallways and relies on rote-learning. In a speech to London’s right-wing think tank Policy Exchange, Luxon said New Zealand could learn from the UK and Michaela’s model.

Meanwhile, Johnston’s NZI colleague Briar Lipson worked for the Policy Exchange. She also worked with former Conservative Party UK Education Secretary Michael Gove.

When Lipson published her paper The Education Delusion in 2020, Albany Senior High School principal Claire Amos wrote a response from the so-called “progressive” educator viewpoint.

Four years on, Amos said think tanks served a purpose, and there was no issue with giving NZI a seat at the table.

“The danger is when think tanks become tethered with ministerial advisory groups,” she said.

“I don’t think the NZI need to be anything other than they are. They are a think tank, and they’re unapologetically right-wing, business-focused think tank … To give NZI their dues, they don’t pretend to be anything other than they are.”

But the articles Johnston had been writing, while in the position of advisory group chair, were not appropriate, she said,

“It’s an interesting example of someone who has clouded their roles and responsibilities.”

Johnston said he didn’t see a reason why education policy had to be political. He said while there was no silver bullet – and acknowledged the complex societal factors sitting behind things like low achievement and truancy – Johnston claimed his policy proposals were based on irrefutable science, therefore above party politics.

“What I’ve learned the closer I’ve got to politicians on all sides of the Parliament is that they’re writing policy for voters,” Amos said. 

Politicians were writing education policy – think the cellphone ban or ‘one hour a day’ policy – for parents, not the teachers or students, she said.

Amos said she doubted this approach to education would ever change. “It’s easy pickings,” she said.

While those who spoke to Newsroom all agreed there were areas of education that needed fixing, and a clearer curriculum with more knowledge was important, they feared a swing from one extreme to another – ending on a prescribed syllabus. Especially, based on what Johnston had written in recent articles and research papers, and how he seemed to have the Minister’s ear.