School Shorts, Stanford's Office, and the Necessity of Parent Persuasion
How the lines between policy communication and podcast content were blurred
30 May, 2026
On the evening of Thursday, 12 March 2026, someone from the Office of Hon Erica Stanford sent a text to Melissa Chan-Green, host of the School Shorts podcast.
"Hi Melissa," it read. "[Redacted] here from Minister Stanford's office, nice to meet you! I'll be able to get the material over to you for the announcement tomorrow shortly, it's looking like it'll be around 5 or 5:30pm if that's alright. Will touch base ASAP."
Chan-Green replied promptly. She confirmed her preferred email and added: "Please feel free to add that one in to any lists for other releases too."
This was a first introduction; the staffer hadn't dealt with Chan-Green before. But briefing her ahead of the following day's announcement was a scheduled task, assigned to staff. Someone in the Minister's office had decided that getting the material to Chan-Green the evening before it went public was worth organising.
Two days later, on Sunday 15 March, a second exchange followed in the same text thread, apologising for a delay. The footage of the maths check "in action" had been sent via WhatsApp; the press release had gone by email. The staffer had Chan-Green's WhatsApp contact already. Between those two text exchanges in the OIA record sits a single fully redacted iMessage –– distinctive in blue amongst the green bubbles –– from someone unknown, withheld in its entirety.
The press release, dated Friday 13 March 2026, announced a new Year 2 maths check. It went to Chan-Green’s email on Sunday afternoon (“I’m so sorry, I was intending to provide you material on Friday … human error on this occasion”), alongside video footage via WhatsApp. It is not clear if other education journalists, podcasters and media outlets were on the list to receive embargoed material the evening before public release. However, equitable access to government information is a condition of a functioning media environment. If the Minister's office provided preferential early access to a content creator, it shapes the information landscape parents navigate — without their knowledge.
~~~
School Shorts bills itself as helping "busy parents make learning fun." It presents as independent parent education content. Its host, Melissa Chan-Green, is a genuine advocate for structured literacy and has built a real audience among parents of young children. None of that is in question.
What the documents released under ESOIA945 — texts, emails, and WhatsApp exchanges between Stanford's office and Chan-Green spanning February 2025 to March 2026 — show is that the relationship between Stanford's office and Chan-Green was operating in ways unsuitable for a policy development environment. Across more than a year, Stanford's office provided embargoed press releases and government footage ahead of public announcements, suggested guests and facilitated access to NZQA scholars for content recruitment. Chan-Green asked to be added to distribution lists for future releases, proposed collaboration with Ministry information campaigns, sought data achievement markers she should "keep across," and — when a new episode featuring the Minister went live — texted Stanford's office to ask whether 1News had the link yet.
Each of these interactions, taken alone, might be explained as routine media management. Together, across the full timeline, they describe something different: a parent-facing content operation being actively cultivated and resourced by a Minister's office.
~~~
The relationship began before the podcast had publicly launched. On the evening of Sunday, 26 February 2025, Chan-Green sent a detailed email to a staffer in Stanford's office following a catch-up that day at the Glass Goose. She wrote about a teaser video, a Woman's Day piece, upcoming launches on Apple and Spotify. She noted her target demographic — parents of children aged three to seven. Under the subtitle ‘INFORMATION / COLLABORATION” she asked them to “have a think about any information that may be helpful for me to communicate to the community of parents who follow”. The email was sent at 10:18 PM on a Sunday. It had the register of a working partnership, not a media inquiry.
By 5 March, Stanford's office was texting Chan-Green about the podcast: "I love it!!! This is fabulous." They recommended she connect with the SPELD conference team, who were hosting Jennifer Buckingham from Australia — a prominent structured literacy advocate — in April.
On 23 March, someone in Stanford's office emailed congratulations. “Hey Mel” the sender wrote, “I really liked it and would be interested to know how parents have found listening!” They also provided suggestions, but these are redacted. Chan-Green replied, thanked them for the suggestions, and said she had “had quite a number of parents get in touch to say they have learnt so much just from the first few episodes - and I understand there are a few schools who have put it into their school newsletter”. She mentioned she was recording with Barbara Oakley soon. "Thanks for the recommendation," she wrote.
That recommendation is worth pausing on.
Oakley had visited New Zealand as a guest of the New Zealand Initiative, the think tank whose policy work has provided much of the intellectual scaffolding for the current education reform programme, including playing key roles in the Curriculum MAG. These emails suggest her appearance on School Shorts was not arranged through standard media channels but instead arranged through a suggestion from the Minister's office. Here we have a podcaster whose audience the reforms needed to reach featuring a figure whose presence in New Zealand had been funded by an organisation aligned with, and having a significant influence on, those reforms, enabled via the Minister’s office. The network is visible in a single guest booking. It is alarming. A Minister and her office should operate independently of think-tanks, not as a cog in their information environment.
Oakley’s standing in the cognitive science field is contested. She is an engineering professor by training, and her popular work has drawn criticism from learning researchers — Stanford’s Jo Boaler has called her “an engineer with no knowledge on learning.” In February 2026, Oakley published an essay attacking constructivism in education and using New Zealand as her central example, claiming the country’s child-centred approach to maths had caused it to fall to 19th in international rankings. That narrative closely mirrors the framing Stanford’s reform programme uses for itself. A Minister’s office recommending Oakley to a parent-facing podcast is an editorial act. It placed a figure aligned with the reform’s ideological foundation in front of a key audience the reform needed to persuade.
Oakley was not the only figure whose School Shorts appearance preceded a prominent role in the government’s education reform programme. On 7 April 2025, Season 1 Episode 7 of School Shorts featured Dr Nathaniel Swain — introduced to parents as “a teacher, researcher and coach of great techniques to help children learn” — speaking about the forgetting curve and spaced practice. Six months later, in October 2025, Swain was the keynote speaker for Stanford’s Curriculum Roadshow, a nationwide, Ministry-hosted event for primary school leaders framed as the flagship implementation event for the government’s curriculum reforms. The question of whether Swain’s School Shorts booking also came via Stanford’s office — as Oakley’s did — is one the released documents do not answer. The pattern, however, is identical: a figure central to the reform’s implementation is introduced to parents through an apparently independent channel before his role supporting the reform programme becomes public.
~~~
The Minister's own interview on School Shorts was coordinated through the same channel. And when a sync issue emerged in the YouTube version afterwards, Chan-Green emailed Stanford's office on May 9 with a corrected link, thanking them for "your help in arranging that." –– although “that” is never specified. When the episode went live, Chan-Green received a text Stanford's office: "has the podcast gone up? 1News are keen for the link — can I send straight on now?" Chan-Green confirmed it was up and would email the links. The Minister's office was coordinating distribution between a podcast and a national broadcaster around content the Minister appeared in.
On 15 May 2025, at 1:46pm, Chan-Green emailed Stanford’s office. She had seen the Minister’s “post re ‘Girl Math’ … if you come across any young people who would be great to chat with, please keep me in mind.” Stanford's office staffer emailed a colleague at 2:05pm: "I had a quick chat with Mel. Reflecting on our recent NZQA top scholar event I thought it would be awesome to highlight some of the aspiration and excellence shown by girls in maths and science. If Mel put together an invitation for interview/discussion would it be possible to coordinate NZQA sending it on to the scholars?" A second staffer replied at 2:33pm: "I can facilitate a request to NZQA on this." At 3:24pm Chan-Green emailed with initial details for the planned episode “that you can pass on to NZQA”, including five topics for discussion “off the top of my head”.
On 20 May, at 7:35pm Chan-Green replied with thanks for being put in direct contact with the organisation that will facilitate the guests.
I want to pause here, because this point is significant and troubling: Government institutional relationships — NZQA's connection to top scholars, mediated via the Minister’s office — were being deployed to help a private podcast find guests. This was a public institution being used for private content development, at the initiative of the Minister's office.
By October 2025, Stanford’s office and Chan-Green were coordinating in real time across the Curriculum Roadshow for Leaders — the Ministry’s nationwide implementation event, held across four venues over ten days: Christchurch Town Hall on 20 October, Lower Hutt Events Centre on 22 October, North Harbour Stadium on 24 October, and Rotorua Energy Events Centre on 28 October. Chan-Grenn was the MC. The OIA documents give an insight into the extent of her involvement with Stanford and her office.
On 20 October (Christchurch), she messaged Stanford’s office to coordinate a prize announcement during a presentation: “If you happen to be anywhere near [redacted] are you able to remind him”.
On the morning of 22 October (Wellington), someone from Stanford’s office texted Chan-Green “Flat white? We have a spare.” Chan-Green replied, “No thanks, it’s a character flaw that I don’t drink coffee”. “Me either!” came the reply. Later that day, the same sender messaged Chan-Green: “Can you mention that I have to pop away to be at question time but I'll be back afterwards please?” “Yes sure, sorry missed it for that transition but will before lunch 👍” Chan-Green replies. “No worries I'm not leaving until 1.15 so perfect :)”.
On 28 October (Rotorua), the thread continues between the two: “What time do you need to leave today? Currently lunch is coming back at 1.55, just checking that time works ok for you to speak then?”
The person whom Chan-Green is texting in these exchanges is redacted. However, it is not Emma Chatterton, as at the top of one of the screenshots is the end of a message from Chan-Green which ends “… Emma to catch up? Mel.” That to me suggests she was asking the person about Emma, not texting with Emma.
And on 26 February, 2026, in a WhatsApp exchange, Chan-Green asked Stanford's office whether there were "any particular data achievement markers this year that I should make a note of to keep across." The podcast had been running for nearly a year by this point. This was not a journalist asking what the story was. It was a host asking which of the Minister's preferred metrics to follow going forward.
~~~
The staffer) whose names appear redacted throughout ESOIA945 are protected under section 9(2)(a) of the OIA — privacy of natural persons — and that protection is appropriate and observed here. What the documents establish is more than one person in Stanford’s office maintaining a sustained working relationship with Chan-Green across multiple channels, and deploying ministerial resources — institutional access, embargoed material, event coordination, NZQA relationships — in service of that relationship.
What is a matter of public record, from a separate OIA (ESOIA780), is that Stanford's Senior Ministerial Advisor during this period was Emma Chatterton, who joined Stanford's office in 2024 after five years at Impact Lab. Chatterton is now the National Party candidate for the Papakura electorate.
That background matters to this story — not as a personal accusation, but as institutional context.
~~~
Impact Lab is the social investment evaluation firm co-founded by former Prime Minister, Sir Bill English, with his daughter Maria English as CEO. Its purpose is specific: identify social interventions that produce measurable returns, quantify the benefit to government for every dollar invested, and use that data to justify investment decisions. It applies private sector return-on-investment logic to public spending.
Sir Bill English is also a board member of the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) — the Australian think tank that has been a consistent international backer of structured literacy and direct instruction approaches, and whose New Zealand connections run through the New Zealand Initiative (NZI) think-tank. The NZI's Executive Director, Oliver Hartwich, previously worked as a research fellow at CIS. English has written forewords for NZI papers. CIS education papers have referenced Learning First education papers –– remember, Learning First was the company given the contract to help guide the writing of our curriculum. Erica Stanford attended the CIS conference in 2025 and 2026, and was on panels each year. These are not coincidental overlaps. They are the connective tissue of a coherent ideological network.
In 2021, under the previous government, Impact Lab evaluated the social and economic return on investment of the Better Start Literacy Approach (BSL). Their analysis, with a foreword written by Sir Bill English, found that every dollar invested in the programme delivers $38.20 in measurable social return (p.11). I am not arguing against BSL here. It has a place in our education system.
However, the evaluation was conducted by an organisation whose co-founder sits on the board of a think tank aligned with the ideological foundations of Stanford’s reform programme. That reform programme has discarded all the curriculum fresh work done by the previous government –– work done in a highly consultative way, that drew on a wide evidence-base (including structured literacy), and centred Te Tiriti –– and replaced it with an approach founded on the theories championed by the NZI (and CIS and Learning First). That organisation's alumni now include the Minister's Senior Ministerial Advisor. The programme whose returns Impact Lab calculated is one of the structured literacy programmes central to the current government's reforms, and parents listening to Chan-Green's podcast have evidence about its effectiveness regularly broadcast to them through that channel.
(Sidenote: The House of Science is another education initiative that has been evaluated by Impact Lab. Their report was done in 2024. Budget 2025 invested $39.9 million over four years into developing and delivering science kits for schools nationwide. The RFP on GETS opened 10 weeks after that Budget announcement, on 1 August 2025. The contract was awarded on 22 December 2025 and announced on 24 February 2026. I’m not casting aspersions on House of Science, but I am concerned that we have a an evaluation and funding environment that is almost exclusively focused on the private sector.)
To understand why the Impact Lab evaluation fits so neatly into this reform programme, it helps to understand the theory of learning the programme rests on, and why data of the kind they supply is so important.
In this theory, learning happens when teaching happens. Ergo, fix the teaching (and the fix here is to make it explicit, structured, standardised, measurable) and the learning follows. The connection between input and output is viewed as strong enough to measure, and the data generated by measurement creates a recursive loop: better teaching produces better results, better results validate the teaching, the validated teaching is scaled, the data improves. The system illuminates and reinforces itself.
What this framework does well is identify tractable problems. Phonics instruction can be standardised. Decodable texts can be specified. Assessment tools can be self-grading. The learning motorway can be built and monitored and optimised. A dollar value –– SROI –– can be attached and become a persuasive metric.
This is the conceptual foundation in which the parent communication strategy rests. Parents are told the science is clear, the evidence is strong, the teaching works. What they are not told is that the science being cited was selected, evaluated, and promoted by a network of organisations sharing the same prior assumptions — and that the Minister's own office was, in parallel, using Chan-Green to amplify those assumptions.
None of this is corrupt. But in a regulatory reform context the question of who evaluates what, and what relationships sit behind the evaluation, is a legitimate public interest question. When a Minister pursues regulatory reform, the appropriate relationships are ones that can withstand transparency. The research-base and evaluation should be independent of the advisory and communication network. The consultation should be genuine. The media access should be equitable. Government institutional infrastructure and relationships — NZQA, the Ministry — should not be deployed to deliver content to a podcast. It is manifestly unfair to that creator for them to do so.
The OIA documents suggest that the boundaries between each of these essential expectations for policy development in a democracy was, at minimum, blurred in this instance. Other investigations I have conducted show they have been deliberately ignored.
~~~
As a point of contrast, the experiences of the New Zealand Association for the Teaching of English (NZATE) is instructive. In July 2025, Pip Tinning, the President of NZATE, sent a text to Stanford's Senior Ministerial Advisor.
"Hi Emma," it read. "Pip Tinning here from NZATE. I hope you are well... I wanted to check in about the role of NZATE with furthering work on the English curriculum. It feels like we are being relegated to tinkering around edges rather than having any real input. It's frustrating because I was led to believe that our input was going to be seen as valuable. Are you able to clarify if this was the expectation of us, please?"
NZATE is the professional subject association for English teachers. It is, by any measure, the body that should have substantive input into an English curriculum. Despite continual obstacles, they had tried to engage with the process in good faith. They had participated in the consultation. They had, in June, canvassed their network on specific curriculum questions and offered detailed feedback to the Minister's office. They had acted in good faith on the understanding that the process was real.
By July, Tinning was texting to ask whether it ever was.
The contrast between Tinning's text and the Chan-Green documents is not incidental. The professional teaching voice was being managed through a process its own participants experienced as window-dressing. The parent-facing voice was being cultivated, resourced, and coordinated through a direct relationship with the Minister's office.
That tells you something about who this reform programme was designed to persuade, and who it was designed to contain.
~~~
The question for parents who follow School Shorts as an independent voice is the one the documents make unavoidable. If the podcast's content was being shaped by the Minister, would you have wanted to know?
It is also a question about what a Minister's office is for — and whether this one answered that question in the public interest, or in the interest of a reform programme that needed parents persuaded and professionals contained.