Heather du Plessis-Allan: Erica Stanford is this Govt's MVP

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Erica Stanford is this Government's MVP.   

Once again, she is taking an inexplicably stupid thing in schools, ditching it, and going back to common sense. 

This is something close to my heart at the moment because I have to make a decision in the next six months or so about which school we send our son to. 

But I’ve basically already made the decision, and it will be the one school in the area that has single classes instead of open plan, modern learning spaces. 

It’s the school his best friend from kindy is now going to. It’s also the school another parent I know has just sent their child to. 

All of us are doing it for the same reason: we want to avoid open plan learning spaces. 

We know, like most parents know, that if you stick a hundred kids in a big room and tell them to pay attention to the teacher in front of them, they can’t. 

They get distracted by the loud noises coming from the other kids over there. 

Why the Ministry of Education forced this in schools will probably baffle me for the rest of my life, because there is no logic to it. 

No one who has kids, or spends time with kids, can really believe kids can concentrate and learn with 100 voices chirping all the time. 

Which idiot came up with this? I’d love to know. 

I tell you what, the legacy of this Government could well be that it finally turns around our up-to-now decades long decline in education stats. 

That, along with the ban on phones in schools, and the hour a day of reading writing and maths, and the expectation that kids must pass existing standards, actually gives our kids a chance to learn as well as kids in any other developed country, like we used to. 

And if that is what happens, given how crucial education is to a country’s success, Erica Stanford will remain as I see her: 

The MVP of this Government, if not of the decade. 

Or, of this generation. 

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