After a leaked video showing a senior ministry of education official telling staff not to record feedback from the minister’s office in writing, more whistleblowers have come forward and the ombudsmen wants answers, writes Henry Oliver in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.

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Earlier this week, the Herald’s Jamie Ensor obtained a leaked video showing Catherine Law, programme lead for the secondary school curriculum refresh, addressing staff about feedback from the education minister’s office on draft curriculum material. She warns them the material is “OIA-able” and asks them not to respond with anything referencing the minister’s office.

“What we do not need is anything in response in writing that shows that this stuff has gone backwards and forwards between them and us,” Law says. She tells staff she will use passive verbs so that it appears the feedback came from her.

According to the Herald, Law was seconded from her role as principal of Avonside Girls’ High School in November last year to lead the senior curriculum update.

Not an isolated incident?

The “ministry insider” who leaked the footage told RNZ’s John Gerritsen the meeting was not an isolated incident. They said staff had been instructed not to write things down roughly six or seven times a year, though this instance was one of the most brazen. “I was just so over the dishonesty and the toxicity of the workplace,” they said.

They also claimed staff were repeatedly asked verbally to strip Māori terms from draft curriculums – including changing “ākonga” to “student” and “kaiako” to “teacher” – and that the word “Aotearoa” was deliberately removed. The whistleblower said the instructions were always verbal and never recorded.

The whistleblower described the curriculum as a “whitewashed, 1980s-style” document that sidelined brown people. And last week, the Waitangi Tribunal said the curriculum update breached multiple treaty principles.

Education minister Erica Stanford rejected the claims, telling RNZ the source was ideologically driven and that there had been no attempts to circumvent the OIA. The ministry said Law’s comments were “inconsistent” with expectations of staff and with OIA obligations.

‘A culture of cover-ups’

Labour’s education spokeswoman Ginny Andersen said the video raised “serious questions about instructions given to MoE staff to keep political matters out of emails and avoid OIA scrutiny.” As reported by the Herald, she called it “a culture of cover-ups, not only within the Ministry of Education, but wider in government as well,” and an urgent debate was granted in the house on Tuesday.

In response, Stanford told the Herald that neither she nor anyone in her office had “never ever said to anybody to subvert the course of the OIA.”

Ombudsman on the case

Chief ombudsman John Allen announced yesterday that he had requested an urgent meeting with the secretary for education, as reported by RNZ, saying he had “significant concerns about these allegations.”

“Public trust and confidence in the Ministry and the OIA would be undermined if they were found to be true,” he said, adding that he is considering a broader investigation under the Ombudsmen Act.

The Ombudsman’s office noted that official information includes knowledge held in officials’ heads, and that unrecorded information can still be requested – and, if necessary, the Ombudsman can require it to be written down.

Update: Since sending the newsletter this morning, RNZ published a new report by John Gerritsen with more whistleblowers coming forward saying ministry of education managers have been “actively trying to avoid scrutiny via the Official Information Act”. 

“One described a manager instructing staff not to record teachers’ criticism of the curriculum because it was out of scope and might be discovered via the OIA,” he wrote. “Two others said senior ministry managers often told staff not to write things down because they could be obtained through the OIA and they also received verbal instructions to remove Māori words from ministry documents.”