The National Party is promising to bring consistency to the way New Zealand's children are taught to read and write.
Instead of letting teachers decide how to do it, Christopher Luxon is telling them: use the Structured Literacy method.
Luxon was sitting in on a lesson at Taumata Primary on Friday and giving teachers something to munch on, a new literacy curriculum.
"National will ensure every child learns to read using structured literacy by making it a requirement at primary school," he said.
That would mean all schools and all teachers would be forced to teach literacy the same way.
"It's systematic, it's explicit, it is teacher-led and directional, and it's structured," said National education spokesperson Erica Stanford.
There are two main ways of teaching literacy.
Balanced Literacy sees kids using cues like pictures, context, and the first letter to figure out tricky words, whereas structured literacy sees kids sounding out letters to figure out the word.
"Structured literacy is better because there is a large evidence base showing children taught by this method have better outcomes," said Brigid McNeill, an associate dean at the University of Canterbury specialising in speech and language therapy.
Currently, schools and teachers can teach reading however they like - but there are no stats on how many use Balanced method or the Structured method.
"I think most teachers will grasp onto, if they are not already using the structured literacy approach, I think they will adapt really quickly to it," said Shelley McKay, the deputy principal at Taumata School.
New Zealand used to be among the world's best for literacy rates, but has been sliding down the rankings over the last two decades.
"This is one of the things that will be really important to make sure we upgrade and build a education system," said Luxon.
Labour is not on board with MPs dictating the curriculum.
"It's soul destroying. We have had that before. We had that with national standards and it was absolutely soul destroying," said Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti.
But Luxon said he makes no apologies for telling schools how to do it.
"We have a vision - we want to be one of the leading advanced small countries on earth," he said.
Tinetti doesn't reckon National has thought it through, but National is vowing to see it through if it gains power.
