Final brushstroke: Minister ‘very comfortable’ with cutting art history from schools

Monday, 22 September 2025

Education minister Erica Stanford, pictured here at Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art and History, is comfortable with the move to scrap art history.

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The Education Minister is refusing to reverse the move to scrap teaching art history at high schools, saying she was “very comfortable” with the decision.

The move is a numbers game; Erica Stanford said just 251 Year 12 students and 543 Year 13 students achieved NCEA in the subject last year, which was an average of one child per school.

However, NZQA figures show 783 students took it at Year 12 and 1,026 students took it at Year 13.

Art history will instead be rolled into visual arts subjects like design or painting or photography which are taken by 10,000 students at the Year 13 level.

“We have to rewrite all of these curriculum. We have to resource them, and we have to provide professional learning and development.

“When 251 students are taking the subject, I think most New Zealanders will think that it's reasonable that we take that knowledge - it's not disappearing - and we put it into other subjects,” Stanford told The Post.

25 art galleries have written an open letter to the government asking them to reconsider their decision to cut art history from the secondary school curriculum

The minister’s steadfastness will likely come as a disappointment to the arts community which has been rallying for the decision to be reversed after The Post revealed last week art history was quietly axed.

The move was part of a curriculum refresh which also saw more subjects were added, including civics, politics and philosophy; music technology; and media, journalism and communications.

Dr Barbara Ormond, president of the NZ Art History Teachers Association, has said art history could not be adequately or comprehensively taught within other visual arts subjects due to time constraints in those programmes.

Not all art history students take an arts subject, and not all art history teachers are general art teachers ‒ many are part of social science departments.

Art history teacher Mila Pasfield said the subject enriched learners’ lives and travels; many of her students had gone on to visit pieces of art they had learned about in high school which was immeasurably valuable.

Students had to be given the opportunity to learn about what came before them, she said.

And through learning about the history of art, students were exposed to different times, cultures and belief systems.

“Art history makes students think critically about images - something they must be able to do in the era of social media saturation and AI use.”

Pasfield, who works at an Auckland high school The Post has agreed not to name, had seen arguments that the subject is “dead” and that it doesn’t lead to jobs but she called those views “dangerously narrow-minded and untrue”. They reflected a misconception that the sole purpose of school is to prepare students for the workforce.

Many of the students she’d taught have gone onto study art history at university and now work in the field.

“I am not naive. I know that school is supposed to prepare young people for their futures, but it is also a place where students can be exposed to challenging and interesting subjects and ideas, and a place there they can learn things which will not just make them successful, but also well-rounded and knowledgeable human beings.”

Stanford said scrapping art history was an operational decision by the Education Ministry, which had been reviewed.

“They've looked at everything, and they are not going to change their position on this. They've got all the right information,” said Stanford.

Oscar-winner Jane Campion took art history at high school and is shocked by the decision.

“I'm very comfortable with this decision and I know it's controversial.”

Many of New Zealand’s creative luminaries have spoken out about the decision, including Oscar-winning director Dame Jane Campion who herself studied art history.

She said it was the only subject she looked forward to during sixth form (year 12) and that it was “a crucial step” towards her creative life in film.

“It was so helpful to discover I had visual acuity and I was actually good at something. Do I think it’s a good idea to scrap art history? No, I think it’s a terrible, tragic idea,” she told The Post last week.

“Students like myself deserve a chance to discover themselves [and] find something they feel passionate about and can pursue to enrich their lives.”