The coalition-led Government has promised to remove distractions in the classroom "with urgency" by banning cell phone use during the school day and has expressed its confidence in its 100-day plan to lift education outcomes. 

This follows the 2022 PISA education results, which revealed New Zealand had fallen by five and four points respectively since 2018 in reading and science. Mathematics was worse, with results down a whopping 15 points since 2018.

The results showed "a significant decline in performance of 15-year-old students in maths compared to 2018," Education Minister Erica Stanford said in a statement. 

"[It] confirms the long-term trend of declining achievement in core subjects since 2000."

Stanford said the results proved the country's education system was delivering poor outcomes for learners, but expressed her belief her newly-appointed Government would be capable of turning things around. 

She made reference to the Government's new Teaching the Basics Brilliantly policy, which builds an important foundation to ensure young people receive "high-quality education they deserve, that allows them to live the life that they want."

The minister promised to ensure there will be a knowledge-rich curriculum introduced into schools, with robust measures of student progress and structured literacy in each primary school classroom. 

This led to Stanford revealing the specific policy her Government will move urgently to introduce in schools heading into the new year - banning cell phone use during the school day to "lift engagement and achievement". 

"W will also ensure all students at primary school receive at least one hour of reading, writing and maths every day," she said. 

"These are just the first parts of our plan to Teach the Basics Brilliantly and equip kids with the building blocks they need to achieve their potential. This Government has high aspirations for our learners and we refuse to leave essential learning to chance."

During Stanford's interview with The Mike Hosking Breakfast on Wednesday, Hosking pointed out the top-performing countries in the most recent Pisa results were all based in Asia, and he asked what the link was.

Stanford suggested the link had nothing to do with the geographical location of the top-performers.

"The link is they've been following evidence-based pedagogy and we haven't for a very long period of time," she said.

"If you think back for the last 20, 30 years, we've been following the whole word approach to reading with read-and-recovery, which is embedding bad practices into our kids, we're teaching them bad habits."

Stanford and the new Government have a clearly defined mandate to introduce a structured approach to learning in the classroom - covering reading as well as maths, which she said has been following the numeracy project.

"[This is] teaching kids a whole range of strategies rather than embedding basic mathematical things they need to build year on year to acquire knowledge, and we haven't been doing that."

Hosking asked Stanford if she was ready for the responsibility of turning the results around.

"Absolutely I am," she replied.