■ Dana Kirkpatrick blocked me from her Facebook page last week. I took exception to her post in reference to the Education Review Office’s report this month on the Government’s cellphone ban in classrooms, specifically the assertion she made that 63 percent of teachers had said student mental health had improved, writes Becs Mackay.

I’m a teacher, not a mental health professional – and neither are most teachers. So, I’m curious as to how Dana and this Government believe teachers are now qualified to diagnose improvements in student mental health in any verifiable or credible way.

It’s also fascinating to watch the New Zealand National Party suddenly celebrate and value teacher opinions … just never in the areas where we actually have expertise.

That is, education. When it comes to class sizes, resourcing, student behaviour and mental health support requirements, staffing ratios, or curriculum?

Yeah, nah. But if a select group of teachers say something that can be spun as a political win in these increasingly desperate times for this coalition, suddenly our words become gospel.

And Dana blocking me only reinforces that point: politicians are happy to hear from teachers right up until the moment our experience and expertise contradicts the hollow and unverifiable narrative they’re pushing.

Then it’s delete, deflect, or –  at best – provide a high-level, well-intentioned memo lacking any detail or accountability.

It’s a perfect example of how teacher voices are “valued” only when they can be weaponised, not when they offer inconvenient truth or ask valid questions of our country's leadership.

The public deserves credible, transparent data – not cherry-picked anecdotes, devoid of context and complexity.

Now, I’m not a maths or science teacher, nor a statistician, but from what I can gather, this ERO report – with regards to its claims on youth mental health – contains no clinical measures, no baseline data, no actual mental-health assessment, and no consideration for confounding factors.

The “improvement” being celebrated is literally based on teacher impressions and student self-reporting.

That is not science, and it is not policy evidence, especially in the short timeframe it’s been gathered since this policy’s implementation (inconsistently across schools, I’ll also add).

The report also conveniently and cynically ignores the wider youth mental-health crisis documented by our ever-dwindling pool of clinicians across the country:

n Escalating severity and need

n Longer waitlists

n More self-harm presentations

n Increased poverty-related distress

Sure, the cellphone ban may assist classroom learning and reduce distraction but pretending it solves or significantly shifts youth mental-health trends is as absurd as it is dangerous.

It’s also unethical to imply it has, because it creates a platform on which this Government can avoid action and accountability. Again.

To be clear, I fully support evidence-based policy. But evidence has to be credible, transparent, and free from conflicts of interest.

The latest ERO report doesn’t meet that standard. It's premature, thin, not independent or robust.

Yet, it’s being used as a convenient pat-on-the-back while a very real youth mental-health crisis continues to worsen.

It's genuinely concerning that this kind of selective storytelling is becoming the hallmark of our Government’s PR machine, which increasingly appears to be the only machine they are running.

Other than the economy, public health, and education sector into the ground, of course. (I suspect this was the comment that got me kicked off Dana’s page).

New Zealanders deserve better than political spin.

Our rangatahi deserve accessible, effective, and properly resourced mental health promotion and support that meets their needs.

We all deserve honesty, transparency, statements linked to credible and accessible evidence, and leaders who choose data driven and effective policy – every time – over social media headlines deliberately employed to mislead voters.

Because, let's be honest, that is what this is about.