She might have to prepare for a deluge of advice from the sector.
While she sees the new curriculum as a significant step towards "delivering a world-leading education system for every learner in New Zealand", critics from a variety of disciplines see it as a chaotic Eurocentric leap backwards.
Ms Stanford says it has been developed by New Zealand educators and curriculum experts, and the new curriculum has been benchmarked internationally against those from high-performing education systems around the world.
"It is designed for Kiwi learners, ensuring both local relevance and global standards."
But some of those whose names are listed as having contributed to it, say the final documents bear little relation to their input.
Physical Education New Zealand was one such group. It is concerned the draft differed markedly from the evidence-informed contribution of its representative.
Even a casual observer of the documents released last week would be surprised by the sheer amount of material teachers will be expected to cover yearly, in some cases in a few hours a week.
Some inclusions seem astounding. In the science curriculum, for instance, part of the knowledge to be imparted to 5-year-olds is: "Theophrastus (c.371-287 BCE) described plant forms and structures. His botanical texts were used for centuries as primary references". Also: "Karl von Frisch (1886-1982) investigated social behaviour in honeybees, including their communication through dance. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973".
It is not surprising faced with this sort of detail, the perplexed chairwoman of the New Zealand Educational Institute Te Riu Roa’s Principals’ Council, Stephanie Madden, asked "Have they met a 5-year old?"
Ms Stanford has acknowledged there might be "slightly too much material" in the drafts but that it would be easier to remove things than go the other way.
Ms Madden said teachers thought they had seen the final English and maths curriculums in January but now had a mere eight weeks to get their heads around the changes before implementing them next January.
Ms Stanford has portrayed the latest changes to the maths curriculum as tweaking, but a letter from 44 maths education experts described the latest version as overcrowded with "an unrealistic number of learning objectives".
"In the first year of schooling, there are 86 objectives (across knowledge and practices). This compares with 30 objectives in the 2024 version of the NZ curriculum and contrasts with the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Australia curricula which have between 12 to 28 objectives. Too many objectives means that children will not be able to learn core concepts due to cognitive overload and insufficient time for practice," they said.
History teachers are also concerned the social sciences curriculum is overcrowded, lacks focus and ignored the input of their representative in the curriculum-writing process.
They say New Zealand history, which has only been a compulsory subject since 2023, will be watered down in favour of Ancient Egypt and the French Revolution. This seems to be the "rebalancing" of the history curriculum sought under the National-Act New Zealand coalition agreement.
It is difficult to grasp why the curriculum process has been so secretive, with those involved having to sign non-disclosure agreements which they say made it impossible for them to share ideas and get feedback from colleagues.
It is understandable those charged with developing the curriculum would not want half-baked proposals being presented as fait accompli, but the confidentiality around this seems to have been excessive and not conducive to getting the best advice.
It has also not been good for developing trust.
If Ms Stanford wants to gain some trust from an increasingly disgruntled sector, she will have to ensure the consultation on the curriculum, when it ends in late April, is not a patsy process but one which will result in sensible responses to genuine concerns.
