Dr. Kim Hailwood, NZPF Research and Policy Officer

Download PDF

A new paper by Professor Stuart McNaughton of the University of Auckland (1) brings clarity to a problem many principals will already recognise. Recent education policy has too often turned genuinely complex issues into overly simple solutions, and that simplification carries real risks.

What McNaughton means by ‘simplism’

McNaughton defines simplism as the tendency to oversimplify by ignoring complexity. In education policy, this means treating complex challenges as though they can be solved through a single, constrained approach. He distinguishes this from healthy scientific simplification, which reduces complexity without stripping away what matters. Simplism goes further: it removes essential elements, leading to incomplete explanations and, ultimately, flawed policy responses.

His message for schools is direct. Teaching, learning, and system change are not rocket science, but neither are they simple. For NZPF, the implication is clear: when policy treats teaching and learning as simple, implementation weakens, learning narrows, and outcomes suffer.

Four current examples

McNaughton applies this analysis to four recent policy areas:

Structured literacy. McNaughton's criticism is not that structured literacy or explicit teaching are wrong. Rather, it is that treating a set of prescriptions as all that is required misunderstands the complexity of how children learn. Some approaches, he argues, reduce teaching to a fixed, step-by-step phonics sequence applied to all children regardless of need, at the expense of comprehension and engagement. He cites ERO data showing a strong emphasis on word recognition, with comparatively less attention to critical literacy and daily writing.

Maths textbooks. While welcoming new resources, he points out that textbooks alone are unlikely to drive improvement without sustained professional learning. ERO reporting, he adds, indicates an over-emphasis on basic number knowledge, with uneven coverage of statistics, probability, and geometry.

Common Assessment Activities (CAA). McNaughton treats the CAA experience, the standardised assessments trialled as part of the NCEA Level 1 changes, as a clear cautionary example. He contends that the pilot process was important because it surfaced serious equity concerns early, including markedly lower pass rates for Māori, Pasifika, and low-decile learners, even among students assessed as curriculum-ready. Based on the pilot data and current design patterns, he expects the replacement to repeat the same simplism. The result, he suggests, would be assessments that do not adequately sample students' literacies across the learning areas.

NCEA replacement and exams. He warns that a shift toward more externally examined, knowledge-focused assessment risks crowding out the explicit teaching of self-regulation, digital literacy, and critical thinking. He argues these capabilities are increasingly recognised in research and international assessment frameworks as essential, not optional.

Why this matters for schools

Across these examples, McNaughton identifies a consistent pattern. Policy is introduced with insufficient piloting or implementation support, followed by evaluation that does not properly shape subsequent decisions. He also highlights a recurring habit of replacing systems and tools that were producing mixed but promising results, including Kāhui Ako, e-asTTle, and the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative, rather than building on their strengths.

The reasons for this vary, from misunderstanding through to, at times, deliberate disregard of the evidence, but the effect on schools stays the same. Complex challenges are repeatedly treated as if they have simple, singular solutions, and schools are left to absorb the consequences. Curriculum narrows, assessment changes are introduced without adequate trialling, and initiatives are abandoned before they are embedded.

This is NZPF's concern. Principals feel it directly, through compressed timelines, changing expectations, and the ongoing responsibility to make reform work regardless of whether it has been sufficiently tested or resourced.

The case for a permanent Council

McNaughton's paper strengthens NZPF's proposal for a permanent, independent Curriculum and Assessment Council. His analysis points to a deeper structural problem: evidence is overlooked, findings are not acted on, and practice is too often discarded rather than developed. This underscores the need for a durable mechanism to steward curriculum and assessment reform across electoral cycles.

The CAA pilot is a case in point. Real disparities surfaced early, but there was no institution with enough independence and permanence to ensure those findings were acted on. That is the gap the proposed Council is intended to address.

The Council's role would be to provide the discipline currently missing: evidence tested prior to major change, piloting ahead of rollout, and an evaluation function with enough standing and autonomy to inform decisions before they are locked in. Genuine Te Tiriti partnership, built into the Council's design from the outset, would be central to that durability, spanning both curriculum and assessment development from early childhood through to senior secondary.

Without that discipline, the pattern will continue. With the Council in place, reform has a far better chance of being coherent, credible, and workable.

(1) From 2014 to 2024, Stuart McNaughton served as the Government’s inaugural Chief Education Scientific Advisor. To date, the role has not been filled.

Reference: McNaughton, S. (2026). Simplism in education or why 'rocket science' isn't a good analogy. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40841-026-00464-z