Community feedback on our new Year 11 curriculum is helping shape the changes that will be implemented next year.

On Wednesday, 7 June, St Bede’s hosted a whānau consultation evening to introduce our vision for a redesigned Year 11 curriculum. Using the learnings from the junior curriculum redesign, faculties have created learning package concepts with vision statements and course outlines.

After wide consultation with all stakeholders about how a new senior curriculum would look, our key learnings were:

• The curriculum must be holistic in nature.
• The type of man that leaves our college is more important to our whānau than academic ability.
• Our options narrow too early.
• There is a need for a more flexible, student-centred model.
• Vocational pathways were an add-on rather than being ingrained across all learning areas.

The new senior curriculum has been designed to remove prerequisites for courses, give choices, be accessible to all students, and ensure Te ao Māori, te reo Māori me ōna tikanga, and mātauranga Māori are embedded through design and practice.

Whānau were given a presentation about the rationale for the changes and how the restructured NCEA curriculum will work. Parents were then invited into the atrium to look at posters of the proposed courses and give feedback.

The next steps will be for the college to finalise their concepts before being implemented in 2024.