On Tuesday 29th October Titirangi School will be having a Teacher Only Day to unpack the new English and Maths Curriculum which was released this term by the Ministry of Education.

As a school, within our strategic plan, we were already looking to make changes in response to the English curriculum refresh. Our Year 0 and 1 teachers are already trained in structured literacy and our next step is to make changes in Year 2 and 3. This is a change we are well-prepared for.

The maths curriculum implementation was planned for 2026 - however the Prime Minister and Education Minister announced a fast-tracking of the new maths curriculum to 2025.

We will be unpacking the curriculum document. However, we know that to do anything well and make sustainable changes that benefit our tamariki, we must focus on one thing at a time. This is how we will be approaching the refresh.

We have completed robust professional development in Mathematics from 2021 to 2023 and our data reflects the shift in practice. At the end of 2022 76% of our students were achieving at or above the expectation. By the end of 2023 that had improved to 85% of students achieving at or above the expectation. There is still improvements to be made but we are pleased by this progress and want to thank our school board for the continued funding they put into quality professional development for our teachers.

We still have students that struggle in maths. One frustration is that schools have been let down by consecutive governments who have underfunded in the area of staffing and support, especially for neurodiverse students and students with additional learning needs. These students make up a significant portion of those students not achieving. Not just in mathematics, but across all curriculum areas.

Our school board made the decision to take part of our annual operational grant (meant for learning resources, building maintenance, painting, power, IT resources etc) and instead use this to fund an extra teacher to keep class sizes small and to fund extra teacher aides to support students with learning needs. We are hugely grateful for this as we know that this - and not changes in curriculum - impacts directly on student achievement and well-being.

We will be reading, dissecting, unpacking and having fun with the two new curriculum documents on the Teacher Only Day and will create a plan of attack. At the centre of all of our decision-making will be what is best for our learners - that will guide us through the next few big changes in education.

We will be guided by the whakatauki 'He maurea kai whiria!' Ignore small matters and direct effort toward important projects.