Curriculum Refresh, Teacher Only Days, Assessment...the changes keep coming and we will do our best to keep you informed.

Schools have always taught reading, writing and maths...so why are these changes presenting such challenges? In a nutshell, it's because there are so many changes, all at once, the order of information released is sometimes not helpful and the detail of how to make things work is having to be figured out by schools along the way

The content is mostly the same - we aren't having to learn new maths strategies or about how to write great sentences. So what has changed and what are the impacts of these changes?

No more curriculum levels - assessing against a year level. The difficulty is that this is a whole new way of measuring progress. The impact is that the graphs previously used in Hero will end and new graphs using year levels will replace them - this means the progress of the last few years will be lost in terms of being visually represented.

There are descriptions of where students need to be by the end of each year, but nothing for mid year so as a school we are having to decide where "at expectation" is at the halfway point of the year for reporting.

There is more focus on whole class teaching. Previously, in a class, we might have had a group of students reading a text at level 2 of the curriculum, a group reading a text at level 3 of the curriculum and some students may even be reading level 4 texts in order to extend them.

Whole class reading will mean the whole class will be reading the same text so the learning for teachers is how to support those students who may need extra scaffolding to understand the text and how to extend the students who may find the text quite easy - this is a whole new approach and teachers need some support in how to plan for this and the resources needed.

Some skills have moved and some are new. This means that where a maths strategy was previously taught at level 3 of the curriculum (Year 5 & 6) it may now show lower down as a Year 4 skill. Teachers may not have taught certain skills so the content has changed - not hugely but it does have an impact. In reading, phonics plays a much bigger part - our current Year 3 students have not been taught reading with an emphasis on phonics when in Year 2 - so there are gaps. Year 3 teachers are having to teach some Year 2 concepts before they can move onto the Year 3 content.

Assessments we have previously used may not be fit for purpose. If a student at Year 4 didn't know a particular skill, the current test could still have them as "at expectation" whereas the new curriculum may describe their level as "working towards the expectation". Schools are having to ensure assessments and testing fits with the new curriculum - at TPS some of our professional learning is around some new assessments in both literacy and maths.

What does this mean for student achievement?

At this stage it's not clear but one possibility may be for a period of time students who were achieving at their level may now be slightly below the expectation - they haven't gone backwards - the expectations have been lifted or the content is new.

Professional Development at TPS

There are two Teacher Only Days this year (28th July and 28th November) on maths, with two more planned for 2026. We are working with Jo Knox and Marie Hirst - two highly respected maths facilitators.

Year 1 teachers are already trained in structured literacy through their BSLA accreditation. Year 2 and 3 teachers are currently completing their qualification through the University of Canterbury - this means a weekly session and lots of new learning. Year 4-6 teachers have workshops this term and in term 4 on structured literacy in the senior years.

Very rarely would schools engage in professional development and curriculum changes in two core curriculum areas at once - even my head sometimes spins as I have to remember which curriculum area this meeting is about!

In the context of change management, "making many changes" is not inherently best practice. While organisations need to adapt and evolve, a rapid, poorly planned series of changes can lead to confusion, resistance and ultimately, failure.

We are doing our very best to approach these changes in a measured and well-planned manner. We will do our best to keep you informed along the way and you can always get in touch with our staff if you have questions. Lastly, rest-assured, we are always asking ourselves "how will this impact our students" and making sure they are at the centre of decision-making.