Kia ora koutou

I had the great pleasure of attending our term 1 Music Department Picnic Evening on Tuesday 24 March. The evening was an opportunity to reflect on the progress of a huge number of students in our music programmes but also an opportunity to remind ourselves of the importance of the Arts and the gift that music gives to so many. Discussions about educational futures can often get bogged down in discussions about assessment and qualifications and we can forget about what learning actually looks like in areas that don’t fit so neatly into paper (or online) measurable tests. Consider the learning to become an ‘expert’ on an instrument (including the voice) and consider the extra learning to play that in a band or ensemble or orchestra, or sing in a choir. The NZ curriculum published in 2007 was fronted with ‘key competencies’ that were seen as essential to become a ‘successful learner’. These competencies are:

• Thinking,

• Using language, symbols, and texts,

• Managing self,

• Relating to others, and

• Participating and contributing.

As I watched the eclectic offerings at our music evening I reflected on the visual embodiment of those competencies on display (although I tried not to think about that too much as I was also really enjoying the music!), and how these students are all successful learners already, who have gained skills that they will take throughout their life. This is the heart of a successful education system.

You may or may not know that a draft new curriculum for years 0 to 10 was released at the end of October last year and we are currently in a consultation period that ends on 24 April. The new curriculum is ‘a knowledge-based curriculum, grounded in the science of learning’, a statement that has almost become a mantra for its proponents. I asked our Heads of Faculty of the eight learning areas in the current NZ curriculum to give me their brief appraisal of what is being offered. I asked them for the positives and the negatives and I have included their feedback below.

Arts - Secondary School Arts is an opportunity for students to develop their creativity and find confidence in expressing themselves. The new curriculum steps away from creativity, and places the focus on historical models and theory. The plan is very content-heavy, and pushes material that would normally be explored at Year 11 and 12 down into junior classes. This will mean less time can be used developing foundation skills, allowing time for play and discovery, and perhaps most importantly, allowing students to gain confidence in their skills and realise that they have the ability to be active in the arts. This is not offering a foundation for lifelong learning.

English - During the development process of the new curriculum, the New Zealand Association for the Teaching of English (NZATE) worked hard to protect the things we value as English teachers, particularly our agency to select texts that we know will appeal, and be of value, to the students in front of us. While retaining some choice, it is reassuring that in year 9 and 10 we are required to teach "texts by a range of authors representative of New Zealand’s rich bicultural (both Māori and Pākehā) and multicultural literary heritage". This was not a specific requirement in the past, so that is an improvement. However the overall level of detail has contributed to a curriculum that is too dense; it will be a challenge to do it justice. There is a risk that we will go far too fast and light in an effort to cover everything, and skip over meaningful learning opportunities. Our ākonga are not empty vessels to be filled with knowledge; they need time to ruminate. Our other main challenge at the moment is working out how we can meaningfully assess and report on the new curriculum while valuing learning over assessment.

Health and Physical Education - The draft curriculum does not adequately meet the needs of our students. The emphasis on physical ability in PE, combined with the extensive content required in Health, dilutes meaningful learning opportunities and moves away from fostering key competencies for lifelong learning. The curriculum has become a “tick-box” exercise, prioritizing quantity over quality to the detriment of our young people.

Languages - The Languages Curriculum has significant changes, notably moving languages from something that every student in Year 7-10 should have the opportunity to learn to being an optional learning area. This means that no school in the country needs to offer languages as a subject choice, and that includes Te Reo Māori. It is good to see that there is more direction at each level than the current curriculum which is vague and amorphous. However the teaching sequences for each level do not align with natural teaching practice in any of the language areas. Neither do they align with the updated vocabulary and grammar lists for NCEA Level 1-3 that were released last year, with a significant amount of content moving from what we would teach in Year 11 into Year 10. This will severely impact language acquisition as it does not allow sufficient time for students to practise and retain the language they have learnt.

Mathematics - The Mathematics curriculum has a lot to cover (which will be extremely difficult to cover this year). However, it has some clear direction on the types of skills that need to be covered and large sections of it are similar to what was taught at Year 9/10 previously. The focus on which skills to cover and the four key components that emphasise explicit teaching and use of rich tasks, communication and positive relationships are pleasing to see.

A negative is the lack of Mātauranga Māori and the importance of this within our learning area - this is clearly missing. The biggest problem however, has been the lack of preparation time for planning to effectively create and find rich tasks and ensure we implement it well. There has been some PLD but it has been webinars, on at difficult times and they haven't been super helpful - some of them aren't running until Term 2, and we've been teaching this material since the start of this year.

Science - The draft Science curriculum presents a significant shift towards a knowledge-heavy model, with more advanced content introduced at earlier levels, an increased emphasis on content recall, and a substantial expansion in coverage. This creates challenges around pacing, with less opportunity for practical investigations, meaningful discussion, and consolidation of learning. There are also concerns around the limited inclusion of local contexts and Mātauranga Māori, as well as the reduced emphasis on Nature of Science skills, which may significantly limit students’ development of critical thinking, scientific reasoning, and their ability to communicate these effectively. This will, in turn, have downstream impacts on senior courses, where these skills are essential for success. Ultimately, science education should be about shaping how students think about and engage with the world, not simply what they know.

Social Sciences - In Social Studies, an issue we are grappling with is the sheer amount of content that we are meant to cover and the absence of well-articulated social science skills that we should foster in our learners. The new curriculum prioritises breadth over depth and there is a risk that this will lead to shallow understanding, with little opportunity for students to develop critical thinking skills. A key question related to the implementation of a 'knowledge rich' curriculum is whose knowledge is being prioritised and why are some “facts” valued above others.

Technology - Technology are pleased with the breadth of offerings including the more formal inclusion of electronics. We are not yet sure how we will accommodate this breadth in our junior schemes of work. The recommended time allocated to Technology at a junior level (4.5 hours per week for the Arts, Health and Physical Education and Technology combined) may not enable students to get a full experience of the various strands of Technology and this will affect how we structure our junior programmes. Additionally, some of the content is a concern as parts of the proposal seem to be at odds with previous learning progressions, and the scaffolding of learning that students experience.

We have a ninth faculty area at High - Learning Services - and our HoF commented on “the strengthening of literacy teaching using structured literacy in the new curriculum. Over time we should see students arriving at our school with better literacy skills, ready to engage with all that secondary school can offer. A concern we have is that the new curriculum may be less accessible to our neurodiverse learners with less opportunities to play to students' strengths and interests as a way to support engagement.”

In summary, the new curriculum is a seismic shift away from the acquisition of competencies and a ‘learning to learn’ focus advocating critical thinking skills, student-centred approaches and inclusivity, to the acquisition of knowledge. The Minister is very sure that this is the correct direction and that seems to be based on NZ’s declining results on PISA testing. I have previously commented on NZ’s PISA rankings and one thing I omitted to say last December is that in the 2022 PISA results, New Zealand’s 15 year olds excelled in creative thinking, ranking 5th out of 81 countries. For some reason, that result gets overlooked yet it is something to celebrate, and a tangible success of our current curricular approach.

Teachers are submitting their feedback and we hope that educators’ voices will be heard. I’m sure that most of them agree with the extra emphasis being placed on literacy and numeracy - the foundational knowledge and skills in these areas enable success in all areas of the curriculum. However, we are all worried about the shift to very dense, prescribed curricula which seem to be a one size fits all approach and will potentially alienate far more than it will include.

Finally, the timeline for all of this work is curious in how it fits with the changes to assessment that have been announced. The current year 9 is supposed to be sitting a new qualification in 2028, 2029 and 2030, but they are being schooled on the current curriculum (except in English and Mathematics). Some thought surely needs to be given to pushing that timeline at least a year.

The changes to assessment that were announced last week and the removal of NCEA is worrying, mainly because the Government highlighted the 10,000 submissions that were made, yet essentially made the same announcement that they made last year. So what did the submissions say and was any of the feedback considered? And will our feedback about the new curriculum be considered?

Dominic Killalea

Principal