Change of Government: What may change in our schools?

Wigram Primary School has, in 2023, introduced a Structured Literacy programme to learning to Read, Write and spell. We did get some Ministry of Education funding to engage a professional team to support us.   In 2024 we have engaged again with a Professional Development team to work alongside us to make sure we continue our roll out, and have consistent practice across the school.  This year we have spent over $20,000 on new reading texts to support us to deliver the Structured Literacy programme.  This will be the same in 2024 to keep enough resource in stock to meet learning needs.  Until learners reach a certain level of reading competence, all school reading teaching is using decodable texts.  Not our existing 'learn to read' resources. 

At this point we have only seen a little of this type of resource coming free to us from the Ministry of Education.  Perhaps the Government will speed up the resources if the Structured Literacy approach is mandated for schools, or maybe resource us financially to access resources already in print.

The other potential mandate is that schools will have to have one hour each day for Reading, Writing and Mathematics.  Actually at Wigram Primary that would be a minimum in our classes.  The reason we changed our lunch break start by 15 mins was to enable teachers to get the Reading, Writing and Mathematics all in by lunchtime.

So what the Government are saying is not new, but hopefully it will be supported with resources and professional development.  Watch this space.

One thing we are watching closely is the 'Refreshed Curriculum' which has started its preliminary rollout.  Some curriculum are expected to be mandated for schools for 2025 and others over the following 4 years.  This may all change.