Source: New Zealand Government
Well, that’s a hard act to follow.
Hey, welcome everybody. Tēnā koutou katoa. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, and welcome.
It is an absolute pleasure to be here at the 2026 International Confederation of Principals Convention.
Thank you to our hosts, the New Zealand Principals’ Federation, and to your members for such a generous welcome. You’ve made this a very warm, memorable, and distinctly Kiwi gathering.
And those performers from James Cook, who were so incredible and inspiring, are just the first, I hear, of many performances and speeches that you’re going to be receiving from Kiwi students across New Zealand.
To those of you who’ve travelled from over 50 countries, thank you for making the long journey here to New Zealand. We are incredibly honoured to have you.
I hope you enjoy your time here in New Zealand, the land of the long white cloud, and experience some of what makes New Zealand unique.
But most of all, I hope that the days together spark new ideas, some interesting conversations, and connections that last much longer than today and the next few days.
The theme of this year’s convention, the seeds of the flax bush that are dispersed by the four winds, captures this beautifully.
It reminds us that good ideas do not stay in one place. They’re shared, they’re adapted, they grow. And when they move between people, communities, and our countries, we can create something even stronger.
I want to acknowledge today all of the teachers, the principals, and the school leaders who are here from New Zealand and across the world.
I want to acknowledge the work that you do every day. You do more than teach, you lead. You open doors, you build confidence, and you harness potential. And you plant those seeds in young people that can last a lifetime.
On behalf of the government, and as the Minister of Education, I want to say thank you for your professionalism, your commitment, and above all, the care you show for our young people and their whānau, their families, every single day.
Because ultimately, the measure of our work is not just in what we know, it’s what we pass on to the next generation and the opportunities and knowledge that that opens up for them.
In a world of growing complexity and change, this work has never been more important.
I want to share with the international delegates a little bit about what is happening here in New Zealand, because there is a significant reform in education underway to build the skills and knowledge and confidence in young people that will set them up for a really bright future.
We have been facing some of the challenges that many of you may have also faced in your own countries: achievement that has been declining over many decades.
Everyone in this room, including myself, wants to turn that around, increase achievement, improve achievement, and close that stubborn equity gap, and follow the science, the research, and the evidence to do everything we can to get there.
For those of you in the room from overseas, we have followed our six priorities.
Reforming the curriculum to a knowledge-rich, year-by-year, internationally benchmarked curriculum, so that it doesn’t matter which school you go to, you have access to the skills and knowledge that you need to succeed, and putting that across the whole of New Zealand.
There is a pedagogical shift underway. The reading wars are over.
We are teaching structured literacy in every school in New Zealand: phonemic awareness, how to sound out words, for young children to learn how to read, and structured literacy throughout our primary schools.
Structured mathematics and the resources that go along with it. We’ve trained tens of thousands of teachers in structured literacy and structured maths.
We’re doing twice-yearly assessments to make sure that we can intervene really early with tailored interventions around literacy and numeracy when children start to fall behind, because we know that if we intervene early, the results are so much better.
And of course, all of this is informed by much better data and evidence.
What I want to say is that the most important part of these reforms are the teachers and principals in the system.
All of these reforms have been helped and informed by the groups of principals who are here in this room. I want to make sure that I acknowledge them and thank them for the work that they’ve done alongside us to help guide this work.
As leaders, you are integral in making sure not only that the policy is fit for purpose, but that it is implemented with fidelity.
We work alongside groups like the Auckland Primary Principals’ Association, who are here today, I know. They survey their members, they come back to me. Sometimes the results aren’t always what I want to hear, but we make changes when we see that things aren’t working on the ground.
Auckland Primary Principals have done a wonderful job at helping guide some of that policy work, alongside people like the Wellington, Christchurch, and Rotorua Principals’ Associations, who we’ve tested ideas with, tried things with, and got their feedback on.
The Association of Middle Schools have been helping us with how we improve mathematics, and what we can do to bring forward some of the changes in the health curriculum, so important to our middle schoolers.
The Southland Primary Principals’ Association have been on at me about teacher supply. They’ve done a wonderful job at making sure it is top of mind, and some of the changes we’ve made have been because of the relationship with those principals, and I thank them.
The Rural Schools Association, wonderfully led by Jane and Andrew, have been absolutely integral in making sure that we’re thinking about rural and isolated schools in all of the reforms that we’re undertaking.
How do we roll out a curriculum in multi-year classrooms? They’re helping us with that guidance and support that’s going to be coming to all schools around the country.
The Primary Principals’ Collective Bargaining Union have been amazing at coming to my office and sitting down with ideas and the way forward for some of our challenges. The Secondary School Principals’ Association, same thing.
I appreciate your help, your support, and your guidance so much, because these reforms have been led and driven by the information and support you have provided us.
And now, these significant reforms that we’re undertaking in New Zealand are up to the principals and the teachers to pick up and run with, and lead through their professionalism and with their leadership skills.
And I can tell the international principals in this room that that is exactly what is happening, and the results are already showing.
I am really, really proud.
In New Zealand, over a very short period of time, in the last three years, our little wee five-year-olds’ phonemic awareness, their sounding out of words, has improved phenomenally.
In Term One last year, 36% of kids were at expectations for their phonics. 58% two terms later. Huge gains.
For our Māori children, 25% to 39%. And for our most disadvantaged schools, 18% to a third in just two terms.
That is because of the leadership and the professionalism of our principals and the hard work of our teachers who are running with these reforms.
The Curriculum Insights show that writing and mathematics are improving dramatically for the first time in a long time, again because of the hard work of teachers on the ground.
And then in PISA, and I know you will have all been looking at the PISA results in the last few days, I’m really proud of what’s happened in New Zealand, because we did buck the worldwide trend of decline.
We insulated ourselves from the effects of COVID, which have ravaged the education sectors in so many countries.
And again, that is down to the incredibly hard work of our secondary school principals and teachers, who have been focusing on literacy and numeracy and improving achievement and putting in hard work every single day.
The thing that I’m most proud of is that while our results held flat, those students from the most disadvantaged quartile lifted.
The equity gap in New Zealand has been stubborn for decades, and it’s starting to close.
In science, we made a year’s worth of progress for those students. In maths, it was three terms, and in reading, it was two terms. And that is significant.
Those are the children we need to change the lives of the most when it comes to education.
My philosophy, and I have to say I did steal this phrase from the Minister of Education in Singapore, is: “Your means should not determine your destiny.”
That is what we are striving for in New Zealand, to make sure that those students who need an education the most to change their lives get the benefit of a world-leading education system that we, together in New Zealand, are building.
We are turning things around. It’s happening more quickly than we expected, and the results are showing that.
I want to go back to my thanks and gratitude to the sector.
You can be the Minister of Education and have a whole lot of nice policies written on paper, but it means nothing without the excellent principals and teachers in this country who are leading this reform.
I owe them a huge debt of gratitude, because they are the reason that these results are improving.
So over the coming days, I hope you laugh together, you challenge each other, you share what works, and, best perhaps, see something different.
I have done that myself with my counterparts, especially in Australia. For the Australians who are here, thank you for all of your support.
I’ve worked very closely with Jason Clare, your Minister of Education, and some of the people in different states who’ve been helping us with some of our work.
And to those who were here last time, I did mention the fact that the South Australians sold us their phonics check that they got for free from the UK, but it was only $10, so I forgive you for that.
But I just wanted to make the point that we are all connected. We are sharing ideas. We are sharing resources. We’re taking what works from the countries who are soaring and doing really well. And thank you.
So for you as educators, sharing what you know, learning from each other, and asking what is possible is what the next few days are all about.
And somewhere in a classroom, there is a young person who’s going to benefit from what happens here today, and that’s why the work that you’re doing matters.
Have a wonderful convention, and for those of you that have joined us from overseas, I hope you get a chance to see a little bit more of our beautiful country.
Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.
Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/09/24/address-to-the-2026-international-confederation-of-principals-convention/