Source: NZ Principals Federation
The President of The New Zealand Principals’ Federation (NZPF), Leanne Otene, is calling for urgent changes to the implementation timeline for the New Zealand English/Mathematics and Statistics Curriculum Years 0-10, released late Sunday evening, by the Ministry of Education.
Otene says schools have wasted hours of work this past year, preparing for changes to the English and Maths curricula and at the last minute, the whole curriculum framework and delivery mode has been altered without explanation or consultation.
“With just seven weeks of the most demanding term of the school year remaining, the Minister now expects schools to undertake significant PLD and preparation for substantial changes to curriculum content and reframe the way it is delivered – all of which she expects to be implemented in February. This is an unprofessional and unachievable expectation,” she said.
“Schools have already invested heavily in time to acquire professional development based on the February 2025 mandated Mathematics/ Statistics and English Curriculum. We were told to get on with it. With the current radical and unexpected changes to both Mathematics/ Statistics and English, Principals are now losing trust in the Minister and the system,”
Principals report that they are expected to rewrite different planning formats, make different resource selections and completely revise teaching sequences and phases of learning. Principals say they are shocked at the extent of the changes.
“What the Minister wants now, is a simple age-based year by year sequence of learning, irrespective of whether a child is well ahead of the curriculum year level or well below it,” said Otene. The reality is that our classrooms have never delivered a one year level curriculum since the 1950s.
“We have repeatedly told the Minister for the last two years that learning must occur in a framework of broader phases of learning – not year levels – so that we can accommodate learners who, for many different reasons, are either well ahead or struggling to keep up,” she said.” “It was our understanding that the Minister supported children learning at the level they were at, rather than at an arbitrary year level,” said Otene.
NZPF is calling on the Minister to rethink the latest ‘learning by year-level’ approach; to provide further PLD funding and dedicated teacher only days for the relearning required to meet the latest curriculum framework and expectations; to scrap the February 2026 implementation date and to impose a moratorium on further curriculum releases until the new English and maths curricula are fully and successfully embedded.
“Our students deserve better than a curriculum implemented on the run,” said Otene.
