Curriculum shake-up for schools

A curriculum shake-up is on the cards for New Zealand’s classrooms, paving a new way for how pupils are taught in schools.

Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced the refresh of New Zealand’s national curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa yesterday morning, saying it would keep studies agile and have a stronger focus on wellbeing, identity, language and culture.

The announcement comes a week after the Government announced it would implement a compulsory national curriculum for New Zealand history to be taught in schools.

Aside from history, Hipkins said, there were other aspects of what students were taught in our classrooms that needed ‘‘a fresh look’’.

The recommendations for a shake-up came from the Curriculum, Progress and Achievement Ministerial Advisory Group and it will be updated by the Ministry of Education, following consultation with educators, students, their parents and wha¯ nau, hapu¯ , iwi and Pacific communities.

Hipkins said the updated learning materials would make it easier for teachers and kaiako to design and deliver a local curriculum or marau a¯ -kura that included all national curriculum content.

He promised more support would be provided to develop school curriculums, new curriculum resources and guidance for teachers on how to integrate the national curriculum locally.

‘‘We need a stronger mechanism to Education Minister

‘‘We need a stronger mechanism to routinely update the national curriculum.’’

Chris Hipkins

routinely update the national curriculum so it remains responsive and current and is clearer about the learning that every child and young person needs and not leave it to chance.’’

Updates to Te Marautanga o Aotearoa would strongly reflect te ao Ma¯ori approaches to education used in kura, he added.

New Zealand Principals’ Federation president Whetu Cormick welcomed the recommendation. The education sector would be keeping a close eye on ensuring the changes did not enforce a prescribed standard on schools, although he doubted that would be the case.

Some schools, although they tried their best, could struggle to form local curriculums. Cormick was hopeful the changes would help with that.

But the announcement had raised a lot of questions, particularly how the Ministry of Education planned to provide resources to schools to embrace the proposed changes, he said.

Work on the proposal will be funded out of the ministry baselines for this financial year and will form part of the 2020 Budget. The minister will report back to Cabinet on the curriculum’s progress in March 2020.