Digital curriculum deadline ‘unrealistic’

Some schools could fail to implement the digital curriculum, unless teachers are given more time and support to assess how to teach it, a union rep say.

In 2020, all schools will be required to be using the Digital Technologies-Hangarau Matihiko curriculum, announced by the Government last June.

The document’s content became available at the start of the year.

It covers two key areas, ‘‘computational thinking’’ and ‘‘designing and developing digital outcomes’’ for 5-year-olds onwards.

Intermediate school teacher and NZEI national representative, Liam Rutherford, said it was ‘‘ridiculous’’ to think the curriculum could be put into practice within two years of being laid out.

‘‘We’re not talking about doing half an hour of robotics every week, we’re talking about having computational thinking woven into what you’re doing in science, and social studies and literacy.’’

He predicted there would be ‘‘very low’’ take-up among teachers of a Ministry of Education programme designed to clarify what the changes involved for teachers new to the area, because some teachers could only access the online programme in their spare time.

Schools just starting out probably didn’t know about a ‘‘contestable pool of funding’’ for help with implementation of the curriculum, which was aimed at schools who already ‘‘had a head start’’, he said.

The $38 million committed by the government to help schools with the rollout barely touched the surface of what was needed to implement the changes, Rutherford maintained.

The Ministry of Education acknowledged the new curriculum would be a major shift for some teachers.

‘‘Anecdotally, we know that many schools are charging ahead with incorporating the new content into their teaching and learning programmes,’’ ministry spokesperson Pauline Cleaver said.

The 40,000 teachers who would need to teach the new curriculum didn’t need to see the changes as overwhelming, digital educator, Frances Valintine said.

Five-year-olds could learn ‘‘computational thinking’’ by devising instructions for an obstacle course, for example. The ‘‘digital outcomes’’ component could involve pupils ordering a series of tasks, represented as numbers, to represent a code chain.