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Tuesday, April 30, 2024

Professor Robert MacCulloch: MOE's refreshed maths curricullum is self-plagiarized


The Ministry of Education's Refreshed Maths Curriculum is Self-Plagiarized

The "Refreshed" NZ Maths Curriculum for NZ Schools was published by the Education Ministry in September 2023 by the Labour Government when Chris Hipkins was Prime Minister. Prior to the top job, he was Education Minister. This is what Chippy calls Phase 2 on page 17 of the Curriculum - it's what students should be able to "Do" by end of Year 6:

Click to view

It is identical to what Hipkins' Refreshed Maths Curriculum calls "Phase 3" on page 23 regards what students should be able to "Do" by End of Year 8. It is identical to what the Curriculum calls "Phase 4" on page 27 regards what students should be able to "Do" by End of Year 10. It is identical to what the Curriculum calls "Phase 5" on page 31 regards what students should be able to "Do" by End of Year 13.

As for what you should "Understand" by the End of Year 6 on page 14, here it is:


Click to view

It is identical to End of Year 8 as on page 20, End of Year 10 on page 24, and End of Year 13 on page 28. What you should be able to "Do" and "Understand" by end of Year 3 is also strikingly similar to later years.

Seems the Ministry is happy for little development to happen between 5 and 18 years old. The Maths Curriculum is 31 pages long, with so many identical parts that the non-repeating content is tiny. Can the 308 people in the Curriculum Department tell us: (1) Why copy so much when we teach students not to self-plagiarize? (3) Isn't the Ministry engaging in wage-theft, given the Curriculum represents one days work by one person, yet was costed at $100 million? As for the Under Achieving (we can't say Failing anymore) former Minister of Education, Chippy Hipkins, what example did he set our school children? That a lazy, cut-and-pasted scrappy document that was charged out at rip-off prices is a "Pass"?

Sources:

Professor Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. He has previously worked at the Reserve Bank, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. He runs the blog Down to Earth Kiwi from where this article was sourced.

7 comments:

DeeM said...

Sounds downright aspirational and challenging compared to Labour's actual economic and social improvement of NZ over their 6 years in power.

If he'd applied that, the kids would know and understand less and less every year. And the amount of Te Reo used in the explanation would have increased.

Anonymous said...

That $100M was spent on translators. This is clearly a scam and should be investigated as such by the Police.

Anonymous said...


And yet... Labour still conspires to return !
Delusion knows no bnoundaries.

Gaynor said...

O dear. How totally depressing. Education in NZ is a million times worse than I thought.

Where, are concepts like decimals, percentages and fractions? Metric measurement and conversions, place value ,perimeter and area, geometric transformations, negative numbers ,graphs including statistical, patterns, averages, range, stem and leaf plots and chance ? None of the elevated projects recommended in the curriculum cited above could be attempted without a solid grounding in these basic skills and as is in a usual year 6 syllabus.

From my experience with children in a high decile area, very few have ever covered all these elements in a Year 6 syllabus and rarely are they well grounded in them. This is frequently because the teacher has either ignorance of, no time for, no confidence in or desire to cover them. Most students, are further handicapped as they are just, struggling with times tables and number facts, counting on their fingers. Students lack the power of concentration to set up and solve multiple-step problems.They are incapable of manipulating symbols and reasoning in abstract terms.

Our faux MoE, are not just incompetent, they are are a malicious black-hole sucking up tax-payer money in foolish and futile activities. Anything they create, based in their present ideology is worthless. We don't want it.





Robert Arthur said...

What astonishes me is that our education system is such a failure yet it produces innumerable persons with the ability to write these incredibly vague statements. How many teachers can quote examples to illustrate the palaver?
They need years of university to be able to pretend to understand them. Are the persons who sign off these statements too timid to observe that the emperor has no clothes?

Peter said...

Yes, Anon@9.45 why isn't Iona Holsted, and her cabal of ideologues, up on charges for rorting the taxpayer - for signing off such a vast sum of money on something that is so patently unfit for purpose and just a duplication to boot?

And if not a scam, why are these grossly incompetent people still employed? They get paid the big bucks and yet still take no responsibility, and the resultant proof in falling student educational outcomes is there for all to see. What an utter disgrace!

So, Minister Stanford, when are you going to drain the swamp? And PM Luxon, is you Minister performing to your expected standard and just when can the public expect some real action, or is a mere $100M and the undermining of our children's (and thereby also the country's) futures not significant enough?

Basil Walker said...

I note that in "Understand End of Year 6 " shaded purple that "Mathematics and Statistics" were used in the five (5) examples written in English and translated/transcribed/transfered into Maori. HOWEVER the 5 examples had different words and NOT one example had "mathematics and statistics" described similarly.
Is this why the issues with the Waitangi Tribunal are so mischieviously or dishonetly confused.

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