Wendy Geus: Kids need to memorize tables, basic facts and spelling, not karakia and waiata

Do NZ's appalling attendance rates reflect parents' rejection of race mandated education?

Are the many women with their healthy, energetic kids I see in the supermarket during school hours rejecting Stanford's mandatory, Maori infused programme, or do they just prefer to home school their offspring? I am not talking about unattended school age thugs terrorising shop keepers, but respectable looking women with their school age kids in tow.

Judy Gill: Te Reo– A Parent's Journey

Forty years on from Te Reo being granted official language status in 1987, and its gradual introduction into mainstream schools through the 1980s and 1990s, there is still no curriculum, no syllabus, no grammar, no syntax. No textbooks. No real workbooks.

Steven Gaskell: The Teaching of Māori Spiritual Worldviews in New Zealand Schools

The teaching of Māori spiritual worldviews in New Zealand schools is a legal consistency issue.

New Zealand’s commitment to secular education is grounded in the principle that the state should not privilege one religion over another. Under current practice, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and other faith traditions are clearly defined as “religion” and therefore excluded from classroom teaching, except in contexts where students are provided choice and parents’ rights are respected. In contrast, Māori spiritual worldviews are reframed as “culture” and integrated directly into the curriculum. This inconsistency raises significant legal and human rights concerns.

Judy Gill: Blasphemy 2.0

From Waiheke to the Nation — a microcosm of New Zealand’s new Blasphemy Codes in a faux-indigenous eco-religious state

INTRODUCTION

Blasphemy laws were supposedly abolished in 2019, when Section 123 of the Crimes Act 1961 (“blasphemous libel”) was repealed.

Judy Gill: Let Māori Children Choose

What Māori Chiefs Chose in 1860 vs What Our Children Face in 2025

In 1860, at the Kohimarama Conference, Māori chiefs from across the country chose Christianity. They didn’t want to return to the gods of war, utu, cannibalism, or ancestor worship. They had lived under that system — and rejected it. They publicly embraced Christ for themselves, their iwi, and their whānau.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Our kids' education is too important to muck around

You can't accuse Erica Stanford of mucking around, can you?

NCEA is gone. Marks out of 100 are back, grades from A to E are back, needing to pass 4 subjects at least in order to get the qualification is back.

Now, how long have we been talking about the need to do this? About the fact that NCEA is rubbish, that it's been gamed, that it's not respected by employers, that it's not understood by parents? How long have we talked about this?

Caleb Anderson: The Forgotten Excesses of Communism

I was interested to read recently of the activities of the Communist party of Aotearoa. Founded on 22 November 2019.

I have also been shocked by the outright, and well publicized, admissions of quite a number of MPs, on the left side of our parliament, who have forthrightly either identified themselves as communist, or who admitted having sympathies with present and past communist regimes.

Judy Gill: The Real Religious Schools Aren't Christian

STATE SCHOOLS ARE NOW RELIGIOUS — AND ANTI-CHRISTIAN

Let’s drop the pretence: New Zealand’s state schools are no longer secular. They are religious — not in name, but in content, tone, and daily practice.

The belief system being promoted is Te Ao spirituality — grounded in concepts like wairua (spirit), atua (gods), mauri (life force), tapu (sacredness), and daily rituals such as karakia (prayer). These are not limited to cultural appreciation. They are taught as reality — and are now embedded across every subject in the curriculum: science, ecology, maths, English, digital technology, and even PE.

David Lillis: Intertwining Knowledge Systems?

Traditional Beliefs in Science?

Dr. Holly Winton has published a thought-provoking piece in The Conversation of 16 July (Winton, 2025). Evidently, Dr. Winton wishes to see intertwining of traditional knowledge with modern global science. My reaction to her piece is that it discusses some appealing traditional ideas about nature, but over-promises on what traditional knowledge can deliver in the world of today. Here I quote from her article and give my reactions.

Ryan Bridge: Something needs to be done about NCEA

If we could mark NCEA level One... would it even get an achieved. let alone a merit or excellence?

We heard at the weekend about an ERO report.

Basically, said the whole system is too flexible. Kids are scooping up credits from all corners of the classroom.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Erica Stanford is this Govt's MVP

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Erica Stanford is this Government's MVP.  

Once again, she is taking an inexplicably stupid thing in schools, ditching it, and going back to common sense. 

This is something close to my heart at the moment because I have to make a decision in the next six months or so about which school we send our son to. 

John Raine: Let's have some realism about Mātauranga Maori

Traditional Knowledge in Education and Research

The role in the New Zealand education system of Māori traditional knowledge, encompassed in mātauranga Māori (MM), has triggered heated debate around the current Education and Training Act Amendment Bill (No.2) [1]. We are currently at risk of further enshrining in education policy Treaty of Waitangi obligations that have no place in a secular education system. Māori traditional knowledge has a rightful place but must not have a politically driven, sanctified position in school or university curricula.

Zoran Rakovic: The Real Equity Is Found in Equations

New Zealand’s education system must shift from ideology to inspiration. It’s time to teach STEM, creativity, and AI to prepare kids for the next century.

Our children deserve rocket fuel, not red tape. As the Ministry of Education clings to 19th-century grievances, the future is slipping through our fingers. This is a call to reclaim education for what it should be: a launchpad into the stars.

Mike's Minute: Stop dumbing down our education system

There's a bit of pushback coming from some sectors in the education business towards the reading, writing, and maths tests.

These are the tests we are failing. Those who are failing mostly come from poor backgrounds.

I'm not sure equating monetary status and academic success should be a thing.

DTNZ: New literacy and numeracy standards lower NCEA Level 1 pass rates

Provisional figures reveal that the introduction of new literacy and numeracy requirements has contributed to a drop in NCEA Level 1 pass rates.

Only 64% of Year 11 students attempted Level 1 in 2024, with 70% of those succeeding, compared to an 82% pass rate in 2023. The decline is attributed to the tougher online literacy and numeracy tests, as well as a shift in the demographic makeup of students attempting Level 1.

David Lillis: Respectful Relations between Science and Traditional Knowledge

The following article was submitted to ACCESS: Contemporary Issues in Education (https://pesaagora.com/access-journal/) but was rejected. In declining to publish, the reviewers’ comments were very curious indeed! Readers of Breaking Views might be interested in reading it.  

Science and Traditional Knowledge 

A recent article makes a call for improved debate on science and Māori knowledge (Stewart et al., 2024). The authors suggest that respectful dialogue and greater understandings of the history and philosophy of both science and Māori education are necessary in order to prevent the invalid denigration of Māori knowledge. We agree with the stated need for respectful relations but, in addition, we believe that New Zealand needs a clear consensus on the relative positions of modern science and traditional knowledge within our wider innovation system. However, we will not reach such an agreement as long as traditional knowledge is being pushed politically within education and science.

David Lillis: New Trajectories for our Universities?

Enforced Indigenization of Our Universities

The School of Clinical Sciences at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) is now on a path that we consider to be divisive and negligent towards the 25% of New Zealand citizens who are non-Māori/non-European - and indeed to Europeans (see AUT, 2024). The extent of its embracing of Critical Social Justice for one ethnic and cultural group only, at the possible expense of quality of medical education, should be deeply worrying for New Zealand. So it is time for the present Government to step in and terminate the current drive towards highly imbalanced health and education.

Kerre Woodham: New Zealand's education system has been failing children for a long time

Yes, the maths. You know, I know we've been talking about this, that we have been failing our children for decades now.

This is not a previous Government issue, this is not of their making. This has been a long time coming.

Where New Zealanders used to assume a world class education as their birth right, where anybody who was educated in New Zealand could stand amongst the brightest minds in the world, now we've had successive generations of children falling behind in every metric.