Dr David Lillis: Have Your Say about the New Curriculum

The Proposed Curriculum is Unfair and Divisive

We must stand up to the proposed curriculum refresh because it is unfair, divisive and biased and will harm education. Due to come into force in 2026, the refreshed national curriculum concerns the education of millions of students over future decades and will impose costs of several billion dollars on New Zealand taxpayers. 

 

Sometimes, the public becomes concerned about some issue but needs help to identify what can be done to effect change. Here are some ideas on the steps that the New Zealand public could take - those who are worried about what is going wrong in education right now. One possibility is to email or talk directly to your local Member of Parliament. Another idea is to email or talk to your school and your school board. Perhaps the most effective strategy is to email the Ministry of Education, stating your concerns about the refresh. Of course, you can do all three. To assist you in having your say, feel free to copy and paste text from this very web-page. See the text below. 

Dr David Lillis: New Zealand Must Fight the New Curriculum

 

New Zealand Must Fight the New Curriculum  

Preamble

This article is rather long but then we are talking about the education of future New Zealanders and there is much to be said. The refreshed national curriculum concerns the education of millions of students over future decades and will impose costs of several billion dollars to New Zealand taxpayers. Readers for whom this piece is excessively lengthy can use the headings to go directly to sections of particular interest.

Dr David Lillis: Reactions to the Proposed New Zealand Curriculum Refresh

Design of the New Curriculum

Recently, I wrote about the proposed refreshing of the New Zealand Curriculum, expressing concerns about the heavily Treaty-centric nature of the proposed national curriculum and embedding of traditional knowledge across the curriculum (Lillis, 2022a). The refresh involves a staged process, scheduled for completion by 2026.

 

 "Te Mātaiaho" is the proposed working name for the Curriculum Framework and means “to observe and examine the strands of learning.” It is critical to understand that the new curriculum will be imposed on all students and not only Māori. 

Peter Winsley: Science, mātauranga Māori, and the national curriculum

The biggest problems in New Zealand’s schooling system are poor literacy and numeracy. This results from factors such as too little direct instruction as compared to child-led learning, inadequate use of phonics, and “fads” such as modern learning environments. We also lack a knowledge-rich national curriculum that gives all New Zealand students a good educational start in life, and with this a basis for democracy and civil society. The evidence is that socio-economic background is the main determinant of differences between Māori and non-Māori educational achievement.

Given all this, it is surprising how much emphasis the Ministry of Education (MoE) is giving to race as a key variable in education. MoE seems more focused on promoting Māori racial and cultural identity than, for example, professional identities. “Māori succeeding as Māori” is a recurring trope. A wisely sardonic Māori kuia once said to me that New Zealand has too few Māori in the professions and too many professional Māoris (sic). This was decades ago, and she spoke in a whisper. By now the prevailing zeitgeist will have silenced her completely.