When the government passed the Sector Reform Bill into law, critics raised alarm bells (we were a key group in doing so) over one key structural shift: the centralisation of power directly around the sign-off of national curriculum documents.

Giving politicians direct control over what constitutes “essential knowledge” in the classroom was always going to set a dangerous precedent. Now, we are seeing the immediate fallout of that policy shift.

The Ministry of Education has released the updated draft of The New Zealand Curriculum: Social Sciences Years 0–10 (August 2026), set for mandatory implementation starting in 2027. On page 30, under the Year 8 Civics and Society strand, sits an explicit reference to a specific political lobby group:

“The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union aims to influence government spending, through public campaigns, media engagement and direct lobbying.”

To understand why this is so alarming, we have to look at how social movements and civil society actors have historically been treated in New Zealand’s curriculum.

Normally, when political and economic actors are introduced in social studies, they are discussed broadly through their institutional, socio-political, and historical roles in a functioning democracy. For example, curricula have long covered the role of trade unions in advocating for worker protections, fair wages, and collective bargaining.

Previous curriculum documents have never explicitly named individual, active unions like E tū, FIRST Union, or the PSA. The focus was kept firmly on the conceptual framework of how organised labour operates within civil society, allowing teachers and students to analyse various real-world examples critically. Teachers may have in their classroom used a specific name when talking about a specific example, however, naming the Taxpayers’ Union in the curriculum itself breaks this long-standing convention entirely.

The Taxpayers’ Union is not a neutral public service organisation or a broad civic institution. It is an explicitly right-leaning political advocacy group, funded by private donors, designed to promote a specific fiscal and political ideology. It exists to selectively pick stories, follow specific interest avenues, and run public relations campaigns that directly align with its ideological agenda.

By embedding a specific, politically active lobbying outfit directly into the prescribed teaching text as a landmark example of active citizenship, the government is effectively normalising political PR as core educational content.

The inclusion of party-aligned lobby groups isn’t the only ideological shift creeping into the draft.

Aotearoa has the opportunity to offer a world-class, unique education system - one deeply rooted in our specific cultural heritage, history, and natural environment, designed to grow the exact types of critical thinkers our country needs (check out our vison). Instead, these recent revisions move us closer to an “off-the-shelf,” imported model borrowed from overseas that fails to recognise the uniqueness and specialness of who we are.

When curriculum design is centralised and politically directed, we swap an ambitious, Aotearoa-centric vision for a generic, cookie-cutter approach that silences critical perspective.

This is precisely why the centralisation of curriculum sign-off under the Sector Reform Bill is so dangerous.

Under the previous, more decentralised and independent curriculum oversight frameworks, attempts to inject partisan groups or strip out essential content would have faced robust critique and pushback from educational experts, subject associations, and independent curriculum bodies. The systemic buffers were designed to insulate the nation’s classrooms from whichever political party held the ministerial warrant.

Those safeguards have now been stripped away. With decision-making powers centralised at the top, political interference can seep directly into what every single school in the country is expected to teach.

When the authority to dictate “knowledge” sits entirely in political hands, the line between civic education and political indoctrination becomes paper-thin. Today, it’s an explicit shout-out to a right-wing lobby group. Tomorrow, it could be whatever ideological pet project the government of the day decides to enforce.

Teachers, parents, and citizens who care about objective, balanced education must pay close attention. The Sector Reform Bill hasn’t just changed administrative processes - it has opened the classroom door to direct political interference.

Find out more about the curriculum and assessment centre here.

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We count who is there. Who isn’t. How often they aren’t. Where they are in reading. Where they should be in reading. Whether they are emerging, developing, consolidating, proficient or exceeding. We put them into systems and spreadsheets and graphs and, occasionally, little red and orange squares. We have special management plans to ensure we are doing our utmost best.

Somewhere around May I lost count of the things that were changing.

At the beginning of the year I was still trying to keep up. I read things: often with fire in my belly and hurt stinging my cheeks. Documents arrived and I diligently opened them. Links arrived and I clicked them. Consultations appeared and I filled them in. I shouted about everything in the hope that others would listen. I grew very angry.

Announcements were made and I tried my best to understand what they meant. I downloaded PDFs and highlighted bits. I joined webinars and listened to pod casts. I had approximately 47 tabs open on my laptop at any given moment and a vague belief that if I just read enough of them I might eventually understand what education in New Zealand was going to look like by the end of the year. That belief didn’t survive Term 2, because something else kept happening: school.

School is terribly inconvenient like that. It keeps happening while everyone is trying to reform it. Children keep arriving at the gate.

Children arrive with no shoes, wet shoes, odd shoes. Missing lunches and breakfasts. Arguments from the bus. A dead cat or family dog. A new baby at home. No sleep. A certificate they desperately want to show you. A rock they found on the way to school and are keen to know if it is something precious. Sometimes they arrive already furious with the world. And sometimes they don’t arrive at all. Then we count that too.

By March, I continued to write about it. At first I thought I was writing about curriculum. Then assessment. Then structured approaches. Then SMART. Then reporting. Then attendance. Then learning support. Then Te Tiriti. Then ERO. Then consultation. Then evidence. Then trust…

I have spent quite a lot of 2026 apparently writing about entirely different things. It has taken me until Term 3 to realise I have actually been writing about the same thing all year: people. Or, more precisely, the increasingly obvious lack of enough of them.

Around the same time, my SENCO world was getting busier.

There were referrals. IEPs. Safety plans. Transition plans. Meetings. Phone calls. Emails. Teacher aides. Funding applications. More meetings. Children arriving with increasingly complex needs and whānau who had already told their story to several people before they got to us.

Some children needed an adult beside them just to make school possible. Not to accelerate their reading or to deliver an intervention; just to make being at school possible. Someone to walk in with. Someone to notice the shoulders tightening. Someone who knew that the noise was getting too much. Someone who could get them out before the chair flew rather than write the incident report afterwards. And we kept trying to find that someone. Move this person here. Move that hour there. Can she do another thirty minutes? Who has release? Could we use this funding? What happens at morning tea? Who’s with him after lunch? What happens if she’s away?

What happens if she’s away? Sometimes an entire child’s ability to access education is balanced on one human being turning up for work — I don’t think that appears on a spreadsheet.

Meanwhile, outside the school gates, education continued to be very busy improving education. There was another new curriculum document to understand. Assessment expectations with new language to navigate. Reporting changes. Attendance targets. PLD. Old terminology we weren’t supposed to use anymore. New terminology that occasionally sounded remarkably similar to the old terminology.

The more the system talked about improving outcomes, the more I found myself looking around the school thinking: With who? Who is going to do all of this? Not theoretically. Actually. Who?

Because I know what happens after each new announcement — the announcements laid down to honey trap parents. Eventually it arrives in a real school, an under resourced school. It arrives in the principal’s inbox or MOE bulletin (if the Press hasn’t announced it first). Then it clogs up the next staff meeting. Then somebody has to triple read it and prepare to take questions from anxious, tired, flu ridden kaiako. Somebody has to understand it, or at least pretend to. Somebody has to explain it. Then teachers have to learn it and add it to their professional growth cycles. Resources and budgets have to be found. Planning has to change. Assessment has to change. Something that was already being done usually has to move over slightly to make room.

And then, at 9 o’clock the next morning, twenty-something children walk through the classroom door.

Two students aren’t speaking to each other. Someone has medication at 11am. One needs instructions broken into tiny pieces. One needs to move. One needs things very quiet. One needs things very loud. One has decided under the table is the only reasonable place to spend maths. And somebody has brought a cicada shell in from morning tea that absolutely everybody needs to see immediately.

That is the bit I think we keep leaving out. Education happens through humans.

Term 3 made that impossible for me to ignore. ERO came. I wrote quite a lot about that. Probably too much. It was my way of unravelling it. For several days we were very busy proving that school was happening.

By then I had started noticing how much time education now spends asking humans to produce evidence that they are doing the work instead of giving them more human capacity to do the work. And suddenly all the things I had been writing about since March began joining together.

Maybe we are simply... critically under-humaned.

That is the best way I can describe what school feels like from where I am standing. We are not just understaffed; that sounds like a vacancy. This is bigger than vacancies. We are under-humaned. We need humans with time.

Humans who can sit beside a child for forty minutes without somebody calculating whether that is an efficient use of resource. Humans who know the whānau. Humans who can teach small groups. Humans who can take the child outside before they explode. Humans who can listen to the story that takes twenty minutes to tell because the important bit doesn’t arrive until minute nineteen. Humans who can ring home when things are going well rather than only when they aren’t. Humans who have time to think. Humans who have enough left at the end of the day to come back tomorrow and still care.

And those humans need other humans too.

Teachers need colleagues. Beginning teachers need experienced teachers. Teacher aides need teachers who have time to talk with them. SENCOs need agencies that have people available rather than another waiting list. Principals need enough people around them that every absence doesn’t become a morning game of human Tetris. Children need adults who aren’t permanently rushing towards the next thing.

Because I worry we are trying to solve a human-capacity crisis with system change when it is the people who make changes happen. And people need time to do it. Which is why, as we limp towards Term 4, I find myself wanting something I don’t usually ask for.

Nothing.

I would like nothing new, please.

This year I have changed classrooms, systems, interventions, timetables, plans and probably my mind several hundred times. Schools change constantly. Good schools do. We respond to the humans in front of us. That isn’t the kind of change I mean. I mean the other sort.

The next announcement.

The next urgent priority.

The next thing to implement.

Could it wait?

Just until next year?

Could we have one term where the ground stays still? Ten weeks where teachers aren’t preparing for the next version of education while trying to deliver the current one. Maybe even ten weeks to notice what is working. Because there are things growing in our schools. Quiet things. And sometimes they need everyone else to stop rearranging the furniture around them.

So, Aotearoa Educators Collective, that is my contribution from the strange, exhausting, occasionally ridiculous world of Term 3.

I don’t have a new model or opinion on the best way to teach. I haven’t developed a stunning evidence based new framework. There is no downloadable resource. Just an observation from someone who has spent most of this year watching what happens when big ideas eventually arrive in small human spaces.

We are a work force who is critically under-humaned.

And perhaps before we change anything else, we should do something about that.

But not in Term 4.

Please.

In Term 4, could everybody just leave us alone for a bit?

We’ve got kids to teach.

Phase 1 -4 Science Analysis Resource

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Kia ora, and welcome to the second episode of Learning on Tap!

In this series, we’re stepping back from the day-to-day classroom routine to look at the bigger picture - exploring the broader issues, policies, and systemic challenges that shape the world of teaching and learning.

This episode we are talking with Dr Jimmy Chong.

When a student returns to the classroom after a concussion, teachers are often on the front lines of their recovery - yet many educators feel unprepared for what that actually looks like. In this episode, we’re demystifying concussion specifically for teachers and school staff to take the guesswork out of supporting young brains.

We break down what a realistic “return to school” process involves, moving beyond physical rest to address cognitive fatigue, light sensitivity, and academic adjustments. We discuss the essential training and awareness schools need to create brain-safe environments, while highlighting a crucial truth: because every brain is different, every recovery journey is unique. If you’re an educator looking for practical reassurance and actionable strategies to help your students safely navigate recovery, this episode is for you.

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It is a pleasure to be able to share the full launch with everyone, as we have had many people inquire.

Read the full report here

At the launch we were grateful to hear from Stephen Lethbridge, Rose Hipkins, Claire Coleman and Anthony MacKay.

Where to from here?

The AEC is not without ambition and a desire for the right type of change in education. We want to make sure that discussions about the future are clear about the vision for which we are striving.

Over the coming months, we are going to be launching a series of policy discussion papers with this vision at their heart. We want to explore different aspects of the education system and discuss the actual policy shifts needed over the short, medium, and long term. Aotearoa is full of amazing policy thinkers, and we want to hear from them.

Please reach out if you have an interest in policy discussions to do with Kaupapa Māori, Initial Teacher Education, Curriculum and Assessment, Resourcing, Learning Support, Tomorrow’s Schools, Early Childhood Education, or the Tertiary sector.

This report addresses a concern shared among educators: that education reform has too often been driven by short-term political priorities rather than a clear, enduring vision of what education is for. We wanted to step back from individual policy debates and articulate a coherent direction grounded in Te Tiriti o Waitangi, equity, curriculum breadth, professional trust, and education as a public good.

This morning the report was officially launched at the University of Auckland by the report’s author, Dr Claire Coleman, supported by Dr Rosemary Hipkins, Anthony Mackay, and our MC, Stephen Lethbridge.

Download the full report here

The report sets out five ambitions - the characteristics of a system that allows people to flourish:

• Re-establishing a bicultural curriculum

• Increasing equity of outcomes

• Broadening the curriculum

• Reprofessionalising teachers

• Building a shared understanding of education

A3 Takeaway Poster

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Where to from here?

AEC is not without ambition and desire for the right type of change in education. We want to make sure that discussions about the future are clear about the vision for which we are striving.

Over the coming months, we are going to be launching a series of policy discussion papers with this vision at their heart. We want to explore different aspects of the education system and discuss the actual policy shifts needed over the short, medium, and long term. Aotearoa is full of amazing policy thinkers, and we want to hear from them.

Please reach out if you have an interest in policy discussions to do with Kaupapa Māori, Initial Teacher Education, Curriculum and Assessment, Resourcing, Learning Support, Tomorrow’s Schools, Early Childhood Education, or the Tertiary sector.

In Closing

A recording of the full launch will be available shortly here on Substack.

A heartfelt thank you to Dr Claire Coleman for her intelligence, depth, and passion for our work and young people.

The kōrero unpacks the concerns underpinning OMEP’s submission, including the framing of early childhood education as a “merit good” rather than a public good, the implications of increasing privatisation, and what proposed changes could mean for qualified teachers, equitable access, Te Whāriki, Te Tiriti, accountability, and the rights and wellbeing of tamariki.

Together, they consider not only the detail of the funding review, but the bigger question it raises: what do we want early childhood education in Aotearoa to be, and who should it ultimately serve?

To learn more about and support the work of visit OMEP Aotearoa here. Click here to learn more about the Ministerial Advisory Group’s review of the Early Childhood Education sector funding model visit

To see further submissions on ECE funding click here.

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And a reminder that of you’re in Auckland to come and join is for the launch of ‘A Vision for Education in Aotearoa New Zealand’. Register here.

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My area of educational expertise is in Technology curriculum. The knowledge system is something we utilise in the Technology curriculum, although I usually refer to it as Knowledge Architecture. This is an essential part of the technological process to solve problems, defining the boundaries and gathering information that will contribute to a solution. The knowledge used has to be useful, it has to have utility to solve the problem. This is how we screen out the misinformation, the disinformation, by focusing on the knowledge that gives us answers to the questions that the problem is presenting. Its integrity.

Rosemary expands on the idea of knowledge systems by recognising three aspects of the mainstream knowledge architecture we currently use: It is very Eurocentric and supports the status quo of Western Imperialism and capitalism; Indigenous knowledge is acknowledged, but viewed as traditional knowledge, and thirdly there is a dilution of local knowledge. Each of these areas provide context to how the knowledge can be seen, evaluated and utilised.

MEANINGFUL & PURPOSEFUL

Context has always been a challenging issue in modern education, as a way to give literacy and numeracy purpose and meaning. When learning is not rooted into a meaningful problem solving context, the quality of the knowledge and information deteriorates into the knowledge system that 21st century education is navigating. Public education is just over one hundred years old. It was designed for a world that no longer exists. Prior to this era of education, an education was process based learning. Look at what I do and copy me. Experiential learning. Developing the skills on the job, the apprentice learning from the master. The learning followed the gaps in the community. Farming was responsible for a large part of the work force, the skills were diverse, focusing on solving the problems of food production. Cottage industries created clothing, boots, bakeries, carpentry, candlemakers for the community. Apprentices were usually family members taking on the craft, learning the process of knowledge and skill acquisition in order to solve a problem and provide a service. It is important to recognise here that the community had agency over what they saw as important learning for their community. With the advent of industrialisation and the establishment of factories, this was all about to change.

There was a specific need to train and upskill a large number of people to work the factories of the industrial era. To achieve this goal they looked to a model of learning where an instructor would teach the necessary knowledge and skills to complete a specific task. The “content” of this task would be broken down into a series of steps (a “process”) for the worker to follow. All that was required was for the worker to follow the step by step process, mimic the actions, learn the knowledge and the task would be completed. They would repeat this process until they were competent. Then they would take their place in the production line. In a factory there would be many production lines, many specific tasks, many step by step processes to learn, so much so that it would be impossible for all workers to know all the steps.

It is at this point three things happened which impacted the future of learning, firstly meaning was stripped from their learning, the big picture, the context, their purpose had been removed. Secondly, the knowledge, the skills, the tasks and processes were siloed and compartmentalised. The holistic approach to learning in their community has been dissected into bite sized, step by step tasks for use in an industrial setting. Thirdly, their agency over learning was removed. No longer did they decide what had to be done for their work day, the decision was made for them. This system of task focused mass learning technique became the precursor of modern education. It was the solution to a problem that 19th century western society was facing. In the 21st century content-based learning presents more problems for our society as it tries to adapt to the fast paced changes we are currently experiencing. The merits of a process-based learning framework when society is confronted with uncertainty and fast paced change will be discussed at a later time, as it has value when confronting issues such as the one being discussed here.

KNOWLEDGE ARCHITECTURE

Knowledge and the architecture that it inhabits is inherently unstable, by this I mean it changes, as new discoveries are made, new insights are formed, the knowledge architecture accommodates it, building on it in a manner that can be seamless or ad hoc. Planning curriculum under these conditions using the content-based curriculum model leaves it prone to abuse by ruling parties by giving undue attention to and learning around literacy and numeracy, whitewashing colonial history, creationism versus evolution are a few examples where curriculum content shaped by politicians and think tanks (New Zealand Institute) with their own agenda, will influence social outcomes. Whereas critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity and innovation, as well as entrepreneurship are all sidelined by politicians as “nice to have” and “we want them to happen”, but are resistant, perhaps even ignorant as to how to go about it. This is a big part of the systemic problem that education faces. It’s very hard to create a better system, when our politicians’ only experience of it is the one we all went through.

Einstein said that “You cannot solve the problems of today with the same level of thinking that created them”. Hence we are caught in an education loop of sorts (like when movie studios run out of ideas, they remake old movies). Politicians don’t know, so they rehash the same political rhetoric: failing school grades, more literacy and numeracy. It’s been done this way since I was at school, nigh on 50 years ago, and yet we have Education Minister Erica Stanford delivering her Knowledge-rich, back to grades A-E on the claims that employers and parents don’t understand the NCEA grading system.

I’ve been teaching technology curriculum for almost 40 years in all education sectors across Aotearoa and Australia. One thing I have experienced is that all national curriculums are not the same. Technology in school curriculum around the world comes in many forms, such as wood work, metal work, cooking, home science, sewing, industrial arts, technical drawing, material science, mechanics, design, computer science are interpretations that governments make in order to meet social and vocational needs. However in Aotearoa/New Zealand they interpreted technology as “Knowledge of Process”. As such the technological process, as applied to problem solving and the design of a solution, shifted the focus from learning content to learning a process. The process remains unchanged, whether you are in year 1, or year 4, or in year 7 or in year 13. It is the depth of knowledge, application of competent skills and the management of resources to design a solution. Therefore technological practice is a good place to learn about knowledge integrity. Understanding this relationship is the reason technology curriculum is resilient to the turmoil and upheaval that society faces, because problem solving has always been the solution to our survival and growth.

Historically, technology was the first curriculum, it was around long before languages, mathematics and contributed to the establishment of scientific, geological and geographical knowledge, as well as the development of skills to shape, form and join materials. The Architecture of Knowledge, its epistemology has its roots in a world shaped by technological process, a process aimed at survival, problem solving and incremental improvements in the quality of life.

Consider the implications of the historical development of technological solutions and its contribution to knowledge architecture. The development of the first stone tools which took place over hundreds and thousands of years developed knowledge about the type of stones to use, their location and the process (skills) to shape and form them. This answers the first question “Where does knowledge come from?” Within this context the knowledge has to have utility. In regard to the second question “How do we know the knowledge is trustworthy?”. The answer is in the solution. Did the knowledge contribute towards solving the problem? For those that know their prehistory, the stone they used was obsidian, a volcanic glass-like rock that when knapped, creates razor sharp edges. This knowledge was essential to preserve. Remember it took hundreds and thousands of years and countless trial and error processes in order for the knowledge to be tested and trustworthy. Not all rocks and stones would be suitable. It had to be obsidian. Once the knowledge was deemed trustworthy it had to be stored for future generations. How would this take place?

TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE & CREATION MYTHS

As technological development evolved and the knowledge architecture increased. With each new insight, new knowledge would be required to be communicated. Language would have evolved alongside as the need to store and transmit this knowledge would be essential. This brings us to the idea of traditional knowledge and its value in modern education and society.

When I teach design with my senior students, we explore creation myths with a focus on the Māori myth of creation. Embedded in this story, and all creation stories is traditional knowledge that serves to retain and pass down essential knowledge to the next generations. These stories were the analogue version of hard drives for an analogue society. By exploring creation stories we can thread together the essential, trustworthy knowledge of ancient societies. One of the key insights I have come to understand is that creation stories follow the same path, chaos to order, the void to light. They all address shared understanding of the problem solving process, the technological literacy that modern technology curriculum teaches. This problem solving process was personified through the Gods and the stories of the culture. It was only in the 1980s that this problem solving process was given a name: Design Thinking. This process identified six key steps: Empathy, Define, Ideation, Prototype & Testing, Iteration, Implementation and Ripples. This is what I teach students of Design and Technology. However, all creation stories embody these exact steps.

Consider the graphic below of the Māori Creation story. Each stage of the myth aligns with the design thinking process. The Void is the chaos arising from the problem. To sit with the problem and consider its impact on the world requires empathy. The Night is defining the problem, recognising the root cause and boundaries of the problem. Ideation is where the children all present possible solutions. Prototyping and testing is to create a working model of the solution, Iteration is changing and modifying the solution weathering the storms of trial and error, and Implementation is its short term and long term effect and impact on the world.

At each stage knowledge and skills are applied to develop the solution. If the knowledge is trustworthy, authentic to the problem, the solution will be revealed. For this process to be embodied into a creation myth narrative, across all cultures illustrates how valuable this problem solving process was for societies. The nature of the creation myths across cultures show diversity of characters, environments and events used to convey the narrative of problem solving. The traditional knowledge these myths offer us is that history shows technological practice and problem solving are essential to our survival and growth. If an argument was to be made for how our education system should work for the 21st century, then the elements of the creation myths serve as a traditional foundational starting point to build from.

INDUSTRIALISATION OF LEARNING

Industrialisation and Western Imperialism established the modern education system at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It is a little over 100 years old. The industrialists wanted workers for their factories. They did not want a nation of thinkers, they wanted a nation of workers. Imperialism, by its very nature, would dismiss creation stories and traditional knowledge for specialist knowledge and skills. From these values, the factory monitorial system of education came into being, and shaped modern western education. This became known as content-based learning and drives modern education as we know it today. Timetables, bells, exams, streamed classes, teacher as the knowledge wielder, sage on the stage all shape the learning environment. Our capacity to navigate a complex world with increasing problems using this model of learning will indiscriminately limit our society’s ability to survive and grow.

Content based learning works well when society is stable, clear employment pathways and predictable outcomes. This was evident in western culture after the second world war into the early 1980’s. The prosperity of the age was a combined result of the education system and how it contributed to the industrial and economic system of the time. It focused on, and was effective in, delivering knowledge and skill capabilities for employment in society. Preservation of the status quo controls and shapes breadth and depth of learning and what is being taught.

When society is in a state of flux, where the status quo starts to break apart, becomes unstable, unpredictable and under constant pressure to change, navigating a sea of problems requires a different set of knowledge and skills, including competent problem solving, critical thinking and decision making. Understanding our motivations and ”Why?”, through the lens of empathy (another overlooked attribute that is sorely lacking in our western culture), is essential for a society’s survival. Societies have always been under threat of succumbing to the slow chaos of constant change. Modern society is no different. It may be more interconnected, more complex, creating more problems, but historically every society had a choice between renewal and growth or decline and death.

Those cultures who used creation stories to store the essential learning, authentic knowledge and the capabilities to survive and thrive are still around. Those societies that no longer exist, the creation stories that preserved their essential learning and authentic knowledge are unknown, lost in the analogue time of history. Easter Island is an example of this. There was a society living on the island. They built statues. Then they disappeared. The environment was left barren. Their creation myth may see the land and its resources as forever abundant. They eat, build, and keep warm without considering the slow depletion of their food and resources. Populations dwindle. Eventually the society is gone. Their knowledge architecture was incomplete or suffered at the hands of misinformation.

Unfortunately Western society suffers at the hands of a myth of an industrialised society and growth model economy that strives to deliver democracy, freedom and private ownership as the ideal outcome. It is sold as equal opportunity for all, but decision making is firmly in the hands of a powerful few. There is no desire from politicians to overhaul a system of learning that has placed them where they are today. The system of education that preserves the status quo is what we have at the moment, content based learning.

As I’ve stated earlier, content based learning is prone to manipulation and control. We are seeing this with our current NZ government introducing a “knowledge-rich” curriculum, with an emphasis in the senior school on vocational training and skill development for industry. In the 1950’s the job market and economy was growing. In 2026, the job market is shrinking, as are manufacturing and traditional vocational pathways. This has created bottlenecks of students trying to enter the workforce. The education system, by not acknowledging its role in creating this problem, makes it difficult to initiate change. Students have no agency over their learning, communities have little influence.

KNOWLEDGE OF PROCESS

This is why having a process based learning, design thinking, technological literacy and problem solving as an educational framework is effective in resolving social problems. This is what the creation stories tell us. The story is the process, and when you have a problem it is the knowledge of ‘process’ that gives you a solution. It is the reason societies evolved and survived, it empowers, increases capability, cuts through misinformation, learning about processes and systems, the very architecture that keeps powerful people in control, is perhaps a key reason why it’s such a threat to the status quo and the class of people in control. A problem solving process based educational framework would create a generation of students who would use this knowledge against them, giving them the agency and means to overthrow their oppressors and create a truly good world for their communities.

Can education be revolutionary at a personal level? Absolutely. Can it be revolutionary at a societal level? Absolutely, but it requires systemic change. For this to happen requires politicians who truly want to empower their citizens, which requires giving away more control. The actions of current government leaders would suggest they would rather not concede more control to the people, so education policy timetravels back to the post war society with grades A-E, vocational emphasis, whitewashing of colonialism and exam based outcomes, back to a time in the good ol’ days of education where all information and knowledge was screened by gatekeepers. This brings to mind a quote you may have already know:

“In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” Eric Hoffer.

Creation myths, stories and the design thinking process has been the dominant learning narrative for the past two million years. They were passed down by word of mouth. From person to person. The meaning was still embedded into the story, keeping it rich and alive. As such, it has shaped and formed the knowledge architecture that we know today. The irony about modern education and its emphasis on literacy is to recognise that at one point in history, with the invention of writing, there became a disconnect to the knowledge of process being experienced and learned, the story being told with the knowledge of “the process” being written down for later learning. The purpose and meaning had been stripped away from knowledge and practice, becoming just written content, dead on a page. Is it knowledge-rich? Is it useful? Does it have utility? Is it relevant? We will not know until it is applied to a real world authentic problem to be solved. Eight thousand years later, we still stand at this place today, as educators.

In this time society has progressed, western society chooses the untested path of a content based knowledge rich learning system, and in the space of just over one hundred years, cracks appear, problems are being revealed, social progress is stagnating and delivering education for a world that no longer exists.

We can continue trying to tick all the boxes, shuffle around the timetable, try different approaches and contexts to literacy and numeracy, again, manage plagiarism, the use of A.I., misinformation, set and mark exams to regurgitate our understanding that is required of a content-based learning framework, or we could problem solve our way forward with a process based learning framework that has students collaborate, build utilitarian knowledge architecture through integrated learning across curricula, fail, build resilience and work at solving real world problems within their own communities with an entrepreneurial spirit that takes ownership over their own learning.

Traditional knowledge of the creation myths shines a light on the narrative path of what is required of education for a society to survive and grow. Technological literacy requires us to understand systems, and when they are not working efficiently and effectively, prototyping better systems is required. When our education system is capable of the erasure of culture, delivering mis or dis information, or restricting access to local knowledge, it is a reflection of the political system responsible for managing it.

The educational framework that we choose to develop will influence and shape the society that we want. Leaders of western society will be required to “check their mindset” and recognise the value of traditional knowledge in education, or suffer its demise.

THE TENSION BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

I tell a story to all my students, one where we live in two worlds. The first world is the Real world, the one we all wake to and experience every day. In this world is the Sea of Problems. As Solutionaries, we need to be able to navigate this sea with its social, environmental, economic and technical problems. This is the world “as it is.” Then there is the Quality world, where all the good things are, the people we love and connect to, the places we visit, the interests we engage in and the values we hold close. This is the world “as you want it to be”, the Sea of Solutions. A problem is the tension that occurs between these two worlds. Everyone has different tensions in their worlds, different problems. The solution is to act. However the key question here is “When do I act?” The answer is simple, as soon as it starts to impact your Quality world. As students or ākonga of technology, they are learning how to develop their locus of control to act. This is the effect of what technological literacy can do in my classroom. I see the success of my students. I see their confidence grow. I see how they step up to solving problems. How they see themselves as “Solutionaries”. I can see and extrapolate how it would look across the school, the community and greater society.

It’s not just resolving the dilution of knowledge, knowledge integrity or bicultural elements within the current educational framework. Because then there is A.I., a changing work force, economic and social inequality, climate change all converging towards this crux point in the future. If a society’s knowledge architecture (education) is not resilient in how it is structured and applied to social and environmental change, then history has few pages on those civilisations that failed in their ability to respond to the change around them. They failed in the response-ability.

If we are going to resolve these problems, we have to ask some serious questions such as “Is the current educational framework ‘fit for purpose.’ in navigating an uncertain future?” In other words, is our Quality world being negatively impacted by our education system? If so then the bigger question for all of us, as a community of learners and educators, is “What does education look like in our Quality world?”. For this answer I would look to the traditional knowledge of indigenous creation myths and legends as applied to solving problems.

By Andrew R. Bowen

HoD Technology

Kings High School - Dunedi

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Register here!

• Event: Launch – A Vision for Education in Aotearoa New Zealand

• Date & Time: Thursday, 20 August 2026, 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM NZST

• Location: University of Auckland Arts & Education Building (Building 201), 10 Symonds Street, Auckland CBD

• Details: Features a networking breakfast followed by a presentation of the AEC report by Dr. Claire Coleman, alongside an online address by international education leader Anthony Mackay AM.

Safer Classrooms Require Better Support, Not a Return to Outdated Behaviour Policies

The Aotearoa Educators Collective agrees with one important point raised in the current debate about student behaviour: Teachers and principals are desperate for greater support. However, ACT’s policy will not provide effective solutions; it is poorly informed.

Across New Zealand, educators are increasingly supporting children with complex behavioural, developmental, disability and mental health needs while specialist services struggle to meet demand. Teachers deserve safe classrooms, and every child deserves the opportunity to learn in an environment where they feel safe, connected and supported.

However, the solution is not to return to behaviour management approaches that research has repeatedly shown are least effective for the children with the greatest needs. Over the past thirty years, advances in developmental neuroscience have fundamentally changed our understanding of children’s behaviour. When children experience chronic stress, trauma, neglect, developmental differences or overwhelming sensory experiences, the lower regions of the brain responsible for survival become dominant while the higher cortical regions responsible for reasoning, impulse control, emotional regulation and learning become significantly less accessible. “A dysregulated child cannot be reasoned with until they are regulated.” – Bruce Perry. Punishment may suppress behaviour temporarily, but it does not build the neurological capacity for self-regulation. This should no longer be a philosophical, nor a political debate. It is neuroscience.

Teachers are asking for:

• increased resourcing for teacher aide support in every class and additional staffing where complexity is greatest;

• timely access to occupational therapists, psychologists, speech-language therapists and specialist behaviour support;

• professional learning in neuroscience, co-regulation and effective de-escalation;

• education policy informed by contemporary evidence rather than assumptions developed decades ago.

The safest classrooms are not created through stronger punishments. They are created by understanding how children’s brains develop, addressing the causes of dysregulated behaviour, and equipping schools with the resources needed to intervene early and effectively.

Event - A Vision for Education in Aotearoa New Zealand AEC report launch

Join the Aotearoa Educators Collective for the launch of A Vision for Education in Aotearoa New Zealand, written by Dr Claire Coleman on behalf of the Collective.

Thursday, 20 August, 8:30am - 10am at the University of Auckland Arts & Education Building - Building 201

The morning will begin with a networking breakfast at 8.30am, followed by a presentation from Dr Coleman exploring the report’s vision for a more equitable, connected and enduring education system.

We will also be joined online by internationally respected education leader Anthony Mackay AM, former CEO and current Board Chair of the Washington DC-based National Center on Education and the Economy. Anthony is Deputy Chancellor of Swinburne University, an Honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne and a Visiting Professor at the University of Greater Manchester.

Anthony will share his insights into how the vision aligns with the thinking and direction of leading education jurisdictions around the world, and why developing a shared long-term vision matters for the future of education in Aotearoa.

Come along to connect with educators, leaders, researchers and others who care deeply about the future of our education system.

Be part of the conversation. Get your tickets here.

Event - AEC Happy Hour

A monthly online get-together for people who want to be part of professional dialogue. Join us on 27 August 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm.

The Problem? For a range of reasons, educators are not engaging in professional discussion and critique of education policy and politics. We are keen to provide a platform for small group conversation about what is going on in education. Just want to listen? - there is space for you, got lots to say? - there is space for you.

People can register through our flash new Zoom account.

Discussions will be book-club style, aiming for around 10 people per breakout room.

Get a sense of the discussion by checking out our one-pager of background reading.

How you can help

Help fund our work, join our Substack as a paid member.

We want to work alongside people to create content for the Substack. You do not need to agree with everything the Collective has said. But we do want to create a place for wide-reaching professional discussion. You can see more info here.

Become a collective member. Be listed on our website as a collective member and help build this movement.

In the Media

Substack Summary

Here is the list of the published posts from July 2026 on the Aotearoa Educators Collective (AEC) Substack:

• Tuesday, 28 July 2026 – Afterschool Special: Phase 5 Consultation Learning Languages Live with Claire Coleman – Read Article

• Sunday, 26 July 2026 – School Briefs: SMART Reports offer no clarity, New ERO reports start to roll out – Read Article

• Saturday, 18 July 2026 – Sunday Read: A Not-So-New Science of Reading – Read Article

• Tuesday, 14 July 2026 – The SMART Tool Reports Are Out! Now With 100% More 1995 MS Paint Energy - not kidding – Read Article

• Monday, 13 July 2026 – School readiness isn’t the finish line. It’s the starting point for life – Read Article

• Sunday, 12 July 2026 – Education Isn’t What You Think It Is – Read Article

• Saturday, 11 July 2026 – Sunday Read: Four futures for senior secondary qualifications in Aotearoa – Read Article

• Thursday, 9 July 2026 – Collective Matters #20 – Read Article

• Sunday, 5 July 2026 – Early childhood education is a public good – Read Article

• Sunday, 5 July 2026 – School Briefs: SMART Reports launch, Attacks on ECE teachers, Term Break reading list – Read Article

• Saturday, 4 July 2026 – The Curriculum Is Coming. The Questions Remain – Read Article

• Thursday, 2 July 2026 – A Programme Is Not a System – Read Article

Education in Aotearoa is at a critical juncture. There is lots of change going on and the speed in which it happens can create restrictions of educators, as professionals to lift their head above the change and to understand, thinking, share, and critquite what happening and what are the underlying assumptions, values, and motivations.

AEC wants to give this platform to educators.

Creating Space for the Conversations That Matter

We are hosting an online AEC Happy Hour - a dedicated, open space for educators across all sectors (ECE, primary, secondary, and beyond) to connect, share ideas, and engage in the conversations that matter most. These are not going to be large gatherings, they are going to be small group book club style discussions of about 10-15 people.

This online discussion isn’t about sitting back and listening to a lecture; it’s about opening up the floor. This month we will be discussing:

• Do we trust the governing bodies of the teaching profession?

• Connecting the curriculum to the citizens we need.

• ECE should be about education, not care.

Whether you’re classroom teacher, a school leader, an ECE practitioner, or simply someone who cares deeply about the future of learning, your voice and experience are needed.

Worried that you wont have anything to contribute? No need, these hui are set up for you to be either a contributor or observer of the discussion, there is not pressure to be involved.

Event Details & How to Join

• Date & Time: 27 August @7pm

• Format: Online via Zoom (Grab a coffee, tea, or drink and drop in!)

• Background Reading: Check out this one pager prior to joining

• Registration Link: Click here to register on Zoom

Once you register, you will receive a confirmation email containing details about joining the meeting.

We look forward to seeing you there and starting these important conversations together!

There are moments in public policy when the stars align. A problem is identified, evidence is gathered, the people closest to the work are asked what they think and, remarkably, they give a reasonably clear answer.

We appear to have arrived at one of those moments.

The newly published NZCER Secondary teachers’ perspectives from the 2025 national survey has landed, and buried among its 80 pages is a finding that is awkwardly difficult to massage into something else: 71% of secondary teachers agree that NCEA should be improved rather than removed, with 45% strongly agreeing. The survey included 830 teachers from 126 schools, with responses broadly representative by school Equity Index, area and region.

Secondary Teachers' Perspectives From The 2025 National Survey [full Report]

2.54MB ∙ PDF file

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Not 71% saying NCEA is perfect. Not 71% demanding that we lovingly preserve every credit-counting quirk, every labyrinthine standard and every feature of a qualification that has accumulated twenty years of educational barnacles.

Seventy-one percent saying, quite simply, improve it rather than remove it.

This may sound strangely familiar.

Almost a year ago, the Aotearoa Educators Collective launched a petition called Save NCEA: Strengthen, Don’t Replace It. Its argument was hardly revolutionary. NCEA has problems. Fix them. Align it properly with the new senior curriculum. Review the standards. Improve coherence. Address credit accumulation. Retain the flexibility that allows schools to respond to different learners and different pathways. Do the difficult work of improving something rather than the considerably more expensive work of demolishing it and starting again.

At the time of writing, that petition has 7,472 signatures. Its central request remains that the Government stop the replacement process and instead work with educators, students, whānau and industry to strengthen and future-proof NCEA.

It turns out this was not merely the fever dream of a few nostalgic NCEA enthusiasts.

NZCER asked teachers. The teachers answered. And they did not stop at 71%.

Sixty-eight percent said they were concerned the proposed replacement would limit learning opportunities and pathways for students in their schools. Only 24% agreed that the proposed Year 12 and Year 13 qualifications were heading in the right direction, while 44% disagreed. Perhaps most concerningly, only 16% thought the proposed changes would reduce existing inequities in student outcomes, compared with 54% who disagreed.

The qualitative comments are equally difficult to misunderstand. One teacher described the reform as being “‘done to’ rather than ‘done with’”. Another, after acknowledging some of NCEA’s shortcomings, asked the remarkably sensible question: “why not just modify the NCEA?”

There is, of course, a legitimate case for reform. The Government has argued that NCEA can lack coherence, that its flexibility can allow students to accumulate unrelated credits and that qualifications should communicate more clearly what students know and can do. Teachers themselves identified some of those problems in the NZCER survey. This is not an argument for freezing NCEA in amber circa 2025.

It is an argument about what we do next.

Because there is an important distinction between identifying problems with a qualification and demonstrating that those problems require an entirely new qualification system. The NZCER findings suggest that classroom teachers, who will eventually have to teach the curriculum, interpret the standards, design programmes, assess students and explain the resulting qualifications to whānau, are far from convinced that replacement is the answer.

Which brings us to one of the Minister of Education’s favourite and, in principle, entirely admirable themes: listening to the sector.

In October last year, when curriculum implementation timelines were changed, Erica Stanford said: “We’ve heard from the sector and we’ve listened.” She went further, saying the Government was “listening to principals’ and teachers’ needs”. (The Beehive)

Excellent. Here is another opportunity.

Possibly an even better one, because this time nobody needs to organise a roundtable, commission another advisory group or undertake an extensive nationwide listening tour. NZCER has done the listening. The results have been tabulated. There are graphs. There are percentages. There is even a particularly helpful bar in Figure 15 showing 71% of respondents sitting on the “please improve the thing we already have” side of the ledger.

And kudos where kudos is due, in recent weeks we have heard both the Green’s Lawrence Xu-Nan state that they are committed to strengthening NCEA not replacing it, and similarly we have heard Labour’s Ginny Anderson state that if elected they would be open to doing similar. That is what listening looks like.

And the wider findings reinforce the message. Seventy-two percent of teachers disagreed that the curriculum changes were proceeding at an appropriate pace. Seventy-six percent disagreed that there had been sufficient engagement with the teaching profession. When teachers were asked what they would most like changed about their work, the number-one answer, selected by 71%, was reducing the pace of change or the number of initiatives happening at once.

One would have to work quite hard to interpret all of this as a cry for an additional national qualifications system to be designed, developed, trialled and implemented simultaneously. More importantly, changing course is still possible.

Yes, the Government has announced its intention to replace NCEA. But the Ministry itself describes the qualification work as being in its early design stages. In March it said the detailed design would now get underway, with the new system phased in from 2028: the Foundational Award first, followed by the Year 12 qualification in 2029 and Year 13 in 2030. (Ministry of Education)

Meanwhile, the Phase 5 Years 11–13 curriculum is still being finalised. Three major rounds of subject consultation have only just concluded, with the third closing on 3 August. The Ministry says all feedback will be considered before the final senior curriculum is published later this year. (New Zealand Curriculum)

This is therefore not a case of discovering halfway through implementation that the profession disagrees with the destination. We are still building the road.

There is an extraordinary opportunity here for the Minister to demonstrate what genuine consultation actually means. Consultation is not simply the process of asking people what they think before proceeding with the original plan. Nor is listening demonstrated by producing a summary of feedback and explaining why everyone who disagreed has unfortunately misunderstood the proposal.

Sometimes listening means changing your mind.

The Minister could take the NZCER findings seriously, act on the Phase 5 feedback now arriving from subject communities and pause the qualification replacement work. She could retain the strongest aspects of NCEA while addressing the concerns that prompted reform in the first place: coherence, consistency, curriculum alignment, credit accumulation, assessment load and the clarity of what a qualification represents.

She could even call it a strengthening programme. We promise not to complain about the branding.

There would be something politically refreshing about a Minister saying: “we proposed a substantial change, we consulted, we have now received strong independent evidence from the teachers who will have to make it work and we have adjusted our approach’.

Wouldn’t this be a great example of evidence-informed policymaking functioning more or less as advertised.

AEC said many months ago that the choice was not between the status quo and wholesale replacement. More than 7,000 people have since put their names behind that proposition. Now the NZCER national survey has reached much the same conclusion from a substantial sample of secondary teachers.

So perhaps the most radical education reform available to the Government in 2026 is also the simplest. Listen to them.

Strengthen NCEA. Don’t replace it.

Join the Aotearoa Educators Collective for the launch of A Vision for Education in Aotearoa New Zealand, written by Dr Claire Coleman on behalf of the Collective.

Thursday, 20 August, 8:30am - 10am at the University of Auckland Arts & Education Building - Building 201

The morning will begin with a networking breakfast at 8.30am at the University of Auckland, followed by a presentation from Dr Coleman exploring the report’s vision for a more equitable, connected and enduring education system.

We will also be joined online by internationally respected education leader Anthony Mackay AM, former CEO and current Board Chair of the Washington DC-based National Center on Education and the Economy. Anthony is Deputy Chancellor of Swinburne University, an Honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne and a Visiting Professor at the University of Greater Manchester.

Anthony will share his insights into how the report aligns with the thinking and direction of leading education jurisdictions around the world, and why developing a shared long-term vision matters for the future of education in Aotearoa.

Come along to connect with educators, leaders, researchers and others who care deeply about the future of our education system.

Be part of the conversation.

Secure your FREE ticket here