Union blows whistle on “secret” curriculum rewrites

Chris Abercrombie, president of the PPTA Te Wehengarua, has claimed that teachers are being deliberately excluded from curriculum changes and processes at the Ministry of Education.

The statement follows recent news that the English curriculum is being rewritten. Abercrombie says that the rewrite is being done by a “secret group” and specialist subject teachers have not been consulted.  

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In a press release, Abercrombie further states that the Curriculum Voices group – made up of key stakeholders who will give guidance and feedback to national curriculum changes – have had their last two meetings cancelled without reason.  

Together with the disbandment of the previous government’s Professional Advisory Group to the Minister on NCEA, Abercrombie says these events amount to a deliberate exclusion of teachers and educators from the curriculum changes. 

Rewriting the rewrites  

Following the coalition government’s formation, Minister for Education Erica Stanford established the Ministerial Advisory Group (MAG), which was tasked with reviewing the refreshed English and Maths learning areas.  

According to Pauline Cleaver, Associated Deputy Secretary of the Curriculum, Pathways & Progress team at the Ministry of Education, the MAG submitted its recommendations to Stanford in March. These recommendations are “helping [to] inform the Minister’s decisions for the direction of education.”  

New writing groups for the Maths and English curriculum refresh have also been appointed. Cleaver says these groups include teachers and kaiako, academics “and other people from the education sector with experience and expertise.

“Their work builds on the previous versions of the updated learning areas, which have already had wide input from the education sector.” 

Cleaver says that schools will be able to review and test draft curriculum content before it becomes compulsory.  

The MAG was appointed by the Minister, and includes several prominent members of the right-wing think tank the New Zealand Institute (NZI). The MAG’s appointment has been scrutinised by the education sector, which has criticised the lack of appointment process and the narrow range of views represented in the group.  

Back in April, Maurie Abraham, spokesperson for the Aotearoa Educators’ Collective (AEC) said “the current over reach of a small group of researchers at the expense of the wider professional and academic field is cause for concern. It is time that the professionals, the school leaders and the teachers were entrusted to lead the development and implementation of curriculum – they know their students and community the best.”  

More sector consultation needed, says union  

Despite the national implications of the MAG’s recommendations and the new writing groups, there has been no consultation process for the groups’ reports and the work has not been publicly released. 

Subject associations for specialist subject teachers have reportedly not been consulted in the rewriting process.  

Pip Tinning, President of the New Zealand Association of Teachers of English (NZATE) said that before the news of the English curriculum rewrite was made public on RNZ, the association had only been informed of a review, not a rewrite. On RNZ’s Nine to Noon, Tinning said:

“What’s majorly concerning is… the extent to which the rewrite has occurred so quickly with no discussion with us, an English association is problematic. The rhetoric around ‘expert curriculum design’ is strange because all the expert curriculum designers I know… aren’t involved at all. 

“It’s worrying that as an association we’ve had no communication.”

Abercrombie said he was “deeply disappointed and concerned” that Tinning found out about the rewrite via media contact.  

“For a Minister who claims to have great admiration and respect for teachers, choosing not to consult with the head of English subject specialist teachers about such a critical development, speaks volumes. 

“We are extremely concerned that if the Minister shuts teachers out of the change process, she risks being misled by people who hold views about education that are very much on the fringe and not representative of national of international effective practice.  

“We have serious concerns about the ability of some of these people to provide sound advice on national curriculum matters. They do not have recent teaching experience and they represent a tiny minority of conservative educationalists who want to take schools back to the last century. 

“We call on the Minister to have the courage of her convictions and publicly release the [MAG] report.”  

Erica Stanford responds 

In a Nine to Noon interview, Stanford denied that there were “secret groups” writing the curriculum and said that she’d like the sector to “come together, work together on implementation and getting the content right.

“In the end, the Ministry have used criteria that they’ve always used to pick people for a writing group that will be made public as soon as the comms go out.

Stanford clarified that the writing groups were selected separately from the MAG by the Ministry of Education and they had only just begun writing. 

Cleaver added “We will be meeting with the Curriculum Voices Group once the Minister has released timelines for the curriculum changes.”