Teachers at Te Kura o Tititea Mount Aspiring College (MAC) have been working hard to prepare for big changes as a result of a long-running NCEA curriculum review that began in 2018.MAC teachers are being upskilled and have been participating in trials in order for the college to be prepared for the changes, MAC principal Nicola Jacobsen told the Wānaka App.It is “a massive job” for individual schools to adapt to the new curriculum as it is developed, she said. The Ministry of Education and New Zealand schools are six years into the review, which is scheduled to be completed by 2027.MAC principal Nicola Jacobsen says “the most important thing is that the teacher knows the child”. PHOTO: SuppliedCurriculum changes underway The changes include what will be taught and in what sequence for each year of schooling, the teaching practices used in classrooms, and the assessment tools and practices used to monitor and respond to students’ progress. “The hardest thing for teachers is we’re working through a review process that’s been going on since 2018 and we want certainty,” she told the Wānaka App.The Ministry of Education has completed work on the history, social sciences, and maths curriculum - with the maths resources only arriving at the end of January 2025 - at the beginning of the school year. “There’s a lot of learning to do to ensure your current planning is meeting the requirements of the new curriculum,” Nicola said.MAC teachers have been “professional and practical” about it, she said, with heads of learning working quickly to get their teams on the same page.The school is still waiting for the rest of the curriculum - including science and English. A new English curriculum was expected this year, but the New Zealand Association of Teachers of English pulled out of the process after debates over whether traditional texts should take priority over modern, more diverse, texts.The new curriculum’s vision for learning places value on Te Ao Māori perspective. MAC teacher Raihania Chadwick pictured flax weaving with senior students. PHOTO: Wānaka AppPart of the proposed shift in the English curriculum is asking students to analyse the perspective taken in texts. “Those thinking skills are so critical in the world of social media kids live in,” Nicola said. “I would hope we can keep that variety and flexibility of choosing texts which are relevant to current events and the geopolitical landscape.” Professional development underway Each school is responsible for managing the curriculum change process, which includes best practice for teachers. For MAC, this means the senior leadership team coming up with a plan, and providing professional learning for teachers every Friday morning for 45 minutes. These sessions look at the changes to the curriculum, and the latest educational research on best practice. Staff professional development focuses on the new curriculum’s five pedagogies: Caring for learners and learning, connecting learning to each learner, building power-sharing partnerships, being urgent about progress, and designing for inclusion.“The most important thing is that the teacher knows the child,” Nicola said.Another outcome of the review will be a change in how students’ progress is reported to parents.Changes to assessment this year“Students [across the country] were being assessed too much,” Nicola said, and each school assessed differently - particularly for years 0 to 10.It was also assumed that all students progressed in the same way. Data shows, however, that progress for junior students is not the same for each subject.“Students will achieve differently in each subject, as their skills develop (for example, a student might make great progress with reading, but your other skills might not develop at the same pace). Having a two year progression, rather than a curriculum level, means that students have time to show how they are developing across skills,” she said.There are now developmental progressions (for MAC - years 7-8, years 9-10, and years 11-13), and for each progression, there is a set of statements for where a child should be at with their learning and achievement by the end of each stage.MAC’s reporting to parents will change this year, Nicola said, moving to measuring whether students are meeting expectations, exceeding expectations, or needing support.The refreshed report, which will be used during term 2, allows for subjects with a refreshed curriculum to report using the new curriculum requirements, as well as those subject areas whose curriculum has not yet been refreshed to report using the old requirements. A new vision for learningDespite all the challenges, Nicola said the new curriculum’s vision for learning “is fantastic”, with a focus on skills and capabilities, a strengthening of literacy and numeracy, placing value on the local curriculum as well as a Te Ao Māori perspective.“The vision is for students being ready, with strong skills in literacy and numeracy, skills in problem solving, and being creative thinkers,” she said.“It comes back to teachers role modelling the values. I spend a lot of time walking around classrooms talking to kids about their learning - what it is and why it’s important.”Nicola said MAC was still a few years away from knowing the impact that it will have on NCEA, but said the resources being provided for literacy and numeracy in years 7 and 8 “have been helpful in supporting the teaching and learning programmes for those students”.Find more information on the curriculum review here.
