Principals don't believe recent significant changes to the new maths curriculum were based on teacher feedback. File photo. Photo: Unsplash/ Taylor Flowe
The release of draft primary and intermediate school curriculums has prompted a revolt by the Principals Federation, and criticism from some subject associations.
Critics say the draft curriculum documents for six learning areas published overnight are old fashioned, sideline Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Māori knowledge, and appear to be written by foreign contractors rather than by New Zealanders.
They covered science, technology, social sciences, learning languages, the arts, and health and physical education. The new English and maths curriculums were introduced by primary and intermediate schools at the start of the year, although the maths curriculum was significantly rewritten last week.
Principals Federation president Leanne Otene said the release and last week's major revision of the newly-introduced maths curriculum had pushed her members over the edge.
"I wouldn't say we're on the verge of revolt, I think we've passed that to be quite frank," she said.
"The words that are coming through in my emails are 'disgusted', 'just absolutely ridiculous'. It's past being disappointed, it's past being even surprised to be honest. It's now to the point where it's like 'you're ruining our education'. We've lost total trust."
Otene said she did not believe recent significant changes to the new maths curriculum were based on teacher feedback and the federation did not trust the ministry to collate and act on teachers' feedback on the draft curriculums.
She said the federation would do the job itself and provide the results to the ministry, so it could be sure it knew what teachers wanted to change.
Otene said Te Mataiaho, the document that underpinned the entire curriculum, had been written in a manner that sidelined the Treaty of Waitangi.
"Inclusion and giving effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi have long been foundational principles in our uniquely New Zealand curriculum. Now they are not even core expectations, making this feel like a foreign document," Otene said.
Whakaari Aotearoa Drama NZ president Annette Thomson said the draft arts curriculum paid lip-service to Māori arts and knowledge.
"It is devoid of meaningful indigenous knowledge. All the little bits about te ao haka are referenced under dance or drama or performance, not grounded, put at the bottom of the of the column - so really devoid of meaningful indigenous knowledge. So it's clearly not been written by New Zealanders and certainly not in a partnership as it should be under the Education Act, with tangata whenua and tangata tiriti," she said.
Thomson said the result was a curriculum that did not reflect the students it was written for.
Overall, she said the draft was a huge step backward that showed a complete misunderstanding of the arts in education.
She said the draft lumped dance and drama together as performing arts, and assumed their sole role was to prepare students to be performers, ignoring skills such as teamwork and understanding of others.
"It basically narrows and deprioritizes our rich development of drama and teaching through the arts. It shows a really gross misunderstanding of what the arts and drama are, especially at the primary and intermediate school level. We are not training actors, we're not training people to perform."
The Ministry of Education said it would listen to arts and drama teachers as it worked to finalise its controversial curriculum changes.
The Ministry said it met with arts teachers, including those in drama and dance, on Wednesday to hear their thoughts and wants to keep working with them to shape the final version.
"The arts continues to be an essential learning area in the national curriculum, and the draft content for Years 0-10 supports students to engage with a wide range of forms, genres and experiences," deputy secretary at Te Poutāhū Pauline Cleaver said.
Technology Education New Zealand chair Hamish Johnston told RNZ his initial impression of the draft technology curriculum was not positive.
"It's a major step backwards. In attempting to make it what they say is knowledge-rich, they're actually dropping a lot of knowledge that we currently teach and learn out of the curriculum."
He said the draft ignored teachers' recommendations and combined materials and processing technologies, which caused a loss of depth of learning.
Johnston said he was also worried the curriculum prescribed a set number of hours per week for each subject - eight for maths and English, and just four and a half for technology, arts, and health and PE.
Health Education Association chair Leigh Morgan said she was not sure that left enough time for teachers to get through everything they were expected to teaching in health and PE at primary and intermediate school.
She said the curriculum, like others, contained less matauranga Māori and, for the first time in decades, referred to sex education instead of relationships and sexuality.
Morgan said the curriculum mentioned "identity", leaving the door open for schools to teach about trans and other identities should they wish.
Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa said the Y0-10 draft health and physical education curriculum was regressive and fractured.
"If young people are not given evidence-based information on these topics in school, they will seek it from other sources (our recent young people's survey confirmed that) which is very concerning. This curriculum side-steps several critical issues, leaving kids with significant gaps in their education around these topics that have real world consequences for their individual lives and relationships," it said.
The organisation was concerned that consent education was the only mandatory component of the relationships and sexuality curriculum.
"All RSE information should be mandatory - not just consent. While consent is an important component of RSE, it needs to be taught and understood alongside other topics such as health relationships, sexual health, drug and alcohol use, and digital safety," it said.
The Educational Institute Te Riu Roa said the draft curriculums were rushed and euro-centric.
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