Michael Johnston: The path toward a more content-rich curriculum

If children don’t learn sufficient numeracy at primary level, the path to success in maths and science at secondary school is closed. Not learning to read and write closes off the path to almost everything. Photo / 123rf, File

OPINION

The curriculum is a blueprint for what we teach in our schools. It should provide a framework for teachers to guide young people through the school system.

It should provide detailed indicators, so teachers can clearly identify who is on track, and who needs additional assistance.

It should also ensure the domain of knowledge that we expect all of our schools to teach is adequately covered.

New Zealand’s curriculum hardly qualifies as such a framework. It’s threadbare. There is very little detail to help teachers guide students.

This is a problem, both for the teaching of core skills like literacy and numeracy at primary level, and for disciplinary subjects like English, mathematics, history and science at secondary level.

The lack of specificity in the curriculum means that teachers must spend more time developing content than they should have to.

Even more seriously, the actual content taught varies widely across schools. Regrettably, there is nothing national about the New Zealand Curriculum.

The problems don’t end there.

Instead of clear guidance for each school year, the curriculum is divided into three-year bands. That makes it difficult for teachers, let alone parents, to tell whether or not a student is on track.

Another problem is that the curriculum includes a distraction, called the “key competencies”. These are things like “managing self” and “relating to others”. They don’t need to be in the curriculum because they don’t need to be taught directly.

Personal responsibility and social skills are acquired through interacting with others in a community. Schools should be set up to foster this kind of knowledge. An orderly and respectful school environment fosters interpersonal skills.

But trying to teach this kind of knowledge directly isn’t effective. It doesn’t need to be in the curriculum.

Our curriculum over-emphasises knowledge that doesn’t need to be taught and underspecifies knowledge that does.

It’s hopelessly vague when it comes to signposts for students’ progress. Not all professors of education agree that the curriculum needs reform, though.

Writing in Newsroom, Professor Peter O’Connor criticises National’s recently-announced curriculum policy. He says that the intention to beef up the curriculum in the areas of literacy, numeracy and science would make it “dull and narrow”.

In another recent column, in the Herald, former York University Professor David Cooke defends three-year achievement bands in the curriculum on the grounds that children acquire knowledge at different rates.

Both professors’ arguments are straw men.

In response to O’Connor, I say that there’s nothing duller and more narrowing for a child than being at school and not learning. He seems to have overlooked that far too many of our young people, especially those from poorer communities, are leaving school without basic adult levels of literacy and numeracy.

If children don’t learn sufficient numeracy at primary level, the path to success in mathematics and science at secondary school is closed off. Not learning to read and write closes off the path to almost everything.

Far from “narrowing” the curriculum, a focus on “the basics” at primary school, is what opens the curriculum up later on. Besides, National’s policy for two hours per day to be spent teaching literacy and numeracy still leaves about three hours for art, music, P.E., science and more.

As for Cooke’s argument that yearly progress markers assume all children will learn at the same rate, yearly curriculum expectations provide a mechanism to identify students who are falling behind, so that they can receive the additional teaching and support they need.

Obviously, not all students learn at the same rate, which is precisely why schools need clearer specification of the learning goals for each year.

The Ministry of Education has recently produced a “refreshed” curriculum, due to be introduced in 2026. So far, only drafts of the English and mathematics curricula are available. These documents include a little more content than in the current curriculum, but still not nearly enough.

The three-year bands remain, as do the key competencies.

What schools need is a curriculum that focuses on the core knowledge that is every New Zealander’s birthright.

It must be specified in enough detail for teachers to be able to take a reasonably consistent approach across the country.

It must include enough information about what is expected every year for schools to be able to identify students who are falling behind and help them to catch up.

Michael Johnston. Photo / Supplied, File

Does that mean that all students will progress at the same rate? Of course, it doesn’t.

It does provide an opportunity, though, to reduce some of the appalling gaps between the highest and poorest achieving students. It is those students who are served worst by the curriculum’s lack of specificity.

This approach has been called “tired”, “cliched”, “right-wing” and ‘ideological’. But it’s hard to see why wanting every child in New Zealand to have an equal chance to succeed at school is any of these things.

Any assertion that such a curriculum would be dull and narrow confuses curriculum with teaching.

The curriculum simply specifies the knowledge that is to be learned. It’s our teachers who bring it to life.

A high-quality curriculum would be an enormous support to teachers, especially those early in their careers. It would free their time to explore ways to teach engagingly and effectively, and provide clear indications of which students need more help.

- Michael Johnston is a senior fellow at the New Zealand Initiative and author of Cutting Through: A Manifesto for Rescuing New Zealand’s Failing School System.