With the 2025 school year now well underway, I wanted to provide an update on what is front of mind in our work programme this year and update you on the implementation of recent announcements and initiatives. Please feel free to forward this email wider to your staff.
First, I want to thank all of you who got in touch with my office in 2024, or the Ministry to pass on feedback and ideas, including what is important to you and your teachers. Your insights are critically important to helping us understand what you are experiencing in your schools and communities, and how we can continually work to optimise the services that the Ministry provide. I look forward to continuing to engage with you. Thank you to those in the Waikato and Hawke’s Bay who I caught up with recently at your respective principals’ forums! Feedback from our North Shore Primary Principals meeting meant we were able to make a small but important change to the Phonics Checks that was sorted within an hour.
Can I also thank those primary and intermediate principals who are leading the implementation of new learning areas in the curriculum this year. It has been inspiring being in classrooms this term seeing structured literacy approaches and maths in action. I know this has required focus, dedication and planning from your SLT and I hugely appreciate the effort from schools around New Zealand to introduce the refreshed curriculum. It has been great to hear feedback on the various components of the curriculum and resources. Over the coming months we will be working to finalise the drafts into gazetted curriculum areas. As I have always maintained, just make a start and we will provide you with support. We do not expect perfection on day one, I know accelerated learning will play a crucial role for many students this year and appreciate with a new curriculum it will be an ongoing process over several years. Our five year implementation plan gives you guidance on what will be available in future years.
Primary & Intermediate update: Maths resources
Our $30 million investment into high-quality maths workbooks, tactile resources and online supports is benefiting more than 433,000 students. There is currently enough stock from all four suppliers for schools to continue ordering resources for new students or to replace earlier orders. This can be done via Down The Back of The Chair. Later this year you will have the opportunity to re-order more resources for 2026 and subsequent years, so please use the resources you’ve received for 2025.
Some questions I received at a recent principals’ hui:
- Are these resources free every year? Yes!
- Can we change providers in 2026? Yes, you are the customer. We are expecting that most schools will have worked successfully with their chosen resource this year, but we want you to access the products and services that you think are best suited to your school community. Please consult with your regional curriculum advisor if you are considering a change before the end of Term 2
- Should students all use different books depending on their ability? We are encouraging a ‘whole class teaching model’ where all students benefit from teaching at their year level against the refreshed curriculum. Additional material (be it support or extension to provide differentiated learning) are best determined by you as the classroom teacher. Should you require a different workbook to support this then it is my expectation that you can order it through Down the Back of the Chair.
Intermediate and Secondary update: English curriculum & NCEA
The Ministry of Education has received informative feedback from a range of groups as they have worked to develop the Years 7-13 English learning area of the curriculum. To ensure the Ministry can provide you the best quality draft for consultation, they are working to have it ready for sector review by the end of this month.
While the consultation for mathematics and statistics (9-13), Te Reo Rangatira (7-13) and Pāngarau (9-13) will close as planned on 28 April, English (7–13) will close in mid-June. This will allow additional time for you to have your say on this learning area, and for the content to be finalised with your input ahead of it becoming official teaching from the start of 2026. It will also stage the feedback window for teachers that are considering both the English and mathematics and statistics (9-13) content.
This year we will strengthen NCEA to ensure it is a credible and coherent secondary qualification. I am awaiting advice from the Ministry who are working closely with my NCEA Policy Advisory Group of principals to develop a proposal for improving NCEA. Pending Cabinet agreement, we intend to consult on a proposal for NCEA in June-July.
To support schools to transition to the new literacy, numeracy, te reo matatini and pāngarau requirements the Ministry has contracted a provider (Evaluation Associates) to work with 172 schools (144 English-medium and 28 Māori medium rumaki) to provide targeted literacy, numeracy, te reo matatini and pāngarau support for students in years 9 – 11. Teacher release time has been made available for a couple of teachers in each school to provide small group targeted support for students yet to achieve meet the co-requisite requirements. Resources that will be made available online through webinars for all teachers to access for accelerating students’ progress to meet the NCEA co-requisite requirements. We had excellent feedback from the SPANZ executive about the delivery of this support. We’ve taken this onboard and made changes to the contract.
Further to this, each school with Year 12 students yet to gain the co-requisite is being contacted by regional office staff to share details of these students to enable a targeted support approach. A range of materials will also be shared with schools and kura. We want to do all we can to ensure these students gain the literacy and numeracy skills they need.
Staffing update: Resource Teachers: Literacy and Resource Teachers: Māori
Our Government is taking a strategic approach to considering which services to scale to create more equitable resourcing of our education system to deliver the best outcomes for children in the classroom. It is important that more supports get directly to the child. To do this, we are focusing on developing in-school expertise and scaling frontline services in classrooms. We also need to ensure that supports and services are equitably distributed and delivered efficiently across the system.
One of the services that we are considering reinvesting is the funding for Resource Teachers: Literacy and Resource Teachers: Māori as part of Budget 2025.
I want to be clear that I hugely value and appreciate the expertise of these highly-skilled staff and the impact that they have on both teachers and students. This proposal is about the delivery mechanism and not the capabilities of the individuals providing these services. Our goal is to ensure that this support and expertise are delivered efficiently and equitably, so that they get to the children who need them the most.
If we reinvest this funding, we can focus on ensuring expertise is closer to the child and have stronger frontline services for all students across English medium, Māori medium, and Kaupapa Māori education pathways. You will have seen our intention in action in our funding of targeted Structured Literacy teachers to work directly with students in Years 0 – 2, who need it most. We intend to do more of this and provide more support for our teachers to raise achievement and close the equity gap.
I value your feedback. Your thoughts will be considered as our government makes final decisions for our education initiatives for Budget 2025.
Learning support update: Targeted interventions and system supports
I am pleased to see 124 schools and 13 kura are taking part in a Year 7/8 maths trial in Terms 1 and 2. This trial will inform possible future decisions to expand across the country.
965 schools are receiving FTTE for targeted structured literacy approaches teacher support in 2025 after this support was expanded following significant interest. From Term 2, schools receiving this support will be able to access advanced PLD which will build on the foundational structured literacy PLD to further develop and deepen their structured literacy expertise and leadership. The Ministry is in the final stages of approving providers for this support and further information will be available before the end of Term 1.
10,000 students across who need additional support with NCEA co-requisites are benefitting from targeted and personalised teaching support. A Ministry-contracted provider is working alongside school leaders and teachers to implement whole-school literacy and numeracy teaching strategies. Around 160 schools have been identified so far, this will continue through 2025 for those who have the greatest need. We will continue to refine this support as we hear your experiences on how it’s going.
Assessment
Many schools have already started using the Phonics Checks, they can be used for all learners who have been at school for 20 weeks or 40 weeks. They can also be used for students who started school in 2024.
Following your feedback, overall school data will now be captured via the Ministry Secure Data Portal – rather than provided teacher-by-teacher. We are not interested in classroom-by-classroom data, we need aggregate data that informs us if further investment is required into targeted supports. We are looking forward to developing and sharing some aggregate insights with you about how the implementation of the Phonics Checks is going in the coming months once we’ve received the data. We will continue to share this country level data and insights regularly.
Ngā mihi,
