Schools must use the new maths and English curriculum for year zero to 10 students from this year. Photo: Supplied / Ministry of Education
The Ministry of Education says it is not expecting perfection as the updated curriculum is rolled out.
Schools must use the new English and mathematics curriculum, for year zero to 10 students, from this year.
The ministry's Curriculum Centre deputy secretary, Pauline Cleaver, told Nine To Noon it was encouraging schools to take it at their own pace.
"From my perspective, it seems most schools have made a really great start, and they will build off that over the year, over this year, to increase how much and how well they are using the new curriculum content, and we encourage that," she said.
Auckland Primary Principals' Association president Lucy Naylor had hoped for more time.
"There is no doubt that the curriculum needed an update... I think most principals will agree that it needed a good look at. It's more the how it has been done, and while there have been some opportunities for consultation, when we surveyed our members at the end of last year, there was a clear message that we would prefer more time for a really deep, authentic consultation."
Naylor said it could take about three years to embed the new curriculum.
"No principal wants their student to miss out, but the risk of a rushed consultation is that we're going to end up with shallow learning, and we certainly don't want just tick boxes to comply with the mandates. We want time to be able to feed back and make those changes, work with the ministry, as we have been, to make sure that what we now have is going to really be a world-class document."
Naylor said the biggest challenge was the year-by-year, especially for composite classes with up to four year levels in one classroom.
"The year-by-year does force a very rigid structure on a system that really needs to be quite fluid in terms of learning," she said.
"We know that children's learning is not linear, so there does need to be some flex within that system."
Cleaver said schools have had composite classes for a long time.
"Even under a multi-year framework, they've had to consider the different year levels and developmental stages of all young people, and design the learning that meets those needs best," she said.
"We want to be really clear - year in, year out - what that sequence of learning should be for our young people.
"We want to be able to notice, we want parents to be able to know that their children are developing the skills and knowledges they need in these critical areas, and that we notice it when they're not, and somebody can respond to that - the classroom teacher being more specific and doing some more one-on-one, or additional support programmes
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