The Education Minister is announcing new maths, English and science resources that were due to be in schools at the start of this year will now be rolled out.
The resources include a new teacher-facilitated writing tool for Year 6 to 10 students a year or more behind and maths resources for Year 9 and 10 students.
Earlier this month, the Post Primary Teachers' Association criticised the Minister for not delivering the resources on time and causing an extremely frustrating and stressful start to the school year.
PPTA president Chris Abercrombie said at the time well developed resources and implemented smoothly are "so crucial", especially with the amount of new content the Minister had introduced.
Education Minister Erica Stanford made the announcement alongside the Prime Minister in Auckland on Tuesday. There will also be new science kits for primary school classrooms, an investment made in Budget 2025.
The writing tool, called Scribo, is a teacher-facilitated 12-week tutoring programme providing targeted support for each student's learning needs, she explained.
She said it will "help close literacy gaps" and strengthen students' writing, spelling, and grammar. It was also curriculum aligned and designed to reflect New Zealand context and culture, she said. The programme was now being extended to students in Year 10.
Erica Stanford says the science kits will be hands-on and curriculum-aligned. Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
The curriculum-aligned digital maths resources for Years 9 and 10 would include digital textbooks and workbooks guidance for teachers.
"Over the next three years, the resources are expected to benefit around 140,000 students each year, supporting 6000 teachers," Stanford said.
Teachers can choose the extent to which they use the resources, and there will be professional learning development provided.
She said the science kits were delivering on Budget 2025 investments to strengthen science in primary and intermediate schools.
"These will be hands-on and curriculum-aligned, supporting teachers with bringing science to life in classrooms," Stanford said.
Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
"Science is such a fun and interesting part of school for so many young people, full of discovery and experimentation."
She said $40 million was allocated in Budget 2025, and the provision of those kits throughout the country will be achieved by early 2027.
Part of the initiative has an entirely new suite of science kits in development for Māori medium education.
'The teachers book whatever topic they want'
The trust which provides science resources to schools will quadruple its staffing after winning the $40-million government contract.
House of Science founder and chief executive Chris Duggan said the organisation would essentially act as a library of science lesson kits for every primary school in the country from next year.
"The teachers literally book whatever topic they want. It arrives on their doorstep and they've got three weeks to deliver those experiments that are in the kit," she said.
She said after three weeks House of Science picked up the kits, cleaned and fixed them ready for delivery to another school.
Duggan said the organisation currently provided kits for about a third of primary schools, but not for every classroom in those schools.
"We're reaching about 10 percent of the students - even though we're in a third of all schools not every classroom in those schools is using our resources. So it's 10 times the number of students, three times the number of schools, and it means about quadrupling the staff to make that happen," she said.
Duggan helped write the draft primary school science curriculum which was currently out for consultation.
She said House of Science declared her role as a conflict of interest and the contract process was very robust.
"Yes, I did contribute at the very early stage of the curriculum rewrite and that was declared as a conflict of interest when we put our RFP in," Duggan said.
"New Zealand is a small country. There's many, many people involved in contributing to a curriculum rewrite, and I was one of many because there's not actually that many primary school science experts in the country."
The Education Ministry's request for proposals for the contract specified "a rotational library suite of ready-made science/pūtaiao kits".
Duggan said the "swap in, swap out library model" was what House of Science had been providing for the past 12 years and it was able to do it nationally.
Stanford said conflicts of interest were difficult to avoid in a small country and they were well-handled in the case of the science kits.
"When it came to the RFP process this was a very strict process that the ministry ran. It was very tough and it went for a very long time," she said.
"Everything in terms of conflicts was managed appropriately."
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