In September 2024 the New Zealand Literacy Association submitted feedback on the Draft NZ Curriculum, English Years 0-6. We expressed strong concern about the curriculum development process and the content of the curriculum itself and we made some recommendations for change. Here is our submission.

Concerns about the curriculum development process

• The Minister frequently refers to this curriculum as being the culmination of four years of development as if this document is a continuation of what has gone before when in fact it is vastly different.
• We are concerned about the lack of proper process around the Ministerial Advisory Group and the writing group and the lack of representativeness and expertise.
• The time frame for feedback has been very short and does not allow for the level of consideration needed to ensure a quality curriculum.
• The questions in the online survey are superficial and focus more on how the curriculum is written (e.g. formatting, alignment, and clarity of language) rather than what it says. There is an assumption of consensus about the curriculum content. Some questions are too broad and general. For example, the questions about the level of detail and difficulty in the teaching sequences for oral language, reading, and writing (comprising more than 50 pages) do not differentiate between the three sections.

Specific concerns about content

• Although some of the UKD framework has been retained and extracts from the Common Practice Model have been incorporated, this is tokenistic.
• The curriculum now has a Pākehā perspective without recognition of wider cultural and linguistic knowledge. The focus on culturally responsive teaching has been lost. There is a lack of te ao Māori and te reo Māori.
• There is a focus on knowledge acquisition at the expense of dispositions. It’s important that students not only can read, write, and communicate but that they want to. The page 9 section on Affective learning skills in this document positions engagement as an aid to learning rather than a rewarding experience for students. (Also see our further comments below about the UKD framework and Reading for pleasure.)
• The Do statements have been changed from describing student actions (e.g. comprehending and creating texts) to instructional contexts (e.g. word recognition, transcription skills). This takes agency away from students and distances the skills taught from the situations in which they should be used.
• Critical literacy has been marginalised. In the 2023 curriculum drafts, one of the Understandings was Literature, language, and texts embody power relationships. This statement has now been reworded to: Language, literature, and texts embody shared culture and rich human experience. This change takes away the critical literacy focus of the original statement and makes it in essence, a repetition of the first Understanding statement: Language and literature give us insights into ourselves and others.
• Overall, the document itself is overly detailed and didactic, implying a lack of teacher expertise and professional judgment. Much of the teaching guidance that is described is common practice. For example, the “I do, we do, you do” approach (involving teacher modelling and shared, guided and independent reading and writing) has been central to New Zealand teacher practice for more than 40 years.
• The progress outcomes and teaching suggestions focus on correctness, with teachers encouraged to intervene and fix errors immediately. This creates the risk of students coming to rely too much on teacher correction or affirmation and makes it harder for them to develop agency and persistence when facing more challenging tasks.
• There is a lack of clarity about assessment. A phonics check is mentioned but what other assessments are going to be suggested? Will they include a record of reading behaviour?
• Some of the progress outcomes seem pitched too low. For example, ERO states that 80% of students are at the expected level in oral language. Many of the suggestions in this section seem to be for students who need support.

Further questions we have about oral language:

–   How will teachers assess oral language?
–   Many of the statements in the sequence are so specific they are more like learning activities.  Do teachers just pick and choose which ones
they want to use?
–   Many of the oral language outcomes cross over with reading and writing. Could these be connected more authentically? For example,
retelling, inferring, predicting, summarising, and verbal reasoning are important aspects of reading and discussing texts, speeches are
linked to writing, and so on.

Recommendations

1. The curriculum should be high-level and visionary with a wider research base. It is problematic for the science of learning to be the only theory or body of research. A section on theoretical approaches for teachers should be added (similar to Te Whāriki pg 60) https://www.education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Early-Childhood/ELS-Te-Whariki-Early-Childhood-Curriculum-ENG-Web.pdf
2. There should be stronger connections to Te Whāriki, Te Mātaiaho, and NCEA.
3. Other resources that should be referred to as supports for teachers are the 2008 version of the handwriting manual and the MoE’s two excellent resources on oral language – Learning Through Talk (years 1-3 and 4-8).
4. Terminology (e.g. strands, descriptors) needs to be consistent across maths and English.
5. The Teaching Sequence section should focus on just the progress outcomes and the teaching suggestions should be provided as a separate document, incorporating the Planning Guidance section. The space taken up by the teaching suggestions in the current documents interrupts the flow of the learning progressions and makes the document too long and unwieldy. As a separate document, they could be summarised, gaps and inconsistencies corrected, and examples of how to integrate the teaching of oral language, reading, and writing could be included.
6. The graphic on page 13 is simplistic and adds no value. It should be removed.
7. Planning for an hour a day – needs to include authentic integration to other learning areas.
8. Reinstate content about multiliteracies. There should be more about developing comprehension and critical literacy with visual, oral, and digital texts, not just written texts.

9. Reinstate the focus on reading for pleasure – as indicated in the Understanding: Stories are a source of joy and nourishment. This is more than “developing positive relationships with literacy”. Reading enjoyment has been reported as more important for children’s educational success than their family’s socio-economic status (OECD, 2002). The transition to independent reading for pleasure doesn’t happen naturally for all students. For Phase 1 Reading, add “Reading for pleasure” as the next heading after “Comprehension” and add these progress outcomes:

6 months – students enjoy listening to stories read aloud, participating in shared reading, and choosing favourite books

1 year – students enjoy listening to stories read aloud, participating in shared reading, rereading familiar texts (e.g. books, poems, songs), and choosing and talking about favourite texts with others

2 years – students enjoy listening to stories read aloud, rereading familiar texts, choosing and attempting texts that are less familiar, and talking about favourite texts with others

3 years – students enjoy listening to stories read aloud, rereading familiar texts, choosing and reading texts that are less familiar (including early chapter books), and talking about favourite texts with others.

10. Clarify the comprehension sections in both Phase 1 and Phase 2. The Phase 1 comprehension section, in particular, is very confusing. Here are some suggestions for improvement:

a.   Rather than listing text aspects (e.g. Vocabulary, Sentence structure, Narrative) the headings should describe what students are doing e.g. Building and using vocabulary, Using knowledge of sentence structure, Summarising. Using verbs in this way would clarify the focus on students using these strategies to comprehend texts, rather than to demonstrate isolated skills or item knowledge.
b.   The “Narrative” and “Information” headings on page 46 should be replaced with a single heading – “Summarising”. This “Summarising” section should include the progress outcomes listed for “Narrative” and “Information” and the progress outcomes for “Summarising and drawing conclusions” on page 52, which do not belong in the Critical Literacy section.
c.   On page 46, the heading “Sentence and text structure” should be “Using knowledge of sentence structure”. Text structure is a different aspect and is part of “Summarising”.
d.   A section on “Asking questions and making predictions” should be added to build student agency and curiosity about what they are reading (rather than relying on the teacher telling them what to expect and think about).
e.   The page 48 section on “Opinion” includes two different sets of outcomes. The outcomes for 6 months and 1 year are about students sharing their personal opinions – this is “Making connections”. The “Opinion” outcomes for years 2 and 3 are about authors’ opinions and points of view and belong under “Critical literacy”.
f.    The page 50 section “Making connections and interpretations” should be called “Making connections”, moved to page 48, and merged with the year 1 and 2 progress outcomes about sharing opinions.