Eighteen months from now, the city of Tamaki Makaurau will be inundated with school principals from across the globe as we host the International Confederation of Principals (ICP) World Convention. They will come from every continent, not just to enjoy our beautiful country, but to observe our unique approach to teaching and learning.
Whilst school principals across the globe are desperate to move away from standardised teaching and testing, which breeds ‘teaching to the test’ and is the death of creativity, Aotearoa New Zealand’s public education shines as a beacon of light and hope for the world’s community of school leaders.
Principals are lining up in droves to visit our land and our schools. They want to see how we infuse indigenous Māori culture and language into our national curriculum. They are excited about our outdoor education programmes and look forward to observing how our schools use our magnificent rivers, mountains, bushland and coastlines to educate our young people outside of the classroom. They want to observe for themselves how Aotearoa New Zealand produces students with the highest levels of creativity in the OECD. They want to witness the close relationships our schools have with their communities and how, in partnership with whānau, each school develops a localised curriculum, reflecting the context, history and values of the people, past and present.
Most importantly, they want to see personalised learning in action. Our teachers face a broad diversity of students, so use multiple approaches to teaching and learning. Assessment is for the sole purpose of finding out what a student knows, understands and can do, so that the teacher can shape their next learning steps. They use a mix of formative and summative assessments. The key is ensuring that each child is making learning progress.
Learning in Aotearoa New Zealand takes place in flexible classrooms, where children see themselves, their culture and environment reflected. A modern mix of furniture enables children to receive direct teaching or guided reading with their teacher and may work either singularly or collaboratively to complete tasks. They have spaces for relaxing and enjoying a good book or engaging in shared reading from the comfort of bean bags. Some may work individually or collaboratively to solve problems, with or without modern technology. Our modern-day classrooms have come a long way from the days of straight rows of single desks and uncomfortable chairs. Our global principal colleagues are keen to investigate the style of our classrooms and engage with our children as they work and learn.
They are also keen to see the innovative approaches that our schools are free to adopt. These may include whole school programmes shaped around a theme. They may be eco-schools, where the curriculum is based around environmental principles. They may witness play-based learning, or ‘Garden-to-Table’ programmes where the children learn the skills of gardening, planting, harvesting and ultimately cooking a meal for the class.
These are just a handful of the many innovations that schools adopt, because they have the autonomy to do so. Autonomy and innovation, alongside giving whānau the opportunity to involve themselves as partners in their own children’s learning, are the gifts of the Tomorrow’s Schools policy. No principal would choose to relinquish these features.
Recently, a cacophony of deafening alarm bells has been ringing out from all quarters decrying our dipping literacy and numeracy scores on OECD league tables. Whilst principals and teachers are always looking to improve their practice, it is critical that we don’t treat small dints in achievement as crises or indulge in over-reaction.
We saw that happen in 2008 when the answer to lifting the achievement of our struggling students was to mandate National Standards. That experiment limited the richness of our curriculum and created high stress for teachers and students as they focused narrowly on the teaching of reading, writing and maths in what became a high stakes environment.
This Government is not proposing another dose of national standards but has expressed concerns about how our schools might lift results for literacy and numeracy. Their election promise was to ‘Do the Basics Brilliantly’. No principals would disagree with that aspiration.
What they might caution, however, is how we do that. The Minister’s intention – to improve the quality of our public education system – is laudable. Her first step was to establish a Ministerial Advisory Group to suggest how to improve the basics. Their report points to a single structured approach to reading and mathematics based on the ‘Science of Learning’.
Many schools already choose structured literacy, with its early focus on phonics and ‘decoding’ skills. The theory is that this gives children basic skills to read and pronounce words, which they may not acquire any other way. But it won’t be the only way, which is why mandating the approach, or worse, creating a common testing regime, would be a mistake. Schools that adopted structured literacy several years ago say they have made adaptations over time and other approaches are also used to accommodate children whose learning thrives through different methods. Teachers can be trusted to make their own professional judgements and assess learning in the most appropriate way. An extra tool in the kete will be welcomed, just not a mandated one with a high stakes assessment regime.
We want educators from across the world to continue seeing Aotearoa New Zealand as a leading light, and in 2026, to share the joy our tamariki experience from our unique approach to education. Our international principals will watch our tamariki question and seek solutions to their own problems by igniting the creativity within – and they will do this not just inside the classroom but outside of it too. That is why school leaders from every corner of the world are so excited about coming to vist our learners, our tamariki, and watch how we teach them – our way.