Every principal reading this will recognise the feeling. You’ve barely bedded in one change when the next one lands. A new curriculum document. A new assessment expectation. A new reporting requirement. A new timeline that someone decided was ‘achievable’ without ever standing in front of 30 children on a cold and wet Tuesday morning. Speaking to and listening to principals across the motu, I feel your exhaustion. I tautoko your relentless commitment as the ground keeps shifting beneath us.
Curriculum, assessment, and accountability have been overhauled simultaneously, as though schools have infinite capacity to absorb change on command. Early childhood education has been left especially stranded. Te Whāriki and the New Zealand Curriculum still operate as separate documents, with children experiencing a jolt rather than a transition when they walk through the school gate.
None of this is new. The 2018 Tomorrow’s Schools Independent Taskforce, a major government-commissioned review, told us that schooling policy has long been driven by partisan politics and a three-year electoral cycle. It found that policies are too often poorly researched or trialled, and that we (as a Ministerially-led education system) attempt too much change at once. Seven years on, are we in a different place?
Since 2023, we have seen the NCEA Change Programme rephased, curriculum refresh timelines shifted more than once, and Te Poutāhū’s Curriculum Centre work paused, reduced, or redirected as a consequence of a change of government. This is not a criticism of the people working in Te Poutāhū. They have done important work under genuinely difficult conditions. But the structure they sit within was never built to survive a change of government – and it hasn’t.
This instability drastically and, in many cases unnecessarily, adds to educators’ already stretched workloads. It fragments professional development across competing priorities instead of allowing us to focus on genuine implementation. And it disrupts the alignment between schooling, qualifications, and the pathways our young people move into afterwards – an alignment that depends on a stability we simply haven’t had.
The constant rinse and repeat has eroded our trust and confidence in the system that is supposed to support and empower us. Principals and teachers are understandably now cautious about investing deeply in any change, for it might be reversed in the next political term.
If we are to achieve the education system that our tamariki and rangatahi deserve, we need assurance that new policies will actually last. This is why NZPF has been developing a proposal that we believe deserves your full attention, your scrutiny, and ultimately your support: a permanent, independent Curriculum and Assessment Council for Aotearoa New Zealand.
The idea is not radical. It is, in fact, remarkably unoriginal. Aotearoa already knows how to build institutions that outlast electoral cycles when the challenge is judged important enough. Te Waihanga, the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission, was established by statute in 2019 precisely because infrastructure planning needs to operate across decades, not three-year terms. The Retirement Commission does something similar for retirement policy, with legislated triennial reviews insulating it from short-term political pressure. If we can do this for roads, bridges, and retirement income, surely we can do it for education.
NZPF’s proposed Curriculum and Assessment Council would be a permanent, legislated Crown entity spanning early childhood, primary, and secondary education. It would lead the direction of Te Whāriki, Te Mātaiaho / the New Zealand Curriculum, and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa. It would deliver a coherent system, not three disconnected sectors. It would run predictable, published review cycles. It would commission and publish research before recommending any major change. And it would require fully costed and sequenced implementation plans before being rolled out. It would understand what professional learning and resourcing schools actually need, not work on the assumption that goodwill and unpaid weekends will fill the gap.
I want to be equally clear about what this Council would not do. It would not set government policy direction. Ministers retain that authority, and rightly so. It would not remove democratic accountability. It would not duplicate the Ministry, NZQA, or ERO, nor would it undermine the independence of the Teaching Council. This is not about taking power away from an elected government. It is about giving whichever government takes office a better foundation to build on rather than an incentive to tear it all down and start again.
From the outset, the proposed Curriculum and Assessment Council has treated Te Tiriti o Waitangi partnership as foundational, not as a box to tick once the ‘real’ decisions have been made. The Council’s governance, core functions, and eventual name would be co-designed with iwi and Māori education partners, not consulted on after the fact. That includes genuine authority over Te Marautanga o Aotearoa and mātauranga Māori, sustained across electoral cycles, independent of the preferences of whichever Government or Minister holds the portfolio.
For such a Curriculum and Assessment Council to be successful, equity, too, must be built into the education system’s architecture, not bolted on. That means published equity impact assessments for every major reform so we can be confident that change is helping our Māori and Pacific learners, our disabled ākonga, and every child who has historically been let down by a system too busy reinventing itself to notice who and what it was leaving behind.
In developing this proposal, NZPF has been looking to Ireland’s National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, established under the Education Act 1998. A 26-member council, representing the sector, industry, unions, and parents, advises the Minister across early childhood through senior secondary, with a dedicated Early Childhood and Primary Board that gives young learners the same institutional standing as those further up the pathway. The Minister still sets direction. The Minister still holds final approval. But the evidence-gathering, the drafting, the piloting, the sequencing — and the recruiting — happen in a space that is protected from political theatre, somewhere built to outlast any change of government. Ireland’s model illustrates how this has worked for them, a bilingual country like ours. Our model will be one built for Aotearoa New Zealand.
While this proposal is led by NZPF, it was born from the strongest of calls from our Regional Association presidents and has been taking shape since the Moot in March. It is not a finished model, and it shouldn’t be. We need to continue with genuine co-design with iwi and Māori education partners, engage with sector leaders, principals, teachers, and early learning leaders to test whether this actually works on the ground, and independently assess which functions should transfer from the Ministry, NZQA, and ERO.
I don’t want this to be another aspiration that sounds good on paper but goes nowhere. So let’s be strategic. The upcoming election provides an opportunity for the elected political parties to work with the sector to co-construct an independent Curriculum and Assessment Council for Aotearoa New Zealand. If we are successful, the Council could exist in legislation in the next political term, with protected funding and genuine Treaty-partnership governance.
Within four to eight years, we would see published review cycles that are actually followed, equity impact assessments that are standard practice, and costed implementation plans that precede rollout rather than following a panicked scramble.Having cross-party support across 10 to 30 years would be transformational. The thing all educators in Aotearoa desperately want – a manageable, predictable pace of change that lets new practice actually embed before the next initiative lands – wouldn’t be a fantasy … we could actually achieve the measurable reductions in inequities that we’ve been talking about for decades!
I ask every one of you to read our proposal and to tell us what we’ve got right, and what we haven’t. You can find it on the NZPF website or ask your regional association for a copy. This will only work if it is built with you, not dictated for you.
I don’t underestimate what it will take to get a body like this into legislation, or how much patient, cross-party work lies between where we are today and where this proposal needs to end up. Our principals and teachers deserve a system that trusts them to do what they were trained to do, that is resourced properly, and that gives them the time to do what is best for the children in front of them. The question is not whether this is needed. It is whether, finally, we can make it happen. I believe that we can – and should – have a stable, evidence-informed, and non-partisan home for curriculum and assessment. Without this, how can we be assured that our young people and our education professionals will thrive, today and long into the future?