School maths curriculum: Why the latest changes have triggered an outcry - Derek Cheng

Some material will be taught earlier than in the previous iteration, prompting concerns that the failure rate will increase, but with no actual drop in student learning.

Education Minister Erica Stanford and the Ministry of Education have explained the changes as a necessary reset - done in consultation with the sector - centred on a knowledge-rich curriculum and high expectations for pupils.

They’re confident it will translate into improved maths performance in our schools. So why is that confidence sorely lacking among experts, as well as those at the classroom coalface?

Last year, only 23% of Year 8 students were at or above curriculum level in mathematics, while 62% were more than a year behind.

The top students are still doing well, but there is an increasing number of underperforming students. Only 8% of poorer students in Year 8 were at or above curriculum level in maths, while for Māori students it was one in every 10, and for Pacific students one in 16.

This was similar to the 2023 results, when 22% of Year 8 students reached the benchmark for mathematics.

It was this figure that triggered the Government to accelerate the introduction of the new maths curriculum for Years 0-8. A draft had been in use in late 2023, with the final version to come into effect in 2026, but this was brought forward to 2025.

A recent Education Review Office report found that, while “still early days, school teachers and leaders have worked hard to change what and how they teach and are already seeing the impacts of the changes”.

So why, at the end of October, was there another update (for Years 0-10) to be implemented at the start of next year?

“We’ve had feedback on how it’s working,” Education Ministry deputy secretary of curriculum Pauline Cleaver told the Herald.

There was also further work to align the Year 0-8 content with Year 9-13, and to ensure the New Zealand content was similar to that in comparable countries.

“We signalled that we needed to take on board all that feedback to make sure we had a clear and coherent full learning area from years 1 to 13. In doing that, it did lead to some changes,” she said.

“They’re about making sure teachers focus on the right things, at the right time.”

Maths education lecturers Dr David Pomeroy (Canterbury University) and Dr Lisa Darragh (Auckland University) described the updated version as “more difficult and more full”.

“There is now a longer list of maths procedures and vocabulary to be memorised at each year of school,” they said in an article for The Conversation.

“For example ... Year 5 students should know what acute, obtuse and reflex angles are. Year 6 children will learn calculations with rational numbers [such as ’75% is 24, find the whole amount’], whereas previously this would have been taught at year 8.”

Some algebra is also being brought forward by two years.

“The inevitably poorer results from testing against a more challenging curriculum risk damaging children’s self-confidence, disappointing parents, and placing blame on teachers,” they said.

We’ve seen this before, Pomeroy told the Herald.

In 2022, under the old maths curriculum (from 2007), the proportion of Year 8 students at or above the benchmark was 42%. That figure almost halved to 22% under the draft new curriculum in late 2023, before inching up to 23% last year under the next iteration.

Kids haven’t become dumber, Pomeroy said. Instead, the curriculum changes pushed the benchmark higher, and with more and harder stuff to learn in the latest update, it will be pushed even higher.

“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that if you raise the bar in terms of curriculum, and then immediately have a standardised test against those new standards, you’re going to have a lot of students appearing to be failing,” he said.

“But they may actually be doing fine in terms of their capability and engagement and their work. I don’t think there’s really a plan to manage that fairly dramatic fallout.

“And teachers will be stuck in the middle. You just can’t keep going like this with an exhausted profession.”

Cleaver agreed in the sense that she didn’t think the 42% to 22% drop in Year 8 achievement reflected kids “getting less smart”.

“I don’t think it suggests that [the curriculum] was too easy before. What we’ve done is create space in the younger years to get those good foundational number concepts coming through.

“That means some things can come forward a bit earlier because they’ve had an opportunity to be well scaffolded in that learning. Other content needed to be pushed out, such as probability, for example.”

Some in the sector say they were blindsided by this change, but it shouldn’t have been totally unexpected, said Dave Phillipps, president of the NZ Association of Mathematics Teachers (NZAMT).

“It has been well sign-posted for a while that many things currently being taught in the junior secondary curriculum were shifting down to lower levels as part of increasing the ability of students at primary schools.

“So it shouldn’t come as a major surprise across the sector. It is just a shame it wasn’t there from the start.”

The newest update didn’t make life easy for primary and intermediate schools, he said.

“What they started teaching this year was a signed-off final version, so it is hard on them having that one changed now. While opinions may be split over that shift, the key for NZAMT is to now focus on professional development and support.”

Pomeroy said that even if, in the longer term, the updated curriculum led to improving standards - “benefit of the doubt here” - the current cohort may fall through the transition cracks.

“If you’re in Year 7 and the stuff that was in Year 8 has been moved to Year 6, have you then leapfrogged that and are never going to learn it?

This is where accelerated learning is meant to come in and plug those learning gaps, alongside professional development, and millions of dollars in the maths resources.

But there are often a plethora of reasons - including out-of-school ones - why those gaps have emerged, said Tom Pearce, an Auckland primary school teacher and PhD student.

“I’ve got the resources to identify those gaps, but plugging them? No, of course not. The reasons for those gaps are many, and varied,” he said.

“Often it’s the fact that these kids haven’t had enough individual teaching time, because they’re one of 28 kids [in a classroom]. Often they don’t have people at home who can support them in the way they need. Sometimes many have high learning needs or behavioural needs.

“This very simple, idealised situation where this kid doesn’t know their three times-tables, so I just need to teach her those and suddenly they’ll catch up - that’s just not how it works in practice.”

Pearce is one of many concerned about diminishing emphasis on applying maths knowledge.

“We’re left with a curriculum that’s just a laundry list of facts, often quite disconnected ones. The rich tasks that get kids to actually engage with the curriculum - communicating and justifying and explaining - has become quite specific and narrow.”

Take, for example, identifying equivalent fractions.

“Do you sit down with two bits of paper in front of a kid and say, ‘Which fractions are equivalent?’ Does that tick off the outcome? Or do the kids have to be able to use that knowledge to solve problems in more creative ways?”

There’s nothing to stop teachers from continuing to do the latter, he said, and many will. “We just don’t have a curriculum that supports it anymore.”

Cleaver said key ideas about applying maths knowledge had not been deleted.

“We have really strong and explicit knowledge statements, but we also have equal focus on the practices that young people need to be taught as well - a good balance that builds understanding for all our young people.”

Many of these concerns are articulated in an open letter to the Government, signed by more than 40 education experts, academics and researchers.

“The October 2025 changes seem more political than educational,” the letter says.

“This is unfair to teachers, but, more importantly, it is potentially damaging to learners.”

Cleaver said the updated curriculum was both politics and education.

“The minister sets the scene. She does approve the final versions of curriculum, but she does it based on the recommendations and advice of the Ministry of Education, and it’s our job to make sure the curriculum is well informed by what the evidence says about what’s the best teaching and learning for maths.”

The experts in the letter disagreed, saying the latest update lacked the “explicit sequence of mathematical learning” in the previous iterations.

Other concerns included:

No one expects an extensive update to be error-free, and Cleaver told the Herald three errors had been corrected so far.

The relatively high number of learning objectives was due, in a knowledge-rich curriculum, to “the knowledge set out in quite a granular way”.

She said the curriculum was, in fact, sequenced in a way that puts learning the foundations ahead of more complex ideas - for example, an emphasis on numbers and shapes in the early years.

“There’s a range of ideas and perspectives on math teaching, and actually on the curriculum in general. I respect the views of these academics and the work that they’ve done in the past.

“But we feel we’ve written a math curriculum that is fit for New Zealand kids. The learning area updates reflect what we know about what is good math teaching and learning, what knowledge young people need, what understanding and skills they need, and how that progresses over time.”

Pearce said it’s normal for teachers to constantly evolve how they teach.

“But the fact they’re changing the curriculum so much means it’s really hard for us to actually do a good job,” he said.

“Good teaching relies on knowing the curriculum really thoroughly, so you can make those decisions around where kids should be, what they need to do, and how they deepen their understanding once they’re there.

“It’s just impossible to do that when the Government keeps shifting the ground under our feet. Everyone I know in teaching is very dark about it. It just feels so disrespectful, the pace of change at the moment.”

This sentiment is echoed by Niki Penny, a deputy principal at a Christchurch primary school and teacher for more than 20 years, who said morale in the sector was as low as she’d seen it.

“I’m the curriculum leader for my school. Six months out, we start designing our year plans. I’ve got [an updated] curriculum now with six weeks left in the school year. That’s a lot of pressure.

“A whole realignment process has to happen. We have maths textbooks that now don’t align with the curriculum.”

The new curriculum for all subjects (Year 0-10) has also just been released for feedback, with most of it coming into effect in just over a year’s time.

“It’s hard when we don’t actually know what we should be teaching from, one moment to the next. That’s what it feels like,” Penny said.

It was making “really competent teachers feel like they don’t know what they’re doing”.

“There are teachers saying, ‘I just can’t do it,’ and they’re leaving. Change fatigue is real. The minister [and ministry] is talking about not expecting perfection on day one. We’re not even close to anywhere like perfection,” she said.

“I’ve been in teaching for a really long time, and this would be one of the hardest times for morale. There’s a level of frustration I haven’t seen in the sector before. All we’re asking for is a bit of time to actually be able to do this well.”

Cleaver didn’t dismiss the possibility of pausing the rollout of the updated curriculum, saying: “We haven’t discussed it to date.”

Asked if the ministry had sympathy for teachers, she said: “Oh, look, I have huge admiration for our teachers, and I have every confidence that they’ll continue to do their best to take on changes. No one’s expecting perfection from day one. We’re just asking people to make the best effort they can, and get started.”

There is unsurprising alignment among parents, teachers, government bureaucrats, and politicians in terms of all wanting to improve results in the classroom.

“The aim of the new mathematics curriculum is to add more rigour in what and how things are taught,” said NZAMT president Dave Phillipps.

“Whether that works, only time can tell. Let’s hope it does. As a sector, we just need to support each other to do the best we can with it.”

Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery team and is a former deputy political editor.