The Government’s newly-announced changes to the teaching curriculum for primary school maths are not in line with expert recommendations, a union says.

New Zealand Educational Institute Te Riu Roa (NZEI) said there was no silver bullet for teaching, and they were concerned the rapid pace of change to the curriculum in maths and literacy, and short timeframe to train teachers, would further strain the workforce without delivering the promised results.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced the move to bring forward the curriculum change at the National Party conference today, saying the current low levels of student achievement showed “a total system failure”.

He set out plans to bring forward the introduction of the new structured maths curriculum for primary and intermediate school children (years 0-8) by a year, meaning it will kick in from the start of 2025.

The “maths action plan” would also include extra professional development for teachers, interventions for children struggling with the topic and twice-yearly assessments to ensure children were up to standard.

Luxon said newly released data showed that last year about 50,000 children in Year 8 did not meet the expected benchmark for maths – 22% of students in that year.

In 2021, the Ministry of Education convened an expert panel on Pāngarau Mathematics and Tauanga Statistics in Aotearoa New Zealand that provided 14 recommendations – a narrow approach with structured mathematics was not one of them.

NZEI representive, principal Martyn Weatherill, said a narrow curriculum prescribed by policy made teaching harder, not easier for schools and kura as it didn’t take into account the diverse needs of the learners.

“We’ve had two rapid and major changes to curriculum, both being fast-tracked for 2025. We’re very concerned that $20 million to fund the proposed maths changes isn’t enough when you take into account the student resources and teacher training it will need to cover. Funding a couple of days of teacher training in one curriculum area is not going to cure 30 years of systemic and chronic underfunding of schools,” Weatherill said.

He said there was no one way students learned and no one way to teach.

Prime Minister and National Party leader Christopher Luxon at the 2024 National Party annual conference. Photo / Claire Trevett

“We do need to address student achievement, but we also know that the diversity of ākonga [students] requires more diversity of approaches, not less. We have existing programmes that do this, and we should be expanding those.”

He said the Developing Mathematical Inquiry Communities (DMIC) programme addressed equity and achievement issues through diverse grouping, and that a Ministry of Education report showed ākonga could make several years of accelerated mathematics learning through the DMIC programme.

Following today’s announcement, Weatherill was worried about the health, safety and wellbeing of principals and teachers.

“We are being tasked with ensuring the programme is ready to start in just five months’ time while continuing to meet all the other government expectations and requirements. To be clear, nothing has been removed from the workload - these proposals all add to it.”

Labour leader Chris Hipkins has hit out at National, saying the Year 8 students who weren’t getting results now had started school with national standards under the previous National Government.

”That was a failure and we are still playing catch up,” Hipkins said.

“I’m pleased to see Christopher Luxon has committed to bringing forward Labour’s curriculum changes and is paying for teacher training and development. He should take the handbrake off school property builds and get rid of his government’s terrible charter schools bill too.”

Education Minister Erica Stanford will bring in the changes at the start of next year. Photo / Mark Mitchell

At today’s announcement, Luxon said only 12% of Māori students were where they should be and 63% of the overall Year 8 cohort were more than a year behind.

“It is abhorrent to me that by failing to properly use assessment the true state of failure has been masked and the interventions that have been required, have not happened,” he said.

“These figures are appalling, but I suspect not a surprise for many parents who I know are frustrated and despondent about the progress of their children.”

Education Minister Erica Stanford would launch the first of three components of “Make It Count” - a maths action plan that will take effect from the start of next year.

Stanford said that would mean from term 1 next year, “children will be learning maths based on a new world-leading, knowledge-rich maths curriculum based on the best from across the OECD like Singapore and Australia, adapted for New Zealand”.

Melissa Nightingale is a Wellington-based reporter who covers crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.