The Education Review Office is the external education evaluation agency for schools and early childhood education services in Aotearoa New Zealand. Shifts from an accountability to an improvement-oriented evaluation approach have increased the professional expectations of, and knowledge and expertise required by, external evaluators. This article describes the design and development of two frameworks, Capabilities for High Quality Education Evaluation in Aotearoa New Zealand and External Education Evaluation in Aotearoa New Zealand: Principles of Practice for review officers working in a public sector context. The article also explores the early implementation of the frameworks and concludes that an ongoing focus on the professionalisation and primacy of evaluation practice that focuses on what makes the most difference for learners is critical in addressing educational challenges.
A recent Education Review Office (ERO) report on preparation and support for new principals in Aotearoa New Zealand revealed that they are not always well prepared for aspects of their role (ERO, 2023). Three key drivers for preparation were found to be previous leadership experience, participation in post-graduate study related to school leadership, and coaching and mentoring support. While this report focused on both primary and secondary principals in their first 5 years as principals, two other recent qualitative studies have looked specifically at pathways to principalship in secondary settings. The first study involving interviews with eight recently appointed principals, highlighted the importance of career choices, postgraduate study, targeted professional learning and development (PLD), exposure to elements of a principal’s role, and mentoring. The second study explored the enablers and challenges experienced by five female principals of co-educational schools. Aspects that were identified as both challenges and enablers in this study included the attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions of principals and others, the support and encouragement received, mentoring and PLD experiences, and work life balance. This article will draw on the findings of the two studies and the ERO report to highlight the challenges in current principal preparation in the secondary sector and make recommendations for aspiring leaders considering principalship, current principals and Boards of Trustees, and policy makers.
Diversity is on the rise In Aotearoa New Zealand. This article conducts an updated exploration of New Zealand's educational landscape in light of this cultural richness, emphasizing the importance of tailored policies and initiatives to address disparities and foster intercultural understanding within the context of superdiversity. It highlights the need for broader shifts towards creating inclusive educational environments, while also acknowledging and rectifying historical injustices experienced by Māori, as tangata whenua or people of the land. Integrating intercultural perspectives offers a promising pathway for societal transformation, championing respect, comprehension, and inclusivity across diverse communities in New Zealand and beyond. Although research on cultural responsiveness in New Zealand classrooms is growing, there is a notable gap in studies addressing Pasifika learners' experiences and the impact of Māori-medium education on student success. A stronger foundation in Pasifika pedagogical approaches and Māori education models will further inform New Zealand’s transition toward intercultural education. This thorough examination emphasizes the ongoing necessity for concerted efforts to address educational disparities and nurture intercultural understanding in New Zealand's evolving educational landscape.
It is vital to engage with professional learning and development (PLD) to be a teacher in Aotearoa New Zealand. In the way it has been enacted due to education policy, PLD has essentially become synonymous with teacher inquiry: to engage with PLD is to follow an inquiry cycle. Literature into what constitutes effective teacher PLD similarly endorses an inquiry approach. But teacher inquiry as interpreted by Ministry of Education neoliberal-influenced policy and procedures risks becoming a linear process abstracted away from the context and complexity of schools and teaching. Neoliberal influences on education policy have similarly supported input-output assumptions of PLD and have led to a narrowing effect. However, it is possible to open PLD up to be creative and subversive. If policy and procedure were to be decoupled, introducing greater flexibility, and refocused on the principles that underpin effective teacher PLD, then this creativity and transformation could be realised.
Policy makers have a powerful influence on educational practice. When such bodies are vague about the evidence-base for their policies they may uncritically rely on outdated theories, beliefs, and selective research evidence. A tension may then exist where practitioners become undermined as agents in curricular decision-making. Practitioners may aim to provide curriculum and pedagogy aligned with contemporary knowledge, but are also bound to the policy bodies who hold persuasive power. In England and Aotearoa New Zealand, two particular organisations in each country have most influence on early childhood education. Focused on the notion of children’s interests, this article questions the basis for the key curricular policy, accompanying advice and guidance, and evaluation standards of these organisations. We do so having discussed children’s interests from historical and contemporary research perspectives. We then trace and critique ways children’s interests present in significant policy documents. We suggest that both policy and practice adopt contemporary perspectives of children’s interests and move towards a middle space between curriculum-as-plan and curriculum-as-lived (Aoki, 2005). Such a space provides a way forward for ongoing curriculum conversations about children’s interests.
In policy, teachers are persistently positioned as central to improving the quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC). They are frequently the targets for policy reform that proactively seeks to shape teaching priorities and practices. The constructions of teachers in policy shape notions of ideal professional identities, opening up spaces for certain identities and closing spaces for others. This critical discourse analysis of seven key ECEC policy texts assembles a range of discourses to identify and critically examine two prevalent and distinct 'ideal' professional identities for early childhood teachers: The Professional and The Kaiako.
Educational leadership resists a unifying definition, assumption, or theory. This complexity encourages us to learn about leadership to understand its core components, underlying assumptions, and relevance for context. In Aotearoa New Zealand, policy rhetoric promotes leadership as being enacted by teachers and positional leaders. This consideration for teachers is positive but problematic, as it requires them to consider leadership in ways beyond what they feel equipped or supported to achieve. Augmenting this concern is the limited professional learning support for leadership development, especially in early childhood, and the increasing responsibility for teachers to achieve policy aspirations. To understand the rhetoric used to emphasise this responsibility, we utilise qualitative document analysis to examine the leadership narratives promoted in the Teaching Council’s Leadership Strategy and Capability Framework, from the perspectives of provisionally certificated teachers, teacher leaders, and positional leaders. Our argument suggests the leadership narratives promulgated by these texts are ambitious and raise issues of: coherence, contextualisation, and complexity. We discuss these issues in relation to support for teachers to critically engage with policy texts as important leadership learning.
How power influences the culture and structure of State schooling in Aotearoa has historically been set by the State and, although this has been particularly harmful for Māori, structural change continues to be imposed from the top. For example, the latest Education and Training Act came into effect in August, 2020. Changes through this Act are further supported by Ka Hikitia – Ka Hāpaitia, the National Education Learning Priorities (NELP), the Curriculum Refresh, and the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories Curriculum. Other major changes, across the system, are set to come into effect by 2024. This paper discusses some of the learning that is required if cultural changes for equity and belonging are to be achieved within these imposed structural changes.
How power influences the culture and structure of State schooling in Aotearoa has historically been set by the State and, although this has been particularly harmful for Māori, structural change continues to be imposed from the top. For example, the latest Education and Training Act came into effect in August, 2020. Changes through this Act are further supported by Ka Hikitia – Ka Hāpaitia, the National Education Learning Priorities (NELP), the Curriculum Refresh, and the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories Curriculum. Other major changes, across the system, are set to come into effect by 2024. This paper discusses some of the learning that is required if cultural changes for equity and belonging are to be achieved within these imposed structural changes.
How power influences the culture and structure of State schooling in Aotearoa has historically been set by the State and, although this has been particularly harmful for Māori, structural change continues to be imposed from the top. For example, the latest Education and Training Act came into effect in August, 2020. Changes through this Act are further supported by Ka Hikitia – Ka Hāpaitia, the National Education Learning Priorities (NELP), the Curriculum Refresh, and the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories Curriculum. Other major changes, across the system, are set to come into effect by 2024. This paper discusses some of the learning that is required if cultural changes for equity and belonging are to be achieved within these imposed structural changes.
Effective leadership is key to addressing enduring education issues in Aotearoa New Zealand. Our education system needs to be responsive within rapidly changing, uncertain, and complex contexts in which we face significant societal and global challenges. Key questions are provided to provoke critical and urgent conversations. These may lead to the development and implementation of effective policy and include an intentional focus on what we need to stop doing, what we need to keep doing, and what we need to start doing.
Aotearoa New Zealand’s policy shifts to an integrated system of early childhood education (ECE), its development of a bicultural curriculum for all children from birth to five years, and its progress towards a fully qualified, equitably paid, ECE teaching workforce, have partially transformed the ECE system. But there is still much to do. Four decades of neoliberalism have led to the rise of financialised corporate ECE, and weakened the sustainability of community and public provision. This paper analyses the people, politics and processes that facilitated and hindered reform, and proposes policy measures needed to make substantive transformations to a high quality, public and democratic ECE system.
Based on findings from The National Survey of Schools project, this study aimed to examine the interactions between schools’ professional learning and development cultures, teachers’ general attitudes towards NCEA changes, their equity-related attitudes towards NCEA changes, and their working experiences (morale and workload views). The participants were 749 teachers from Years 9-13 and Years 7-13 English medium secondary schools who completed our national surveys. Data were analysed quantitatively through descriptive and exploratory techniques. Results suggested a positive association between a perceived culture of ongoing PLD in schools, and teachers’ general attitudes towards NCEA changes. Teachers who reported positive attitudes towards the NCEA changes in general, were more likely to understand how these changes can improve outcomes for Māori learners, Pacific learners, and those with disabilities and who need learning support. In addition, a strong culture of ongoing PLD was also positively associated with teachers’ morale and workload views. The study has practical implications by indicating how teachers can be better supported to enact educational changes in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Repositioning school and system leadership was at the heart of the Tomorrow’s Schools Independent Taskforce recommendations in 2019 to tackle the longstanding and worsening issues of equity in our schooling system. This commentary traverses the current situation and moves towards improvement, in relation to the continuing challenges to ensure effective and sustainable school leadership in all of the country’s 2,306 schools, and government frameworks and support for school leadership.
The research, practice and policy communities in Aotearoa New Zealand know a lot about literacy; the what and how of development, and what works for whom, under what conditions. But two issues stand in the way of better meeting the national excellence and equity goals. One is solving system challenges of variability, scalability, sustainability and capability. Solving this requires taking a life course approach to the evidence, including what optimises enjoyment and criticality from early learning through schooling; and guaranteeing collective clarity and accountability for effective practices. Solving the second, too much selective and limited reasoning about what is needed, requires better understanding our histories of practice and outcomes, and the evidence about these; taking seriously the collective need for evidence-based reasoning; better understanding the nature of the sciences involved; and careful and collective reasoning to understand what is robust evidence and what is inaccurate and misleading. Both issues have implications for capability building through resourcing, initial teacher education, and professional learning and development.
External evaluation in Aotearoa New Zealand is an important accountability mechanism in education. In 2019 the Tomorrow’s Schools Independent Taskforce recommended that the Education Review Office (ERO) develop and implement an improvement-oriented approach to external evaluation in schools. This approach requires fundamental shifts in evaluation practice. In implementing an improvement-oriented approach, while maintaining accountability functions in a public sector context, evaluators need to balance key tensions: relational, epistemological, pedagogical, contextual, political, methodological, and organisational. The role of the evaluator in implementing ERO’s new approach, and managing the shifts required, is key to the approach’s success. Building evaluation capability and capacity and strengthening the evaluation evidence base are critical areas for further development.
Recent history of schooling in Aotearoa New Zealand has seen ongoing efforts to achieve improvement in learning outcomes, and particularly reduction in the inequity of outcomes between different groups of learners, without significant sustained progress. Over recent decades the literature on schooling system improvement has increasingly identified key factors that have contributed to improved learning outcomes in systems where this has been achieved. An assessment of Aotearoa New Zealand’s experience against both the “what” and the “how” of effective system improvement suggests that the Aotearoa New Zealand experience aligns with some, but not all, of the identified aspects of successful change. This points to areas for greater focus and new approaches to change management in order to achieve sustained improvement in learning outcomes in the future.
In this paper we take a credit/asset view of the breadth of knowledge and expertise that teachers have to contribute to curriculum and curriculum making from their everyday and professional experiences. We argue and illustrate the value of teachers grounding their funds of knowledge and identity in designing curriculum that connects with their students and the local context. Teacher funds of knowledge and identity are part of their personal learning ecology. Barron (2006) defines this as encompassing the ideas/knowledge, relationships, and material and virtual resources that people draw on within and across their everyday lives. The ability to mobilise a personal ecology that goes beyond academic or formal/professional knowledge would seem to be a crucial capability for teachers as they localise curricula. Even more so when teachers aim to do this in ways that foster engagement, develop agency and progress student ‘achievement.’ We offer suggestions for researchers, school leaders and teachers interested in exploring the nature and use of funds of knowledge/identity within a learning ecology framing.
Currently the focus of education provision in Aotearoa New Zealand is on successful school achievement in specified learning areas and provision of guidance for Kaiako. Yet, the real purpose of education is ako – to collectively equip ākonga with knowledge, skills, values, and capabilities for lifelong learning. Without clarity on the ‘why’ – the purpose for education – people in the system flounder in knowing what to teach, when, or how. This commentary proposes building assessment and learning capability to provide clarity on these important questions and thereby enable the education system to celebrate ākonga diversity and agency through life wide and lifelong learning.
Mathematics education in English-medium schools in Aotearoa New Zealand currently reproduces inequity. There is widespread concern about overall levels of student achievement and who participates and who succeeds. Rapid, and accelerating, social and technological change impacts what students need to know in mathematics and statistics and increases its significance. There are fundamental debates about how mathematics education should respond to inequity and rapid change. Content and pedagogy are both contested spaces. Research in mathematics education tends to exacerbate rather than resolve this contestation. In this cacophony it is hard to hear marginalised voices and yet these groups are the most impacted by current practices. Mathematics education is entwined with other curriculum areas and has far-reaching consequences; therefore, policy has to treat improving system performance as a complex problem requiring intervention at multiple levels to achieve equitable outcomes for students.
