The draft English curriculum has sparked fierce debate among teachers over equity, achievement and Shakespeare’s place in the classroom. But not every teacher is opposed, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin.
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Draft curriculum sets off nationwide conversation
Few education debates in recent years have ignited as much heat as the draft replacement English curriculum for secondary schools. Released for consultation in April and due to be implemented in 2026, the proposed curriculum has sparked fierce division among teachers, academics and the wider public. At its core is a shift toward a “knowledge-rich” curriculum, with foundational grammar instruction in Years 7-10 and mandated Shakespeare and 19th-century literature at senior levels. Its emphasis on sequenced learning and a common canon of texts departs sharply from the more flexible, bicultural approach of recent years.
An argument for equity
While public pronouncements from the educational sector about the draft have been overwhelmingly negative, not every teacher is opposed to the change. For Tansy Oliver, an English teacher at a formerly decile one school, the new curriculum represents a necessary intervention to address persistent educational inequities. Writing in The Spinoff this morning, Oliver defends the curriculum’s focus on structured literacy and sequenced teaching, arguing that “students from low decile areas… often need specific, explicit teaching with clear sequences and connections, like the new curriculum proposes”.
According to Oliver, the backlash from many of her colleagues is disconnected from the daily reality of students, in which foundational literacy remains a barrier to success. “Literacy is essential and no matter how smart a student is, without it, they are limited and their world will shrink,” she writes. “Our students deserve to have the same access to the world as anyone in the decile 10 school 20 minutes down the road.”
While Oliver acknowledges concerns over the omission of te ao Māori from the curriculum, she contends that teachers still have the flexibility to include these perspectives, and that the bigger issue is the longstanding failure to deliver equitable outcomes for Māori and Pasifika students.
A Eurocentric approach?
Oliver’s article is a response to David Taylor, head of English at Northcote College, who has declared that he will not teach the new curriculum. In his piece, also published in The Spinoff, Taylor argues that the new curriculum enables systemic racism by stripping out references to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and pedagogical approaches known to support Māori achievement. Describing the draft document as “damaging” and ideologically regressive, Taylor says the media focus on the teaching of Shakespeare “misses the fundamental problems with this new national directive”. Among them: the sidelining of student voices and creativity, resulting in a curriculum that “talks at them, with little interest in listening to them”.
His piece, which has been widely shared and debated over the past seven days, encapsulates a broader anxiety: that the draft curriculum privileges a narrow, Eurocentric view of literature at the expense of diversity, critical thinking and real-world relevance. For Taylor and many others, the fight over English in schools is about more than pedagogy – it’s about what kind of education system New Zealand wants to build.
Tensions over process and politics
Controversy has dogged the draft from long before its public release. Beginning last year, the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) and the New Zealand Association of Teachers of English (NZATE) raised serious concerns about the consultation process, which they say excluded educators and lacked transparency. NZATE formally withdrew from engagement in February, citing the ministry’s “unreliable” approach and unaddressed concerns about unrealistic teaching expectations and cognitive overload, reported RNZ’s John Gerritsen.
Prior to the withdrawal, reports that the rewrite had been taken over by a ministerially appointed group, including a small number of academics and teachers from elite schools, had already inflamed tensions. The PPTA called the process “an absolute shambles” and accused the government of sidelining teacher expertise in favour of a narrow ideological agenda.
More reading:
- A ‘Parent Portal’ has been launched to give caregivers a better understanding of their children’s education, including the new curriculum (Adam Pearse, NZ Herald)
- The ‘good old days’ of our education system weren’t actually good (David Hill, The Spinoff)
- Should Shakespeare be compulsory? A student’s perspective (JJ Mathias, The Spinoff)
