Teaching to be tailored to needs of community

Irene Cooper

Schools will be given more power to decide how they teach students if a new draft national curriculum comes into force in its current form.

The draft - which sets out what primary and secondary schools should teach - is less prescriptive and considerably slimmer than the current seven-volume curriculum.

It promotes the idea of schools tailoring their teaching to the type of community that they are part of, and teachers' unions yesterday welcomed the prospect of added freedom.

"The draft curriculum appears to be more user-friendly for teachers," said Irene Cooper, national president of the New Zealand Educational Institute.

"Schools will still be required to teach core skills, such as numeracy and literacy, but will be able to do so in a way that recognises the community in which their students live," she said.

The current school curriculum hasn't been changed for more than a decade. It was reviewed in 2000 and 2002 in response to concerns from teachers that the curriculum was overloaded and should reflect changes in society such as an increasingly diverse population.

The draft version issued yesterday will be open to public feedback until the end of November, and a final curriculum is likely to be published late next year.

Education Minister Steve Maharey said yesterday that the draft had a much lower level of prescription about what should happen in schools.

"It tells them exactly what you need to know at the end of all this, but it's not saying, 'I'll tell you exactly how to get there'," Mr Maharey said.

"That's left increasingly up to the professional competence of the teacher to design something that will bring all that to life."

The curriculum does, however, still contain specific targets for children.

It states that at level one (which begins at Year 1 and contains parts which can stretch to Year 5) students of maths should be able to say, read and write forward and backward counting sequences with whole numbers to 100.

The new curriculum focuses learning around five key competencies:

* Managing self.

* Relating to others.

* Participating and contributing.

* Thinking.

* Using language symbols and texts.

They replace eight sets of "essential skills" which are in the existing curriculum.

The National Party's education spokesman, Bill English, said the streamlined curriculum was a "step in the right direction".

But he argued that the new curriculum needed a sharper focus on making sure that all children could read and write and do maths.

The NZEI said it expected that the lower level of prescription would lead some people to ask for the resurrection of some parts that had been removed.

"But you can do that at your local level," Ms Cooper said. "This is about the community. It's about schools not being pressured by what everybody else thinks they should be doing."


Every student to learn controversial set of core values

Eight core values will be woven into the education of school students under a new draft curriculum, including one which promotes caring for the environment.

The draft curriculum, unveiled yesterday by Education Minister Steve Maharey, includes broadly the same eight values which sparked a debate last year when they were proposed by the Ministry of Education.

They include the encouragement of New Zealanders to value excellence, by "aiming high and by persevering in the face of difficulties".

Care for the environment, or specifically the Earth and its interrelated ecosystems, is also included.

Schools will decide how the values will be expressed to their students, following "dialogue" with communities.

The values must be evident in the school's philosophy, structures, curriculum, classrooms and relationships.

Mr Maharey said yesterday that it was "essential" that young people got some kind of values at school.

"I think New Zealanders have got a little shy about values," he said.

"But it's clear that one of the roles of schools is to pass on not just knowledge but skills and values and so on."

The Education Ministry's proposal last year to teach values as part of the curriculum triggered a major debate which extended through the election campaign. Critics questioned whether compulsory values education was necessary and said it would increase the burden on teachers.

Values are already in the curriculum, but the ministry has said that the proposal to put them into the new curriculum would ensure that teaching them was not left to chance.

The draft curriculum states that values are "deeply held beliefs about what is important or desirable".

"The values outlined in this curriculum are those that the New Zealand community supports because they enable us to live together and thrive in a diverse, democratic society in the 21st century."

Feedback is being sought on the draft curriculum until November 30, and a final curriculum will be published late next year.

IDEALS

New Zealand students will be encouraged to value
* Excellence
* Innovation, Inquiry and curiosity
* Diversity
* Respect
* Equity
* Community and participation
* Care for the environment
* Integrity