Pip Tinning: NZ English Teachers Association President on teachers' response to the new curriculum rewrite

The troubled curriculum rewrite has hit another snag. 

The Ministry of Education’s new English curriculum has been described as “shambolic” by the English Teachers Association, who have walked away from the rewriting process. 

They say it’s too complex and has unrealistic expectations of what teachers can fit into a single year. 

Association President Pip Tinning told Francesca Rudkin that the Ministry is expecting teachers to fit a significant amount of work into a single year, with the curriculum document currently sitting at 120 pages. 

She says they’re concerned about the ability to meaningfully engage with the content, and the idea of leaving students behind becomes increasingly concerning if they’re trying to get through everything. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Real credibility issues for the Ministry of Education's new English curriculum.
It's been described as shambolic by the English Teachers Association,
who have walked away from work on the draft, saying
it's too complex and his unrealistic expectations of what teachers
can fit into a year. President of the English Teachers
Association pipt in and joins me, now, really appreciate your time, Thank.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
You, my pleasure. Good morning. Hey.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
What has this rewrite process been like?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah, shambolic I think is a really good word for it.
It's been a long process so far. We had a
lot of stuff early last year that we were very
concerned about, had some conversations with the Ministry. I think
about September was our first lot of conversations with them,

(00:49):
and then radio silence until probably December November December, where
we were given a draft curriculum to have a look
at and to give feedback on in a nine day
period at the end of our school year beginning of
the holidays. So it's been all over the show. Yeah.

(01:12):
Over the last few months, we've had a couple of
members that we put forward as people who would be
really good to help with feedback and consultation around the curriculum,
and yeah, the experience I've had has been really problematic
as well.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
So how much extra are they trying to fit into
the curriculum compared to what's appropriate or manageable.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah, it's interesting. At the moment. The document that we
first saw was one hundred and eleven pages, and after
our feedback that said, you know, this is it's just
it's too big, it's too long, it went up to
one hundred and twenty. What they're asking for teachers to
fit into a year is, you know, they have to

(01:58):
do one novel, a collection of poetry, a film, a
drama text, short texts, other visual, spoken, multimodal and digital texts,
along with writing oral presentations. And then they are expecting
students to engage meaningfully with all of these things. Well,

(02:19):
any good novel study could take somewhat five weeks, and
then if you're doing a film study, that's at least
five six weeks. Poetry could be that long. Writing, if
you're doing good writing, that will take a huge amount
of time over the course of the year. Then your
oral presentations. So it's a lot to fit into a

(02:40):
forty week year.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
So what impact would that have on students and teachers.
If a curriculum dislike this is implemented, I think the.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Biggest issue will be that lack of really meaningful engagement.
If you're just tick boxing and trying to move on.
I guess one of the big issues is when you
look at fact that we're trying really hard to work
with students to get them up to the appropriate standard.
If it's like, look, guys are really sorry that we
haven't quite got you to where you need to be,

(03:10):
what we need to move on because we've got a
huge curriculum to cover, you know, their idea of leaving
students behind becomes increasingly concerning if we're trying to get
through everything. One of our recommendations is rather than each year,
that each phase covered those things and did it in

(03:31):
a really thoughtful, meaningful and deep way, to ensure that
our students are learning to read texts in a way
that allows them to look at them critically, to write
really well and write a range of things, and to
be really good communicators. So those are things that as
English teachers we constantly keep in the forefront of our

(03:52):
minds as being really important for our young people. But
the complexity of some of the statements within the curriculum
are just they would be really overwhelming, and we are
also needing to keep in mind that teachers will be
given a final draft in term four of this year

(04:13):
with a twenty twenty six implementation, so that's an incredibly
short time frame to ask people to get their heads
around one hundred and twenty pages potentially.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
I thank you very much for your time. Gosh, you
know we really need to We're all hoping this works
for both teachers and students appreciate that. That was President
of the English Teachers Association, Pip Pretending. For more from
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