The Ministry is three years into a six-year programme to refresh The New Zealand Curriculum.
The draft Te Mātaiaho | the refreshed NZ curriculum can be downloaded using the link below.
Te Mātaiaho means “to observe and examine the strands of learning.” This name was gifted by Dr Wayne Ngata and members of our Rōpū Kaitiaki.
Te Mātaiaho has eight learning areas, which are being developed and released in phases.
Schools and kura have until the beginning of 2027 to start using the fully refreshed curriculum, although they must use the refreshed mathematics and statistics and English learning areas from the start of 2025.
- Te ao tangata | social sciences was released in November 2022, and the new Aotearoa New Zealand's histories must now be taught in all schools.
- English is now available to be explored and used in schools and kura. It must be used from 2025.
- Mathematics and statistics is now available to be explored and used in schools and kura. It must be used from 2025.
- Science is in development for release in 2024.
- Technology is in development for release in 2024.
- The arts is in development for release in 2024.
- Health and physical education is in development for release in 2025.
- Learning languages is in development for release in 2025.
A range of resources is available to support schools and kura with starting to implement Te Mātaiaho.
What's different from the existing curriculum?
Te Mātaiaho | the refreshed NZ curriculum includes:
- the whakapapa of Te Mātaiaho
- Mātaitipu | vision for young people, which was written by young people
- a purpose statement to ensure equity and inclusion for students.
Mātauranga Māori will sit at the heart of the learning areas, with key competencies, literacy, and numeracy explicitly woven into each learning area.
This will help students understand a dynamic and evolving knowledge system unique to Aotearoa.
The refreshed curriculum will be progression-focused, rather than outcomes-focused.
Curriculum levels and achievement objectives will be replaced with five phases of learning: Years 1-3, Years 4-6, Years 7-8, Years 9-10 and Years 11-13.
Understand, Know, Do: A progression-focused curriculum
Each of the five phases of learning contains progress outcomes that describe what students should understand, know, and do by the end of each phase.
Students deepen their understanding of the big ideas (understand), as they explore the context (know), using critical practices (do).
Each phase is cumulative, building on the last and increasingly complex as students progress.
The model is designed to make it easier for teachers to create rich and responsive learning, and puts students – their voices, wellbeing, and aspirations – at the centre of learning.
When using progressions, assessment for learning is an ongoing process integral to teaching and learning.
(The video begins with various exterior shots of Sylvia Park school, basketball courts, kids playing outside, murals, art projects and community gardens. Upbeat music plays.)
Sylvia Park is located in Mount Wellington in Auckland. We've got about 540 kids at the moment, it's big but it's not that big that you don't get to know every single family and every learner in the school.
(A title screen appears reading: The New Zealand Curriculum, Understand, Know, Do framing and progressions model)
(Barbara Ala’alatoa, Principal of Sylvia Park school sits in a classroom and speaks to camera)
‘Understand, Know and Do’ is really the framing for the curriculum refresh.
(An infographic appears of the Understand, Know, Do model. Three separate strands, Understand the big ideas, Know rich contexts for exploring the big ideas and Do practices that bring rigour to learning, all plait together with the title ‘the learning that matters’)
It's quite different from the previous curriculum that we've had. I think one of the things though that it lacked was some structure around the things that are most important and
‘Understand, Know and Do’ provide that structure.
(An infographic appears with three boxes, the first reads ‘Understand, the big ideas’)
‘Understand’ is about the big, enduring ideas that connect students to their learning, it’s these big ideas, these concepts that help ensure that learning is not just important but relevant and necessary for our learners, and not just for them but for their whānau, their friends, their community and beyond.
(On the same infographic, the second box reads ‘Know, Rich contexts for exploring the big ideas’)
Knowledge is really important, no enquiry would be valid without our students acquiring knowledge. In a social science context this knowledge might be related to events, stories, people in the local rohe, hapu, iwi, there’ll be local and regional, national stories that are important to learn about and so that learners have an understanding of the things that have shaped the world in which they live.
(On the same infographic the final box reads ‘Do, Practices that bring rigour to learning)
I’m really excited to see the ‘Do’ part. These are processes by which we ensure that students develop multiple perspectives on a controversial perspective, that they’ve sourced valid and reliable information from a whole range of sources. That they’ve sorted and synthesised ideas, actions or events, that they’ve had to compare and contrast knowledge and ideas, and that they’ve taken action as a result of this rigorous learning that they’ve undertaken.
(Much like the first infographic, the three boxes then form three separate strands that plait together under the title ‘the learning that matters)
‘Understand, Know and Do’, they really weave together, they’re all equally important and it’s when we get that balance right, we know our students have the best chance of being engaged and being engaged in the things that really matter and that are relevant for them, but also at the same time are developing a sense of themselves, the communities they live in and what has been important and what has shaped those places and spaces.
(A title screen appears reading: Progressions model, redefining the current curriculum levels)
One of the really exciting things about the curriculum refresh is that we have looked at progression in a much more child-centred way.
(A new infographic appears with the title: Progressions model, redefining the current curriculum levels. Under this are different age brackets reading years 1-3, 4-6, 7-10, 11-13)
So rather than a kind of year-on-year look at progress throughout a curriculum, it's chunked up now so we look at progression in terms of years one to three, four to six, seven-eight, nine-ten and eleven to thirteen. So we’re matching what we do, that matches their development rather than a kind of year-on-year thing. I think what’s really good about the progressions too is that it will provide for teachers, for people who are in the planning and design part of the curriculum, some clarity about what that will look like, we can’t second guess this stuff anymore. We really need to understand what that looks like at those ages and stages and we need to get expert at doing it so that our children in turn are becoming very expert in it. I think the transparency is hugely important and I think the transparency will be fantastic for not just teachers, for planning and design and implementation around the curriculum. But for whānau, I think you know, our whānau need to be able to walk into a school and say “what does the learning journey look like for my children when they come here?”, if you were coming to this school you’re going to spend eight years here. By the time that they leave in year eight we expect to be able to show you a very sophisticated toolkit that these children have developed as a result of being on a journey about an increasingly sophisticated way of learning.
(A title screen appears reading: Understand, Know, Do framing in practice, examples from Sylvia Park School)
Something that we did when we looked at ‘Understand, Know and Do’ as a staff was to look at what we currently did and we made links between what we currently did and what ‘Understand, Know and Do’ and what was really surprising and really helpful for everybody was to say, ‘oh, we're actually doing quite a bit of it already’. So I think it's really important to start with doing, you know, it's kind of a stock take and a review of what you do and then thinking about what is this truly asking us to do and finding those links and then seeing, so what are the opportunities and the bits that may not be quite there. We did an enquiry that was about, we knew that the centenary of World War I was coming up, so we knew it was going to be a big deal in the communities, we knew there was going to be celebrations everywhere and we also knew that if we said to our kids “we’re going to do World War I centenary, it was a hundred years ago” that most of them would go, “that’s got nothing to do with me”. So the big idea was how would we make that relevant to our children knowing that was going to be relevant in our community, relevant to quite a few people in our community actually. So what we did is we came up with a question, so an enquiring question that children could investigate. So it was ‘keep calm and carry on, how do we deal with conflict?’ And then if you think about the ‘do’ part of it, one of the things that we did because it was a social science enquiry was designing how do you get children to engage in and develop their learning in the context of an enquiry around conflict. So, the idea of coming up with things like a human timeline helps them to develop a set of skills to be able to tell the story but also, it brings them into it and they get to dress up and they get to stand in the shoes of those people and tell the story. But it doesn’t begin and end there, it also goes on, it provides them the platform to talk about, so what do I learn from what I’ve learnt about my own response to conflict, about what happened in World War I? What can I do now in terms of the way in which I act differently because of what I’ve learnt. They use the platform to be able to say how I will be, somebody who mitigates or supports people through conflict and so they end up taking action as a result of their learning because they’ve engaged in it, and they’ve been down in the trenches.
(Visuals of Sylvia Park School’s values are shown, each value is written on a mural with photos of the students. The values include Ignite, Explore, Sort/Synthesis, Create and Celebrate)
That ‘Understand, Know, Do’, when you put it all together when you make it as big and as exciting as it can possibly be, it will shape your existence, it will create the culture of your school and it will create a culture that is about children, about a community and about what they can do and will do in the future. If we get the ‘Understand, Know and Do’ part right I really think that our kids will be able to, not just survive in the world but to be able to thrive because they're wise, because they're knowledgeable, because they know how to act on the things that are important to them.
(The video ends with a title screen reading: Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga, Ministry of Education)
(The video begins with various exterior shots of Sylvia Park school, basketball courts, kids playing outside, murals, art projects and community gardens. Upbeat music plays.)
Sylvia Park is located in Mount Wellington in Auckland. We've got about 540 kids at the moment, it's big but it's not that big that you don't get to know every single family and every learner in the school.
(A title screen appears reading: The New Zealand Curriculum, Understand, Know, Do framing and progressions model)
(Barbara Ala’alatoa, Principal of Sylvia Park school sits in a classroom and speaks to camera)
‘Understand, Know and Do’ is really the framing for the curriculum refresh.
(An infographic appears of the Understand, Know, Do model. Three separate strands, Understand the big ideas, Know rich contexts for exploring the big ideas and Do practices that bring rigour to learning, all plait together with the title ‘the learning that matters’)
It's quite different from the previous curriculum that we've had. I think one of the things though that it lacked was some structure around the things that are most important and
‘Understand, Know and Do’ provide that structure.
(An infographic appears with three boxes, the first reads ‘Understand, the big ideas’)
‘Understand’ is about the big, enduring ideas that connect students to their learning, it’s these big ideas, these concepts that help ensure that learning is not just important but relevant and necessary for our learners, and not just for them but for their whānau, their friends, their community and beyond.
(On the same infographic, the second box reads ‘Know, Rich contexts for exploring the big ideas’)
Knowledge is really important, no enquiry would be valid without our students acquiring knowledge. In a social science context this knowledge might be related to events, stories, people in the local rohe, hapu, iwi, there’ll be local and regional, national stories that are important to learn about and so that learners have an understanding of the things that have shaped the world in which they live.
(On the same infographic the final box reads ‘Do, Practices that bring rigour to learning)
I’m really excited to see the ‘Do’ part. These are processes by which we ensure that students develop multiple perspectives on a controversial perspective, that they’ve sourced valid and reliable information from a whole range of sources. That they’ve sorted and synthesised ideas, actions or events, that they’ve had to compare and contrast knowledge and ideas, and that they’ve taken action as a result of this rigorous learning that they’ve undertaken.
(Much like the first infographic, the three boxes then form three separate strands that plait together under the title ‘the learning that matters)
‘Understand, Know and Do’, they really weave together, they’re all equally important and it’s when we get that balance right, we know our students have the best chance of being engaged and being engaged in the things that really matter and that are relevant for them, but also at the same time are developing a sense of themselves, the communities they live in and what has been important and what has shaped those places and spaces.
(A title screen appears reading: Progressions model, redefining the current curriculum levels)
One of the really exciting things about the curriculum refresh is that we have looked at progression in a much more child-centred way.
(A new infographic appears with the title: Progressions model, redefining the current curriculum levels. Under this are different age brackets reading years 1-3, 4-6, 7-10, 11-13)
So rather than a kind of year-on-year look at progress throughout a curriculum, it's chunked up now so we look at progression in terms of years one to three, four to six, seven-eight, nine-ten and eleven to thirteen. So we’re matching what we do, that matches their development rather than a kind of year-on-year thing. I think what’s really good about the progressions too is that it will provide for teachers, for people who are in the planning and design part of the curriculum, some clarity about what that will look like, we can’t second guess this stuff anymore. We really need to understand what that looks like at those ages and stages and we need to get expert at doing it so that our children in turn are becoming very expert in it. I think the transparency is hugely important and I think the transparency will be fantastic for not just teachers, for planning and design and implementation around the curriculum. But for whānau, I think you know, our whānau need to be able to walk into a school and say “what does the learning journey look like for my children when they come here?”, if you were coming to this school you’re going to spend eight years here. By the time that they leave in year eight we expect to be able to show you a very sophisticated toolkit that these children have developed as a result of being on a journey about an increasingly sophisticated way of learning.
(A title screen appears reading: Understand, Know, Do framing in practice, examples from Sylvia Park School)
Something that we did when we looked at ‘Understand, Know and Do’ as a staff was to look at what we currently did and we made links between what we currently did and what ‘Understand, Know and Do’ and what was really surprising and really helpful for everybody was to say, ‘oh, we're actually doing quite a bit of it already’. So I think it's really important to start with doing, you know, it's kind of a stock take and a review of what you do and then thinking about what is this truly asking us to do and finding those links and then seeing, so what are the opportunities and the bits that may not be quite there. We did an enquiry that was about, we knew that the centenary of World War I was coming up, so we knew it was going to be a big deal in the communities, we knew there was going to be celebrations everywhere and we also knew that if we said to our kids “we’re going to do World War I centenary, it was a hundred years ago” that most of them would go, “that’s got nothing to do with me”. So the big idea was how would we make that relevant to our children knowing that was going to be relevant in our community, relevant to quite a few people in our community actually. So what we did is we came up with a question, so an enquiring question that children could investigate. So it was ‘keep calm and carry on, how do we deal with conflict?’ And then if you think about the ‘do’ part of it, one of the things that we did because it was a social science enquiry was designing how do you get children to engage in and develop their learning in the context of an enquiry around conflict. So, the idea of coming up with things like a human timeline helps them to develop a set of skills to be able to tell the story but also, it brings them into it and they get to dress up and they get to stand in the shoes of those people and tell the story. But it doesn’t begin and end there, it also goes on, it provides them the platform to talk about, so what do I learn from what I’ve learnt about my own response to conflict, about what happened in World War I? What can I do now in terms of the way in which I act differently because of what I’ve learnt. They use the platform to be able to say how I will be, somebody who mitigates or supports people through conflict and so they end up taking action as a result of their learning because they’ve engaged in it, and they’ve been down in the trenches.
(Visuals of Sylvia Park School’s values are shown, each value is written on a mural with photos of the students. The values include Ignite, Explore, Sort/Synthesis, Create and Celebrate)
That ‘Understand, Know, Do’, when you put it all together when you make it as big and as exciting as it can possibly be, it will shape your existence, it will create the culture of your school and it will create a culture that is about children, about a community and about what they can do and will do in the future. If we get the ‘Understand, Know and Do’ part right I really think that our kids will be able to, not just survive in the world but to be able to thrive because they're wise, because they're knowledgeable, because they know how to act on the things that are important to them.
(The video ends with a title screen reading: Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga, Ministry of Education)
Introduction to the progressions model in Te Mātaiaho
In this module you will learn about the progressions model that sits within Te Mātaiaho and the ways you can begin to use Mātairea (the progressions model) and Mātaiaho (the learning strands) to strengthen how you notice, recognise, and respond to student learning in your programmes.
It is expected to take 60 minutes to complete.
After completing this module, you will be able to:
- explain why there is a shift to a progression-focused curriculum
- understand Mātairea (the progressions model) and Mātaiaho (the learning strands) and how they are interwoven
- recognise ways you might weave the progressions model and Understand, Know, Do (UKD) elements into your teaching and learning
- focus your school's learning programmes in a consistent way.