Education in Aotearoa doesn’t need to be so divided

If you talk to almost any teacher, school leader or parent in Aotearoa, they will tell you that education shouldn’t be a ‘political football’, that we should all be working together for the best interests of our students.

Most would also agree that we need to do something about educational underachievement. Our maths, science and literacy scores have steadily declined over the past 15+ years – well before Covid hit. We’ve been seeing a shift in assessment types with a decline in external exams, and an increase in both internal assessments and unit standards for our year 12 and 13 students – a worrying trend given the strong relationship between success in high school exams and first year tertiary success.

However, rather than working together to come up with solutions, educators, policy makers and government seem to be in an increasingly bitter argument about the path forward.

On one side, you have the Government’s current policy agenda, centred around a knowledge-rich curriculum, explicit teaching grounded in the science of learning, and a move back towards external exams. Some schools have whole-heartedly embraced this approach.

On the other side, many educators remain deeply committed to a vision of education as culturally responsive and relational, with a desire to embed indigenous approaches and knowledge in the classroom.

Too often now each side has an increasingly deep scepticism of the other and feels there is little to learn from ‘the other team’. There must be a way to bridge this divide.

At Waipapa Taumata Rau, The University of Auckland, the Pacific Academy initiative – developed by talented math educators Josephina Tamatoa and Katalina Ma, alongside Pacific tertiary leaders Damon Salesa and Rennie Atfield-Douglas – shows things can be done differently. This year, the tutoring programme supported over 630 Māori and Pacific students with science and maths, achieving generous philanthropic backing to expand the initiative to more than 1000 students in 2026.

The programme is grounded in science of learning principles. Key mathematical knowledge and processes are explicitly taught, and over 16 weeks students are supported through sequenced retrieval practice, a structured approach of regularly prompting students to recall previously learned mathematical concepts and procedures from long-term memory.

It also embraces cultural responsiveness and relational learning. Programme evaluation shows that students saw its use of culturally affirming practices, such as the involvement of South Pacific Indigenous engineering students, as key to its success.

In taking this approach, Pacific Academy recognises there is strong evidence base both for science of learning-based approaches and culturally responsive and relational ways of teaching.

In England, for example, maths scores have significantly improved after the adoption of science of learning-informed approaches, including a greater focus on teachers helping students master the basics before progressing.

Such results build on many large-scale studies that show well-sequenced and explicit instruction led by the teacher can have significant effects on student outcomes. Understanding what has been most effective elsewhere can and should help us think about what we might do here.

But we’re not England – we’re Aotearoa New Zealand. Just as there’s a large credible body of research on the science of learning, research shows that indigenous ways of teaching with reciprocal, relational learning increases Māori, and Pacific, student participation and success.

And as advocates have reminded the New Zealand public time and time again, what’s good for Māori and Pacific is good for all of us.

We would never argue for a one-size-fits-all model of education. Approaches need to be tailored to children and their local communities, and to vary by subject. It’s also vitally important to remember that addressing poverty remains the number one thing we could do to improve educational outcomes.

However, it seems to us that each ‘team’ in education in Aotearoa right now has something it could learn from the other, and that if they did this, we could make some real progress.

Advocates of explicit instruction, for example, could come to better understand how learning is always situated in cultural contexts and depends on relationships. Likewise, those committed to culturally grounded practice could consider ways that carefully sequenced teaching, clear modelling, and structured practice can sit alongside, and even enhance, commitments to identity and belonging.

How do we get beyond the scepticism each ‘side’ in this debate seems to have for each other? Perhaps, because we haven’t worked through our nation’s colonial history (rather, we have an internally contested and confused national identity); we’ve come to see two broad educational schools of thought that could benefit our young people as mutually exclusive. This is an unfortunate and unnecessary division.

That the Government has removed Te Tiriti obligations from boards is, in our view, a big backwards step. Progressing our educational conversations relies on a deep understanding of who we are as a country, and learning to see the value of different perspectives, knowledges and needs.

Without a cohesive national identity – a model of partnership offered by Te Tiriti – we risk treating our educational system as a ‘political football’. Our young people and communities need us to think critically about how we contribute to building a connected, equitable society; one that embraces Te Tiriti-based multiculturalism and draws on the strengths of diverse worldviews.