The Minister has provided information about the timing for updating the national curriculum – The New Zealand Curriculum for English medium, and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa for Māori medium.
Both The New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa (TMoA) are being updated and made available in phases, and schools and kura have until the beginning of 2027 to start using the fully refreshed national curriculum.
The timelines support the rollout of structured approaches to learning, as well as the rephased NCEA change programme.
- Term 4,2024 Content for mathematics & statistics and Pāngarau Years 0-13 will be available to test and give feedback
- Term 1, 2026: Schools and kura will need to teach the updated mathematics and statistics and Pāngarau for Years 0 to 13.
- 2027: The updated national curriculum will be required. This includes the other learning areas from the NZC (science, technology, health and PE, learning languages, the arts, and social sciences), and the other wāhanga ako from TMoA (Te Ao Māori, Pūtaiao me te Hangarau, Toi Ihiihi, Waiora, Te Reo Pākehā, and Ngā Reo).
- 2028 NCEA Level 2
- 2029 NCEA Level 3
More information is available on Tāhurangi https://tahurangi.education.govt.nz/national-curriculum-timelines
“Years 11 to 13 will have a national curriculum that will be broken out into subjects to more clearly align with NCEA achievement standards and senior secondary programmes of learning. The NCEA change programme has been rephased to allow time to develop clear curricula for senior secondary level subjects before NCEA Levels 2 and 3 are further developed. This was announced by the Minister of Education in April this year.
Evidence-based teaching practices will be integrated into the national curriculum, providing clarity about what teaching and learning is needed at each year level, and the practices that work best. This will incorporate the work done on the draft common practice model and the Ako Framework into a single document. We are retaining and strengthening the ‘Understand, Know, Do’ model in the updated national curriculum, which has already been tested. We are also using Mātauranga — Pūkenga — Whanonga (Knowledge, Skills, Dispositions) as the organising model in Te Marautanga o Aotearoa.” p3 Curriculum changes info sheet
