- What’s driving the renewed focus on literacy and numeracy in Aotearoa
- Why foundational skills are necessary – but not sufficient
- The broader purpose of education: capabilities, meaning-making, and flourishing lives
- The risks of narrowing curriculum and defining success too tightly
- A call to reclaim a bold, human-centred vision for learning
Naming the Moment
To borrow a quote I’ve read lately, “We are right to refocus on the basics – but not if we lose sight of the horizon.”
Reading through recent news reports and communications from the Ministry of Education I’ve become increasingly aware of a deepening sense of urgency within the education sector in Aotearoa. Results from national and international assessments – such as NCEA, the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (NMSSA), and the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) – have shown a steady decline in literacy and numeracy achievement over the past decade. In 2022, for example, NMSSA data showed that just 56% of Year 8 students met curriculum expectations for reading, and only 45% for writing. In mathematics, New Zealand’s performance in PISA has declined significantly since 2003 – with the country now performing below the OECD average.
These data points represent real learning barriers – not for anonymous cohorts, but for the very children in our communities, including my own grandchildren. Students who struggle to read fluently, write clearly, or grasp foundational mathematical concepts are at a disadvantage – not only in schooling, but in life. These skills are key to future learning. Without them, deeper engagement in science, social studies, the arts, and digital technologies becomes increasingly difficult. The stakes are high.
It is in this context that the government has mandated a renewed emphasis on “the basics”: structured literacy, explicit teaching in numeracy, phonics-based reading instruction, handwriting, and prescriptive learning sequences. I understand the motivation here – the aim is to ensure all learners, regardless of background, are equipped with the core skills they need to succeed. And I agree we need a renewed focus on ‘getting this right’. Foundational skills do matter. They always have.
But there is also a growing unease – not about what is being emphasised, but about what might be overlooked in the process. The concern is that a system narrowly focused on structured approaches and prescriptive content may crowd out the broader goals of education: critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration, citizenship. These are the capabilities that enable learners to thrive in a world of complexity and change.
This is not a simple either/or. In fact, that’s the problem. The current discourse too often sets up a binary – as though we must choose between ensuring every child can decode a text and enabling them to understand, question, and respond to it. Between drilling handwriting and nurturing self-expression. Between structure and agency.
This post is not a rejection of structured approaches. On the contrary, I want to argue that these are necessary – particularly given the evidence of recent years. But they are not sufficient. If we are serious about equipping young people for the future, we need to ensure that foundational skills are just that: a foundation. From there, we must still build.
Beyond the Basics – What Else Education Is For
“Literacy opens the door, but what matters is what we do in the room.”
Literacy and numeracy are essential, but they are not the end point of education – they are the entry point. They equip learners with the tools to access knowledge, express ideas, and engage in the world. But the deeper purpose of education is to help young people make meaning, ask questions, think critically, relate to others, and contribute to society.
In Aotearoa, this broader vision has been embedded in the New Zealand Curriculum, which aspires for young people to become “confident, connected, actively involved, and lifelong learners.” The Key Competencies (thinking, using language, symbols and texts, managing self, relating to others, and participating and contributing ) reflect an understanding that success in life requires more than technical proficiency. These are the core capabilities needed to navigate complexity, uncertainty, and change and to shape the systems and relationships that define their lives.
Internationally, similar ideas are reflected in frameworks like the OECD Learning Compass 2030, which positions foundational knowledge as one part of a wider developmental arc – one that includes agency, collaboration, ethical reasoning, and a capacity to contribute to well-being, both personal and collective.
At the heart of these visions is a powerful idea: education as a foundation for human flourishing. That means supporting young people not only to succeed individually, but to participate meaningfully in creating a better world — socially, economically, environmentally, and culturally. It’s a view of education that sees learners not just as future workers, but as future citizens, kaitiaki, creators, leaders, and carers. It asks not only “What skills will students need?” but “What kind of people do we hope they will become – and what kind of future do we want them to help shape?”
This is not about choosing between “skills” and “values,” or between academic learning and broader capabilities. It’s about recognising that foundational skills are necessary, but insufficient on their own. They enable access — but what we do with that access is where education’s deeper purpose lies.
Too narrow a focus on basics risks reducing learning to a checklist, and learners to vessels to be filled. Yes, children need to learn how to read. But they also need to learn why to read – to enter new worlds, encounter diverse perspectives, feel something, question something, dream something. Structured literacy may help a child decode a sentence, but it is their engagement with stories, ideas, and each other that brings those words to life.
Education, at its best, should develop both fluency and depth; both mastery and meaning. And most importantly, it should equip learners not only to thrive themselves – but to help others do the same.
The Risk of Narrowing The Purpose
“We can teach decoding while also nurturing meaning-making. We can teach handwriting while also creating digital storytellers. It’s not a binary – it’s a blend.”
When educational systems respond to a crisis – like the well-documented decline in literacy and numeracy – the instinct is often to simplify the solution: focus on the basics, tighten expectations, prescribe methods, and double down on “what works.” While this response may be understandable, even necessary in part, it can also bring unintended consequences.
We’ve been here before. History shows that when curriculum and assessment systems narrow their focus, teaching and learning often follow. What is emphasised gets taught; what gets assessed gets prioritised. And what doesn’t? Often, it quietly disappears from the timetable, the planning folder, or the professional learning calendar.
Already, there are signs that this is happening. Teachers and principals I’ve encountered in the past months report growing pressure to concentrate time and energy on phonics instruction, handwriting drills, and basic numeracy programmes – even in the early years where playful, exploratory learning has long been valued. There’s less space to explore texts for meaning, to engage in dialogue, to experiment, to create. The risk is not just the marginalisation of other curriculum areas like the arts, science, or te ao Māori – but the crowding out of the very capabilities that make learning deep, connected, and transferable.
This is not a critique of structure, or of the importance of evidence-based approaches. It’s a warning about what happens when structure becomes prescription, and when evidence is reduced to what can be easily measured. Literacy, for example, is not only about decoding words; it’s also about comprehension, interpretation, empathy, imagination. If we focus only on what is most quantifiable – letter-sound correspondence, testable vocabulary, legible handwriting – we risk producing technically competent readers who do not love to read, or who cannot fully grasp what they are reading.
There is also a human cost. A curriculum that narrows what matters risks reducing teaching to the technical task of delivery – a checklist of pre-scripted moves rather than a profession of relational, adaptive, and deeply creative practice. Many teachers I’ve spoken to talk of feeling burned out by the pressures of accountability and compliance, while others are becoming disillusioned about their capacity to work as professionals. If the profession is reshaped around a narrow set of routines and outcomes, we may further erode their sense of agency and joy – making it even harder to attract and retain passionate educators. When teachers are treated as technicians rather than professionals, we risk diminishing not just their autonomy, but their vocation. As we respond to one crisis, we risk fuelling another.
As Linda Darling-Hammond cautions, “When high-stakes testing becomes the goal rather than the measure, curriculum narrows, teaching becomes less creative, and learning suffers.” Similarly, Pasi Sahlberg observes, “The irony is that the more we try to control learning with standardisation, the less learning actually happens.” These insights underscore the unintended consequences of an overemphasis on standardized testing and the importance of maintaining a balanced, holistic approach to education.
This narrowing has equity implications too. A tightly controlled curriculum may appear to provide consistency and certainty, but it can also limit teachers’ capacity to adapt to diverse learners, local contexts, and culturally sustaining pedagogies. It risks turning learning into a one-size-fits-all process, when what we actually need is a deeply human one.
Yes, foundational skills need to be strengthened. But if we narrow our definition of success too much, we may improve test scores while impoverishing the experience of learning. We may raise the floor – but lower the ceiling. And ultimately, we may fail to prepare young people not just for schooling, but for life.
A Broader Vision: Holding the “Both/And”
We don’t have to choose between strengthening foundational skills and fostering deeper, richer learning. We can – and must – do both. In fact, it is only by doing both that we can genuinely prepare young people for the complexity of the world they are growing into.
The current sense of urgency around literacy and numeracy is real – and justified. Every child deserves to leave school with the ability to read, write, and reason with confidence. These are basic human rights, not optional extras. But if we respond to this crisis by narrowing our curriculum, reducing our definition of success, and sidelining the broader purpose of education, we risk solving one problem while creating many others.
We need an education system that sees the development of foundational skills not as the end goal, but as the beginning – the scaffolding on which to build the full breadth of human potential. One that supports learners to flourish not just academically, but socially, emotionally, and ethically. One that prepares young people not only to navigate the world, but to shape it – with empathy, imagination, and a commitment to the collective good.
To get there, we need to trust teachers as professionals, not just technicians. We need to design policy that holds the space for both structure and creativity, for rigour and relational practice. We need to protect room in the curriculum for the arts, the sciences, te ao Māori, play, inquiry, and critical dialogue – not as luxuries, but as essential ingredients of a meaningful education.
Above all, we need to expand our vision of what success looks like. Not just test scores and technical proficiency – but engagement, curiosity, connection, capability, and contribution. Not just preparing young people to pass assessments, but to participate fully in life.
Because in the end, structured programmes may help build the foundation – but it is purpose, relationship, and vision that will build the house.
Reclaiming a Bigger Vision
“We can teach decoding while also nurturing meaning-making. We can teach handwriting while also creating digital storytellers. It’s not a binary – it’s a blend.”
At the heart of all of this lies a simple but urgent question: What is education for?
If we define it narrowly – as the transmission of skills and knowledge to enable individual success in a competitive world – then our current path might seem sufficient. But if we believe education should do more, that it should cultivate capable, compassionate, creative human beings who can contribute meaningfully to a changing world, then we need to reclaim a broader vision.
We need a bigger why.
This means recognising that education is not just about economic outcomes or international rankings. It is about shaping the kind of society we want to live in, one that values equity, sustainability, cultural wisdom, and collective wellbeing. It is about preparing young people to face challenges we cannot yet imagine, with resilience, hope, and a strong sense of purpose.
It also means trusting that our young people are more than just future workers. They are future citizens, neighbours, leaders, carers, creators, kaitiaki. They need more than basic skills; they need opportunities to discover who they are, what they value, and how they can contribute. They need an education system that affirms their identity, extends their capacity, and invites them to be part of something bigger than themselves.
This bigger vision requires boldness. It asks us to design a curriculum not just around what is easiest to measure, but around what matters most. To give teachers the space to teach with depth and humanity. To elevate the voices of young people and communities. And to hold fast to the idea that education can – and must – be a force for human and societal flourishing.
This is not a call to abandon structure or standards. It is a call to place them in service of something larger. Foundational skills are vital. But they are not the summit – they are the base camp. From there, the real climb begins.
If we are to meet the challenges of our time – ecological, social, technological, spiritual – we need an education system that grows thinkers, questioners, collaborators, peacemakers. People who know how to read the word and the world. People who can connect across difference, act with integrity, and imagine new possibilities.
The moment we are in calls for courage – not just to respond to decline, but to dream again. To resist the temptation of small fixes and reclaimed pasts, and instead lean into the future with a bigger view of what learning is for, and who it is for.
That is the challenge. And that is the opportunity.
If the ideas in this post resonate with you then consider becoming part of our EdRising community – or attending our EdRising Convening in Auckland on 7-8 July, 2025. More details here
