I recently read the State of the Public Service 2025 report released by the Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission with real interest.
In it, the Commissioner describes a Public Service that has served New Zealand well – but whose current operating model is coming under increasing pressure. The message is clear: if the Public Service is to continue serving New Zealanders well into the future, it must adapt.
As I read it, I couldn’t help but think: education is not separate from this story. It is one of the largest and most visible parts of the public service. If the system risks identified in this report are real, they are already showing up in our schools. And in many cases, they’re being managed every day by principals and boards of trustees.
The report identifies six major areas of risk:
- fragmentation and silos
- lack of whole-of-system perspective
- slow uptake of enabling technologies such as AI
- numerous sub-scale agencies
- ongoing fiscal pressure
- insufficient talent development
None of these are abstract in education. They are lived realities. In what follows I’ve tried to expand a little on how each risk area applies in our education system.
1. Fragmentation: When No One Owns the Whole Journey
Fragmentation is perhaps the most visible risk in our current education – a consequence, in part, of the Tomorrow’s School’s reforms.
A learner’s journey – from ECE to schooling to tertiary to work – is governed, funded, and measured in separate policy silos. No one agency truly owns the trajectory. Schools, meanwhile, juggle overlapping initiatives in wellbeing, literacy, digital technologies, assessment reform, equity, and vocational pathways – each with its own reporting and accountability requirements.
For a student with complex needs, fragmentation is even more tangible. School, Learning Support, Health, Oranga Tamariki, NGOs — coordination often relies on relationships and goodwill rather than deliberate system design.
If a 15-year-old can fall between the gaps of our own education structures, that is what “fragmented and siloed” looks like for citizens.
We see the same fragmentation in the teacher workforce. Initial Teacher Education (ITE) is designed and quality-assured in one part of the system. In-service Professional Learning and Development (PLD) is commissioned and delivered through another. There is no coherent, career-long “learning spine” connecting preparation, induction, mentoring, leadership development and ongoing growth.
2. A Missing Whole-of-System Perspective
This issue is something I’ve highlighted a number of times in previous blog posts – it is, in my view, one of the key things holding us back from being truly innovative and successful in our endeavours to create a world class education experience for our tamariki.
A whole-of-system perspective should design around the learner’s lifetime journey. Instead, policy shifts often occur at one level without a shared picture of cross-sector consequences.
Curriculum refreshes, qualification reform, vocational redesign, workforce strategies – each may be defensible in isolation. But do they connect into a coherent, long-term pipeline?
Data systems still largely stop at sector boundaries. Leaders see their patch – a school, a Kāhui Ako, a tertiary provider – rather than the full arc of learners’ lives.
Without a whole-of-system lens, optimisation in one area can create pressure in another.
3. AI: A Canary in the Coal Mine
The Public Service report highlights slow uptake of enabling technologies such as AI across the public service. Education may be the canary in the coal mine.
Generative AI is already reshaping assessment, teaching practice, administration and workforce capability in schools and systems across the world. Yet schools in New Zealand are left to develop policy, ethical guidelines, and professional learning independently, often with uneven infrastructure and limited system-level support.
If education is central to New Zealand’s future productivity and innovation, then slow, fragmented AI capability development in education should concern us deeply. The place where we most need future capability is one of the places receiving the least coherent guidance.
4. Many Small Entities, Fragile Resilience
New Zealand’s education landscape is built on many relatively small institutions – schools, kura, wānanga, PTEs – each with limited specialist capacity. Some of this is a consequence of our geography, some related to the expression of different educational ideologies and philosophies. The local responsiveness introduced under Tomorrow’s Schools can be a strength. But system resilience can be fragile.
In small schools especially, principals carry multiple specialist roles: curriculum leader, SENCO, property manager, ICT strategist, pastoral lead. When a key person leaves, institutional knowledge leaves with them.
Career pathways are similarly constrained. Talented educators often have to leave their community – or leave education entirely – to find progression.
Local autonomy without structured cross-system pathways can limit both resilience and talent growth.
5. Fiscal Pressure: The Daily Trade-Off
Fiscal pressure is not an abstract Treasury line item in education. It is the teacher who does not get release time for PLD. It is the learning support that cannot be extended. It is the choice between upgrading digital infrastructure or adding staffing.
Schools are regularly asked to implement curriculum change, strengthen inclusion, respond to wellbeing needs, integrate digital and AI capability – often within static or tightening baselines.
Under sustained pressure, short-term fixes crowd out long-term capability building. And equity ambitions are the most vulnerable when budgets tighten.
6. Talent Development: The System’s Mirror
If education is how we grow the country’s talent, then how we grow talent within education matters enormously.
Teacher shortages, workload pressures, ageing demographics, and limited structured leadership pathways signal strain. Leaders are expected to navigate AI, data use, cultural capability, and complex change – yet systematic, career-long development pathways remain patchy.
As mentioned earlier, ITE and PLD still operate largely as separate markets rather than as a single, strategic pipeline, meaning there’s often a lack of coherent in what people are experiencing and being told as they move between these parts of the system.
In that sense, education mirrors the broader public-sector challenge the report identifies: insufficient, system-level investment in talent development.
What This Means for Principals
For principals, these risks are not theoretical. They show up as:
- trying to knit together multiple national initiatives without a coherent implementation roadmap
- making AI policy decisions with limited guidance
- balancing staffing and innovation under fiscal constraint
- struggling to build leadership pipelines within small teams
So what can leaders do?
- Map fragmentation locally. Identify every initiative, agency and provider interacting with your school. Where are the overlaps? Where are the gaps? Simplify where you can.
- Strengthen the ITE–PLD bridge. Build deliberate partnerships that create continuity from practicum to early-career development.
- Take a strategic stance on AI. Choose a small number of priority use-cases and build capability deliberately rather than reactively. Join a national community of practice focused on sharing knowledge and experiences.
- Invest in leadership pipelines. Grow internal talent intentionally.
- Tell a whole-of-learner story. Use reporting and planning to make transition points and system gaps visible.
You may not be able to redesign the public service – but you can reduce fragmentation inside your sphere of influence.
What This Means for Boards
Boards sit where national system risks become local realities. Governance can either amplify fragmentation – or counter it. Boards can:
- Integrate national priorities into a small number of coherent, learner-centred strategic goals.
- Ask whole-of-system questions: How does this decision support learners across transitions?
- Treat principal PLD as strategic investment, not compliance.
- Govern deliberately for AI and digital capability.
- Monitor workforce wellbeing, supply and development as core strategic indicators.
Boards and principals cannot fix every system weakness. But they can model what a less fragmented, more future-focused, talent-nourishing education system looks like in practice.
A Final Reflection
What struck me most in reading the Public Service report is that it is not a crisis document. It is a warning document.
It says: the model that served us well may not be sufficient for what comes next.
In education, we should hear that clearly. Because when system weaknesses go unaddressed, they don’t remain in reports. They show up in classrooms. And that is where the stakes are highest.
