Any learner, any where, any time…

New Zealand’s recent COVID‑19 inquiry and the increasing pressure on our schooling workforce are a fresh reminder that we can’t treat resilience in education as a “nice to have”. We need to design for disruption as a default – and hybrid models of teaching and learning should be central to that design.

Why resilience must be designed in

The Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID‑19 Lessons Learned is about much more than looking in the rear‑view mirror; its focus is on how Aotearoa can be better prepared for future pandemics, including keeping education going next time. International modelling suggests the probability of another COVID‑scale event in coming decades is not trivial, with some analyses putting the chance of a similar pandemic at around 2–3% in any given year – a risk that compounds over a decade. Add the emergence of further COVID waves as population immunity wanes, and it becomes harder to pretend that 2020–21 was a one‑off; episodic health disruption is now part of the landscape.

Pandemics are only one part of the picture. Climate‑fuelled weather events and natural disasters are already closing schools and cutting off communities in different parts of the motu. Global instability, including the current conflict in the Middle East, flows through into fuel prices and the viability of school transport, quietly undermining our assumption that “turn up to a building at 9am” is the only way schooling can work. Then there are the pressures generated from inside the system itself: Ministry forecasts now point to a shortfall of around 710 secondary teachers in 2026, with particular pinch points in certain subjects and regions. Without enough teachers, continuity of rich, high‑quality programmes quickly becomes a timetable challenge, not just a future hypothetical.

This is exactly the kind of context I’ve explored previously in my thinking on resilience planning and future‑focused schooling (see links to thought pieces at the end of this post)

We already have the backbone

The encouraging news is that we are not starting from a blank slate. Across Aotearoa we already have providers whose core business is to deliver high‑quality learning at a distance – accessible to learners regardless of geography or local circumstance. Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu (Te Kura) has decades of experience in this space, supporting learners who are geographically isolated, medically unable to attend, or needing programmes their local school cannot provide. At secondary level, networks such as NetNZ and Kōtui Ako have shown that young people can successfully engage with senior programmes through well‑designed online courses, with local schools providing pastoral support while specialist e‑teachers work with students across the country.

Alongside this, the rapid uptake of learning management systems and video‑conferencing tools during and after COVID means that most schools now sit on a basic digital infrastructure that can be strengthened and used more intentionally, rather than built from scratch. This aligns closely with what I’ve argued for in earlier writing about hybrid learning and “anytime, anywhere” models of provision (see links below).

Too often, however, these capabilities are treated as peripheral – “alternative” options we turn to only when the conventional model falters. A resilience mindset flips that. Instead of viewing online providers as add‑ons, we can treat them as core infrastructure: a backbone of national provision that any school, cluster, or learner can plug into when (not if) local capacity is stretched. When we frame online and hybrid provision this way, the benefits extend well beyond coping with disruption. We also:

• Create new career pathways and flexible roles for teachers (for example, specialist online teaching or cross‑school leadership roles).
• Smooth spikes and troughs in demand across subjects and regions.
• Make it viable to offer small‑roll or niche courses that would otherwise disappear.

In future disruptions, continuity of learning should not rest on every individual school scrambling to “go online” at short notice. It should rest on how well we have recognised, integrated, and normalised these existing strengths as part of the mainstream fabric of schooling in Aotearoa. The table I’ve created below is an attempt to summarise this:

Element	What we already have	How it supports resilience	Additional system benefits
National distance provision	Te Kura’s programmes, dual enrolment options	Provides continuity for learners when local schools not accessible or are disrupted.	Creates alternative career pathways for teachers, supports flexible workloads, and enables provision for hard‑to‑staff areas.
Online subject networks	NetNZ, Kōtui Ako, and similar collaboratives	Promotes regional collaboration and support. Keeps specialist subjects running despite local teacher shortages.	Smooths spikes and troughs in demand (by subject and region), enables national sharing of expertise, and supports small‑roll courses.
Digital platforms	Widespread LMS and video‑conferencing adoption post‑COVID	Enables rapid shift to remote or hybrid delivery when needed.	Builds system‑wide digital fluency, supports blended PLD models, and enables cross‑school collaboration and resource sharing.

Hybrid as the “normal”, not the backup

The key move here is to stop treating hybrid as an emergency workaround and instead see it as the way we do schooling in a complex world. The aim is for every learner to experience a blend of in‑person and online learning as part of the everyday pattern of school life. Hybrid does not mean abandoning kānohi‑ki‑te‑kānohi learning; it means deliberately weaving together:

• Classroom‑based experiences grounded in relationships, hands‑on activity, and local place.
• Online environments where resources, tasks, and interaction are available “any learner, anywhere, anytime”.
• Assessment and feedback practices that work seamlessly across both spaces.

When every class, or at least every learning area, has a living online “home” – where current learning, explanations, and opportunities to connect are accessible – then short‑term closures, staff absences, transport interruptions, or individual attendance issues become “learn from where you are this week”, rather than “learning stops”. From a workforce perspective, hybrid approaches also allow schools and clusters to share scarce expertise: that specialist physics or te reo teacher can work with a small group of learners nationally via NetNZ, Kōtui Ako, or a locally organised online hub, while local staff provide mentoring and pastoral care. In an environment of worsening secondary teacher shortages, this kind of design directly supports breadth and equity of curriculum access for learners.

As I’ve argued before, the benefits are not limited to crises. Hybrid models can support learners with chronic health issues, part‑time work, or complex whānau responsibilities, enable deeper whānau involvement in learning, and build the digital capabilities we claim are essential for life and work in the future.

What schools and clusters can do now

There is clearly important work to be done at system level – in funding, policy, and in how we formally recognise and support Te Kura, NetNZ, Kōtui Ako and others as part of our core architecture of provision. But that doesn’t mean schools and Kāhui Ako have to wait. There is work within our immediate sphere of influence:

1. Build and normalise online “mirrors” of classroom learning.
Ensure every learning area has an up‑to‑date online space where ākonga can find current work, resources, and ways to seek help. Start small: one team, one unit, one year level.
2. Plan explicitly for continuity scenarios.
Ask, with staff and community, “If we had three weeks of closure, or a 30% staff absence, how would learning continue?” Map the role of Te Kura, NetNZ, Kotui Ako and other providers into those plans, rather than assuming we must do everything ourselves.
3. Collaborate on specialist provision.
Within your region or Kāhui Ako, agree which school or provider will take the lead in online delivery of high‑risk subjects (senior sciences, languages, technology, arts) and how others will support learners locally. Use those arrangements now, not only in emergencies, so they are familiar and trusted.
4. Invest in capability for online pedagogy.
Resilient hybrid practice is not about uploading worksheets. It’s about designing engaging online experiences, presence, and feedback. Prioritise PLD that helps teachers plan for learning that travels well across both physical and digital spaces.
5. Engage your community in the “why”.
Frame hybrid shifts as a way to widen opportunity, personalise pathways, and equip young people for life in a digitally rich world – with resilience as a critical added benefit. When whānau see the broader purpose, they are more likely to support new ways of working.

These are practical, local moves that can sit alongside – and in many cases anticipate – any national changes that may flow from the Royal Commission’s recommendations.

A timely reminder – and an invitation

The COVID‑19 Royal Commission is asking us, as a nation, what we have learned and how we will act differently next time. The secondary teacher shortage is asking us, right now, how we will sustain breadth and quality of learning experiences with fewer specialists on the ground. The climate, the global economy, and geopolitics are reminding us that disruption is not a temporary anomaly, but a defining feature of the world our young people are growing up in.

We can respond to each of these pressures in isolation – another recruitment campaign here, another emergency plan there. Or we can see them as a combined invitation to re‑imagine schooling in ways I’ve been arguing for over a number of years now on the FutureMakers blog: as a connected learning ecosystem, underpinned by hybrid models that assume learning must be portable, flexible, and shareable across time and place (see links below).

The design challenge is real, and it won’t be solved overnight. But it aligns with the very best of what we already know about effective pedagogy, equity, and future‑focused learning. Most importantly, it honours our responsibility to ensure that, whatever the next decade brings, our tamariki and rangatahi can rely on the continuity of their learning – not because we were lucky, but because we chose to plan, design, and act accordingly.

For more read:

• Resilience Planning – provides a framework for considering what options a school might consider to be adequately prepared for this eventuality, proposing the adoption of a hybrid model as a solution.
• Being Resilient: Characteristics of Resilient Schools – provides guidance for school leaders as they seek to work with their staff and communities to design the systems, structures and processes required to ensure they are able to continue providing high quality learning experiences for their students in the wake of any disruption they experience
• Empty Seats – identifies six key areas of strategic focus for schools striving for resilience in their day to day operation.
• Hybrid Learning – a means to an end –  a short paper outlining the case for taking a longer-term view about the work we’re doing on hybrid learning, and how our vision should be on building resilient schools and a resilient education system.
• Getting Started With Hybrid – This guide contains a six-step framework that can be used to guide the development of hybrid approaches in schools
• Tuia Te Hononga Tāngata, Tuia Te Hononga Ao: Taking the Pulse of Distance Learning in Aotearoa New Zealand – provides and analysis or the evolution of school-sector distance education in Aotearoa NZ
• Taking the pulse of distance learning in Aotearoa New Zealand – This report examines the historical period from 2019-2022 to understand the pandemic’s impact on traditional distance education practices in the compulsory sector across Aotearoa NZ.
• Hybrid Learning – this link takes you to where all of my hybrid learning thought pieces are collated for ease of access.