Derek is regarded as one of NZ education’s foremost Future Focused thinkers, and is regularly asked to consult with schools, policy makers and government agencies regarding the future directions of NZ educational policy and practice.
Derek’s Blog, launched in 2003, serves as a platform for sharing thoughts and reflections related to his work. It offers over 20 years of searchable posts, categorized by the tags below. Feel free to comment, as your feedback contributes to ongoing reflection and future posts.
In the weeks leading up to the election, I spent some time pulling together the AI policy statements of New Zealand’s political parties. I did it out of personal interest because I wanted to understand what our politicians were saying about a technology already changing our lives, our work, and our classrooms – and also so that I could participate in conversations with colleagues from an informed perspective.
The exercise left me with a collection of positions (you can access my summary here), but not a clear picture of where we are heading as a nation. Some parties emphasise innovation and light-touch rules; others propose new oversight, stronger protections, or limits on infrastructure. The Good Ancestors AI Election Scorecard adds a useful risk-focused view of where parties stand. But a scorecard, like a collection of policy statements, can only take us so far. What I found myself looking for was a shared direction – how can we make the most of AI’s potential while preparing people for change and protecting them from harm?
That question feels especially timely as parties work through the formation of the next government. The choices made now could shape New Zealand’s AI direction for years. And they matter to educators in particular, because the decisions we make about AI will help shape the world our children inherit.
A compass with three points
As I think about this I keep returning to the Brookings Institution’s Prosper, Prepare, Protect framework. It offers a practical way to hold three responsibilities together: make it possible for people and communities to benefit from AI; prepare learners, workers, and institutions for a changing world; and protect people from harm. Brookings developed this framework for education, but the questions it raises belong in national policy too. Brookings’ report argues that AI can enrich or diminish learning depending on how it is used, and sets out actions for governments, technology companies, educators, families, and others.
Prosper means more than attracting investment or adopting new tools quickly. It asks whether AI helps solve real problems, strengthens public services, supports creativity and productivity, and shares its gains fairly. It also means asking what infrastructure AI requires, and who pays the costs in energy, water, and public resources.
Prepare means building the knowledge and confidence to live and work well alongside AI. We need informed public servants, capable businesses, supported teachers, and students who understand what AI can do, where it falls short, and how it can affect their choices. Preparation is not simply training people to use the latest tools. It is helping them judge when those tools serve a human purpose.
Protect means putting clear, enforceable safeguards around the uses that can cause harm. That includes privacy, discrimination, scams and deepfakes, children’s wellbeing, security, and the use of algorithms in decisions that affect people’s lives. It also means independent capability to understand the systems we rely on, investigate serious incidents, and work with international partners.
Protection should not become the whole AI conversation. But credible protections are part of what makes confident innovation possible. The goal is not to eliminate risk before acting – that would be impossible. It is to make deliberate choices, know who is accountable, and give people the means to challenge decisions that affect them.
Guardrails are part of the route
In my thought piece Leading Like a Wayfinder in an AI enabled world, I draw on the 3P framework and use a navigation metaphor for leadership through change. A wayfinder needs a destination, knowledge of conditions, and the ability to adjust course. The same thinking belongs in national AI policy. We need room to explore, but we also need shared bearings and a way to recognise when we are drifting into danger.
A dedicated group or agency could help build that capacity, provided it has a clear purpose, the expertise and resources to do the work, and meaningful input from the people affected. It should help government understand emerging risks, coordinate across portfolios, evaluate high-impact systems, and work constructively with researchers, civil society, Māori, educators, and AI companies. Engagement with companies matters because they build and operate many of these systems. Independence and public accountability matter because their commercial interests do not always match the public interest.
The question is not simply whether New Zealand needs an “AI office” or an “AI safety institute”. Those names can become a distraction. The question is whether someone is properly equipped and accountable for helping the country understand the technology, prepare for its effects, and act when safeguards are needed.
Our tamariki must not be a footnote
For educators, this is not an abstract policy debate. AI is already changing how learners find information, create work, and relate to digital systems (hence the motivation for writing my thought piece). The choices we make about assessment, privacy, access, and classroom use will influence young people’s learning and development.
Brookings’ findings are a useful prompt for taking that responsibility seriously. AI’s benefits depend on how it is used, while over-reliance can affect learning, wellbeing, relationships, and privacy. That is a reason for thoughtful design and preparation, not a reason to abandon the potential benefits. Its recommendations include involving educators and students in design, building AI literacy, preparing teachers, and setting clear expectations for ethical use.
This connects directly with the questions in my three posts titled “Signals, noice and the children in our classrooms” pt.1: reading the headlines, pt.2: watching what governments do, and pt.3: remembering it isn’t about us. The first asks us to look past the noise and test what has actually been committed to. The second asks us to look for institutions, capability, and accountability. The third turns our attention back to the children whose futures are shaped by the decisions adults make now.
Education cannot be left to respond after national settings have already been decided. Teachers, school leaders, boards, students, and whānau need a place in the conversation from the beginning. They understand the everyday contexts in which AI’s benefits and harms are experienced.
Make the next conversation count
It is my view that the new government should bring parties together around a durable national direction for AI, one that can survive a change of ministers or a new technology cycle. It should set out what we want AI to help us achieve, how we will prepare people for change, and what protections must be in place. It should also explain who is responsible, how progress will be measured, and how the public can raise concerns.
Citizens and educators can help make that happen. We should be asking our local MPs what the government will do to build independent AI capability, how educators and young people will be involved, and how the public will know whether commitments are being met. Ask whether policy covers benefits and preparedness as well as risk. And ask what mechanisms will keep the work transparent and accountable.
The challenge is to make AI serve a future we have chosen, rather than letting the future emerge by default. Prosper, prepare, protect: three connected responsibilities, and a useful compass for finding our way.
Many of us stayed up last Saturday evening watching the election results unfold. Now we’re trying to make sense of what they might mean – not just for the next three years, but for the future of our society.
My particular interest is education. Whoever is in government, we need to look beyond changes designed mainly to win votes. The future of our nation is at stake, and so is the future of the young people in our schools right now.
I was thinking about that this morning as the year draws to a close, a time when schools will be preparing prize-givings and farewells for students graduating and heading into the next stage of their lives. It’s a moment to celebrate what they’ve achieved – and to ask a bigger question: what futures are they stepping into, and how well have we prepared them?
For decades, we’ve heard that the world of work is changing, and that the pathways our young people will follow are unlikely to look like the ones we knew. Yet education can still seem caught between two familiar poles – making space for new aspirations and ways of learning, while continuing to prepare students for predictable careers and employment in someone else’s enterprise.
We can’t assume that what worked in the past will be enough to help young people thrive in the future. Nor can we keep responding to today’s challenges with the same thinking that helped create them. Climate and environmental pressures, the health of our democracy, geo-political tensions, artificial intelligence, employment and wellbeing all demand more of us than familiar answers. That challenge is visible in political debates here and overseas, where short-term fixes can crowd out the deeper conversations we need.
So what should education be for in a changing world? And how do we make sure our answers start with young people – not with the needs of the economy alone, or a narrow idea of growth that concentrates its benefits among those who already have the most?
Later this week I’ll be speaking with deputy principals and assistant principals at a conference in Auckland. We’ll explore a debate that is often framed as a tension between the science of learning and relational pedagogy. One side is associated with explicit instruction, cognitive architecture, memory and evidence-informed teaching. The other is associated with relationships, belonging, learner agency, identity and the social construction of meaning.
These ideas don’t have to become competing camps. The important question is how our understanding of learning, relationships and evidence can help us create the conditions young people need to learn, belong and shape their futures. Any conversation about teaching and learning should keep that purpose in view.
The futures we’re considering shouldn’t simply reproduce the experiences we had ourselves. And education shouldn’t serve an economic growth mindset that privileges the wealthy while leaving others to adapt to the consequences. It should help every young person build the knowledge, capabilities, relationships and agency to contribute to a society in which more people can flourish.
That takes more than cosmetic change. It takes honest, far-reaching conversation – and a willingness to put young people at the centre of the choices we make now.
That is why I’ve agreed to take part in an upcoming webinar hosted by the Aotearoa Educators’ Collective, in conversation with Anthony Mackay, founder and co-chair of the Global Education Leaders’ Partnership, among his many other roles.
Our theme is “Building a shared understanding of education.” To be clear, this is not a political statement. It’s a genuine attempt to explore the purpose of education in our modern world, and what we could or should be doing to re-imagine it for the future.
I’ll be drawing on the twelve challenges I set out in my Beyond the Ballot Box paper – challenges that I believe any government, of any stripe, needs to address if we want a world-class system that serves all of our young people, not just some of them. They’re interconnected, and they demand the kind of sustained, joined-up commitment that doesn’t fit neatly into a three-year electoral cycle.
Whether you’re a teacher, a leader, a board member or simply someone who cares about what comes next, I’d love you to be part of the conversation. Because the future we’re considering isn’t ours to replicate. It belongs to the young people in our schools right now – and they deserve to be at the centre of our thinking.
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Beyond the Ballot Box
Twelve challenges the next government cannot ignore
Aotearoa New Zealand’s education system is at a defining moment.
There is understandable urgency around lifting achievement, strengthening foundational learning and ensuring young people leave school with the knowledge and qualifications they need. These goals matter. But if we focus only on the most visible measures, we risk missing the deeper questions: What is education for? What conditions allow learning to flourish? And are we building a system that will serve the world our young people will inherit?
In my latest thought piece titled Beyond the Ballot Box: 12 Challenges the Next Government Must Address, I look at twelve issues shaping education in Aotearoa. Some are immediate pressures; others will influence the system for a generation. Together, they point to a central argument that these challenges are connected, and they cannot be solved one at a time.
Consider attendance. It is influenced by whether learners feel engaged and connected. Engagement depends on relationships and the quality of the learning experience. That experience, in turn, rests on teaching capability, curriculum, leadership and resources. And all of these are shaped by the wider purpose and organisation of the system.
A targeted intervention may help with one part of the picture. But lasting improvement requires us to understand how the parts work together. Otherwise, a quick fix in one area can leave the underlying conditions untouched – or add pressure elsewhere.
The Government’s focus on curriculum clarity, literacy and mathematics, assessment, workforce development, learning support and evidence matters. Progress in these areas deserves support. The challenge is to make that progress while also addressing the broader educational, social and systemic conditions that shape learning.
That means holding two horizons in view. We need to improve what schools are doing now, while asking whether our assumptions about learning, teaching, assessment and success are fit for the future. AI, environmental change, social fragmentation and shifting patterns of work make that question increasingly urgent.
Reimagining education does not mean turning away from effective teaching or foundational knowledge. It means building on those foundations so learners can think critically, act with discernment, work with others, adapt to change and contribute meaningfully to their communities.
For me, the purpose of education is not simply to help young people succeed at school. It is to help them develop the knowledge, capabilities, relationships and sense of agency to live meaningful lives and shape a future worth inhabiting.
That ambition calls for more than a cycle of policy announcements, implementation demands and corrections. It requires the capacity to learn and change together – teachers, leaders, schools, kura, whānau, communities and agencies understanding challenges, testing responses, sharing what works and adapting over time. It also requires trust, collaboration and a coherent sense of purpose.
No single government can resolve these issues in one term – or even two. Lasting progress will take a long-term commitment that can sustain direction across political cycles, which is where my final challenge in the paper is around developing (and committing to) a longer term strategy for education – one that has cross-party commitment for the duration of the plan..
Each of its twelve sections in the paper close with questions for discussion – one for change in a local school or kura, and one for national policy. My hope is that these questions help widen and deepen the conversation around the motu, and move it beyond short-term fixes towards what we need to do together after the election.
The future of our nation, and the lives of our tamariki, are too important to leave to chance.
Distance education: from the fringe to the foundation?
Distance education used to be the thing we did when the “real” thing couldn’t happen. It was a patch for the small rural school that couldn’t staff a senior physics class, or the student who needed a language no one nearby could teach.
In my latest podcast conversation, my long-time colleague Michael Barbour and I discussed whether that picture still holds. Michael has spent three decades researching K-12 online and distance learning in North America, and we’ve been comparing notes across the Pacific since we first met in Montreal 20 years ago. Together we’ve tracked the New Zealand scene through the Taking the Pulse of Distance Education in Aotearoa reports.
Michael began by suggesting that the most significant shift may not be in distance education itself, but in how its tools have quietly moved into every classroom. Learning management systems, online assignments and digital collaboration were once the preserve of the distance provider. Now they are everyday practice, and that raises a question about what “distance” actually means.
We also found ourselves back at an old tension. Everyone wants learning that is personalised and flexible, and no single school can offer everything a learner might need. Yet the way we fund education often stands in the way. Michael shares some practical ideas from other jurisdictions that suggest small structural changes could open up big possibilities for learners, including those who are poorly served by their local school and have nowhere else to go.
Then there is the question of who should be running our schools. New commercial players are entering the distance education market here in NZ, and the US has years of experience with the model. Michael doesn’t hold back on what the evidence shows, and he draws a distinction between the role of companies as vendors and as operators that I think deserves wider discussion.
This connects to something I wrote about recently after time with the board and senior staff of Te Kura: The Future of Distance Education: From Competition to Collaboration. My argument there was that we should see distance education as a network of expertise working together in the interests of learners, rather than as providers competing for students and funding. Michael’s perspective, from a system that has leaned the other way, adds real weight to that question.
Underneath it all is a more basic question that keeps surfacing in my writing and thinking: what is education actually for? Until we are clearer about that, arguments about who provides it, and how, will keep going in circles.
We finish by challenging the very idea of distance. Michael has a way of reframing it that I won’t spoil here, but it left me thinking differently about connection, presence and what it means to belong in a learning community.
If you care about equity of access, the future shape of our school system, or the place of online learning within it, I think you’ll find this conversation worth your time.
Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments below…
Explore further…
Taking the Pulse of Distance Education in Aotearoa – links to a series of reports as part of a national study that examines the nature, regulation/governance, and scope of activity of distance learning providers in the New Zealand school sector. (hosted by the Flexible Learning Association of New Zealand)
The Virtual Learning Network in New Zealand – History and Future Thoughts – The first part of this paper provides a background to the development of the VLN in New Zealand and the second part explores some ideas about how the use of online learning might become more embedded as a part of our education system
The future of the VLN – This paper presents a case for bringing initiatives such as the VLN into the ‘mainstream’ of our education system in New Zealand
Virtual learning as an impetus for change – authored by Michael Barbour and myself back in 2013 that outlines the history of distance education in New Zealand and charts a vision for the future of education in New Zealand through virtual learning.
Hybrid learning – a means to an end – written shortly after the COVID experience this paper argues that the benefits of pursuing hybrid learning goes far beyond being a simple ‘fix’ for a short term problem – if properly pursued, they set the scene for a fully transformed education system.
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I’ve written this post after discussions with a number of educators and parents as we head into this year’s election. It’s easy to become fixated on just one perspective – hopefully this broadens the conversation we might be having.
The data is hard to argue with. Across the Western world, the OECD’s international surveys show literacy and numeracy slipping, and Aotearoa New Zealand is no exception. Universities and employers say the same from their side of the school gate: too many school leavers arrive without the foundations they need. For politicians it raises an uncomfortable question about whether years of investment have bought what we hoped. This is a real problem, and anyone who dismisses it has not been listening.
So it is no surprise that the response has been swift and certain. Look at the evidence, find what isn’t working, fix it. The diagnosis has landed on the past couple of decades: the emphasis on child-centred learning, inquiry and problem-based approaches, and universal design for learning with its attention to differing needs and preferences. In their place comes a mandated, tightly specified approach built on direct instruction, presented as the “science of learning”.
Here is where the conversation usually splits into camps, and where I’d like to resist the split. Direct instruction works. It is especially powerful for learners who are struggling and for those who simply learn well that way. It has always been part of a skilled teacher’s toolkit, and in our enthusiasm for progressive approaches, some of us let it slip from view. We should be willing to say so. And we should expect it to deliver: measurable short-term gains in literacy and numeracy are likely, and early signs are already being reported. Those gains are worth sustaining.
We should also be careful about what we claim for them. When the latest PISA results arrived, they were offered as part of the case that the reforms are turning things around. But PISA’s 2025 results showed stability rather than recovery, and they were gathered from 15-year-olds in the year the mandate began, who were never taught under it. The numbers, in other words, cannot be evidence of the change. There is more to this story than a single chart, and the honest course is to let the evidence say what it says. The early post-mandate data may be encouraging, but it is also early.
A gain in scores is not the same as an education, either. The foundations of literacy and numeracy are not up for debate. Every learner needs them to reach deeper and higher-order learning. The risk lies in what happens if they become the sole focus. A system tuned narrowly to those measures can leave learners well drilled and quietly short of the capabilities they will need across work, citizenship and life – to think critically, collaborate, create and adapt to a future none of us can predict. Foundations are where learning begins, not where it ends.
There is also an assumption inside the mandate that deserves to be stated here. Treating every child as equal in their capacity to learn sounds like fairness. In practice, it can mean treating every child the same way. I am the father of five children, one of whom is physically disabled. I have lived alongside each of them as they navigated school, and what I know with certainty is that each is a unique individual. They learn in different ways, at different paces, and are motivated by different things. No single method, however well evidenced on average, has suited all five. The best of what they’ve experienced came from teachers who knew them, read what they needed, and drew on whatever approach fitted. A mandate can set a floor, but it cannot do that work.
That matters most for the learners our system has failed longest. A 2024 briefing to the incoming Minister of Education put it plainly: “Māori learners are a significant and growing proportion of all learners, 25% of school students in 2023 and projected to reach a third within the next two decades.” On average Māori rangatahi experience worse outcomes than other learners on every major metric we measure, a longstanding pattern that the briefing itself attributes to a system that has historically underserved them. This is not a failure of children, whānau or communities. It is a generational failure of the system, and it is now a failure that will define the system’s future, because these are the learners who will make up a growing share of it.
The same briefing offers a clue about what doesn’t work and what does. Where comparable data exists, Māori learners in kaupapa Māori and Māori-medium settings consistently do better than their peers, in settings built on identity, language, culture and strong relationships with whānau. The lesson is not that one approach beats another. It is that context and relationship shape whether any approach lands. An average gain in scores can sit comfortably alongside a gap that doesn’t move. Closing it takes a response that is targeted, built with whānau and iwi rather than delivered to them, and flexible enough to recognise who these learners are and what they bring.
Then there is a second problem, with nothing to do with pedagogy. Change that is mandated rarely survives on mandate alone. Teachers are being asked to implement approaches many were often not trained in, and some hold philosophical convictions that pull the other way. Add the message, spoken or implied, that the profession is being corrected for failing at its job, and you have a recipe for compliance without commitment. Trust is the infrastructure of any change process. Directives, however well researched and well intended, cannot stand in for it, and a system that expects teachers to deliver reform while being blamed for the need for it will find the reform hollowed out from within.
The same applies beyond the staffroom. Parents and whānau are critical stakeholders, not an audience to be informed. They hold their own hopes for their children and their own questions about what is changing and why. Their trust has to be earned alongside that of teachers.
Put these threads together and the real question comes into view. It is not “progressive or traditional?” or “inquiry or instruction?” Those are arguments about methods, and methods mean something only in service of purpose. The question we have not settled is what we want education to achieve for our young people, our communities and our country. Preparing learners for future employment is part of that answer, but it is far too small to be the whole of it.
What we need is a shared vision, agreed by teachers, school leaders, whānau, employers, tertiary providers and policymakers, that sets out the outcomes we expect of the system with real aspiration. With that in place, the choice of approach becomes a question of fit rather than allegiance: direct instruction where it serves, inquiry where it serves, and honest professional judgement about which is which.
We are heading into a general election, and every party will have a view on the changes under way. But the most important question is not which party owns which policy. As writer Sofo Archon puts it; “the real issue isn’t left versus right; it’s critical thinking versus a system that depends on you never developing it.” Critical thinking is not a nice-to-have in a young person’s education. It is among the core capabilities they will need to thrive – to question, weigh evidence, and make judgements of their own in a world that will keep presenting them with persuasive answers. A system that produces learners who can comply but cannot question has not prepared them for that world. The same goes for teachers. A profession required only to comply with directives is no more able to model critical thinking than the students it teaches. So the test I’d offer for every party and every promise is simple: “does this build the capacity to think, or does it settle for compliance?” Underneath that question sits the larger one we have yet to answer together: “what is education for, and who gets to decide?“
Explore further…
As an appendix to this post I offer my own summary of education-related policy as I’ve managed to glean it from the various party websites (listed in alphabetical order!)
ACT party Education brief
School Uniform Cost Cap: Proposes limiting state schools to a maximum of three compulsory branded items, allowing generic alternatives (such as plain shorts, pants, skirts, skorts, and socks from standard retailers) to reduce costs for families.
Classroom Discipline & “Reasonable Force”: Plans to amend the Education and Training Act 2020 to give teachers explicit legal power to use “reasonable force” to remove disruptive students into a supervised, staffed space (such as a deans’ or pastoral room).
Parental Fines: Proposes fines of up to $3,000 for parents who fail to engage with schools regarding severe or persistent student behavioural issues.
Charter Schools & School Freedom: Continues backing charter schools, clearer academic standards, transparent reporting, and operational freedom for high-performing schools.
Rural Bus Services: Aims to address rural transport gaps, such as school buses passing children with empty seats.
Free and Nutritious School Lunches: The Greens plan to restore, extend, and permanently fund the Ka Ora, Ka Ako school lunch program to ensure all children receive healthy, locally prepared kai.
Jobs for Young People Guarantee: The party announced a $4.9 billion four-year program to guarantee a job, education, or training pathway for 16- to 24-year-olds who have been unemployed for six months or more, partnering with local councils, iwi, the public sector, and non-profits.
Opposition to National’s NCEA & Education Changes: The Greens have criticized government and rival proposals regarding NCEA changes and amendments to the Education and Training Act, arguing they weaken student support and Tiriti obligations.
Broader Platform Commitments: The party’s broader manifesto includes policies advocating for free access to education (including tertiary), liveable student allowances, lowering the voting age to 16, income guarantees for students, improved staff-to-student ratios, and integrated school hubs offering health and social services.
School Uniforms & Costs: Limit compulsory branded school uniform items and track uniform prices starting Term 1, 2028, to allow affordable generic alternatives from stores like The Warehouse or Kmart.
Free School Lunches: Reinstate and expand the school lunch programme, priced at $5 a meal for primary/intermediate and $6.50 for Year 9 to 13 students, prepared via school kitchens, iwi/hapū, or local caterers.
Curriculum & NCEA Oversight: Create an independent education body (similar to the Infrastructure Commission) to oversee the curriculum and assessment, and tweak the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) rather than replacing it.
Student Debt: Write off 10% of student loan balances for New Zealand-based graduates who missed out on fees-free, clearing balances of $2,000 or less in full.
Apprenticeships: Reset the Apprenticeship Boost scheme back to a two-year subsidy model starting in 2028.
Rural Transport: Restore selected rural school bus routes.
Staying in School: National will require high school students to stay in school until they finish Year 11 (starting in 2028 if re-elected), ending the current rule allowing students to leave when they turn 16.
Impact: Affects roughly 5,000 students a year who currently leave during Year 11.
Goal: Ensure students earn basic literacy and numeracy qualifications before entering the workforce.
Curriculum & Qualification Overhaul
Scrapping NCEA: National plans to phase out NCEA and replace it with a new tiered national qualification system:
Foundational Award in 2028.
New Zealand Certificate of Education at Year 12 in 2029.
New Zealand Advanced Certificate of Education at Year 13 in 2030
Operational & Support Policies
Consistent Term Dates: Introduce nationally consistent school start and finish dates to help parents manage work and childcare.
Early Childhood & School Limits: Policies include early childhood and school screen limits, alongside foundational requirements for reading, writing, and mathematics
New Zealand First’s education platform emphasizes a back-to-basics approach and a focus on core subjects while removing controversial social curricula.
Key Education Positions
Curriculum Focus: Remove education about gender and sexuality from the school curriculum.
Core Basics: Emphasize traditional learning fundamentals in primary and secondary schools.
Language & Culture: Support making English the primary official language in education.
Te Pāti Māori has announced its flagship education policy for the 2026 general election, centering on self-determination (tino rangatiratanga) and returning decision-making authority to Māori communities.
According to party policy announcements and reporting by Waatea News and The Spinoff, key elements of the policy include:
Governance & Structure
Māori Education Authority: Establish an independent Māori-led education authority to shift leadership, funding oversight, and decision-making power back to Māori communities.
System Governance: Strengthen Māori governance and representation across all levels of the education and training system.
Kōhanga Reo & Kura Investment
Kura Property Funding: Pledge $1.25 billion over five years via a ring-fenced property programme for kura Māori.
Kōhanga Reo Support:
Pass a dedicated Te Kōhanga Reo Act.
Provide $20 million a year for a kōhanga reo capital fund.
Allocate $50 million to address a backlog of roughly 80 kōhanga reo requiring new buildings or refurbishments.
Fund 20 new kōhanga reo over three years in partnership with Te Kōhanga Reo National Trust.
Curriculum & Language
Te Reo Māori: Make te reo Māori a core curriculum subject up to Year 10 and restore Te Ahu o Te Reo Māori.
Mātauranga Māori: Deeply embed mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge systems) throughout the national curriculum.
Wānanga & Wharekura: Increase long-term investment into kōhanga reo, kura kaupapa Māori, wharekura, and wānanga.
Student Welfare & Support
Universal Student Allowance: Introduce a universal student allowance.
Expanded Student Services:
Expand free school lunches.
Provide free public transport for all students.
Offer free school counselling
Workforce: Strengthen and support the education workforce.
The Opportunity Party (TOP), led by Qiulae Wong, has made its core education policy for the 2026 election a 10-year, cross-party plan for education called Future-Fit Education.
Key Elements of the Policy
10-Year Cross-Party Agreement: TOP proposes ending the cycle of political resets and curriculum rewrites every time a new government is elected by building a long-term plan across Parliament.
Independent Curriculum and Assessment Council: The party advocates for an independent body to set curriculum and assessment frameworks, taking political interference and short-term election cycles out of the classroom.
Modernising Early Childhood Education (ECE): TOP supports higher staff, space, and education standards in ECE, alongside increased support for community-owned services (such as Playcentres, Kōhanga Reo, Kindergartens, and Pacific language nests).
Teacher Workforce Planning: The policy includes advocating for a 10-year workforce plan covering training intakes, supervision, career pathways, and fair teacher remuneration rather than fighting for piecemeal budget increases year-by-year.
Modern Learning and Technology: The platform calls for purposeful technology use in schools, expansion of te reo Māori learning, and better connection between vocational and academic learning pathways (including upgraded polytechnics).
Te Tiriti o Waitangi Integration: The plan is designed in partnership with iwi, Māori communities, educators, learners, and families, grounded in Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
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The Future of Distance Education: From Competition to Collaboration
Image source: Derek Wenmoth using CANVA
What does it take to ensure every learner in Aotearoa New Zealand has access to the education they need and deserve, wherever they live and whatever their circumstances?
This was a question at the heart of conversations I had this week with senior staff and the board of Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu, New Zealand’s largest school and principal provider of distance education for school-aged learners.
In our time together we spent time exploring the signals of change shaping the future for this institution. Some are readily apparent: growing and increasingly diverse enrolments, more learners referred by support agencies, and schools struggling to provide the full range of curriculum options their students need. Others are emerging more gradually: new commercial providers entering the market, digital delivery becoming easier and cheaper, and rising expectations for seamless, engaging online learning.
Together, these signals point to a challenging future – not just for Te Kura, but for our whole education system. Demand for flexible learning is growing, but so too are the pressures on staffing, specialist expertise, support systems and funding. Meanwhile, the growing availability of online platforms risks creating the impression that distance education is simply a matter of putting lessons online, and the increasing number of online providers simply adds to that impression. Anyone who understands this work knows that effective distance education requires far more – carefully designed learning, strong relationships, responsive support and a deep understanding of the diverse circumstances in which learners live and learn.
The challenge is not simply how to do more of the same, but how to rethink the way we work in response to a changing educational landscape.
Yet amid all this change, some things must remain constant. Every learner deserves equitable access to quality education, regardless of location or circumstance. Every learner has the right to belong, participate and succeed. Learning relationships matter. Personalised support matters. And the expertise developed over many years in distance education remains an essential resource for the future.
Holding firmly to these commitments doesn’t mean holding on to every existing structure, process or way of working. Indeed, doing so may prevent us from fulfilling them.
I believe one of the most important shifts will be from thinking about distance education as a service delivered by individual providers to seeing it as a network of expertise, opportunities and support, working together in the interests of learners.
As new providers enter the field, it may be tempting to see them primarily as competitors for students, funding and public confidence. But what if we approached this differently?
What if the priority were to identify what each provider does best, share expertise, build complementary capabilities and create pathways that make it easier for learners to access the education they need? What if schools, specialist providers, community organisations and digital learning services worked together to extend opportunities rather than duplicate effort or compete for position?
This doesn’t mean abandoning accountability, quality assurance or the distinctive contribution each provider makes. Nor does it mean that all providers need to work in the same way. It means recognising that no single organisation can meet every learner’s needs alone, and that a connected system can achieve more than a collection of isolated providers.
For Te Kura, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Its depth of expertise, commitment to equity and experience in serving learners whose needs are not met by conventional schooling are valuable assets for the whole education system. The opportunity is to build on these strengths while developing new ways of working with others.
Ultimately, the measure of success isn’t the size of an organisation, the number of students it enrols or the reach of its digital platform. It’s whether learners across Aotearoa can access meaningful learning opportunities that recognise their circumstances, build on their strengths and open up possibilities for their futures.
Perhaps the most important question isn’t how we protect our place in the future of education, but how we work together to create a future in which every learner has a place.
Read some more:
The Virtual Learning Network in New Zealand – History and Future Thoughts – The first part of this paper provides a background to the development of the VLN in New Zealand and the second part explores some ideas about how the use of online learning might become more embedded as a part of our education system
The future of the VLN – This paper presents a case for bringing initiatives such as the VLN into the ‘mainstream’ of our education system in New Zealand
Virtual learning as an impetus for change – authored by Michael Barbour and myself back in 2013 that outlines the history of distance education in New Zealand and charts a vision for the future of education in New Zealand through virtual learning.
Hybrid learning – a means to an end – written shortly after the COVID experience this paper argues that the benefits of pursuing hybrid learning goes far beyond being a simple ‘fix’ for a short term problem – if properly pursued, they set the scene for a fully transformed education system.
Taking the Pulse of Distance Education in Aotearoa – links to a series of reports as part of a national study that examines the nature, regulation/governance, and scope of activity of distance learning providers in the New Zealand school sector. (hosted by the Flexible Learning Association of New Zealand)
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Know where the levers are
Reflections on what the four FLANZ keynotes taught me about the scale of change, and why it matters for educators right now
Having had more time to reflect on the keynotes and workshops I attended at the recent FLANZ conference one theme ran through almost everything I heard. Each was saying the same thing: change happens at different levels, and a great deal of the frustration educators feel comes from mistaking one scale for another.
I want to use that thread as a way into something that’s weighing on a lot of us in Aotearoa at the moment: CHANGE! Curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and the arrival of AI – and happening all at once. It’s an enormously complex picture – and something we need to grapple with amid all of the ‘noise’ we’re hearing in the lead up to this year’s election. My argument is that it becomes a little more navigable, and a lot more hopeful, once we are clear about where responsibility actually lies.
Three perspectives on change
The idea is simple. The micro level is the individual: the teacher, the learner, the classroom. It’s about habits, attitudes, relationships and the daily choices people make. The meso level is the group: the school, the department, the team, the professional association. It’s about culture, leadership, communication and how a community makes sense of what’s being asked of it. The macro level is the system: legislation, funding, national curriculum, qualifications, and the larger economic and technological forces that act on all of us.
Mark Nicholls made these three levels explicit in his keynote on Blendagogy, crediting Olaf Zawacki-Richter for bringing them into the distance education conversation. For Mark, the macro level is where agencies like TEC, MoE and NZQA set policy, funding and quality assurance. The meso level is the school or department, with its programme norms, timetabling conventions, workload expectations and supported technologies. The micro level is where teaching actually happens, in the day-to-day choices of the kaiako with their ākonga.
His observation resonates for me. The majority of kaiako design at the micro level, yet the meso and macro layers shape what’s possible there. Ignore them, and you can spend years working in good faith against the very institution you’re part of. But look at them closely, he said, and you may find avenues to extend your practice too.
Here’s an example that will be familiar to many of us right now. At the macro level, there is a mandate for explicit teaching of structured literacy, a response to system-level literacy problems that have been identified. It’s a clear national direction. Now picture a kaiako whose classroom runs on a broader, interests-based approach where learners are reading and writing about things they care about, with high engagement. The teacher’s conviction is that this is what makes children want to read and write at all. From where they sit, the mandate can feel like an instruction to abandon what works. Left on their own, they may comply reluctantly or quietly resist, and either way they carry the tension alone.
This is where the meso level earns its place. A school that takes responsibility for the response, rather than simply passing the directive down, can design a balanced approach, ensuring explicit, structured teaching is used to address the identified literacy needs, alongside the interests-based approaches that keep engagement high. The teacher’s commitment is then an asset the school builds on, and the macro mandate becomes one half of a design problem the school owns, rather than something done to its teachers.
Three levels, three different jobs. The macro level names the problem and sets the direction. The meso level decides how to honour both that direction and what it knows works for its learners. The micro level brings the craft and relationships that make it real for each child. Remove the meso level and the teacher is left to fight the system or give in to it.
What the keynotes demonstrated
Adrian showed us a system that couldn’t see what it already knew. As a 19-year-old he was already trusted to work as a sous chef and had won a national competition, yet the qualification still required him to reproduce his knowledge in its kitchen, on its menu, at its chosen time. That is a macro and meso problem: how qualifications and institutions define evidence of learning. But the second half of his story is the one I find hopeful. It began at the micro level, with a couple of colleagues trialing the use of iPods to replay demonstrations for students who couldn’t make it to class. That small crack led to questions about where learning lives, then to project-based learning, then to a degree, and eventually, after COVID, to a formal pathway recognising work-integrated learning. Change that started in one kitchen ended up reshaping a programme.
Kathryn showed us what happens when the levels fall out of step. Institutions are rushing out AI guidance, and much of it tells students to be “responsible” and “transparent” without saying what that looks like. Worse, she pointed out, we can’t ask learners to be transparent if our institutional culture makes honesty risky for them. And behind all of that sit the tools themselves, built and controlled by technology providers none of us have any say over. Yet she also gave us micro-level examples: the teacher who told her chatbot to “do better” as if the prompt weren’t her own responsibility, and the work of co-designing guidance with students so that every guideline comes with an explanation and a concrete practice. Her central point was that humans shouldn’t be a safety check sitting “in the loop”. We should be the ones leading it.
Selena was candid about the macro level. Competency-based qualifications have limits that educators have criticised for decades, but turning that ship around is close to impossible, so we work with it. What we can do is design learning that protects the productive struggle that builds capability, and use AI as a coach rather than an answer supplier. She also gave us a meso-level warning sign: in her small survey of vocational educators, around one in five were either refusing AI outright or very reluctant to use it. If those colleagues aren’t supported to build their own literacy, they can’t model good practice for their learners.
Mark offered perhaps the most practical advice of the week. If you’re an individual kaiako, start knocking on the door of your head of department, because you need meso-level support for what you’re doing. Otherwise you risk building a Franken-course: rich and flexible to you, but disjointed and confusing for the learner who meets a different model in every classroom.
Where this leaves us in Aotearoa
Right now we are facing change on all three levels at once, and each of the big shifts looks different when you map it.
The national curriculum is being substantially overhauled, moving from a competency-based approach to a knowledge-rich one, with much more prescription about content and less emphasis on developing capability. NCEA is changing too, with more traditional end-of-year assessments that sit in tension with what schools have been used to. And with AI, schools have largely been left to develop their own adoption policies, with very limited guidance and support from the government and the Ministry. Many other countries are putting national guardrails in place. New Zealand has taken the position that the benefits outweigh the dangers and is encouraging greater uptake. There is work going on behind the scenes, but much of it isn’t explicit or well understood by schools and their communities.
The table below illustrates how these issues are addressed at the three levels of the system:
Issue
Macro (national)
Meso (the school)
Micro (the classroom)
Curriculum
Shifts from competency to knowledge-rich, with more prescribed content
Interprets and resources the change, and designs how to balance capability and knowledge.
Teaches the content well while keeping learners’ capability and agency alive
NCEA and assessment
Introduces more traditional end-of-year assessment
Manages the tension between new requirements and existing practice, and explains it to whānau
Prepares students and designs tasks where the learner’s own judgement is visible
AI
Encourages uptake with limited guidance; some work not yet visible to schools
Develops its own adoption policy and explains it to the community
Models good practice and teaches students to use AI critically
Notice the difference in pattern. With the curriculum and NCEA, decisions arrive from the macro level and the meso and micro levels are asked to implement them. With AI, the macro level has stepped back, so the responsibility doesn’t disappear. It moves down. Boards and school leaders at the meso level are being asked to make decisions about safeguards that other countries make nationally, as that is a responsibility that shouldn’t be left to individual teachers to carry alone.
The reason this matters is that locus of responsibility is easy to get wrong, and getting it wrong is costly. When a teacher feels personally to blame for something that was decided at the macro level, or when a school waits for national direction on something it could be deciding for itself, energy goes to the wrong place. Naming which level a problem belongs to is not a way of passing the buck. It’s how we work out who needs to act, and what each of us can reasonably be expected to carry in a complementary manner.
It also lets us say something honest about the macro level: much of it is not in our hands. Mark was blunt that nobody should be waiting for a funding announcement to make the education they believe in possible. Selena was blunt about the limitations of a competency-based system. We can and should advocate at that level, but we shouldn’t mistake advocacy for the only thing we can do.
What you can act on
Here is where I find real hope. Each of these keynotes pointed to things within reach of an individual educator, whatever is happening above them.
Look for the human, not the AI. Rather than trying to police where AI was used, ask where the learner’s judgment, effort and authorship are visible in the task, and design for that. Be precise with students about what “appropriate use” means for this task, rather than leaving them to guess.
Protect the struggle. Design tasks so that AI supports the effort rather than replacing it. Use it as a coach that asks questions rather than a machine that supplies answers, and treat mistakes as part of learning.
Bring students into the conversation. Co-design your classroom expectations for AI with them, and turn vague guidelines into worked examples. They are asking for exactly this.
Start small, and let it travel. Adrian’s iPods were a minor experiment that solved a problem for a handful of students. It wasn’t a strategy. Small, well-grounded changes can be noticed and adopted, and sometimes become the pathway.
Find your meso allies. Talk to your head of department, your principal, your colleagues. A change that is aligned with the group around you is far more likely to last, and far less likely to leave you exhausted.
None of this makes the system issues go away. But it does mean that nobody has to wait for the system to be fixed before doing something that matters for the learners in front of them.
A question to take away
If you map the biggest change you’re facing right now across the three levels, which part of it is genuinely yours to act on? And who, at the other levels, needs to hear from you?
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Who gets a say in the AI conversation?
By the final keynote at FLANZ 2026 in Dunedin, a pattern had emerged. Adrian Woodhouse opened the conference by asking who owns the learning. Mark Nicholls’ Blendagogy framework left me asking what it all looks like with the learner in the driver’s seat. Dr Selena Chan emphasised the importance of engaging students in a productive struggle, using AI as a coach and not an answer supplier. Then Dr Kathryn McCallum, from the University of Canterbury, closed the conference with a third question, though she never quite phrased it this way: “who gets a say in how AI shapes learning?”
Her answer, as I heard it, was “far more people than are currently at the table”, and the first on that list are the students.
Reading the current
Kathryn began by challenging us to think about the metaphors that come to mind when we think of AI – some of which are illustrated in the image at the head of this post. She then suggested that each of these metaphors foreground a particular bias or concern that we may have – as illustrated here:
Building on that, Kathryn then added one of her own: AI as an ocean current. It is often invisible, it changes the conditions of travel, and it can carry you a long way from shore before you notice. Some people know how to read the water. Others simply get swept along.
The point she was making is that AI is no longer something we go out and find. It is arriving inside the tools we already use – the answer served up above the search results, the feedback delivered to a student at the end of a task, even the fridge. The more embedded it becomes, the less visible the choices become, including the choice about whose information we are trusting.
The metaphors matter too. In her focus groups with tertiary students, they kept describing AI as a friend, a tutor, an expert, a collaborator. Each of those hands over a measure of authority and humanity that the technology hasn’t earned. “The words we use”, she said, “shape what we expect AI to do, and how much we defer to it.”
We are writing the rules about students, not with them
This is where Kathryn began to challenge some of the prevailing wisdom. Institutions have rushed to publish AI guidance, but few have asked whether students understand it. A national survey of New Zealand students she ran showed what they actually want: clear boundaries, worked examples rather than instructions to “be responsible” (as she put it, but do we know what that means?), and a critical AI literacy that takes into account ethics, privacy and sustainability.
Meanwhile we leave them in what she called the Goldilocks effect. Too hot, too cold, work it out yourself, and be penalised if you guess wrong. Detectors don’t work. Students who disclose their AI use risk being marked down for it. Those who use assistive technology are viewed with suspicion because it now carries the AI label. And when learners opt out, we rarely ask whether that is an informed choice or a reaction to fear and lack of confidence.
Her response is to take a co-design involving students. At Academy X, she described how students helped write the guidelines using the following structure: a statement, an explanation, and then a practice that shows what the guideline looks like in action. The students shaped the content, and the guidance became something they could use.
What students need in order to take part
This is where things really started to ‘gel’ for me. Kathryn stated what I’d already started to ponder – no one can contribute meaningfully to a conversation they don’t have the language for.
I like that last label. Addressing the ethical issues associated with AI use is essential – but ‘ethics’ tend to sit “over there” as a topic, whereas, citizenship is about my role, my risks and my responsibility, whether I use AI or not. Ethics then becomes an integral part of that activity.
Literacy, in her words, is not a map. It is the confidence to navigate the current – to question, to judge, to use, to refuse, to disclose without penalty, and to challenge. That list includes refusal, which I think is the test of whether we’re serious. A literate student can say no for good reasons. An illiterate one just gets swept along or sits on the beach.
Then there is the question of whose voice is in the data. A te reo Māori language model can handle the language but not the tikanga that sits behind it. In her talk Kathryn illustrated this by sharing a picture an image of a Māori scientist that had been created by an AI image generator which the Māori PhD student who had created it couldn’t recognise as being Māori. If students don’t get to question these things, they inherit someone else’s answers.
Back to the passport
In my first post I described the learner who starts over at every border, handing over their credentials and being asked to prove themselves again. At the University of Canterbury where Kathryn works, AI is adding a second border crossing. Every course, every assessment, every teacher now has a different rule about how AI may be used, and the learner is expected to read each one correctly, alone, and bear the consequences of getting it wrong.
In the second post I argued that accessibility is the learner’s word, and availability the institution’s. The same applies here. Almost all of our AI policies are drafted from the institution’s perspective, about integrity and risk. Few begin with the learner’s perspective: what do I need to understand, what am I afraid of, and what would I decide if someone asked me?
In my third post I asked “how do we help learners become the kind of people who choose the harder path, on purpose?” – focusing on the issue of productive struggle and how, if agency means owning your record, your pathway and your choices about when, where and how you learn, then it has to include owning the effort too. This aligns strongly with Kathryn’s emphasis on ensuring humans are ‘in the loop’ and not abdicating responsibility for engaging deeply in the learning task.
He tangata
At the end of her talk Kathryn came back to the theme of this year’s FLANZ event – He Tangata (the people). Her strongest challenge to me was her point about ensuring we keep the “human in the loop”. It’s a well-intended statement, but it often casts the human as a safety check on the machine’s output. She told the story of a teacher who responded to a poor response from an interaction with an AI by telling the AI to “do better”, when the real issue was her own prompt. Humans, she argued, should be leading the process and deciding where AI steps in and where it doesn’t.
The same goes for learners. They are not a loop for us to close, or a risk for us to manage. They are the people the whole thing is for, which is what He Tangata means. And as she said, we can’t ask learners to be transparent and responsible if our institutional culture makes that risky for them.
Kathryn was honest that she doesn’t have all the answers. Neither do I. But I know where I’d start: next time your institution, school or board discusses AI, look around the room. Who is missing? Then go and ask them.
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What if the frustration is the point?
Image created using Gemini and Canva by Derek Wenmoth
What a pastry cook’s classroom can teach us about AI, effort and learner agency
The second keynote at the FLANZ conference in Dunedin was given by Selena Chan who began with her personal story to set the scene for what she wanted to share.
At the age of fourteen, Selena was doing well at school and quietly disengaging from it. Growing up in Singapore, she found an education system that was exam-oriented, academic and heavily reliant on rote learning. She left with four O-levels and no appetite for the English literature and history that A-levels would have required. What she really wanted was to be a chef, but at the time girls couldn’t be, so she took the nearest open door and became an apprentice pastry cook.
It turned out to be the making of her. Pastry work demands precision, and precision demands persistence, perspiration and practice. It gave a wandering spirit a discipline she says she has drawn on ever since. She came to New Zealand in the late 1970s, started teaching baking in what was then the Christchurch Technical Institute, and never really left. Today she is an award-winning educator, a researcher and author on vocational pedagogy, and part of Ara Polytechnic‘s large AI Ara research project.
As I’ve reflected on her presentation I’ve come to think her story wasn’t simply a charming preamble to the argument she was about to make. It was the argument. Here was someone who disengaged from a system that rewarded getting the answer, and who found her way back to learning through work where you simply couldn’t fake it.
Effort you can’t skip
Selena’s best illustration comes from the bakery. She explained how a commercial dough isn’t one kilo, it’s twenty. When an experienced baker lifts it from the mixer, they can read its temperature, consistency and viscosity, and that tells them what to do next, so the scone comes out the same size and texture every single day. That isn’t recipe-following. It’s a relationship with materials, built over thousands of repetitions, and it ends up so embodied that the baker often can’t explain how they know.
The route to that kind of knowing is deliberate practice, and it follows a familiar pattern – try something, notice it didn’t work, ask what went wrong, try again. Around and around. Skip the loop and, in Selena’s words, nothing happens in your brain – no connections are made. She calls the result of doing that cognitive debt, the learning you thought you’d done but hadn’t, because you never did the work.
We’ve all met this debt. The calculator generation who hesitate over seven times eight. The driver who can’t find their way without GPS and has lost their feel for the place they’re in. Selena is careful to say these skills matter far more in some fields than others, but the trades, where numbers and spatial sense are the job, are exactly where she sees it bite.
What AI is built to do
Selena then spoke about the future role of AI in this learning process. She was adamant in her argument that generative AI is pattern recognition, that it still makes things up, and that it is designed to please us. It agrees with us and it hands over answers. That, she pointed out, creates the cognitive debt she talked about and is precisely the opposite of what the bakery teaches.
Selena used Ara’s own experiments to illustrate the approach she believes we should all be taking, because they’re honest about where this goes wrong. She shared about a chatbot that had been used to help foundation students who had been having major struggles with their writing. This is now in its third iteration and probably its last, because pattern matching turns out to be poor at giving feedback on writing. She described a numeracy tutor that has worked far better, partly because numeracy is more black and white, but mostly because of how the fact that it doesn’t give the answer. It prompts the learner to recall the method, lets them have a go, and walks them through a tutorial when they get it wrong, still without handing over the answer.
Their trades students find this frustrating. All they want is the answer.
That frustration is the point. It is productive struggle, designed in on purpose, and it’s what Selena means when she talks about using AI as a coach and not an answer supplier.
Whose struggle is it?
In my last couple of posts I’ve been circling the question of learner agency with Adrian Woodhouse’s challenge of who owns the learning, and Mark Nicholls’ Blendagogy and what it looks like when the learner is in the driver’s seat . Selena’s talk adds something of an additional twist. If agency means owning your record, your pathway and your choices about when, where and how you learn, then I’d suggest it has to include owning the effort too.
Think about this example. A numeracy tutor that withholds answers only works if the learner understands why. Otherwise it’s one more thing done to them, and they’ll go and find a tool that gives them what they want. Selena’s own classroom practice shows the alternative. When her students’ bakes came out, the products went on the bench with no names attached, and the whole class discussed what hadn’t worked. Too hot, too cold, something weighed wrongly? Her reasoning was that if you can’t look at something imperfect and work out how to correct it, you will never get to something perfect. Mistakes were information, not shame.
A learner who has absorbed that mindset, who sees a mistake as information and not a verdict, can use AI to strengthen the struggle – asking it to probe, to push back, to check their reasoning. A learner who hasn’t will use the same tool to get around it. The technology is identical. The difference is agency.
Becoming
Think again about Selena’s story. The bakery was no easier than school. By her own account it was a major struggle at times, with early starts and long hours. What changed was what the struggle was for. Every cycle of trying, failing and trying again was taking her somewhere: it was making her a baker. In her research she calls this occupational identity formation, learning to think, do, feel and be what the vocation expects of you.
I suspect that’s the piece we keep missing in our work as educators. Learners rarely choose the hard path because we’ve explained cognitive debt to them, or because a tutor won’t hand over the answer. They choose it when the effort connects to who they’re becoming, when they can see themselves in the work and can see their own progress. The learner who sees a future carpenter, nurse or teacher in the mirror has a reason to do the work, and a reason to use AI as a coach and not a shortcut. The learner who sees only an assignment has every reason to find a way around it.
Selena’s talk was situated in the context of vocational training at a polytechnic, but the more I reflect the more I’m feeling that there are important lessons here for those working in the compulsory sector als0 – particularly at the senior end of secondary school. So here’s a question I’ve been left pondering: “how do we help learners become the kind of people who choose the harder path, on purpose?”
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Blendagogy, and who’s in the driver’s seat
Reflections on Dr Mark Nicholls’ opening keynote, day two of FLANZ 2026, Dunedin
The second day of the FLANZ conference here in Dunedin opened with Dr Mark Nicholls, president of ICDE and a member of the Open Polytechnic, launching his new book, Blendagogy. Coming straight after the previous day’s keynote on recognition of prior learning and where learning actually resides, it’s had me thinking a lot about how the two perspectives ‘fit’ together. In this post I start with a summary of Mark’s presentation then follow with where I think the thinking needs to go next.
What is blended?
Mark began by pointing out that blended learning has been part of the higher education conversations for around thirty years now, and yet, despite faster networks, more storage and ubiquitous devices, the basic models look much as they did when he was building CD-ROM and HTML resources at Manawatu Polytechnic in 1997. His diagnosis is that we have never had a shared approach to describing or designing blended learning. He observed that “I do blended learning” tells you almost nothing, because the practice underneath that phrase varies enormously and sometimes contradicts itself.
He also made a point that is important for anyone in open, flexible and distance education to understand – the terminology (distance, online, HyFlex, bichronous) may differ, but all of these are essentially blended, and the old divide between distance and face-to-face has largely collapsed. That convergence is why he helped shift ICDE’s emphasis from “open and distance education” to inclusive, scalable and sustainable education.
On a personal note here, Mark’s comments about a ‘convergence’ taking place reminded me of the work I did around 20 years ago to describe the convergence I saw happening – taking us from discrete distance or physical schools, to a more networked and fully ‘merged’ system view of the education ecosystem illustrated above.
The framework: four objectives, six factors, three levels
Blendagogy is a project that grew out of Mark’s work as Commonwealth of Learning chair and a hui held at the National Library last year. It offers a comprehensive framework built on three elements as illustrated here – and explained below:
Four objectives. Two are learner-facing and two are institution-facing. Availability covers what, where and when access is provided, including enrolment flexibility and any-time starts. Inclusivity means anyone can succeed regardless of personal or situational challenges. Scalability is the ability to extend reach up or down as demand shifts, and sustainability is the need for models that work without new funding, which Mark was blunt about not expecting.
Six factors that describe any blended model: ākonga activity, kaimahi activity, resources, assessment, timetable and success services. The case studies in the book are all structured this way, so models can be compared like for like. The question to ask a colleague isn’t “do you blend?” but “what do your ākonga do, and what do you do?”
Three levels of context: micro (the classroom or cohort), meso (institutional policy, programme norms, workload models, timetabling conventions, supported technologies) and macro (system policy, quality assurance and funding). Mark was clear that this is the real breakthrough. Most blended design happens at the micro level, but meso and macro conditions largely determine whether it can work.
Art, science and the “Franken-course”
Mark argued that good design needs both the art of the kaiako (teacher) and the science of evidence-based practice. Many gifted teachers work from the gut, and the science sometimes tells them otherwise. His memorable warning was about the Franken-course: a blended design that makes sense to its creator but looks disjointed to learners, who must learn how to learn again in every course. His minimum remedy is alignment at the meso level.
He concluded his talk with three recommendations:
Be institutionally deliberate, with a clear vision, a clear line between what is centralised and what is open to innovation, and deliberate technology choices.
Be curious about all six factors, not just the classroom.
Design intentionally – be informed by the significant amount of evidence that is now available.
Where I think the conversation needs to go
As I have been reflecting on Mark’s talk, I can’t help but also reflect on the keynote message from the previous day that encouraged us to consider the notion of flexibility from the perspective of the student, not simply the institution.
The framework outlined by Mark is strong for institutions that are providing, or want to provide, blended learning – and it’s certainly something I’d have found useful many years ago when I was involved in developing organizational strategies for this sort of thing. But it is built from the provider’s seat. The learner appears as one of six factors, alongside things the institution controls. Even Mark’s own illustration of the Franken-course is a learner-side problem with a provider-side fix. From the learner’s seat the Franken-course is the whole experience across providers, workplaces and communities, and no alignment inside one institution can solve that. It is the passport problem I referred to in my previous post – the learner starts over at every border.
Availability or accessibility?
Mark called availability the slipperiest of the four objectives and noted he couldn’t get it adopted alongside the ICDE’s other three. I fully support it as a principle, but even that conveys a sense of being institution-centric: “what will we make available, and how?” I prefer using accessibility as it prompts me to think more from the learner’s perspective: “I want to reach this learning from this place, at this time and in this way.” Something can be available without being accessible. Mark’s own example from his time with the Open University, with courses that start once a year, illustrates this. Every course is technically available, yet some are effectively out of reach. His any-time-start test is really an accessibility test in availability language.
For this reason I’d pair the two rather than replace one with the other. Availability is the institution’s condition, and accessibility is the learner’s test of whether it worked – and consider then, inclusivity alongside these as illustrated below:
The six factors from the learner’s seat
As I’ve spent some time considering the the six factors I’ve thought about how they might be addressed if we changed the language to put the learner in the driver’s seat. The illustration below is a quick attempt to illustrate how the questions might change:
Two things stand out for me. First, Assessment is the pivot, because it is where learner-held evidence meets institutional credentialing, and so where the question who owns the learning? has its sharpest edge. Second, the right-hand column is almost entirely meso and macro: records, pathways, standards and funding that no learner can create alone.
A learner axis
Macro, meso and micro nest vertically inside the provider system. The learner runs horizontally across all of them, and across institutions, and is the only constant in the whole picture. I’d suggest treating that as a fourth level, or as a lens to apply at each level: what does this policy, practice or choice mean for the person who has to move through it?
I need to emphasise that I’m in no way dismissing Mark’s framework – in fact I thoroughly endorse it. There is common ground here. Mark’s central claim is that teachers can’t make blended learning work from the micro level alone, because the conditions are set above them. The same logic applies to learners. Agency can’t be achieved from the learner’s seat alone, because it depends on infrastructure that someone else has to build.
An invitation
Mark explicitly invited critique of the framework and thought experiments about what the perfect blend might look like. A learner-driven blend seems to me exactly that kind of experiment. Blendagogy gives us a much-needed shared language for what providers do. The next step is to ask what that language looks like when the learner holds the record, makes the choices and carries their learning with them from border to border.
If you’re interested, the book and the community of practice Mark floated are at blendagogy.org.
Mark Nicholls (right) with some of his chapter contributors at the FLANZ conference, 2026
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Daniel SmithChair Learning Environments Australasia
Derek and Maurie complement each other well and have the same drive and passion for a future education system that is so worthwhile being part of. Their presentation and facilitation is at the same time friendly and personal while still incredibly professional. I am truly grateful to have had this experience alongside amazing passionate educators and am inspired to re visit all aspects of my leadership. I have a renewed passion for our work as educational leaders.
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I was in desperate need of a programme like this. This gave me the opportunity to participate in a transformative journey of professional learning and wellbeing, where I rediscovered my passion, reignited my purpose, and reconnected with my vision for leading in education. Together, we got to nurture not just academic excellence, but also the holistic wellbeing of our school communities. Because when we thrive, so does the entire educational ecosystem.
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Refresh, Reconnect, Refocus is the perfect title for this professional development. It does just that. A fantastic retreat, space to think, relax and start to reconnect. Derek and Maurie deliver a balance of knowledge and questioning that gives you time to think about your leadership and where to next. Both facilitators have the experience, understanding, connection and passion for education, this has inspired me to really look at the why for me!
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A useful and timely call to action. A great chance to slow down, reflect on what really drives you, and refocus on how to get there. Wonderful conversations, great connections, positive pathways forward.
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RRR is a standout for quality professional learning for Principals. Having been an education PLD junkie for 40 years I have never before attended a programme that has challenged me as much because of its rigor, has satisfied me as much because of its depth or excited me as much because of realising my capacity to lead change. Derek and Maurie are truly inspiring pedagogical, authentic leadership experts who generously and expertly share their passion, wisdom and skills to help Principal's to focus on what is important in schools and be the best leader they can be.
Cindy SullivanPrincipal, Kaipara College
Derek Wenmoth is brilliant. Derek connects powerful ideas forecasting the future of learning to re-imagine education and create resources for future-focused practices and policies to drive change. His work provides guidance and tools for shifting to new learning ecosystems through innovations with a focus on purpose, equity, learner agency, and lifelong learning. His work is comprehensive and brings together research and best practices to advance the future of teaching and learning. His passion, commitment to innovation for equity and the range of practical, policy and strategic advice are exceptional.
Susan Patrick, CEO, Aurora Institute
I asked Derek to work with our teachers to reenergise our team back into our journey towards our vision after the two years of being in and out of 'Covid-ness'. Teachers reported positively about the day with Derek, commenting on how affirmed they felt that our vision is future focused. Teachers expressed excitement with their new learning towards the vision, and I've noticed a palpable energy since the day. Derek also started preparing our thinking for hybrid learning, helping us all to feel a sense of creativity rather than uncertainty. The leadership team is keen to see him return!
Kate Christie | Principal | Cashmere Ave School
Derek has supported, informed and inspired a core group of our teachers to be effective leads in our college for NPDL. Derek’s PLD is expertly targeted to our needs.
Marion Lumley | Deputy Principal |Ōtaki College
What a task we set Derek - to facilitate a shared vision and strategy with our Board and the professional and admin teams (14 of us), during a Covid lockdown, using online technology. Derek’s expertise, skilled questioning, strategic facilitation and humour enabled us to work with creative energy for 6 hours using a range of well-timed online activities. He kept us focussed on creating and achieving a shared understanding of our future strategic plan. Derek’s future focussed skills combined with an understanding of strategy and the education sector made our follow up conversations invaluable. Furthermore, we will definitely look to engage Derek for future strategic planning work.
Sue Vaealiki, Chair of Stonefields Collaborative Trust
Our Principal PLG has worked with Derek several times now, and will continue to do so. Derek is essentially a master facilitator/mentor...bringing the right level of challenge, new ideas & research to deepen your thinking, but it comes with the level of support needed to feel engaged, enriched and empowered after working with him.
Gareth Sinton, Principal, Douglas Park School
Derek is a highly knowledgeable and inspirational professional learning provider that has been guiding our staff in the development of New Pedagogies’ for Deep Learning. His ability to gauge where staff are at and use this to guide next steps has been critical in seeing staff buy into this processes and have a strong desire to build in their professional practice.
