Category: Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A jury trial for the man charged with murdering Senior Sergeant Lyn Fleming in Nelson is due to begin in the High Court at Christchurch, today.

Fleming, 62, was killed in the early hours of New Year’s Day in 2025 after she and a colleague were struck by a vehicle while on foot patrol in Buxton Square, in central Nelson.

Hayden Donald Jason Tasker, 33, entered not guilty pleas to six charges, including murder, last February.

He has also denied the attempted murder Senior Sergeant Adam Ramsay, who was critically injured in the crash and required surgery.

A third police officer was assessed for concussion, while two members of the public were also injured.

Tasker has also plead not guilty to a charge of causing grievous bodily harm with reckless disregard for safety and three charges of dangerous driving.

His case was transferred to the High Court at Christchurch, last year.

Fleming was the first policewoman to be killed in the line of duty in New Zealand.

At her funeral, Fleming, who had been a police officer for 38 years, was described at the matriarch of the Nelson Police Station and a fearless advocate for her staff.

Police Commissioner Richard Chambers, who worked alongside Fleming in Nelson, said she was a remarkable policewoman.

She had not been required to work that New Year’s Eve shift, but had chosen to do so to support her colleagues.

The trial is expected to take three weeks.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Wellingtonians are divided over paying higher bills to improve the region’s water infrastructure, a new survey shows.

Tiaki Wai – which will own and manage the region’s water services from July – asked people if they agreed with paying more, if it delivered better water services for future generations.

IN March, Tiaki Wai said bills could reach more than $6800 a year by 2036. [. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/590521/wellingtonians-face-average-2400-water-bill-next-year-massive-increases-to-follow Indicative charges for this coming financial year] are a 14.7 per cent increase – an extra $310 per year – followed by a 28 per cent increase in 2027/28

Results of the survey showed 44 percent of people definitely or somewhat agreed that investment was important, even if it meant paying more, while 43.6 percent definitely or somewhat disagreed with higher bills, while 12.5 percent were neutral.

Almost half of the respondents – 49.4 percent – agreed with paying more, if it reduced contamination of waterways, with 36.7 percent disagreeing and 13.8 percent neutral.

Safe and high quality drinking water was the most important priority for residents – 64.4 percent cared about that the most – followed by clear, consistent billing (55.9 percent) and infrastructure maintenance, including preventing leaks (54.8 percent).

More than 1150 people from Wellington city, Lower Hutt, Upper Hutt and Porirua completed the survey.

Tiaki Wai Board chair Will Peet said the survey results showed Wellingtonians had “pretty strong views on water”, with a tension between wanting better infrastructure and concern about affordability during a cost-of-living crisis.

“Most people know that there’s a lot to be done, but there’s a real feeling about who should pay for it and people going, ‘Well, I’ve been paying all this money in rates, how do we pay for it?’

“From our perspective, we are where we are, and we now need to get on and build that confidence of the people who don’t think we should be spending more money, and can see that they’re getting value from it.”

Tiaki Wai faces scrutiny from the Commerce Commission over its proposed bills, with chair John Small telling RNZ it was “looking closely” at Tiaki Wai’s model.

Peet said the organisation was reviewing the initial charges it proposed in its draft water strategy, although he wouldn’t confirm whether those would come down.

He said the Commerce Commission had indicated it would begin a consultation on Tiaki Wai’s charges soon.

The board was also considering “bluntly how much work we can do and get good value for money for”.

He said the next water services strategy next year would be interesting, because it would show what people cared about the most.

“I think it will be really interesting listening to people and see what are the priorities. Do you want to have more days swimming in he sea or do you want to have fewer leaks?

“The question is which one do people want us to prioritise more?”

He said the survey showed the Moa Point failure had raised the concern of the environmental impact of sewage discharges.

Tiaki Wai will inherit the five Wellington region councils’ water assets from 1 July and Peet said fixing Moa Point was critical.

“Getting Moa Point back operating to where it should be is a really high priority, but we’ve also got two other wastewater treatment plants – both the seaview plant in Lower Hutt and the west plant in the back of Karori – and both of those have compliance issues,” he said.

“I wouldn’t want to say [Moa Point] is the highest and only priority, because throughout the network, there is lots to be done.”

The board will consider the feedback on its draft strategy and will release confirmed water charges for this coming financial year before 30 June.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Fire and Emergency New Zealand has axed the only paid role on Aotea Great Barrier Island.

Documents seen by RNZ show the new arrangement – sending staff from the mainland — will cost the fire service more than retaining an officer on the island.

Aotea Great Barrier Island is home to around 1250 residents, 50 of whom are volunteers in the local fire brigade.

The island’s voluntary chief fire officer, Wayne Anderson, says volunteers have been supported by a paid, part-time, person on the island since 2000, when the role was funded by Auckland City Council.

In 2017, that position transferred to Fire and Emergency, which ended the contracted role on April 24.

Going forward, staff from Counties Manukau will provide support for the island, a FENZ spokesperson said.

Aotea Great Barrier local board chair, Izzy Fordham, said the community was “pretty devastated” by the decision to cut the on-island role.

“To me, it just doesn’t make sense, and it’s not making sense to our volunteer fire committee, and it’s certainly not making sense to the community,” she said.

“It’s a really vital role for the island, and there seems to be some thinking within the higher management of FENZ that it can be run from the mainland… but that’s not really going to work that well.”

A FENZ spokesperson said the organisation looked at keeping the on-island role, taking into consideration the workload, existing district support, and incident data.

That data showed, on average, crews attended five medical call outs and two structure fires each year.

Mr Anderson said those figures didn’t reflect the times volunteers dealt with floods, or supported the island’s sole paramedic.

However, the low call-out numbers reflected years of fire prevention work which was now at risk, he said.

“It’s going to affect our risk reduction plans definitely because they’ll be flying someone over who nobody knows. We’re a small community, everyone knows everyone, and respect is big, but a stranger going to a house, putting in a smoke alarm, is not going to happen.”

Mr Anderson said that due to the island’s isolation, it needed to be well-resourced, but it was being abandoned.

“Especially in a severe weather event or a tsunami, we’re going to be on our own for quite a few days,” he said.

“In (Cyclone) Gabrielle, the airport was closed for two days. and we had no ferry for a week. The island was cut off into four pieces because of landslides and flooding.

When things escalate, where are these resources, how are these resources going to get here?”

Internal FENZ advice seen by RNZ showed that flying staff to the island would cost more, be less practical than keeping the on-island role, and impact support for mainland stations.

Travel to the island was not straight-forward, Mr Anderson said, and the ongoing impact of rising fuel prices on flight costs and frequency was unknown.

FENZ staff travelling to Aotea from Auckland would “spend a lot of time at the airport,” he said.

“… we do get a lot of cancellations because of weather, and sometimes you’ve spent a long time in the airport waiting for the fog to clear, waiting for the rain to clear.”

According to FENZ, the contract for the on-island support officer was put in place in 2022, with an agreement to review “its ongoing need against broader organisational priorities”.

“This decision to not appoint a permanent role was not made due to cost,” a FENZ spokesperson said.

“Currently a group manager visits the island approximately four times a year. The future arrangement will see the island supported by specialists, including risk reduction advisors, community readiness and recovery advisors and volunteer support officers. These arrangements will have a more regular schedule, likely to be monthly.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

The Cannabis Clinic is calling for more education around medicinal cannabis.

Research has found that 65 percent of New Zealanders believe there is stigma, according to chief executive Waseem Alzaher.

He told RNZ that improving understanding is critical to helping more patients access safe, informed care.

“We did a survey of 1000 patients last year, and we found that 65 percent of those respondents still feel that stigma was associated with medicinal cannabis,” he said.

“We’re here to address that stigma by providing a professional service – and kudos to our doctors and clinical team who have put their head above water to talk about an issue which is stigmatised even within the medical community – to put it in the hands of Kiwis, to make sure that people who do benefit from it, who are suffering and have reduced quality of life, or who are accessing cannabis illegally and carrying that burden on their back, thinking, ‘Oh, my God, I’m doing something illegal,’ have a place that they can come in and have that conversation.”

Alzaher said medicinal cannabis was like any other medicine, but that stigma remained a barrier for some people.

“It has its right time, place, person, dose – and anything, including non-pharmaceuticals, have risks of adverse effects – so let’s not take cannabis outside of that perspective.

“Let’s treat it like it is, which in New Zealand is a prescribable medicine, and treat it accordingly.

“It’s no different to any other medicinal product.

“Kiwis don’t have to hide and use cannabis illegally behind closed doors.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

A gynaecologist and women’s health expert says Pharmac’s rationing of menopause drugs is reasonable from an equity perspective, given the global shortages.

Progesterone capsules will now be dispensed on a monthly basis, instead of three-monthly.

Auckland University associate professor Dr Michelle Wise said it’s a fair call from Pharmac.

“It’s a response that makes sense from the perspective of equity, so it’s not like I can go down to my pharmacy and get a year’s worth, and someone else can’t get it at all.

“I like the idea that it’s seemingly fair across wherever you are in the country, that you can at least get a month’s supply.”

Wise said the global shortages are driven by more women requesting menopause hormone therapy and demanding better healthcare in mid-life.

She said she’d expect the trend to continue and hopes regulators and suppliers around the world can keep up with the demand.

Wise said there have been shortages of estradiol patches on and off since the pandemic.

However, she believed New Zealand was facing shortages of progesterone capsules for the first time.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Penny Taylor was in an induced coma, “frying from the inside”.

The 36-year-old mother-of-two had been rushed to hospital after being discovered unconscious.

There, she was given 30 minutes to live and a two percent chance of survival.

As her organs failed, her three and seven-year-old children were told to say goodbye.

It was November 2009 and prior to her collapse, Taylor only knew she had a vomiting bug. In reality, it was meningococcal septicaemia.

Meningitis covers a range of serious and life-threatening diseases involving inflammation of the meninges – the membrane lining the brain and spinal cord.

In Taylor, the meningococcal bacterial infection led to blood poisoning, which can escalate rapidly, damaging blood vessels and organs – and ultimately left her a double-amputee.

Now, the Health Minister wants to know what services are available to survivors like Taylor, who on Wednesday last week told a Health Select Committee that after she was discharged from hospital, she had to fend for herself.

Survival against the odds

Taylor survived, but only just. She said it was a “harrowing experience,” particularly for her family, but told RNZ she was willing to revisit it in the hope that others could avoid her fate.

Before she became ill, she knew very little about the dangers of the meningococcal bacteria.

“I knew it was around, but I didn’t know that I could get it at my age. I didn’t realise that everyone is open to it and that we all carry it in the back of our throats and it’s kind of a bit like potluck as to whether it takes hold or not.”

Meningitis presents with flu-like symptoms, including vomiting, and as a mother to a toddler, Taylor naturally blamed a daycare bug. “I just thought, ‘Oh, it’ll be a 24-hour bug, I’ll be fine.'”

Fortunately, Taylor’s mother – who’d been given a heads up that her daughter was unwell – popped in on her way home from work and upon finding her daughter unresponsive, called an ambulance.

She later told Taylor that by the time it arrived, a little dot had appeared on her leg. A rash can be a tell-tale sign but doesn’t occur with every infection.

“By the time I got to hospital that had rapidly grown right across my body, and I was turning black before her eyes,” Taylor said.

In Palmerston North’s intensive care unit – her body about twice the size from the swelling and looking like she’d been “eaten from frostbite” – Taylor was put in a coma.

“All my organs had failed … I had a 42-degree temperature … I was essentially frying from the inside.” In that state, “completely unrecognisable,” Taylor’s children said goodbye.

Left to fight for myself – survivor

According to Public Health and Forensic Science there were 40 cases of meningitis in 2024 and 2025 (down from 52 in 2023 and 69 in 2022). There have been six cases so far this year.

Principal medical advisor to the Immunisation Advisory Centre, Nikki Turner said while it’s common to carry meningococcal, it’s rare to catch it.

“But when you catch it, it moves fast and sudden … if you treat it in time, you can manage it, but if you don’t get it in time, it can be lethal.”

Taylor defied the doctors’ expectations and after a month in ICU woke from her coma – but she said that was only the beginning.

On Wednesday, the Health Select Committee heard the details of the long and arduous journey that’s characterised the past 15 years of her life.

Unable to be transferred to Waikato Hospital, Taylor was sent to Lower Hutt’s plastics ward, where she underwent multiple surgeries – debriding, skin-grafting, and amputations of fingers and both legs below the knee.

“The next month was probably the most torturous part of the whole journey … that didn’t really need to happen had I gone to Waikato,” she said.

“Morning and night I was having surgeries and in-between they were transporting me to Wellington Hospital for dialysis. So, every single bump, touch, I would feel … that was excruciating.”

Back in Palmerston North, rehabilitation wasn’t smooth either.

“As soon as I was out of hospital, everything stopped. I had no aftercare, I had no physiotherapy, I was there to fight for myself.”

It was tough going, she said, in a wheelchair and with a young family, she had no choice but to go back to work.

Taylor said the funded prosthetics didn’t work for her – the sockets hurt her damaged skin – and ultimately, she raised “a deposit on a house” to get innovative osteo-integration surgery in Australia.

She said such surgery wouldn’t be right for everyone, but for her – after two years of rehabilitation – she was able to go back to fulltime work, hit the gym, and walk over 10,000 steps a day.

“So that was worth it for me, I actually got my life back.”

Taylor said the past decade-and-a-half had been a rollercoaster that she had navigated on her own and didn’t know where she would be without her children – her driving force.

She suspected it was a different story for those at high risk of contracting the disease.

“A 16, 17-year-old youth trying to navigate life again without kids to live for, it would be extremely hard for them.”

‘People are simply not aware of it’

Better aftercare is one of a handful of demands the Meningitis Foundation Aotearoa New Zealand is making.

Alongside Taylor, foundation chairman Gerard Rushton told the Health Select Committee that not enough had been done to raise awareness since he was last before it in 2022.

He said expanding access to free vaccines and increasing awareness of the disease were key to preventing the spread of meningitis – the rapidity of which meant treatment often came too late.

Rushton’s own teenage daughter died after contracting the disease in 2014.

“We were completely unaware of the risk that meningitis posed, and we thought that because Courtenay had a vaccination when she was a baby, that she was actually protected.

“The underlying factor of most cases of meningitis in New Zealand is that people are simply not aware of it.”

Rushton said a school-based vaccination programme could help close that gap and protect young people before they entered university or the workforce.

He feared the current programme – free vaccines for 13-25-year-olds in their first year of close living situations – was inequitable and those most at risk were missing out.

“Presently, Māori and Pasifika are four to five times more likely to get meningitis and they are under-represented at halls of residence or boarding schools.”

The foundation said that those who weren’t eligible for free vaccines faced paying $150 per dose. Two doses of meningococcal B and one dose of meningococcal ACWY are recommended for full protection in older children to adults, it said.

In 2022, the foundation submitted an application to Pharmac to fund all 13-25-year-olds, regardless of where they were living.

Pharmac director advice and assessment, David Hughes said its Immunisation Advisory Committee recommended the application be declined, considering a universal vaccine was not proportionate to the risk.

“This recommendation to decline was made on the basis of evidence that people in close living situations and other high-risk groups within the 13-to-25-year age group were most important to target as the evidence supported reducing the vaccination risk for individuals.”

Hughes said feedback was sought on that decision and is currently being reviewed – no further funding decisions have been made.

He noted two applications to widen access to the meningococcal B and A,C,W, Y vaccines would be reviewed by the committee later this month.

Meningococcal A,C,W,Y vaccines for 5-21 years and 13-21 years had been recommended for funding when the budget allows, he said.

“When assessing which vaccines to fund, Pharmac takes into consideration a number of factors, including clinical advice from our advisors, cost of the vaccine, its effectiveness and the benefit on the wider health sector from funding this vaccine.”

Rushton told the Health Select Committee that at the very least, there should be free vaccines for all community services card-holders and urged bipartisan support.

Turner said if the country had the resources, she’d back expanding the programme, but that wasn’t the case, which meant vaccination had to be targeted.

She said the meningococcal vaccines were highly effective (around 80 percent), but that protection waned after three to five years.

Associate Minister of Health (Pharmac), David Seymour said vaccines were important and good value if they stopped people from getting sick.

However, he said funding decisions must be made by independent experts at Pharmac, not politicians.

“If politicians get to decide what medicines get bought, we will end up buying the things that have the best political campaigns behind them, and we will miss out on the things that give the most healthcare value for money, ” he said.

Committee member and Labour Party health spokesperson, Ayesha Verrall said as a doctor, she’d seen the “harrowing consequences” of meningitis first-hand.

“Wherever possible we should prevent illness rather than intervene too late with costly treatment – vaccination is one of the tools we have to do that.”

She said she hoped to further explore the funding of vaccines at future committee hearings.

Questions about aftercare

In response to questions from RNZ, Health Minister Simeon Brown said meningitis survivors should have access to appropriate support and ongoing care.

“I have asked Health New Zealand for information on this issue, including what services are currently available and how these are being delivered.”

Verrall also urged the agency to address “reports of inconsistent care and support” as a priority.

Health New Zealand [Health NZ] national clinical director protection, Christine McIntosh did not directly address questions about support for survivors.

She said like other infectious diseases, treatment for meningococcal disease is publicly available, including disease surveillance, diagnosis, treatment, follow up and contact tracing to identify other potential cases.

McIntosh says steps have also been taken since to raise awareness since a report from the Health Select Committee in 2023.

Such measures included providing advice through the Immunisation Advisory Centre to around 32,000 vaccinators (mostly general practitioners), talking to boarding schools at the beginning and end of the school year about vaccines, and informing tertiary institutes about eligibility for students and providing material to promote vaccination.

McIntosh said Health NZ’s annual ‘Meningitis week’ campaign encouraging vaccine uptake, coincided with one from the Meningitis Foundation.

She also noted that the most common strain, meningococcal B, was included in the National Immunisation Schedule (making vaccines free) for babies at three, five, and 12 months old.

“We have made significant improvement in childhood immunisations, with 82.9 percent of children fully immunised at 24 months of age in the quarter to December 2025, compared to 77.0 percent in the quarter to December 2024.”

Turner said vaccinations were only part of the answer and that among adolescents and young adults, lifestyle also played a part in spreading the disease.

“It’s close contact with each other. It’s sharing mucus, body secretions, it’s sharing water bottles.

“Obviously, it’s not possible to stop doing all of that. So, it’s also good healthy living, sleeping well, eating well, and getting access to healthcare services as soon as you’re unwell. Being aware of the disease … being aware of rashes.”

For Taylor, reducing the prevalence and spread of meningitis was the goal – and said it could be achieved through vaccination.

“I have teenagers myself now and they’re right in the prime age for it. If we can raise the prevention … then people won’t end up travelling the road that I have.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Teachers specialising in music, physical education, science, technology and history have slammed draft curriculums covering their subjects.

Submissions provided to RNZ say the music curriculum was unteachable, science was over-crowded and in some cases even silly, while PE needed a total rewrite.

They say combining dance and drama in the arts curriculum was problematic, and technology was confusing and unusable.

Consultation on the six drafts for Years 0-10 closed at the end of last week.

The drafts would replace a curriculum many said was too vague with documents that set out more clearly what teachers must teach at each year level, from the start of primary school through to the first two years of secondary school.

The government wants to finalise the curriculums later this year, with schools using the new science, social sciences, and health and physical education curriculums next year, and the arts, technology and learning languages from the start of 2028.

Many principals groups said the timeline was unworkable and Education Minister Erica Stanford said she would make announcements on the curriculum soon.

All submissions provided to RNZ highlighted a lack of meaningful Māori content in the drafts.

Drama New Zealand said: “There is very little, if any, indigenous knowledge in ‘performing arts’ and what is there is tokenistic.”

A submission from Bay of Plenty science teachers said the curriculum’s “guiding kaupapa of ‘excellent equitable outcomes, reflecting the Treaty of Waitangi/Te Tiriti o Waitangi’ is not evident anywhere in the science draft”.

The New Zealand History Teachers Association said the social sciences draft breached principles derived from Te Tiriti o Waitangi, while Physical Education NZ said the draft health and physical education curriculum weakened “the bicultural foundations that underpin learning in Aotearoa New Zealand”.

Last week, the Education Ministry said it was finalising the number of submissions received.

PE ‘not fit for purpose’

Physical Education New Zealand’s submission on the draft health and physical education curriculum said the document needed a total rewrite.

“The current draft curriculum is not fit for purpose,” the submission said. “It does not require refinement, it requires complete reworking.

“Any attempt to adjust or ‘tweak’ the existing draft will result in a curriculum that is incoherent, difficult to implement and ultimately unable to deliver meaningful outcomes for ākonga.

“The issues are not peripheral. They are structural, conceptual and disciplinary.”

It listed problems including a narrow view of PE centred on performance and measurable competencies, a fragmented and underdeveloped approach to knowledge, and lack of coherence as children progressed.

“This submission is intentionally direct, because the stakes are high,” the submission said

Physical Education New Zealand managing director Heemi McDonald told RNZ the draft would take physical education back to the 1950s and 1960s, when the subject was focused on sport.

“It drives physical education back down to a skills-and-drills kind of approach,” he said. “If we look back in our past, like maybe in the 50s and the 60s, the PE curriculum was very much sports skills and drills, and the discipline has moved significantly from that time along with the world.”

McDonald said the subject had moved on significantly, and the draft failed to recognise the importance of learning about movement, identity and relationships through physical education.

For example, he said five-year-olds needed to understand how they moved, how to work with other people and skills to move through the world.

“At its most basic level, that’s what our curriculum should reflect – this idea that our bodies are moving, we move in the world with others, we move in different environments and we all have a different experience,” he said.

McDonald said sport was good, but the subject was much more than that.

“If I’m teaching a young person to develop a particular movement skill – rolling or throwing or catching – we want them to be able to see that in lots of different contexts because you’re not only going to throw and catch in softball or cricket.”

“If every child has to do netball or has to do hockey or has to do cricket, which is what the draft implies, then who are we missing out, who are the kids who are not going to engage in those things.”

“The risk… is that we end up as sports coaches as opposed to teachers.”

He said PENZ supported a more prescriptive curriculum that made clearer what teachers should teach.

Technology – significant issues

Technology Education New Zealand’s submission said its members raised significant problems with the draft technology curriculum.

“Feedback consistently highlights significant structural, pedagogical, cultural and practical issues that require attention to ensure the curriculum is clear, equitable, implementable and able to meet the needs of all ākonga,” it said.

“A core concern is that the curriculum’s overall purpose feels vague and insufficiently defined. Many teachers report difficulty understanding the intended outcomes, the role of design thinking, and how the learning area supports both practical and academic pathway.

“Confusion is further amplified by inconsistent or unclear use of terminology, uneven expectations across year levels and complexity that escalates sharply between phases. Many describe the structure as poorly sequenced and lacking coherence across Years 1-10.”

The submission said members were also unhappy with the curriculum’s approximate allocation of an hour a week for the subject in Years 0-8 and 1.5 hours a week in Years 9-10.

Association chair Hamish Johnston told RNZ the draft had many big problems.

He said some technology areas had been squished together to make unviable subjects and the curriculum’s recommended time allocation for technology was badly conceived.

At Years 7-10, areas such as textiles, hard materials, food and biotechnology had been combined to a single ‘Materials and Processing Strand’.

“The classroom spaces where they would be taught, the teacher expertise to teach those things, putting them all in one subject together does not seem viable,” he said.

Johnston said the curriculum expected too much in some areas and recommended far too little time for technology – about 1.5 hours a week.

“The issue with the timing is it reduces certain subjects to an amount of time that would not allow deep and meaningful teaching,” he said.

Johnston said many schools allowed about three hours a week for each of the eight learning areas, but the new curriculums set aside more time for English and maths, and less for other subjects.

He said the sector had put up with about eight years of change and impending change, and it was burning through teachers.

Arts’ near-total absence of creativity

Drama New Zealand’s submission said combining dance and drama as performing arts was “problematic and devalues both disciplines”.

“There is very little, if any, indigenous knowledge in ‘performing arts’ and what is there is tokenistic,” it said.

“The draft curriculum does not reflect research and evidence for sound curriculum design for arts education, especially drama and dance internationally.”

Meanwhile, Music Education New Zealand Aotearoa’s submission said the music part of the curriculum was too focused on formal music lessons, with next-to-no mention of creativity or love of music.

“The draft curriculum, as written, is not deliverable in the majority of primary school contexts, without fundamental changes to resourcing, teacher capability and time allocation,” it said.

Association chair Kat Daniela said the curriculum would worsen existing inequities, because it required trained music teachers and could not be taught by generalist primary teachers.

“We have students who move into secondary school having never had any dedicated curriculum music time and then we have others who have had really rich music experiences,” she said. “Our concern is that the divides that already exist, and that lack of access and equity would be further widened.”

Daniela said the curriculum had to teachable by regular teachers.

“It has to be available for generalist teachers,” she said. “They have to have the ability to be able to teach, it because we don’t have a huge number of music specialists.”

Daniela said the draft also contained many basic errors, which the association assumed the Education Ministry would fix.

Science ‘just silly’

A submission from Bay Science, an organisation for teachers in Bay of Plenty, said a survey indicated 80 percent of its members believed the draft science curriculum had “far too much content” and 84 percent wanted significant changes.

Teachers’ notes on the draft said much of the content was too advanced for the age it was aimed at and primary schools did not have the required equipment.

Comments included “way too early for this” and “difficult concept at this level”, while mention of Greek scientist Theophrastus for Year 1 students was labelled “just silly” and “ridiculous”.

The submission said the draft was not internationally comparable, had knowledge gaps and did not honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Intermediate school science specialist John Marsh told RNZ he liked a lot of the content, but worried that it lacked New Zealand flavour and would require a lot of support for teachers.

“I think there’s some really nice pieces in it, but it it does have some flaws,” he said. “The thing I really like about it is very clear principles, theories and exemplars, which I think will be very useful.

“It’s been aligned to the UK and some of the USA curricula, so international curricula, and that’s good and bad. It’s nice to be able to kind of make a connection, but I think we have missed out on making it New Zealand’s curriculum.”

Marsh said, in the past 12 years, New Zealand schools had emphasised the “nature of science”, meaning the skills and approaches scientists used to investigate problems and make observations, but the draft had dropped that completely.

“I think that’s a mistake,” he said.

Marsh said UK and US primary schools tended to employ science specialist teachers, unlike New Zealand, where science specialists were a rarity.

“A lot of overseas programmes are textbook-driven,” he said. “I have taught in textbook systems in Ireland and England, and it was pretty boring.

“I’m not sure if going towards a a more book-driven or content knowledge, especially in the primary sector, is going to be as engaging for our kids, because New Zealand kids like doing things, they like pulling stuff apart, observing, discussing amongst themselves and that sort of thing.”

Social sciences

The NZ History Teachers Asssociation’s submission on the draft social sciences curriculum said the document needed significant changes.

“The design, as it stands, will undermine effective teaching and student learning, and substantive revision is required,” it said.

“This draft curriculum is full of distortion and obfuscation that will harm Māori students, and has a eurocentric positionality. So much content is included that the concern is not that New Zealand history is absent from the new curriculum, but that it will be taught in a cursory and monocultural manner, re-inforcing outdated misconceptions and myths.”

The submission said the government was making too much change too fast.

“The pace of curriculum change is unreasonable, has layered multiple demands on schools and kura, and has created huge workloads on the sector. This will have significant negative impacts, including impacting on the recruitment and retention of teachers.”.

The submission said the draft’s teaching of history in a chronological sequence was a mistake.

“The curriculum describes what comes next, but not how learning deepens or what students should be increasingly able to do. This creates a fragmented experience of disconnected topics, rather than a cumulative pathway of understanding.”

It also said the curriculum did not meet the ‘Science of Learning’ principles that supposedly underpinned it.

“The draft references principles aligned with the Science of Learning, but does not enable them in practice. This is a fundamental design flaw.

“Cognitive load is too high: Dense, unprioritised content introduces too many new ideas simultaneously, limiting retention.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand