Building on strong foundations#

A strong foundation in reading, writing and maths or pānui, tuhituhi and pāngarau unlocks success in the rest of the curriculum, enabling lifelong learning and opening the doors to better outcomes throughout life. That's why we started our reform programme in 2023 with a focus on these core areas.

The changes we’re making to foundational learning work as an integrated whole. Clearer curricula, quality teaching and better assessment, aromatawai | assessment and monitoring are all designed to work seamlessly together to ensure that every learner has the opportunity to succeed.  

You can see how these changes work together in the image below.

Teaching the basics brilliantly#

To help narrow the wide variation in teaching and learning across the country, and even between classes in the same school, we started by revising the Mathematics and Statistics and English learning areas of the New Zealand Curriculum. This introduced a knowledge-rich curriculum grounded in the science of learning, with a year-by-year teaching sequence that is clearer about the knowledge and skills that students need to learn, and by when.  

Alongside this, we’ve rolled out:  

• a mandated hour a day for reading, writing, and maths in all Years 0 to 8 classrooms
• teacher training in structured literacy approaches for Years 0 to 3, later expanding to include teachers up to Year 8
• teacher training for the new approach to Maths and Pāngarau
• Ministry-funded maths resources for Years 0 to 8 provided to all schools and kura, which has now been expanded to include Years 9 to 10
• a variety of supports to help students accelerate their learning to reach curriculum expectations for their age, including specialist literacy and numeracy staff, teacher training in accelerated learning, and a new initiative to help students in Years 7 to 8 accelerate their Maths and Pāngarau learning. 

More consistent assessment and monitoring#

We wanted to help address the gaps in achievement data to ensure teachers, school leaders, the Ministry and parents/caregivers have the data they need to make the best decisions for students.  

To support this, we:

• expanded our national monitoring study, the Curriculum Insights and Progress Study, to assess a representative sample of students in reading, writing, and maths annually in Years 3, 6 and 8 from 2025
• developed a parallel study for those who learn through te reo Māori called Te Tīrewa Matai, a world-first indigenous-language study of Māori-medium settings, which will help up address longstanding gaps in our understanding of progress and achievement for mokopuna learning through te reo Māori.

We also introduced:

• phonics checks and hihira wēteoro, early checks of key early literacy skills for English- and Māori-medium students. This helps teachers identify students needing extra support as early as possible and provides an understanding of what is happening in schools during the crucial first years of schooling  
• new reporting to parents and whānau guidelines to support consistent, nation-wide reporting and to make it easier for parents and whānau to understand their child’s progress both in their current year and over time. 

Building on these early reforms, we are now embedding more consistent assessment and monitoring to help inform the design of acceleration programmes and other supports.

• We are continuing to improve our data picture with twice-yearly assessments for Years 3 to 8 students and new assessment | aromatawai tools, especially SMART, a free-to-use tool for assessing students in Years 3 to 10 in reading, writing and maths.  
• We are also developing a Maths and Pāngarau check to test core mathematical skills and knowledge at Year 2 to enable earlier interventions for students needing extra support.
• To complement this, an end of Year 2 literacy | te reo Matatini check will also be introduced to make sure we can identify students who need targeted support in reading and writing early.
• These checks will form a suite of checks at the end of Year 2. Schools will be able to identify students who need access to accelerated supports from the start of Year 3.

In the coming years, we plan to increase our focus on secondary schooling with more tightly focused interventions designed to allocate resources where they are needed most.

Through each of these initiatives we will be able to further develop a comprehensive, evidence-driven understanding of what works, when, and for which students. All of this will better support all students to reach their potential, no matter where they live or which schools or kura they attend. 

Read the action plan#

From 2025 we released individual action plans for maths (Make it Count) and writing (Make it Write). Alongside this we have developed an action plan for reading (Read to Succeed).

These action plans work together to provide a consolidated plan for strengthening foundational learning from 2026.  

You can read our consolidated Action Plan for Foundational Learning below.