by Rebecca Thomas Why is it that whenever our Minister of Education hears something she doesn't particularly like from the people working in education, somebody ends up being blamed? This week apparently we are not just wrong. We are “pretty disgusting”. To be honest, during Te Wiki o te Reo Māori our Minister hasn't been far from my thoughts. I've been wandering around school in my NZEI T-shirt, inviting kōrero with my students about the kupu from At the Marae printed across

by Rebecca Thomas I can’t really describe just how tired I am today. Actually, I can. I am absolutely bloody exhausted. Not yay, it’s Friday tired, or even normal end-of-term teacher tired. I am the kind of tired where someone asks you a perfectly reasonable question and you have to concentrate really hard on not being irritated that they asked it. The kind of tired where you walk into a room to do something, forget what it was, stand there for a moment and then decide that p

by Rebecca Thomas I knew I should have checked the news before I went to bed. There I was, worrying about education unnecessarily: apparently it is fixed! Twenty years of decline simply, turned around. Science and maths are up. The post-Covid slide has stabilised. The equity gap is narrowing. Halle-bloody-lujah. And presumably, somewhere in Wellington, somebody is polishing the educational equivalent of a Nobel Prize. Except… you know me. I saw the headlines and immediately w

By Rebecca Thomas I don't know if this is happening everywhere. Maybe it is a Te Tai Tokerau thing. Maybe other SENCOs, LSCs, principals and teachers around Aotearoa are sitting with the same uncomfortable feeling. But something is happening in our kura. And I am worried. While the educational landscape has been consumed by curriculum changes, assessment changes, media swipes, political ugliness and educators pushing back against yet another thing being done to education, som

by Rebecca Thomas As we head towards November, I expect many of us have been thinking about trust. Professional trust. Institutional trust. The trust that allows people to disagree fiercely about education while still believing that everyone around the table is there because they genuinely want something better for tamariki. Lately, I have found myself in conversations where that trust feels increasingly fragile. You hear it in the shared language: Who is connected to whom? W

by Rebecca Thomas As the dust settles and you finally get a chance to reflect on what happened when ERO came to visit, there is a weird feeling that settles over the leadership team. It takes a while to decompress. For days you have been ‘on’. Preparing; explaining; answering; finding things and linking them — giving access to digital pixels. Justifying things and thinking about things you hadn't thought about for months because you had been too busy actually doing them. And

by Rebecca Thomas Day 2 — Part 2 And so, after all the fishing, came the bread and butter. Teaching. ERO wanted to see what actually happened inside our classrooms. Before they ventured out, they asked us a seemingly simple question: What might we expect to see? So we told them: WALTs, success criteria, explicit teaching, effective use of teacher aides, feedback and feedforward, power sharing, student agency, engagement, excitement. A curriculum shaped around the children sit

By Rebecca Thomas Day 1 ERO They come carrying questions. Carefully sharpened ones. The sort that look perfectly harmless laid neatly on a table, but you soon realise have hooks hidden beneath the surface. And so begins the curious business of evaluation. Except, on this occasion, I found myself becoming rather fascinated by the evaluators. Because while they were watching us, I was watching them. And it turns out there is quite an art to fishing. One casts the line while ano

by Rebecca Thomas Science; the magic of life. I have taught for long enough to know when a curriculum document makes me excited about teaching and when it makes me reach for a highlighter and start wondering which boxes I am supposed to tick. On first reading, the new Science Curriculum did the latter. Perhaps most of my reaction comes from having taught in the UK. Reading through the primary years felt strangely familiar. The themes, concepts and sequencing reminded me stron

by Rebecca Thomas AI image — no actual children were exploited, measured, rated or placed in a coloured box for this blog. ’Twas the week before ERO, and all through the school, The teachers were humming, pretending we’re cool. The classrooms were buzzing with real boys and girls, With meltdowns and laughter and fights in their worlds. The whānau, oblivious — we mean no disrespect — Had no idea what next Tuesday might suddenly affect. For seven days from now, when the reviewe

by Rebecca Thomas It’s fair to say that while the reform kōrero battles on in media headlines and across political sandlines — and, admittedly, in my head before spilling into online spaces — my actual classroom and my actual class have been largely shielded from all the upset. The children are oblivious to the grown-up battles. Thankfully. They don’t know which politician thinks teachers need more power. They don’t know about the promises of stronger discipline, firmer conse

by Rebecca Thomas Paul Henry echoes what Tom Bennett has championed for years It is easy to understand that the status quo believes if children misbehave we should punish them. They share the idea that if behaviour gets worse we should increase the consequences, and if that doesn't work, remove them. Stand them down. Suspend them. Give teachers more power. The problem is that education has spent the last fifty years discovering that children are far more complex than our comm

by Rebecca Thomas This week was a strange week. My wairua was bruised, stretched and, at times, left wondering whether it had anything left to give. Adults frustrated me. Systems exhausted me. I can't help it. I take this job seriously. I know I can become frosty with adults who still don't understand neurodiversity or trauma. Admittedly, I lose patience with people who would rather defend the status quo than ask, "What if there was a better way?" Quite often, my passion spil

by Rebecca Thomas Politicians keep high-profile friends. Friends with benefits. The kind that help win elections, shape policy and, once in government, quietly occupy positions of influence. Politics has always traded in loyalty. Trusted allies are less likely to leak, less likely to challenge and more likely to carry the agenda exactly as intended. You only have to look at the recent line-up across education to see the final row of the chessboard coming into play. Sarah Brow

by Rebecca Thomas A pin that used to stand for protecting future generations and shared purpose. Every morning I unlock the door to a school in Te Tai Tokerau where around ninety-five percent of the children are Māori. I see mokopuna and I hear laughter that survives hardship. I see generations of promise that have the potential to make us all be better humans. But, I also see the scars left behind by an education system that, for decades, has too often measured them against

Minimum. Is. Terrifying. by Rebecca Thomas As a nation we've truly lowered the bar for the people leading the country. Quite frankly, it's embarrassing. There was a time when we expected better, better judgement, better process. Somewhere along the way, we let those expectations slip for the people at the very top. A curriculum is the blueprint of our next generation. It tells a nation what it values. It decides what knowledge deserves to be passed on. Whose stories matter. W

by ELV Give this guy a medal...oh wait he already has one! For nearly two years we've been told New Zealand education has one big problem. Teachers just weren't teaching the right way. It was all too "balanced". Added to that, the curriculum was too vague and assessment wasn't rigorous enough. The science was being ignored. (Cue stamping feet and an exaggerated pout.) The solution, we were assured, was obvious. Rewrite the curriculum (several times over). Better still, get i

by ELV Sometimes an email from a stranger jogs your memory about all of the promises, the redirected funds and the wonderful things that were supposed to happen for children as a result of jobs being defunded and specialist services being dismantled. This particular email reminded me that reality doesn't seem to fit the story we've been told. Last year the Government asked us to trust them. They told us significant funding would be redirected into Learning Support, bringing e

by Rebecca Thomas Sometimes, when you've spent nearly thirty years in classrooms, you begin to wonder whether you're the one who's finally lost the plot. Every now and then, when every Ministry update celebrates another mandated resource. Another programme or assessment tool with a promise that this will finally fix education. Even stubborn teachers like me have moments where we quietly question ourselves. Have I missed something? Am I romanticising the past? Is this really w

by ELV This Friday, schools across New Zealand will finally receive the detailed SMART reports from Assessment Window One. (Assessments taken in April...we are now in June.) There's just one tiny problem. Teachers have already written the reports. They've been printed, sealed in envelopes and carried home in children's bags. Mid-year reports have gone home. Eight weeks of teaching, intervention, observation and assessment have happened since children sat the tests. So I found