Outsourcing of Our Curriculum Sovereignty

by Protective Educators in Aotearoa

The Curriculum Shit-Show Was Real

Teachers across the motu are only just noticing that the familiar Understand–Know–Do framework has quietly vanished — replaced by a shiny, standardised spreadsheet of “knowledge and practices.”

What’s dawning now is how much unpacking, alignment, and translation this “glowed-up” curriculum will demand — and it’s falling on an already exhausted workforce.

Not to mention the time, money, and professional learning poured into the last version — the one we now know isn’t even happening.

Countless hours of teacher inquiry, staff meetings, and PLD sessions have been quietly swept aside.

Where did this new document come from?

The Mystery Begins

In a country that prides itself on consulting its own educators, a question like this shouldn’t really be a Scooby-Doo moment.

And yet — here we are, following the clues, tugging at the mask of another “curriculum mystery.”

During our own digging, we came across a report titled “Fixing the Hole in Australian Education” by a firm called Learning First, led by Dr Ben Jensen — a Melbourne-based education-strategy consultancy.

The language in that paper — “knowledge-rich,” “curriculum coherence,” “content depth,” and “system alignment” — felt strangely familiar. Almost word-for-word familiar.

And so the question forms, Scooby-Doo-style:

Is Dr Ben Jensen the man behind the mystery mask of our new curriculum?

Who Is Dr Ben Jensen?

Jensen isn’t a classroom teacher — he’s a policy technician. His CV includes work for the OECD, the Grattan Institute, and curriculum reforms across several countries. 

He’s well-known in government circles for advising on education strategy and teacher effectiveness.

None of this is Ben’s fault.

By all accounts, he’s an intelligent and capable bloke with a reputation for system reform and efficiency.

The issue isn’t the man; it’s the mandate — the choice to import a consultant’s blueprint (even if it's not Ben's handiwork) rather than trust our own educators to write one grounded in Aotearoa’s whakapapa.

What Learning First Does

Learning First designs “knowledge-rich, assessment-aligned curriculum frameworks” — the kind that promise international rigour and deliver rapid standardisation.

According to its own website, the firm’s clients include federal governments, state and provincial education systems in Australia, the United States, and Canada, and global organisations such as the OECD, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the National Centre on Education and the Economy.

That pedigree makes them attractive to governments under pressure: they deliver polished, export-ready curriculum models that can be rolled out quickly and defended as “international best practice.”

But it also means their approach is shaped by systems with very different cultural, social, and Treaty obligations from ours.

In Fixing the Hole in Australian Education, Jensen argues that curriculum design itself caused Australia’s performance decline — not poverty, inequity, or teacher workload.

He defines equity not through culturally sustaining pedagogy, but through equal access to the same content sequences. (Sound familiar?)

That logic fits neatly with the global ed-tech and data-broker model — curriculum as infrastructure rather than culture, measurable and 'monetisable'.

His report even brags that Australia teaches “only five topics in depth compared to an international average of twenty-two.” (Sound familiar again?)

Those “findings” conveniently scaffolded Learning First’s expansion — and now, perhaps, its quiet arrival here.

And the irony?

Erica Stanford recently promised to simplify NCEA to five learning areas.

Five areas. 

Five topics. 

Coincidence? 

Or have those numbers travelled remarkably well across the Tasman?

The Legal and Democratic Question

Under the Education and Training Act 2020, the Minister may approve curriculum statements — but the law presumes transparent consultation with educators and Treaty partners.

If external companies are writing, training, or implementing our curriculum, the public has a right to know:

• What contracts were signed.

• Who authorised them.

• How much was paid.

• Where Māori and Pasifika consultation occurred.

  
  

Anything less is a breach of the public’s right to open governance.

You don’t need permission to ask hard questions.

Under the Official Information Act 1982, you can request:

• All contracts, invoices, or correspondence between the MOE and Learning First Australia or Dr Ben Jensen (from 2024 onward).

• Any documentation describing their role in writing or training related to the Curriculum Refresh, the Curriculum Roadshow, or Phase 5 outcomes.

Boards of Trustees and professional associations can also request this information 

collectively — strength in numbers.

And hopefully, our little “Scooby-Doobious” moment turns out to be nothing more than an overactive teacher brain connecting clues that aren’t really there.

But until someone shows us the full picture, you can’t blame educators for wanting to peek behind the mask.

A curriculum is not a technical document.

It is a social contract — an agreement about who we are and what we value.

When its authorship is outsourced, so too is our authority to define success, equity, and belonging for our own tamariki.

That’s not reform.

That’s colonisation in a suit (or mask in this case).

“Curriculum sovereignty belongs to us — not to consultants.”

Disclaimer

Now, if it turns out we are wearing 5G tinfoil Covid hats and poor Ben has absolutely nothing to do with the wizardry fixing of our current curriculum, then Ben — we owe you a coffee, maybe even a muffin.

But let’s be honest — if this “magic curriculum” hadn’t dropped out of nowhere in its new glowed-up form, We probably wouldn’t be so suspicious.

Education is messy. It’s human. It’s glorious chaos held together with care and caffeine.

So when things get this secretive, it makes even the calmest teachers start feeling like Scooby-Doo sniffing out a mystery.

If they thought we’d all be thrilled with the 'glow up', why are we finding out through whispers instead of wānanga?

Because that’s the thing — when it comes to our kids, we’ll still fight for them.

Maybe not with claws, but definitely with the instinct of a mama bear who’s just seen someone wander too close to her cubs.

Governments can roll out all the consultants they like — but teachers?

We’ll keep showing up, tinfoil hat or not, because that’s what love for our tamariki looks like.