The Power of the Pen

“Including akonga Māori, Pacific students and those with learning support needs”

In AEC’s At The Marae Substack, which drew attention to the removal of kupu Māori from junior readers, we wrote:

We are walking backwards into the sixties and seventies with each stroke of the twink.

This week saw another stroke of the twink revealed. In reality it was a pen, but the effect was to ‘white out’ the inclusion of Māori and Pacific learners from our most fundamental education document: The New Zealand Curriculum.

On Wednesday, RNZ revealed the 2024 argy-bargy of documents sent backwards and forwards between Minister Stanford and Ministry of Education officials as they sought to agree on the wording of the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) Overarching Design Principles.

Government flip-flopped on Treaty’s role in school curriculum. As John Gerritsen reports, the inclusion of the Treaty of Waitangi (note: not Te Tiriti o Waitangi) was pinged to and fro like a shuttlecock between the Ministry, the Minister and Cabinet:

• 12 April 2024: No mention of the Treaty in the report on the NZC Overarching Design Principles.

• 18 April 2024: The Treaty is included.

• 30 April 2024: No mention of the Treaty.

• 4 June 2024: The Treaty is included.

The final version of the NZC did ultimately retain a reference to reflecting the Treaty. But what was all that flip-flopping about?

Insider comments from Claire Coleman, a Ministry curriculum writer at the time, shed some light:

“It correlates a lot with what we were being asked to do in terms of taking te reo Māori and reference to Te Tiriti out of our position paper documents,” (RNZ)

So the Treaty remained, but “ākonga Māori, Pacific students and those with learning support needs” did not.

The image above is taken from the 30 April version of the Design for the New Zealand Curriculum report. It shows these words struck through - presumably by the Minister.

The phrase is also underlined, with the handwritten word “important” added beside it. Does that mean it was important to keep those words, or important to remove them? Given that they did not appear in the NZC published in October 2025, it seems reasonable to conclude that the annotation referred to their deletion.

So here we are with a national curriculum that no longer explicitly foregrounds Māori and Pacific learners, or those who need additional learning support.

How can we avoid a one-size-fits-all approach to education, and genuinely pursue equity, if we erase from the curriculum the very groups of learners our education system continues to fail?

When these groups are explicitly recognised in the New Zealand Curriculum and its supporting documents, governments are expected to consider them when making policy decisions, allocating resources, funding specialised professional learning for teachers and developing culturally responsive learning materials - including junior readers.

When that explicit recognition disappears, Māori, Pacific and disabled learners become less visible within the policy framework. The risk is that longstanding educational disparities receive less focused attention, targeted investment becomes harder to justify, and systemic inequities become easier to overlook.

If the National-led government win in this year’s election they effectively receive a mandate to continue to push through their recolonising education reforms - “at pace”.

What will an emboldened Minister of Education take her ‘white-out’ pen to next?