NZ CURRICULUM PARENT INFORMATION EVENING

Thank you to all those parents who turned out for the parent information evening with guest speaker Chris Arcus. Chris talked through a presentation where he explained the rationale behind the revised New Zealand Curriculum and the challenges schools face as they work towards fully implementing this for the start of 2010.

The NZ Curriculum is a statement (document) of what is deemed important in education. It takes as its starting point a vision of our young people as 'lifelong learners' who are confident and creative, connected, and actively involved. It includes a clear set of principles on which to base curriculum decision-making. It sets out values that are to be encouraged, modeled, and explored. It defines 5 key competencies that are critical to sustained learning and effective participation in society and that underline the emphasis on lifelong learning (TRUMP: Thinking, Relating to others, Understanding symbols, text and numbers, Managing self, Participating and contributing, ) .

Key Messages for schools and teachers are:

• Curriculum design and review is an ongoing, continuous process.
• Schools, with their communities, make decisions about how to give effect to the National Curriculum to best address the particular needs, interests and circumstances of the school's students and community.
• A school curriculum clarifies priorities for student learning, the ways in which those priorities will be addressed, and how student progress and the quality of teaching and learning will be assessed.
• At the heart of a school curriculum is the teachers making and acting on decisions, based on evidence about what to teach and how to teach it.

If you are not familiar with the NZ Curriculum and would like to learn more I recommend you visit the tki website by clicking on the link below: http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-documents/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum