Here is a video of the launch. We want to acknowledge the voices of parents that were shared.

What Accountability Looks Like

The 2025 Budget set out a timeline. The Aotearoa Educators’ Collective intends to hold that timeline, returning at each milestone to ask the same question with the same honesty.

The commitments are on record. The full LSC rollout is due to complete in 2027. The 2 million additional teacher aide hours are committed by 2028. The sector will be watching and will continue to report what it finds.

What the contributors to this report would change, given the chance, is consistent across every response.

* Fix the teacher aide funding model.

* Fund the missing middle.

* Create a national plan with real targets and real accountability.

* Measure success by what children experience rather than by what is announced.

These are the same answers given last year. The urgency behind them has only grown.

You can read the report we discussed here.

In a wide ranging discussion they spoke about the the pattern of remove Te Maori and the voices of Maori from the curriculum and its development process.

Bruce offered the change for people to request the MOE funded equity report. You can contact him via email: manukura@teakatea.co.nz

The full submission can be found here.

We also referenced Te Akatea’s paper: The Recolonisation of the Aotearoa New Zealand Curriculum in 2025. This can be found here.

Guy Claxton is Emeritus Professor of the Learning Sciences at the University of Winchester Centre for Real-World Learning, UK, and author of The Future of Teaching and Intelligence in the Flesh: Why Your Mind Needs Your Body Much More Than It Thinks.

For those interested in Guy’s latest book. You can find it here. Bodies of Learning How Embodiment Science Transforms Education, By Guy Claxton, Emily Poel

Bodies of Learning is a bold reimagining of education through the lens of embodiment science. Claxton and Poel challenge outdated assumptions that separate mind and body, revealing the interconnectedness of the ‘bodymind’. Drawing on cutting-edge research in embodied cognition, this book offers a transformative vision for education that integrates heart, gut, brain, feeling and action into the learning process, reshaping how we think about intelligence, learning and teaching.

For decades, educational reform has stalled due to fixed beliefs that prioritise intellectual understanding over physical and emotional intelligence. Bodies of Learning dismantles these barriers, showing how learning is deeply intuitive, emotional and physical. The authors present practical strategies to create classrooms that work with, rather than against, human nature, while advocating for structural changes to reimagine schools as spaces for mastering the crafts of thinking, problem-solving and real-world learning.

This accessible and inspiring book goes beyond advocating for better nutrition and exercise in schools. It calls for a fundamental shift in how we teach, recognising intelligence as a dynamic blend of memory, bodily awareness, intuition and emotion. Packed with actionable ideas and reflective exercises, Bodies of Learning is essential reading for educators, as well as anyone passionate about creating a truly holistic and effective education system for the future.

Thanks to Claire Coleman, Annette Thomson and Peter O’Connor for their thoughts on the discussed the draft Arts Curriculum.