World-Leading? Or World-Lagging? New Zealand Is Repeating the World’s Mistakes
The Minister of Education’s promise of a “world-leading curriculum” sounds ambitious and inspiring — but the direction being taken risks pulling New Zealand backwards into the very policies the rest of the world is now abandoning.
At last week’s UpliftEd Conference in Wellington, attended by over 350 education leaders, teachers and specialists from around Aotearoa, renowned education experts Professor Pasi Sahlberg and Dr Julia Atkin delivered a clear warning: New Zealand is once again catching the same virus that has weakened school systems across the globe.
The GERM infection
Sahlberg calls it the Global Education Reform Movement, or GERM — an ideology that spreads under the banner of “raising standards.”
Its symptoms are easy to recognise: relentless testing, school competition, narrow curriculum focus, and declining trust in teachers.
Despite more spending, data, and technology, global learning outcomes and wellbeing have declined (OECD 2018).
For more than twenty years, nations infected by GERM — the US, UK, Australia, and many others, have seen flat or falling results and growing inequities despite billions invested in reforms.
The OECD confirms that since 2010, average student achievement has stagnated worldwide, while wellbeing and sense of belonging have plummeted.
New Zealand and Australia record among the steepest declines in student belonging (OECD PISA 2022).
Sahlberg’s point is simple: this is not a New Zealand-specific problem. It is a global trend driven by societal forces, including inequality, mental-health stress, digital distraction and not by teachers or curriculum design.
Yet instead of learning from this evidence, our government is repeating the same failed formula.
Abandoning what made us world-leading
As Dr Atkin reminded conference delegates, New Zealand was once the model others looked to. The 2007 New Zealand Curriculum was admired internationally for its trust in teachers and its holistic, competency-based approach to learning.
The refreshed framework (pre-2023), Te Mātaiaho, built on that strength — aligning with OECD research calling for future-focused, locally responsive, and wellbeing-centred curricula. It positioned Aotearoa at the forefront of global thinking about education for a complex, fast-changing world.
Socio-economic achievement gaps remain wide globally — a societal, not curricular, problem (OECD PISA 2018).
Now, instead of consolidating that world-leadership, policy is shifting back toward control and compliance: scripted lessons, mandated content, and a return to standardised testing.
As Atkin warned, when governments dictate what teaching should look like from above, they silence the professional judgment that makes real learning possible.
Ignoring the evidence
Sahlberg’s research shows that teachers account for only about 10–15 percent of student achievement variation. The remaining 85 percent is shaped by factors outside the school gate — family income, health, community support. Yet policy continues to treat testing and tighter instruction as the cure, when in fact they address only the smallest part of the problem.
Research shows that around 60% of student achievement is influenced by out-of-school factors such as family, health, and community. Teachers account for roughly 10–15%, while the rest is shared across school leadership and unexplained variables (Haertel, 2013; Berliner, 2014).
Around the world, nations are moving away from GERM-style reforms. South Australia, where Sahlberg and Atkin now advise, is building a trust-based, community-led model that empowers educators rather than policing them. New Zealand could have been leading that movement. Instead, we are turning back.
Time to think differently
A genuinely world-leading education system learns from global evidence instead of ignoring it. It trusts teachers, supports communities, and measures success by more than test scores.
We have the blueprint in Te Mātaiaho (2023) and the expertise in our schools.
What’s missing is the political courage to stay the course.
As Sahlberg warns, continuing to do the same thing while expecting different results isn’t reform - it’s insanity.
If New Zealand truly wants to be world-leading, we must stop chasing the mistakes of others and reclaim the innovation that once set us apart.
My recent comment in an email to a colleague was that when we were writing the refresh that was ready in 2023, we were moving forward knowing what was behind us, (enhancing the good stuff, sifting out the not so good). NOW, we are moving backward to what was behind us (all the worst stuff with only a hint of the good stuff.)
There is a reason for neoliberal governments to deliberately wreck education systems and to wipe out anything that will inform "us" of what could be possible.
Collateral damage doesn't matter to neoliberalists and libertarians.
Also. Follow the money. Follow who got the billions of dollars lining their pockets.
Fantastic. Gosh, you should hear my Aussie colleagues go on about GERM warfare.