Learning Media - Te Pou Taki Kõrero

The New Zealand Curriculum is a statement of official policy relating to teaching and learning for years 1–13 in English-medium schools. A parallel document for Māori-medium schools, Te Marautanga o Aotearoa, was developed in line with Māori philosophies and principles.

The brief

The Ministry of Education is committed to ensuring that all young people in New Zealand/Aotearoa are equipped to become active and positive members of their local, national, and global communities. The Ministry wanted The New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa to give full expression to this commitment.

Our solution

The New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa projects were complex and high profile, requiring Learning Media to work in close partnership with the Ministry of Education and the wider educational sector.

Learning Media staff were part of the working groups that decided how to incorporate draft curriculum feedback into each curriculum document. The editor for The New Zealand Curriculum had an extensive background in teaching as well as publishing, which proved invaluable in addressing many of the issues that arose during development. He participated in writing the core text and liaised closely with key people in each learning area to finalise text for the achievement objectives and learning area statements. The Learning Media staff involved in the writing workshops for Te Marautanga o Aotearoa had also been involved in the development of the earlier Māori-medium curriculum documents and were able to ensure that the developers’ decisions on content and format were constructively implemented. 

Learning Media designers came up with a design concept for The New Zealand Curriculum that clearly identified it as “our” curriculum. They developed engaging, easy-to-follow layouts that incorporated numerous layers of information. While Te Marautanga o Aotearoa has enduring Māori design elements from the earlier curriculum documents, the graphics in both documents link closely to the general and learning area content.