For four decades David Crickmer stood in front of New Zealand classrooms. When he arrived from England in 1969, he was handed a National Curriculum. It told him exactly what to teach at each year level.
That document is gone. So, he argues, is much of the country’s academic standing.
Crickmer published a letter today in the Henderson Valley area of Auckland. He was responding to Patrick Drumm’s earlier opinion piece on the “long road back to equitable learning for students.” But Crickmer brought something Drumm did not: a direct, causal claim. He drew a line from curriculum dismantling to declining Programme for International Student Assessment scores.
“The looser the expectations of a curriculum, the less robust it becomes,” he wrote. The numbers back his timeline.
PISA results have slipped as the old structure eroded. The Education Department — not yet a ministry — once produced handbooks supported by an expert advisory service. Education Boards enforced consistency.
Teachers made content meaningful to students, but the content itself was the same from Kaitaia to Invercargill. That is no longer the case. What replaced it?
A looser framework. Schools gained more discretion.
Curriculum expectations became less specific. Crickmer argues the record shows that structure has loosened significantly. He offers his own career as evidence: he knew what had to be taught at each year level.
That certainty is gone. The letter lands at a moment of political flux.
The coalition government faces questions about its approach to education. Act leader David Seymour has suggested Pharmac should make greater use of artificial intelligence. The broader coalition appears keen on replacing many front-line interactions with automated systems.
That raises a question Crickmer does not ask but his letter implies: if the curriculum itself lacks structure, what exactly will AI be teaching? Crickmer thanked Drumm for his assessment that “the journey back to quality education for our young people is underway.” But the letter is not celebratory. It is a warning from someone who watched the old system work and then watched it be taken apart.
He is saying the journey back will require rebuilding what was lost. The forces behind the decline are not mysterious.
New Zealand followed a global trend toward school autonomy and local curriculum design. The theory was that teachers closest to students would make the best decisions about content. In practice, Crickmer suggests, the result was inconsistency.
Some schools maintained high standards. Others did not.
The national floor dropped. Where this leads depends on the coalition. The government has not announced a curriculum overhaul.
Seymour’s focus on AI suggests a technocratic approach to public services. Crickmer’s letter implies that technology cannot substitute for structure. You cannot automate what you have not specified.
The veteran educator is not calling for a return to 1969. He is calling for clarity.
A teacher should know what to teach. A student should know what to learn. A country should know what its children are expected to master.
Without that, PISA scores will likely keep falling. Crickmer wrote one letter.
He cited one opinion piece. He offered one career’s worth of observation. That is enough to raise the question the government has not yet answered: what exactly are New Zealand’s students supposed to learn?
