Hutt Valley High School English teachers Derek Wood, Genevieve Hanify and Corey Spence. Photo: RNZ / John Gerritsen
Consultation on a draft intermediate and secondary school English curriculum that prioritises Shakespeare, grammar and 19th century literature closes on Friday.
English teachers told RNZ they were worried the draft set unrealistic workloads for students and failed to mention the Treaty of Waitangi.
The Y7-13 curriculum's development was fraught, with the association for English teachers walking away from the process last year and Education Ministry staff expressing doubts about the people chosen to write it.
At Hutt Valley High, English teachers told RNZ they had worked through the draft together with the intention of making a submission.
The school's Head of English, Derek Wood, said teachers were nervous about the scope of the curriculum and how much they would have to change.
"We like some of it. The explicit teaching of grammar we think is really useful, but we are concerned that we don't have time to upskill our teachers in that space," he said.
"Also the sheer quantity of texts that we have to cover in our classes, it's quite scary. It's going to be a full rewrite for a lot of our programmes and it means that some of the courses that we run, we don't know if they're going to be sustainable."
Wood said the insistence on Shakespeare and a 19th century work for senior students seemed Eurocentric and the absence of any reference to the Treaty of Waitangi was odd.
Another of the school's English teachers, Genevieve Hanify, said her Year 13 class was appalled when she told them the draft suggested senior students cover six texts a year rather than the current three.
"The curriculum doesn't really align with the qualification framework that we use, NCEA, and so to suddenly have to double the number of texts and still expect the students to have a deep knowledge to be able to write really well to that high level, that feels like a big challenge."
Teacher Corey Spence said the curriculum felt aspirational, but the jump in expectations was large.
"In Year 10, our students will be expected to have mastered the Oxford comma and we're still often looking at commas and sentence structure even deep into our senior levels," he said.
"There is good stuff there, but the sheer expectation and the sheer volume has definitely been a bit of a jump. Our programmes at the moment have perhaps a collection of short texts or an extended text each term, whereas moving forward it might need to be two of those, each term which is going to apply a lot more pressure on teachers as well as students."
The teachers did not agree with the draft's requirement that schools teach Shakespeare and 19th Century texts in Years 12-13.
They told RNZ they enjoyed teaching Shakespeare and it was important that teenagers were able to encounter his works, but it should not be compulsory.
Association of Teachers of English president Pip Tinning said some people thought the new curriculum was good, but the consensus from the association's members was that it needed work.
"The majority view has been quite critical of the document, however we know full well that the curriculum document is coming. We just need to make sure that what we're getting is fit for purpose, is coherent and is achievable," she said.
Tinning said the draft needed more coherence between year levels and more clarity about what was expected of students beyond a lot of reading.
"There's a lot being jammed into a curriculum that I just don't think teachers are going to be able to do and that's without the fact that there's going to be a huge amount of funding for all these texts that people don't currently have - we're asking departments to fund, probably for larger schools, up to $10,000 worth of texts," she said.
Tinning said the curriculum looked as if the writers had been forced to include too many demands from different people.
She said there was no explanation of what students were expected to gain from compulsory Sharespeare and 19th century works in Years 12-13, and there were no compulsory Māori or Pacific writers.
Tinning said the government's plan to introduce the curriculum next year was not realistic and teachers would need more time.
The Education Ministry's consultation page said an updated version of the curriculum would be published in term 4 and schools would be required to teach it from the start of next year.
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