Kea Academy
For parents
Curriculum levels are gone. Here's what phases mean for your child.
If your child's school has started saying "Phase 2" where it used to say "Level 3", nothing has gone wrong. The maths and English curriculum changed, and the old numbers no longer apply.
What actually changed
For years, New Zealand described school learning in curriculum levels — eight of them, spanning the whole of school, with most primary children somewhere between Level 1 and Level 4. A level covered roughly two years, and children moved through them at their own pace.
That structure has been replaced for two subjects. Since 1 January 2026, maths and English for Years 0 to 10 are set out in phases, and within each phase there is a year-by-year teaching sequence saying what is taught in each particular year. Both documents are official policy for every English-medium state and state-integrated school.
The phases, and which one your child is in
| Phase | School years | Roughly |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | Years 0–3 | New entrants to about 7 |
| Phase 2 | Years 4–6 | About 8 to 10 |
| Phase 3 | Years 7–8 | About 11 to 12 |
| Phase 4 | Years 9–10 | About 13 to 14 |
| Phase 5 | Years 11–13 | NCEA years |
The two shaded rows are where most primary-school homework sits. Note that Year 3 is the last year of Phase 1, not the start of Phase 2 — a detail worth knowing, because it is the one place where "my child is in Year 3 so they must be starting the next stage" goes wrong.
The biggest practical difference: it is now year-by-year
Under levels, a Year 5 and a Year 6 child could both be "working at Level 3" and that was the whole answer. The new documents are more specific: each year within a phase has its own teaching sequence, so there is a stated expectation for Year 5 that is different from the one for Year 6.
For a parent that is mostly good news. "What is my child meant to be learning this year?" now has an actual answer rather than a two-year range.
Maths is organised differently too
The old maths curriculum had three broad strands. The new one has six:
- Number — how numbers represent quantity, estimating, calculating
- Algebra — patterns, relationships, generalising
- Measurement — quantifying things, standard and non-standard units
- Geometry — shape, space, position and movement
- Statistics — collecting, organising and interpreting data
- Probability — chance, likelihood, prediction
Statistics and probability being separated out is the change most likely to show up in a homework book that looks unfamiliar.
What it does not change
Science, and the other learning areas, still use curriculum levels. So it is entirely normal for a school report to talk about phases for maths and English and levels for everything else, in the same sentence. That is not an error.
It also does not change what your child can do. A relabelling is not a reassessment — the same child, on the same day, is simply being described with a different vocabulary.
If you only remember one thing: phases for maths and English, levels for everything else, and the year within the phase is where the detail now lives.
Where this comes from
Both statements are published by the Ministry of Education on Tāhūrangi: Mathematics and Statistics Phases 1–4 (Years 0–10) and English Phases 1–4 (Years 0–10), both of which state that they come into effect on 1 January 2026. This page summarises them for parents; where the two disagree, the Ministry's wording is the one that counts. Kea Academy is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the Ministry of Education.
Kea Academy sets short homework quizzes in Maths, Science and English for Years 3 to 8 — you build one in under a minute, and your child works through it on a phone. See what it does.