An Australian consultancy called Learning First came under scrutiny on 17 June 2026 over its involvement in New Zealand's maths curriculum. The Ministry of Education said the firm helped find content but did not write the curriculum, according to RNZ.

The Ministry hired Learning First to help develop the curriculum. But critics want to know: what exactly did the firm do, and did it actually stick to just finding material rather than making writing decisions? The boundary between the two matters.

This is happening as the government makes big changes to how schooling works. It is removing NCEA Level 1 and replacing it with different learning in Year 11, announced in March 2026. New subjects are planned to start from 2028, signalled in September 2025. The updated national curriculum framework, Te Mātaiaho, launches from 2027, confirmed in October 2025.

Mathematics is central to all of this. The government announced a major overhaul of maths teaching in August 2024 because students were not doing well enough. Learning First's role emerged within that change.

The firm's involvement was first mentioned publicly in November 2025 by a group called Engaging Learning Voices, which said the Ministry's process had damaged trust among teachers and educators. The RNZ report in June 2026 brought these concerns into Parliament.

The broader curriculum changes are moving through Parliament as well. The Education and Training (System Reform) Amendment Bill updates the law to put new policy into effect. Another bill focuses on early childhood education. The Education and Workforce Select Committee examined these bills and also ran an inquiry into online harms facing young people.

Using overseas advisors to help shape curriculum is not new in New Zealand, but it matters now because so much schooling is being changed at once. The government is changing assessment, updating the curriculum, introducing new subjects, and overhauling early childhood education. Learning First worked specifically on maths, but the Ministry's claim — that it found content rather than wrote it — will depend on what records show.

For officials and teachers watching this, there are two questions. One is whether the Ministry was transparent about how it worked. The other is whether New Zealand maintains ownership of its own curriculum or whether it has been shaped by an overseas firm. The Ministry says it used Learning First to research what works internationally in maths teaching, which is a defensible approach. Using an outside firm to make the actual writing decisions would be different. The Ministry says the first is what happened. Whether that is true may come down to what the Education and Workforce Committee decides to investigate.