10/11/2025
H Patel
[FYI request #32297 email]
Tēnā koe H Patel
OIA: 1353163 – Changes to food, nutrition, and home economics subjects in New Zealand
secondary schools
Thank you for your email of 12 September 2025 to the Ministry of Education (the Ministry)
requesting the following information:
I request under the Official Information Act all documents and records relating to the
apparent reorganisation or removal of curriculum subjects that address food, nutrition, and
wellbeing - specifically changes affecting Food and Nutrition (Health Studies, Year 11),
Home Economics (Year 12/13), and Food Technology (Technology learning area).
This request seeks to clarify whether and how nutrition, wellbeing, and practical food
preparation learning wil continue to be provided under the new senior secondary subject
structure (as posted at https://tahurangi.education.govt.nz/senior-secondary-subjects) and
the decision-making behind these changes.
Accordingly, I request the following information:
1. Decision-making records - any Cabinet papers, Ministerial decisions,
memoranda, or approvals that considered, recommended, or confirmed changes to
Food and Nutrition, Home Economics, and Food Technology, including whether
they would be removed, merged, or replaced.
2. Policy and analysis - Ministry briefing papers, impact analyses, options, and any
other advice, including but not limited to those addressing:
- how food/nutrition content wil be delivered under the new structure;
- rationale for not listing a subject explicitly focused on food and/or nutrition under
Health & PE;
- anticipated impacts on student health, wellbeing, and learning outcomes;
Wellington National Office, 1 The Terrace, Levels 5 to 14, Wellington 6011
PO Box 1666, Wel ington 6140, DX SR51201 Phone: +64 4 463 8000
- whether practical food preparation learning wil continue in any subject, other
than Hospitality;
- anticipated workforce impacts - including redeployment, job losses, or attrition of
specialist teachers due to 'their subject' no longer being offered.
3. Consultation - materials, submissions, feedback, engagement notes, summary
reports, surveys/data collected from schools, teachers, and subject associations,
health/nutrition experts, parents, students, iwi, or other community stakeholders, or
records of any meetings where these changes were discussed; including details of
the type of stakeholder where available.
4. Comparative materials - any working documents mapping the current subject
content (Food and Nutrition, Home Economics, Food Technology) to the
proposed/replacement subjects, showing how content wil be retained, merged, or
omitted.
If portions of this request are likely to be refused for reasons of substantial collation, I am
happy to discuss narrowing the scope or receiving information in stages.
I understand that some parts of my request may relate to detailed materials that are stil
under development (for example, detailed subject content and course design). For clarity, I
am requesting information that has informed the confirmed list of 'Years 11-13 subjects for
the National Curriculum', as published on 11 September 2025 - including decision-making,
analysis, consultation, and planning carried out to date. If any part of my request cannot be
answered for this reason, please confirm this explicitly in your response.
Your request has been considered under the Of icial Information Act 1982 (the Act).
On 9 October 2025, we wrote to you, refusing
parts one and two of your request under section
18(d) of the Act, as advice on the refreshed curriculum for the Years 11-13 subjects, including
advice to the Minister wil be published on the Ministry’s website, so the requested information wil
soon be publicly available. You also followed up to our extension asking when we expect to publish
this information. I can advise we expect to publish advice within the next four weeks.
After careful consideration, I am refusing
part three of your request under section 18(f) of the Act,
as the information requested cannot be made available without substantial collation or research.
The scope of your request is very broad, covering a wide range of document types, and
communications over an extended period. Attempting to provide a substantive response to your
request would require extensive searches across multiple systems and individual mailboxes, and
detailed review of a large volume of material to identify and extract relevant content.
To demonstrate the extent of communications held, the Ministry has received approximately 2,700
enquiries via our public-facing channel on the refreshed Year 11-13 subjects alone, which would
require assessment for relevance to the request followed by consultation with the authors. As
required under sections 18A and 18B of the Act, I have considered whether inviting you to refine,
fixing a charge or extending would enable this part your request to be answered. However, I do not
consider that any of these mechanisms would sufficiently mitigate the administrative burden
OIA: 1353163
associated with collating and assessing the information requested, which would have a significant
impact on the Ministry’s ability to carry out its core functions.
I apologise for extending the time to respond to this part of your request. We made all reasonable
endeavours to identify information to provide to you, however, have formed the opinion that it is
necessary to refuse
part three of your request due to the substantial collation required to make
this information available.
However, I can advise some additional details regarding
parts three and four of your request.
In regard to
parts three of your request, the process of developing advice to the Minister included
targeted consultation with subject associations in July 2025, including Home Economics
Technology Teachers Association of New Zealand (HETTANZ) on 21 July. This meeting was via
video call and no formal minutes were taken. HETTANZ did not provide written feedback that
informed the Ministry’s advice to the Minister on the Year 11-13 subjects.
Regarding
part four of your request, the Ministry has recently published a video explaining the
changes to home economics in the new curriculum. The information we were considering for part
four of your request seeking comparative materials was the content captured in this video, which at
the time we extended, was not yet published. You can find this video here:
https:/ vimeo.com/1130066187/7633e4809c. The Ministry also produced a Fact Sheet
summarising how subject content relating to Home Economics wil be treated in the refreshed Year
11-13 curriculum. This is attached for your information as
Appendix A to this response. No other
working documents exist of the sort you have described in
part four.
You have the right to ask an Ombudsman to investigate our decision to extend the timeframe for
responding to this request, in accordance with section 28 of the Act. You can do this by writing to
[email address] or Office of the Ombudsman, PO Box 10152, Wellington 6143.
Nāku noa, nā
Cindy McDonald
Principal Advisor, Official and Parliamentary Information
Government, Executive and Ministerial Services
OIA: 1353163
