A brightly lit preschool classroom with small red chairs, round yellow tables, and colorful toys. Large windows and glass walls separate different play areas. "THE BULLETIN" is written vertically on a blue strip on the right.
Ground floor classrooms at Lairdsland Primary School, Scotland. (Photo: Dennis Gilbert/View Pictures/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The BulletinJuly 17, 2025

Walls go back up as open-plan classroom experiment falls flat

A brightly lit preschool classroom with small red chairs, round yellow tables, and colorful toys. Large windows and glass walls separate different play areas. "THE BULLETIN" is written vertically on a blue strip on the right.
Ground floor classrooms at Lairdsland Primary School, Scotland. (Photo: Dennis Gilbert/View Pictures/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Once hailed as the future of education, the cavernous classrooms are finally being scrapped after years of complaints, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin.

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End of the open-plan era

The Ministry of Education will no longer build open-plan classrooms, education minister Erica Stanford announced yesterday, calling time on a once-fashionable approach to teaching that critics say has failed to deliver. Open-plan classrooms, also known as modern or flexible learning environments, were rolled out from 2011 under then-education minister, National’s Hekia Parata. Designed to foster collaboration and student-led learning, the model typically removed internal walls between classrooms and grouped students in large, open areas. But from the beginning, many teachers and principals raised concerns about noise, distraction and the classrooms’ impact on behavioural issues. Now, after years of pushback, the government has confirmed all new classrooms will return to standard designs with the flexibility to open or close spaces as needed.

The Christchurch experiment

As Cate Macintosh reported last month in The Press (paywalled), Christchurch schools were at the vanguard – often unwillingly – of the open-plan movement, with many schools rebuilt post-earthquake according to the then-trendy principles of modern learning. Now they are among the most vocal in rejecting them. Rangiora High School spent $1.5 million retrofitting walls into its sprawling 3185m² open space. Shirley Boys’ High spent $800,000; Avonside Girls’ spent $60,000 on largely ineffectual acoustic dividers and screens. “It was sort of the emperor’s new clothes,” says Avonside Girls’ principal Catherine Law of the open-plan trend. “Everyone went ‘21st century learning’, ‘modern environments’, ‘no knowledge’, and nobody was prepared to say, ‘but that’s not good teaching and learning’.”

Now the tide has changed – but retrofits are expensive, and schools operating under public-private partnerships face additional barriers to making changes, Macintosh writes. In an era of fiscal restraint, many principals are asking how the government plans to help schools convert spaces they never wanted in the first place.

The noise annoys

There’s no shortage of evidence showing what went wrong. Research has highlighted the negative impact of noise and distraction on learning, particularly for neurodiverse students. “Nobody can learn, least of all these kids for whom education means everything to their future independence, when they’re freaked out by their environment,” writes Australian former principal Adam Voigt, who once championed open-plan spaces but now calls them a failure. Studies cited in Ed Design Magazine show that noise in open classrooms can reduce speech perception by up to 75% for students sitting at the back of the room. Children with ADHD, autism or sensory sensitivities are disproportionately affected by this lack of structure and quiet. Teachers, too, have struggled with classroom management and identifying students who need extra help in cavernous, shared teaching spaces.

Broader questions about modern education styles

Open-plan classrooms are just one element of the “modern learning environment” movement that took hold in the 2010s, alongside the introduction of student-led inquiry projects, cross-disciplinary teaching and the widespread use of digital devices. As the Herald’s Simon Collins reported in a deep dive into the issue six years ago, teachers’ roles have shifted from “the sage on the stage” to “the guide on the side”, helping students take ownership of their learning. But as New Zealand’s international rankings in literacy and numeracy declined, critics including the NZ Initiative​ began to question whether innovation had come at the cost of educational outcomes.

Some parents and teachers remain enthusiastic about the flexibility and engagement that modern spaces can offer, especially when used selectively. Still, reviews have found little empirical evidence that open-plan designs improve learning. With this week’s announcement, the tide has definitively turned – and the next challenge will be what to do with the thousands of students still learning in spaces built on a now-abandoned idea.

Keep going!
A man in a suit speaks at a microphone, with the United Nations emblem behind him on a blue background. An orange vertical banner on the right reads "THE BULLETIN" in white text.
David Seymour has refused to acknowledge he was wrong to send the letter, insisting only that he had been ‘a bit too efficient’. (Image: Getty Images / The Spinoff)

The BulletinJuly 16, 2025

Coalition rift opens over UN letter as Seymour defends rogue response

A man in a suit speaks at a microphone, with the United Nations emblem behind him on a blue background. An orange vertical banner on the right reads "THE BULLETIN" in white text.
David Seymour has refused to acknowledge he was wrong to send the letter, insisting only that he had been ‘a bit too efficient’. (Image: Getty Images / The Spinoff)

The Act leader’s unilateral reply to the UN has exposed fresh cracks in the coalition – and created a clean-up job for Winston Peters, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin.

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Letter row underscores coalition strain

David Seymour’s fiery response to a United Nations letter has turned into a full-blown coalition controversy, exposing divisions over both diplomatic conduct and the ideological direction of government. In June, UN special rapporteur Albert K Barume wrote to the government expressing concern that Seymour’s Regulatory Standards Bill failed to uphold Treaty principles and risked breaching Māori rights. Without consulting his coalition partners, Seymour fired back, sending his own letter to Barume telling him his remarks were “presumptive, condescending, and wholly misplaced” and branding the UN intervention “an affront to New Zealand’s sovereignty”. As RNZ’s Craig McCulloch reports, prime minister Christopher Luxon yesterday described Barume’s letter as “total bunkum” but agreed Seymour had overstepped and should not have responded directly.

What the UN said – and what Seymour wrote back

In his letter, Barume said he was concerned about reports of “a persistent erosion of the rights of the Māori Indigenous Peoples… through regressive legislations” that may breach New Zealand’s international obligations. Seymour’s response was uncompromising. “As an Indigenous New Zealander myself,” he wrote, “I am deeply aggrieved by your audacity in presuming to speak on my behalf and that of my fellow Māori.” He dismissed concerns about Māori exclusion from consultation as “misleading and offensive”, and accused Barume of misunderstanding both the bill and New Zealand’s legislative process.

While Seymour has since agreed to withdraw the letter to allow foreign minister Winston Peters to respond officially, he has refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing, insisting that “we all agree the UN’s criticisms are crazy” and that the official response would be essentially the same as his own. When asked if that was the case, Peters sounded aghast, reports The Post’s Kelly Dennett​ (paywalled). “That’s not true,” Peters told reporters. “Why would he say that?” The government’s position would be made clear only after consulting all affected ministries, Peters said. “We don’t do megaphone diplomacy in this business,” he added acidly. “Don’t you understand diplomacy? You don’t speak to other countries via the media.”

Māori opposition to the bill runs deep

Behind the diplomatic drama lies the more substantive issue: widespread Māori opposition to the Regulatory Standards Bill itself. Writing in Te Ao Māori News, former MP Louisa Wall says Seymour’s claim that the bill doesn’t weaken Treaty protections is “demonstrably false”. In fact, she says, “the Bill is silent on Te Tiriti. It elevates a monocultural legal standard based on private property and individual liberty while excluding Māori values like tikanga, mana motuhake, and kaitiakitanga. This is not neutral. It is erasure.”

Wall also defends Barume’s intervention, arguing that he was fulfilling his mandate to monitor Indigenous rights worldwide and that his concerns echoed those already raised by Māori leaders and legal scholars. “Dr Barume is not imposing an external ideology,” she writes. “His letter reflects what Māori across the motu already know: our rights are being undermined.”

Coalition fault lines widen over Seymour’s bill

The clash over the UN letter comes at a tense time for Act’s relationship with NZ First, which has made no secret of its discomfort with parts of the bill. Seymour has “made it clear behind the scenes” that the regulatory standards legislation is “as bottom line as it gets”, writes Thomas Coughlan in a fascinating piece for the Herald (paywalled).  Translation: “[Seymour] is willing to walk away from the coalition over it, bringing down the Government and triggering an election” if he doesn’t get what he wants.

While that’s an unlikely scenario – especially since the coalition agreement commits the government to passing some version of the legislation – Seymour’s passion for the bill speaks volumes about the junior coalition partners’ divergent ideologies, writes Coughlan. “Act is willing to risk short-term unpopularity, even losing an election, for long-term foundational change; NZ First is not.”​

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