Prepared for the SCENZ Executive and Board as the end-of-contract record of the AI in Science Teaching workshop programme — covering scope, delivery, measured impact, and the strategic options now in front of SCENZ as the revised NZ curriculum lands.
Across six workshops in five cities between November 2025 and April 2026, the SCENZ AI in Science Teaching programme reached 157 secondary teachers — the largest subject-association AI literacy programme delivered in Aotearoa to date. The April 2026 cohort (N=36 survey respondents) reported 94% confidence growth, a +45% lift in self-rated Practical AI usage, and 89% endorsement of the workshop's pace and balance. Every respondent — 36 of 36 — named a topic for a future deep-dive. Thirty-nine percent chose “Customising AI for science curricula” — a request that, in hindsight, anticipated the New Curriculum announcement now reshaping every subject association's PLD priorities. This report documents what was delivered, what was found, and future recommendations for SCENZ and NZIP to consider next. Three Phase 02 tracks are presented for the Board's consideration, each scoped around the curriculum transition and built on the resources, methodology, and member relationships already established under Phase 01.
Six workshops. Five cities. Two waves of delivery. Resources built, methodology iterated, member relationships established.
Scope · Delivery · Resources Created
The headline footprint of what SCENZ funded between November 2025 and April 2026.
Six workshops delivered across the contracted programme — two waves, Nov 2025 and April 2026.
Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Dunedin, Christchurch — coverage across the contracted national footprint.
Secondary science teachers attended across the programme — 82 in the Nov 2025 wave, 75 in the April 2026 wave.
Phase 01a established the model and the relationships in three cities late 2025. Phase 01b widened reach and built measurement into the methodology in April 2026.
Under Schedule A and IP clause 14, every resource developed during the programme is SCENZ property. These are the assets now in the SCENZ catalogue, available to members.
Each resource was developed inside the contract, tested with the cohort, and refined based on workshop feedback. They are institution-grade artefacts, not prompts pasted into a slide deck — each one carries a SCENZ provenance and is suitable for member distribution. The list below is the asset register; live URLs are linked, with QR codes available in the PDF mirror.
A custom AI assistant that helps a NZ school draft an AI-use policy tailored to its decile, curriculum mix, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi obligations as a core value. In ten minutes, a school leader has a framework they can take to their board — not a template, their school's version. Built on AI Forum NZ frameworks and tested with the April cohort. Provided on both Gemini and ChatGPT so members can use whichever platform their school is licensed for.
A guided prompt-construction tool designed around the workshop's 3C pattern (Context · Constraint · Criteria). Teachers describe what they need; the assistant returns a tested prompt aligned to chemistry, physics, or biology contexts. Also provided on both Gemini and ChatGPT for platform flexibility.
A walk-through video showing teachers how to set "custom instructions" inside ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini — locking the assistant into a science-teacher voice, NCEA-aware framing, and ethical-use guardrails. Watch once; configure each tool in a couple of minutes thereafter.
94% of measured respondents grew. 39% mandated the next chapter — before the curriculum reform landed.
The Shift · The Gains · What Resonated
The April programme included a 5-point self-rating instrument administered before and after each workshop. N=36 respondents across three cities. These are the headline numbers.
of respondents grew on at least one dimension. 34 of 36 reported measurable confidence lift after the workshop.
average lift in “Practical AI usage” — the dimension teachers cared most about and rated lowest beforehand.
endorsed the pace and balance of the workshop — rare for AI PLD, which typically over- or under-shoots a mixed-experience room.
Three benefit dimensions consistently named across the April cohort — in respondents' own words.
Many teachers arrived uncertain whether AI belonged in the classroom at all. They left with the language, the framing, and the permission to bring it in — thoughtfully, deliberately, on their own terms.
Thank you for today and affirming that AI has a valuable place in the direction of education in NZ — we just need to be brave and embrace it.
Not abstract concepts — working tools. Several teachers walked out with prototypes built during the session: custom GPTs, prompt templates, and assessment scaffolds they could deploy on Monday morning.
Great session. Benny helped me make a tool and was very knowledgeable and helpful. Being an actual teacher is all the difference. So worthwhile — will improve my teaching.
Some teachers were already steering. What they needed was confirmation that their direction was sound — and a sharper map for the next step. The workshop affirmed departmental approaches and accelerated existing work.
Time felt like it flew by. So good to have many questions about AI answered and affirmed the approach we are taking in our Department.
Every attendee left with the same set of resources — built for NZ science classrooms, tested with the cohort, and now SCENZ-owned.
Two questions in the April survey opened the cohort's preferences for further work: which workshop topics resonated most, and which deep-dive they would prioritise if SCENZ offered one.
Teachers selected up to two from the day's content. Productivity tooling and prompt craft drew the most votes — closely followed by AI ethics, and the foundational "how AI works" segment.
Teachers chose one option for a future deep-dive session. Customising AI for science curricula — specifically NCEA levels and formative feedback — was the runaway winner, claiming 39% of votes.
The cohort wrote the next chapter. The New Curriculum reform made it urgent.
Strategic Moment · Three Tracks · Closing
Phase 01 closed in April 2026. The Ministry of Education's revised curriculum announcement landed shortly after. In hindsight, the cohort's 39% mandate for subject-specific deep-dive work reads less as a workshop preference and more as professional foresight.
Every NZ subject association is now scrambling to translate the New Curriculum into PLD their members can use. SCENZ has a window — finite and competitive — to lead that translation for science teachers, rather than watch members default to other providers for AI-readiness support during the transition.
Why it matters for SCENZ now. Subject associations across the country are simultaneously trying to interpret the New Curriculum, redesign assessment, and respond to teacher anxiety about AI — with volunteer-driven capacity. SCENZ enters this moment with three advantages no peer association currently has: (a) a fresh cohort of 157 AI-uplifted member teachers, (b) a library of SCENZ-owned AI resources already tested with that cohort, and (c) a documented methodology and delivery partner with proven outcomes (the data in Part II of this report).
The cohort's prescience. Three months before the curriculum announcement, 39% of the April respondents asked unprompted for “Customising AI for specific science curricula” as their preferred next session. That request is now the most strategically valuable signal in this report — it tells SCENZ that the members are already primed to engage with curriculum-specific AI work the moment SCENZ offers it.
Three months from now, every NZ subject association will be claiming "AI-readiness" credentials to their members. SCENZ can either own that position with evidence, or have to catch up to peers who moved faster. Part III sets out three tracks Phase 02 can take — each scoped around the curriculum transition and built on Phase 01's foundations.
Each track is scoped around the curriculum moment, built on Phase 01 foundations, and assessed on four dimensions: the outcome SCENZ achieves, the confidence that outcome will be delivered, the time-to-first-value, and the effort required from SCENZ. The Board is invited to consider all three; they are not mutually exclusive.
Each track is presented with a pitch (what SCENZ buys, in one paragraph) and a four-dimension value panel. The panel borrows from a deliberate value-assessment framework used in professional-services scoping: Outcome and Confidence are the upside drivers (maximise); Time-to-value and Effort-from-SCENZ are the friction terms (minimise). The same instrument is applied to each track so the Board can compare them directly. Specific pricing and timelines are deliberately omitted from this report — the Board will be invited to a scoping conversation for any track it wishes to pursue.
InspiraEd co-develops, from SCENZ's delivery point of view, a library of curriculum-aligned AI resources — lesson sequences, assessment templates, worked examples, teacher-facing playbooks — ready for SCENZ to distribute as a member benefit. Done-for-you content development that fills the capacity SCENZ does not have internally. Every artefact is SCENZ IP, by default, under the same clause-14 model that already governs Phase 01 outputs.
Ongoing teacher-facing delivery — a cadence of workshops (in-person and online) plus member support — that sustains the AI uplift Phase 01 built, attributed to SCENZ and the curriculum transition. Without this, the April cohort's confidence half-lives back toward baseline; with it, members feel SCENZ walking with them through the transition rather than handing them a binder and disappearing.
Paid creation of subject-specific AI use cases — especially in assessment redesign under the New Curriculum. Each use case is modular, classroom-ready, and dropped into teachers' Monday morning: a chemistry investigation prompt, a physics marking rubric, a biology data-analysis scaffold. No other subject association currently has a library like this. SCENZ's member portal becomes the destination teachers visit when they need a curriculum-aligned AI artefact now, not a workshop next month.