The New Zealand Curriculum (page 30) lists four conceptual strands for the social sciences:
| Level 6 | Level 7 | Level 8 |
| 6.1: Understand how, as a result of scarcity, consumers, producers, and government make choices that affect New Zealand society. | 7.1: Understand how economic concepts and models provide a means of analysing contemporary New Zealand issues. | 8.1: Understand that well-functioning markets are efficient but that governments may need to intervene where markets fail to deliver efficient or equitable outcomes. |
| 6.2: Understand how the different sectors of the New Zealand economy are interdependent. | 7.2: Understand how government policies and contemporary issues interact. | 8.2: Understand how the nature and size of the New Zealand economy is influenced by interacting internal and external factors. |
At level 6, key economic conceptual understandings related to scarcity are introduced. Students gain an understanding of everyday microeconomic choices consumers, producers, and government need to make, because of scarcity, and the implications of these choices for society. Students are introduced to the supply and demand model, using it to support predictions they make about the effect of choices on society.
At level 7 the focus is contemporary macro-economic issues. Students define and use statistical data to measure these issues. They use models to assist them in gaining an understanding of cause and effect. At this level, students will recognise the interdependent nature of the New Zealand economy by examining the impact government policies designed to address contemporary economic issues have on varies groups in society. They will also understand that government policies may have unequal effects.
At level 8, students use more complex microeconomic models to gain an understanding of the efficiency of markets. Students will see that perfectly competitive markets are allocatively efficient. But in the real world firms don't meet the conditions for perfect competition, meaning government intervention in markets may be required to improve efficiency and/or equity. Analysis at this level will show that government intervention may involve a trade-off between efficiency and equity. Macroeconomic analysis at this level involves looking at the performance of the NZ economy. The impact of internal and external influences on the New Zealand economy are analysed by students using economic models that allow them to predict the impact of the influences on the macroeconomic goals of government.
Last updated April 18, 2016