A senior research fellow from the New Zealand Initiative warns universities will have to teach science from scratch if a new curriculum is implemented.
Newshub has obtained the document, which was sent to a few teachers for their feedback.
It has raised major concerns students could leave school without knowing the basics of science if the proposed curriculum is introduced.
Science teachers across New Zealand are alarmed the early draft makes no mention of physics, biology or chemistry.
It proposes to teach the subject through five contexts - including the earth system, biodiversity, and infectious diseases.
New Zealand Initiative senior research fellow Michael Johnston told AM on Thursday not even the key concepts of the science are mentioned.
"It's not just that it's not broken down into those three traditional science areas, its key concepts from those areas are completely absent," he said.
"So in biology, there's no mention of evolution. In physics, there's no mention of mechanics or optics. In chemistry, there's no mention of atoms or compounds or chemical reactions.
"So all of the key concepts of science are missing and not only that, there's no mention of science methodology either, I can't find the word experiment in the entire document."
Johnston told AM co-host Laura Tupou the current curriculum does have issues as it's pretty thin on specifics and "threadbare", but despite that, it would still be a lot better than implementing the draft plan.
He warns if the new curriculum is implemented, it could have drastic consequences throughout New Zealand.
"Universities would have to prepare themselves to teach science from scratch if this became the curriculum. Young people wouldn't be at all prepared for the specialist sciences there," he said.
"We'd have difficulty probably attracting international scientists to New Zealand [and] over time, our knowledge of science would erode."
He told AM the new curriculum is a "dumbing down", is very, very different and misrepresents what science is.
He believes the draft document, sent out to selective teachers for feedback, should never have been sent out in the first place as it misrepresents what science is.
Johnston explained that the draft plan would see the five contexts taught from Year 1 to Year 13, which if implemented, could see Kiwi kids start to find science "dull" and not realise there is much more to the subject.
"Those topics are to be taught every year and that is to be the lens through which young people learn science," he told AM.
"Now, first of all, that's going to get pretty dull coming across the same concepts and topics year after year and secondly, young people could easily get the idea that that's all there is to science if that's the only way in which they encounter it through their schooling."
For Kiwi kids to understand the five contexts, they need a basic understanding of basic science concepts, which wouldn't be taught to them, Johnston said
"It's not good enough to teach them on an as-needs basis as you encounter a need for them through those topics. You have to teach them systematically from the ground up," he said.
Cathy Buntting co-wrote the draft curriculum and told Newshub it's about modernising the curriculum.
"It's proposing to teach those subjects differently, not operating in the silos that have been traditionally the structure of science education in secondary schools."
The Ministry of Education said in a statement any speculation on the curriculum is premature, as this is a very early draft.
A proper draft document will go out for wider feedback in August and will give educators time to have their say and make changes.
Watch the full interview with Michael Johnston in the video above.
