The recognition and affirmation of student identity in New Zealand primary schools is a policy requirement. While directives for its implementation are found in the current national curriculum, little, if any, guidance is given about what this means or how it might look in classroom programmes. This paper discusses a study concerning the beliefs, understandings and practices of teachers as they interpret the curriculum related to the identity directive. The findings indicate that a marked divergence exists between the identity directive encoded into the curriculum and the way in which teachers decode and enact the directive in their practice. This article argues that two unintended effects are produced as a result of this divergence. First, rather than promote the affirmation of student identity, the enactment of this directive might, in fact, lead to ethnic division. Second, attempts to recognise and affirm identity have led to the displacement of school subject knowledge in classroom programmes. These unintended outcomes are not only unacknowledged, but they continue to disadvantage the community the identity directive was intended to address.