New Zealanders and Germans have a lot in common. They share a socially liberal ethos, a liking for beer and the MMP electoral system. Read more

In a column that appeared in The Post on 23 February, Victoria University of Wellington Vice-Chancellor Nic Smith criticizes the coalition's commitment to have universities adopt a free speech policy. Smith notes that ACT Party leader david seymour ‘has previously criticised universities for declining to host certain speakers and argued the institutions should lose funding if they don't “protect free speech.”' The vice-chancellor then states that ‘one inference of all this is that anyone who wants to speak on campus should be able to do so.' But it wouldn't actually be valid to infer from Seymour's criticisms of recent deplatformings at New Zealand universities that he thinks that ‘anyone who wants to speak on campus should be able to do so.' You can, of course, think that Vice-Chancellor Jan Thomas was wrong to prevent Don Brash from speaking to a student politics club in August 2018 (for example) and at the same time recognize that random people can't simply turn up at a university without an invitation and expect to get a hearing. Read more

According to Stats NZ, the 2023 average gender pay gap across the entire New Zealand workforce was 8.6 per cent. The gap has not shifted much in recent years. Read more

The Ardern Government was New Zealand’s most censorious in living memory. Following Brenton Tarrant’s murderous rampage through two Christchurch mosques in March 2019, Ardern set out on an anti-free speech path. Read more

Two decades ago, a new term – ‘PISA shock’ – entered the German lexicon. The Germans had prided themselves on a world-class education system. Read more

Every three years since 2000 - except during the Covid-19 pandemic - the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) has assessed the reading skill of 15-year-olds from an ever-increasing range of countries. From 2003, mathematics was assessed as well. Read more