Michael is a Senior Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative. He leads the Initiative’s work on education. He is a cognitive psychologist with a background in literacy research, educational assessment and psychometrics.
Prior to his time at the Initiative, he was the Associate Dean (Academic) of the Faculty of Education at Victoria University of Wellington. Between 2005 and 2011, he worked at the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA), where he developed a new, more reliable, marking system for NCEA examinations. In 2024, Michael chaired a Ministerial Advisory Group (MAG) for Education Minister Erica Stanford. The MAG advised on the development of a knowledge-rich curriculum for English and mathematics. Following that work, Michael is currently a member of the Curriculum Coherence group, which advises on the development of knowledge-rich curricula across all school subjects. Michael is also a member of a technical advisory group to NZQA on assessment for NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship.
In his time at The New Zealand Initiative, Michael has published reports on Modern Learning Environments, systems reform in education, teacher education, the use of AI in education, and pathways for industry training and apprenticeships.
Phone: 044990790
On 31 July 2022, New Zealand's borders will fully reopen. This will be a welcome development for education providers, especially those in the tertiary sector. Read more
Our education system is becoming a bit like a gym in which people use robots to pump iron for them. The trend began in the 1980s when hand-held calculators became cheap. Read more
In July last year a furore erupted when seven eminent professors from the University of Auckland published a letter in the New Zealand Listener. They wrote to criticise Ministry of Education plans to include mātauranga Māori (traditional Māori knowledge) in the science curriculum for schools. Read more
The New Zealand Initiative hosted a symposium on literacy education practice and policy yesterday. The attendees numbered about one hundred and included teachers, representatives of literacy advocacy groups and a representative from the Ministry of Education. Read more
There’s a crisis that everyone’s talking about. Far too many Māori and Pacific young people are not thriving in our education system. Read more
Like Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen, Elon Musk is fond of impossible things. And not content with simply believing them, Musk likes actually to get them done. Read more
The government’s Te Hurihanganui sketches a radically different version of education in New Zealand. But what is it based on? Read more
Michael Johnston told Newstalk ZB Heather du Plessis Allan that we've seen in the PISA results over the last 20 years a continuing decline in the proportion of New Zealanders that at 15 can do basic literacy tasks
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At the general election in 2023, New Zealand will mark 30 years and ten elections since it adopted the Mixed-Member Proportional Representation (MMP) electoral system. A criticism of MMP is that the party list system allows party hierarchies essentially to appoint their apparatchiks to parliament. Read more
Ben Craven interviews Dr Michael Johnston about his recent presentation at The New Zealand Initiative Members’ Retreat. The pair discuss the disturbing trends of cancel culture and the erosion of academic freedom. Read more
There was once a place called the University. I knew it well – in fact I grew up there. Read more
New Zealand has a major problem with educational inequality in its school system. The reasons are complex and not all of them are in the control of the education system. Read more
“Because there is no time for thinking and no rest in thinking, we no longer weigh divergent views; we’re content to hate them.” Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that back in 1878, but he could easily have been describing the early 2020s. Perhaps it was ever thus, but I can’t help feeling the problem Nietzsche was describing has recently got a lot worse. Read more
Do you fear and loathe mathematics? If so, you are far from alone. Read more
The Department for Education in England recently issued guidance to teachers to remind them of legal requirements to be politically impartial when they teach sensitive topics such as the legacy of the British Empire. Commenting on the guidance, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said “contested theories and opinions must not be presented to young people as facts”. Read more