Some of us have been training for a scenario like this our entire lives! Coronavirus has hit and in the early public reaction to the outbreak, there are already talks of a possible nation-wide quarantine or “self-isolation” policy. Read more
What happened in Italy this week could tempt us to feel smug. Surely, the decision to put the whole country into lockdown must be an exaggeration. Read more
What if the principal and chair of trustees of each of New Zealand’s 500 secondary schools received a report every year that cut through the noise to show exactly how their school was performing? Crucially, this report would be objective, data-driven and fair, because it adjusts for the unique community of students each school serves. Read more
The Prime Minister called 2019 “the year of delivery.” Later this year, voters will deliver their verdict on that statement and promise. At the Initiative, it was definitely a year of delivery for us. Read more
If your school has strong NCEA results, is it because it’s performing well, or because it serves a lot of children from more privileged backgrounds? Schools with identical NCEA outcomes could have wildly different performance if one of them got there through extraordinary efforts to overcome the disadvantages that its students brought with them to class. Read more
Welcome to this week’s New Zealand Initiative podcast with chief editor Nathan Smith. Policy analyst Joel Hernandez joins the stream to discuss the latest developments with his school performance tool. Read more
There is no doubt that COVID-19 will impact global economies. The Project has asked some of the country’s smartest financial experts, including our Chief Economist Eric Crampton, for their advice on how people can keep their money safe. Read more
Travel bans bought New Zealand a little time, nothing more. We hope the Government is using this time well to prepare for the more widespread Covid-19 outbreak that seems likely to arrive, sometime. Read more
To start with a disclaimer, I am not a medical expert. I have no degree in epidemiology, nor can I claim any expertise in public health management. Read more
On TVNZ Breakfast, John Campbell talks to our Chief Economist Eric Crampton and Southern Cross Campus Principal Robin Staples about our new report presenting a groundbreaking new tool for measuring school performance objectively and fairly. In Insights and Excellence: School success in New Zealand, we present three case studies showing how three secondary schools, including Southern Cross Campus, performed before and after our tool separated the contribution of family background from the contribution of each school. Read more
This research note is the third in a series of reports discussing the Initiative’s school performance tool and school evaluation in New Zealand. We present three case studies showing how three secondary schools performed before and after our tool separated the contribution of family background from the contribution of each school. Read more
Wellington, 6 March 2020 – A groundbreaking new tool could give parents and principals the first objective measurement of New Zealand school performance, says a new report released today by The New Zealand Initiative. Insights and Excellence: School success in New Zealand demonstrates the quality of information, analysis and reporting that could be provided to every parent and principal in the country using the data already collected by the Ministry of Education and other government agencies. Read more
New Zealand is vulnerable to the same threats to their freedoms Australia is struggling with – and arguably the risk has already arrived. The worst assault across the ditch comes initially out of US and UK universities where a hybrid utopian movement of the most dangerous aspects of postmodernism and collectivism has been rebooted in the form of social justice, intersectionality and identity politics. Read more
On this week’s New Zealand Initiative podcast, chief editor Nathan Smith speaks to career public servant David Law who is one of the newest policy researchers at the Initiative. He returns to New Zealand from spending a handful of years at the OECD in Paris, but before that David worked at the Commerce Commission, the Electricity Authority and the Treasury. Read more
Since 2008, a contagion spread through the developed world: people felt that elites and politicians were looking out for each other and forgetting them. With this new coronavirus, murmurings about a travel ban has begun since Christmas as the virus jumped beyond China. Read more