Yesterday, the government announced that New Zealand’s decile-based school funding system would be replaced, from 2021, by a funding formula tied to student risk factors. It noted that parents too often conflate a school’s decile rank with its quality. Read more
School evaluation is an essential component of the education system. Identifying high-performing and underperforming schools is vital for building an evidence base for what works to improve education outcomes for students. Read more
Douglas Adams' classic The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy offers salient advice about an awful lot of things. Don't listen to Vogon poetry. Read more
Dr Eric Crampton talks to TVNZ Breakfast about our new report In Fairness to our Schools. He explains the results of our innovative new tool that enables the performance of schools to be properly measured and how it can be used to provide better outcomes for all students in New Zealand. Read more
How do you rate a secondary school's performance? For many parents the decile rating becomes the default measure. Read more
Low-decile schools are often viewed as being of lower quality by parents and are disproportionately categorised by ERO in the underperforming category. However, findings from The New Zealand Initiative’s latest report, In Fairness to Our Schools: Better measures for better outcomes, suggests that many low-deciles schools are some of the top-performers in the country. Read more
When Alice tried to recite one of her lessons while down the rabbit-hole in Wonderland, she thought only a few words had come out wrong. The Caterpillar corrected her bluntly: “It is wrong from beginning to end.” By contrast, the Cabinet Paper on the National Policy Statement protecting sensitive soils is not wrong from beginning to end. Read more
“Look in the mirror long enough and monsters will come out of it,” says an old wives’ tale. Toymaker Hasbro has put up a mirror to all of society and we do not look pretty. Read more
Imagine you went to your GP and received an unpleasant diagnosis. Would you want your doctor to panic in front of you, speculate that your disease might be terminal and prescribe a strong medicine? Read more
Artificial intelligence will soon steal all our jobs, subjecting humans to the whims of a small and privileged capital-owner elite. At least, that is a recurring conspiracy in apocalyptical sci-fi movies or in the minds of modern luddites. Read more
Dr Eric Crampton talks to Radio New Zealand, The Panel about a Universal Basic Income (UBI) and whether it would work in New Zealand. Listen to the full interview below. Read more
As Germany heads towards an economic slowdown, and in fact may already be in recession, calls for deficit spending and fiscal stimulus are getting louder – calls for the federal government to use the opportunity of negative interest rates to borrow and invest in infrastructure. Siemens’ CEO Joe Kaeser says so. Read more
In 1936, the father of Keynesian economics, John Maynard Keynes, used the term ‘animal spirits’ to refer to the fluctuating human emotions that can drive economic decisions in stressful times. Today the term is most often found in the context of investors’ decisions. Read more
Everyone has their guilty pleasures. For many people that guilty pleasure is a cheesy melodramatic soap opera. Read more
Monday saw Wellington’s Lambton Quay come alive with a joyful parade celebrating Māori Language Week. Yet, when asked whether her government would make te Reo compulsory in schools Prime Minister Ardern dodged the question, explaining instead that even if the government wanted to do this, New Zealand lacks the necessary teaching workforce. Read more
