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New Zealand is now below average for all but one international education TIMSS measure. Released this week, the 2019 Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) reveals Kiwi 10-year-olds are now the only group of students performing above the international average in science. Read more

Kiwi students are not learning the literacy skills they need and now some schools are paying from their own pocket in a desperate attempt to reverse the dismal trend. Both domestic and international data show a major problem in New Zealand literacy levels. Read more

All too often, today’s flavour of the month is tomorrow’s failure. This truism appears to be playing out in education. Read more

All around the country Kiwi students are in the thick of their long-awaited NCEA exams. Many of which will now have a new appreciation for the immense value of schooling – particularly after being locked out for several weeks this year. School is more than cheap day-care. Read more

One of the first management books I ever read was Tom Peters’ A Passion for Excellence. I must have received it in the late 1980s from a family friend. Read more

A distinct advantage that the bench sciences and medical sciences have over the social sciences is the ability to run experiments. If a clinician wants to run a trial to check whether a new drug might work, the regulatory hurdles can be substantial, but the trial is certainly possible. Read more

Last week the Initiative took aim at those presiding over the country’s education system. For nearly two decades Kiwi students have suffered a steady decline in performance. Read more

The rise of automation, artificial intelligence and pressures from developing economies are threatening low-skilled and unskilled jobs. Never has the need for school leavers to be well-educated been more important than today. Read more

It took eighteen years for New Zealand’s school system to plunge from world-leading to decidedly average. Despite a concurrent 32% real rise in per-pupil spending, in maths, Kiwi 15-year-olds now perform the way 13 and a half year-olds did just 20 years ago. Read more