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Wellington, 6 October 2020 – New Zealand’s education system is a mess, riddled with unscientific ideas and seduced by child-centred orthodoxy, according to a new report by The New Zealand Initiative. Falling from its height as the envy of the world just twenty years ago, the Ministry of Education has let New Zealand’s education system unravel by turning the focus away from teaching knowledge and on to 21st-century “competencies.” In a comprehensive new report, New Zealand’s Education Delusion: How bad ideas ruined a once world-leading school system, author Briar Lipson traces how the country’s schooling system lost its way and provides solutions for correcting the dangerous path. Read more

Briar Lipson's new book New Zealand’s Education Delusion: How bad ideas ruined a once world-leading school system explains why there is a rot at the core of schooling in New Zealand. The report found that educational standards have plummeted over the past two decades. Read more

Educational standards have plummeted over the past two decades. Where New Zealand children once topped international league tables, they now perform mediocrely due to education providers blindly adhering to the philosophy of child-centred learning. Read more

Research Fellow Briar Lipson explains in a new book why New Zealand’s education system is a mess, riddled with unscientific ideas and seduced by child-centred orthodoxy. She talks to John Campbell on TVNZ Breakfast about how to create the corrective shift that will reverse the decline and narrow New Zealand's educational inequities. Read more

Following the release of her new book New Zealand's Education Delusion: How bad ideas ruined a once world-leading school system, author Briar Lipson discusses her research and findings with Sean Plunket on MagicTalk. The New Zealand Initiative · Are we making NCEA credits too easy for kids to get? Read more

In this week’s New Zealand Initiative podcast, Briar Lipson isolates how the idea of child centred orthodoxy is the key ideology responsible for New Zealand’s educational decline. It is not a Kiwi idea. Read more

In this week’s New Zealand Initiative podcast, the country’s education system keeps slipping in standards and producing students who can barely solve the simplest sums or read basic instructions. But without solid and reliable data on how New Zealand schools are actually faring, it’s hard to make pinpoint effective changes. Read more