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Confirmation came this week that New Zealand’s once world-leading school system continues its steady decline. Ever since the OECD began testing the educational performance of 15-year olds in the early 2000s, New Zealand students have performed progressively worse in all three assessed areas of reading, maths and science. Read more

Despite what Education Minister Chris Hipkins would have us believe, you cannot simply google everything. Technology has undoubtedly transformed our ability to access information, but despite what Hipkins told Newshub, memory still matters. Read more

Moving to New Zealand in 2003 was a bit like stepping into an underpowered time machine. The new-release movies in theatre were ones that had hit the big screen in the US months earlier. Read more

Forgive them for they know not what they have done. Even for those of us without religious convictions, this is not a bad rule of thumb. Read more

Imagine putting $100 in a bank account that earned 2% annual interest but being unable to calculate how much would be there at the end of one year? ($102) As an NBR reader, that question was probably easy to answer. Read more

“For a child in Bluff who might be interested in muttonbirds, they are not going to be interested in the fact that there are seven continents in the world." This statement, made by the elected President of the New Zealand Principals’ Federation, Whetu Cormick, perfectly encapsulates what is wrong with education in New Zealand. Reported in the Herald in response to a question about our national curriculum, Cormick’s example was prompted by our latest research note Ignorance is not bliss. Read more

If there was one buzzword for 2019, it was “wellbeing”. This year, our government launched the world’s first Wellbeing Budget, Treasury continued developing its Living Standards Framework measuring wellbeing, and Statistics New Zealand established Indicators Aotearoa also to measure wellbeing. Read more