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The question of how to help schools face challenging circumstances was a key focus of Monday’s Tomorrow’s Schools review discussion held jointly by the Initiative and Victoria University’s Faculty of Education. The Tomorrow’s Schools Taskforce is clear, and the Initiative agrees, that there is a serious and stubborn problem of underachievement among students from certain ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Read more

Germany and Switzerland have long been famous for exporting cars, machinery and chemicals to all parts of the world. They are now becoming well-known as exporters of their dual education model. Read more

New Zealand schools enjoy relative freedom. Some teach 21st century skills, others a knowledge-rich curriculum. Read more

Comparing schools is complex at best – and a nightmare at worst. Every school has a different cohort of students, each with their own unique background. Read more

Jake is a 16-year-old student with NCEA level 1 who has just left school. His friends and family tell him “more education is always better; graduates earn more on average than non-graduates”. Read more

The Tomorrow's Schools Independent Taskforce sees competition and self-governance as bad, collaboration and ministry management as good. It is seductive stuff, if a little Orwellian. Read more

Few countries centralise government power as much as New Zealand. In most areas of public life, Wellington calls the shots, makes the rules, and holds the purse strings. Read more

New Zealand is world leading in many aspects, most notably for Sir Edmund Hillary’s triumph on Mt Everest, Ernest Rutherford’s breakthrough in nuclear physics, and women’s suffrage. We can also be proud of leading the world in integrated data, a process that combines data from different sources and displays results in a unified view to users. Read more

If you were not already alarmed about the state of education in New Zealand, two stories in the media last week should shake you from any complacency. The first story was about a commonplace word, trivial. Read more

When you break a bone, being told that an X-ray confirms the break is little relief. You already know there is a problem, but what you really want to know is how to fix it. Read more