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One in seven of New Zealand’s 15-year-olds cannot read at a level considered requisite for basic participation in society, according to the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study. But does this simply reflect natural variation in ability levels and the left-end of the bell curve? Read more
This week a friend attended a parent-teacher interview to discuss her 6-year-old daughter’s progress in school. The teacher started off not with reading, writing, or maths, but with a comment on her character that would puff up any parent’s chest with pride: her daughter is a delight to have in the classroom. Read more
The debate over National Standards continues to simmer away, but the conversation is changing. If you listen carefully there is no real opposition to the general concept of National Standards – which is the reporting of student progress to parents. Read more
Wellington (7 October 2013): While national standards, charter schools, and class sizes have dominated the education debate, research by The New Zealand Initiative shows teacher quality is the most important in-school factor influencing student achievement. But as the World Class Education? Read more
What kinds of things matter for student achievement? Is it class size, school journals, the school building, or a flash new gym? Read more
Should New Zealand be letting inexperienced and unqualified teachers loose on children in our toughest communities? That’s exactly what Teach First is doing. Read more
Before you start thinking that there is a radical new health or safety (or better still, health and safety) measure in place to ban hundreds and thousands biscuits in schools, a more serious matter is at stake: are schools banning hundreds and thousands of students? This matters, because OECD data shows that school systems that transfer disruptive students out of schools, as a system, tend to perform lower and are less equitable. Read more
This week, Massey University Professors James Chapman and Bill Turner released a highly critical report of the Ministry of Education’s strategy for improving children’s literacy. In essence, they argue that the strategy has failed. Read more
It’s a story teachers often lament: Children bringing behavioural and emotional problems to school, without shoes on their feet or food in their bellies. Research in 2005 estimated that 10% of children in New Zealand go without breakfast. Read more
Last week I heard a 60-something-year-old talk about getting some files out of his ‘machine’. I imagined some kind of futuristic filing cabinet but it turns out he was talking about his computer. Read more