June 29, 2020

Will tertiary fee changes in Australia increase Trans-Tasman study?

Pii-Tuulia Nikula

Tertiary fees in New Zealand versus Australia: Fees Are Important, but not as Important as Financing In Australia, the Education Minister Dan Tehan has proposed an overhaul of the existing higher education funding system to offer 39,000 additional study places by 2023 and 100,000 by 2030. The proposal has been

 

May 7, 2019

Dumbing down polytechnics

David Cooke

The Coalition Government is reshaping vocational education in New Zealand, under the banner of a proposed New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology. Presentations by the Minister and the Tertiary Education Commission focus on major points like the following: meeting the needs of business and industry preparing graduates to be

 

November 13, 2018

The costs of choice in the New Zealand history curriculum

Rachel Rafferty

History is not just an account of past events, but an interpretation. Which historical events are taught in schools, and how they are presented, communicates an important message to pupils about national identity. Currently, in New Zealand, these important decisions are left in the hands of individual educators. The 2010

 

November 6, 2018

Te Pūtake o Te Riri

Arini Loader

The ‘two-worlds’ analogy retains its stubborn hold. Two worlds mapped onto Niu Tireni, sharing space, differently placed. You say Raowmati, I say Raumati; You say Oohtackie, I say Ōtaki. Or as poet Robert Sullivan put it: You say Treaty and I say Tiriti, You say justice and I say hegemony,

 

October 30, 2018

The New Zealand Wars and the School Curriculum

Joanna Kidman and Vincent O'Malley

The New Zealand Wars (1845-72) had a decisive influence over the course of the nation’s history. Yet Pākehā have not always cared to remember them in anything approaching a robust manner, engaging at different times either in elaborate myth-making that painted the wars as chivalrous and noble or, when that

 

September 18, 2018

Doctoral theses in Māori: Advice for universities

Georgina Stewart

Introduction – writing in te reo Māori at university Standard university policies in Aotearoa-New Zealand allow for any essay or dissertation to be submitted in te reo Māori as an official language, given suitable assessment arrangements are made. Alongside other equity developments in tertiary education for Māori, such as university

 

February 27, 2018

Food for Thought – Free of charge school lunches

Pii-Tuulia Nikula

Few would disagree with the contention that all children deserve healthy, nutritious meals before, during, and after their school days, yet there is plenty of evidence showing how food insecurity and malnourishment are prevalent issues among many New Zealand school children. However, there is less consensus on whether the government

 

November 28, 2017

Rethinking the teaching of economics

Girol Karacaoglu & Julienne Molineaux

In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, some students of economics in countries as diverse as Chile, the UK and the US asked why the curriculum they were studying at University did not deal with contemporary issues such as debt and finance, or the shortcomings of markets. Some academic

 

March 28, 2017

Zero-fee tertiary?

Pii-Tuulia Nikula

A zero-fee scheme – suitable and realistic for the New Zealand higher education system? The Labour Party announced its plan for a zero-fee system in January 2016. The ‘Working Futures Plan’ promises a life-time entitlement of three years of post-school education. This plan is predominantly targeted for new school leavers

 

March 14, 2017

School competiton vs cooperation

John Laurenson

I have been a principal of a secondary school for more than 20 years. In that time just about every principal I have come across will privately acknowledge that the way the country’s school network functions has to change. However until the central government recognises that legislation is required to

 

March 7, 2017

School governance overhaul

Bernardine Vester

Why removing decile and creating communities of schools is not enough to transform learning in South Auckland   Jane and Cory send their children to Stonefields School, a Decile 9 primary school within walking distance of their home. This fits perfectly with the family’s aspirations for free, compulsory, quality, public

 

February 28, 2017

How are the children doing?

Keryn O'Neill & Sue Younger

A literature review on young children in childcare Over a two-year period, the Brainwave Trust conducted a literature review to see what is known and what is not known about the impact of childcare on children – things such as their development, behaviour, stress levels, relationships and school outcomes. Are

 

January 31, 2017

The digital classroom revolution

Pii-Tuulia Nikula

Many parents are faced with the new digital practices used in their children’s schooling. ‘Bring Your Own Device’ policies and increased use of technology in classroom are becoming daily realities in most schools. The New Zealand Ministry of Education supports this digitisation process and provides significant resources for related initiatives,

 

October 26, 2016

Young People, Civics, and Political Literacy

Andrew Chen

There is an intergenerational democratic deficit, most obvious in voting statistics. The Electoral Commission reports that only 62.7% of enrolled voters aged 18-24 voted in 2014, in comparison to 86.3% of enrolled voters aged 60 or older. This situation looks even worse when we include the fact that only 66.4%

 

May 30, 2016

Recent Trends in Public Spending

Brian Easton

Despite the public’s desire for more government spending there has been little increase in the aggregate level of government spending relative to GDP over the last 20 years. There was a slight rise immediately after the GFC, because GDP stagnated. Government spending as a percent of GDP is now lower

 

May 11, 2016

Valuable information? Decision-making tools for students

Hannah August

The decision about which course of study to follow is an increasingly important one for tertiary students. Their choice will affect both their future and the future shape of tertiary institutions whose course offerings are enabled by student demand. Yet the information being provided to students to aid their decision-making

 

May 9, 2016

It’s Not Just The Economy, Stupid

Richard Shaw

What’s the problem? The humanities and social sciences – collectively described here as the Arts – have been under sustained assault in Aotearoa New Zealand for years, too often derided by policy-makers, parents and pundits as irrelevant, frivolous and indulgent. The primary purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the

 

May 2, 2016

Whanau as first teachers

Dr Kathie Irwin

The hundred year journey from Nuhaka to Harvard   The Story In May, 2014, a Harvard University graduation booklet included the tribal names of Ngati Porou, Rakaipaaka, and Ngati Kahungunu. It was a Harvard Law Graduation and a young Māori woman was graduating Master of Laws, one of only a

 

April 26, 2016

Schooling in an era of economic inequality

Liz Gordon

In mid-2015 I published an article revealing the effects of 25 years of ‘Tomorrow’s Schools’ on the schooling system in New Zealand. It showed that, as a result of families choosing ‘up’, socially and economically, the schools serving New Zealand’s poorest communities were now, on average, 2.5 times smaller than

 

April 18, 2016

Working conditions in the early childhood education sector

Andrew Gibbons, Sandy Farquhar & Marek Tesar

Introduction In April 2015 New Zealand Herald reporter Kirsty Johnston ran a week-long series of reports on the status of early childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand. The key matter for public concern was the quality of education and care provided for children up to the age of five. A

 

March 15, 2016

Poverty in teacher education?

Vicki Carpenter

High educational outcomes are unevenly spread amongst New Zealand’s school population. Most measures show correlations: the higher or lower the decile of a New Zealand school, the higher or lower are any student’s likely levels of academic achievement. This is evident at all levels of the system where achievement is

 

March 8, 2016

What’s Wrong With ‘Special’ Education?

Hilary Stace

Parliament’s Education and Science Select Committee is currently holding an Inquiry into the identification and support for students with the significant challenges of dyslexia, dyspraxia, and autism spectrum disorders in primary and secondary schools. The public took the opportunity to make over 500 submissions dealing with concerns relating to what

 

March 1, 2016

How Do We Determine Programme Effectiveness?

Pat Bullen, Kane Meissel & Kelsey Deane

Over the last decade, there has been increasing discussion at the government, policy and funder level in favour of requiring educational, social and community programmes and interventions to provide evidence of their effectiveness. This evidence is then used to determine whether the programme is deemed worthy of future or continued

 

February 22, 2016

Outputs Or Outcomes; The Difference Matters

Brian Easton

The 1989 Public Finance Act distinguished ‘outputs’ from ‘outcomes’. Outputs are what a department (or, more generally, an agent) can deliver while outcomes are what the minister (or, more generally, the principal) actually wants. Thus a minister may want, on behalf of the country, a high level of education in

 

February 16, 2016

How Can We Measure Our Schooling System?

Bali Haque

How do we make judgments about how well our schooling system is performing? Domestically, the most common methods use NCEA and National Standards results. In addition, the Education Review Office(ERO) reports on school performance. For international benchmarking the current favourite method is the Programme for International Testing (PISA). All of these

 

January 19, 2016

Uniforms, Uniformity and Meaning

Elaine Webster

Most secondary schools in New Zealand have uniforms, however, the style, approach and attitude to school dress within each school is far from uniform. School uniforms have that curious quality of being everywhere and seeming all same, yet what most people know is confined to their direct experience. Uniforms, like

 

July 9, 2014

Education

Ivan Snook & John O'Neill

Just over 30 years ago, OECD examiners reported on our education system: “To an extent greater than in some other OECD countries the parents, citizens, employers and workers of New Zealand appear to be reasonably happy with what is done for them in schools, colleges and universities.” (OECD Report, 1982)