This research note takes a closer look at school effectiveness across state, state-integrated, and private schools, otherwise defined as school authority (or type) using the Initiative's school performance tool. In a New Zealand first, we estimate each school’s contribution to student achievement across the three school authorities after separating out the contribution of the family socioeconomic background using data from Statistics New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI). Read more

Since the first cases of the Covid-19 virus emerged in the Chinese province of Wuhan, several East Asian countries including Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan have successfully 'flattened the curve' of infection rates. The three countries used common public policies in the first 50 days since each registered their 100th case. Read more

Alongside South Korea, Taiwan is one of the few countries to “flatten the curve” of Covid-19 without a national lockdown due to its prior experience with the SARS epidemic of 2003. New Zealand’s pathway is similar to Taiwan’s and there are lessons to be learned as New Zealand moves into Alert Level 2. Read more

As the world struggles to contain Covid-19, many countries are at different stages of containment and mitigation since registering their first 100 cases. Some, like South Korea, are more than a month further ahead compared with New Zealand and could offer a good example of what might be expected as New Zealand transitions out of Alert Level 4 lockdown. Read more

This research note is the third in a series of reports discussing the Initiative’s school performance tool and school evaluation in New Zealand. We present three case studies showing how three secondary schools performed before and after our tool separated the contribution of family background from the contribution of each school. Read more