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New Zealand’s universities have, at least since the mid-2000s, relied on foreign students for substantial parts of their income. Though the extent of foreign students’ contributions is obvious to anyone working in academia, they are not well appreciated outside the tertiary sector. 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

For most of history, only the wealthiest in society had the time and resources to pursue disciplinary knowledge. For everyone else, knowledge beyond daily experience was an unaffordable luxury. Read more

Yesterday, the government announced that New Zealand’s decile-based school funding system would be replaced, from 2021, by a funding formula tied to student risk factors. It noted that parents too often conflate a school’s decile rank with its quality. Read more

School evaluation is an essential component of the education system. Identifying high-performing and underperforming schools is vital for building an evidence base for what works to improve education outcomes for students. Read more

The opportunities of industry-based qualifications are highly underestimated in New Zealand. It is therefore laudable that earlier this month, Minister of Education Chris Hipkins proposed reforms to the vocational sector that include industry-based education. Read more

As teachers prepare to leave the classroom on strike, The New Zealand Initiative proposes a potential solution to the seemingly impossible impasse. Dr Eric Crampton argues in his Policy Point Biting education bullets that Minister Hipkins is in a thoroughly unenviable position. Read more

A comprehensive and year-long econometric analysis of data for 400,000 students undertaken by The New Zealand Initiative reveals there are no significant differences in school performance between schools of different deciles. Adjusted for the different student populations they serve, the vast majority of New Zealand’s secondary schools create the education outcomes we would expect from them. Read more

Read The New Zealand Initiative's submission to the Education and Workforce Select Committee on the Education Poverty Reduction Bill. Read more

New Zealand’s education system is designed not to measure performance. How can we tell whether policies intended to boost student performance are successful, or how much academic achievement matters for later life outcomes, if we cannot measure it? Read more