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If you found out your local school had a 60% NCEA level three pass rate, would you know whether you should congratulate the principal or demand a sacking? Students come to school from different starting points. Read more

After returning an English exam paper marked “43%”, a teacher asked her 13-year-old student “did you cheat”? To which the student nodded with a “yes”. Read more

I have just returned from a journey of discovery in the UK and the US looking at how they navigate the notion of school choice. As a concept, it remains highly contentious. Read more

Imagine if the New Zealand Rugby Union’s collective agreement with players mirrored the agreements negotiated by the teachers’ unions. The pay scale for teachers has all teachers starting on more or less the same salary, and stepping up in small increments over seven years or so to a fixed maximum. Read more

Many of New Zealand’s future surgeons, scientists and teachers are right now sitting in front of an adult charged with teaching them the skills and knowledge that will help them in their post-school careers. In this way, would it be far-fetched to conclude that teachers have one of the most important jobs in New Zealand? Read more

As German-American journalist and satirist H.L. Mencken once explained, “Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods”. Read more

Schools are labs and students are the subjects. Though this may sound controversial, behind closed doors teachers experiment on their students. Read more

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, an admired African novelist, once said ‘show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become’. It sounds like a cliché but it applies neatly to the portrayal of our schools and students. Read more