Stories by John Gerritsen

Schools have told the Education Review Office that some children lost 10 weeks of learning in last year's lockdowns, but the overall impact of the pandemic is still unclear.

After years of criticism the Education Ministry has finally reined in delays for specialist help for disabled pre-schoolers that critics said were appalling and outrageous.

Covid-19 has driven the biggest-ever increase in home-schooling enrolments - although home educators expected a larger jump.

There are hopes the online learning the pandemic forced on schools this year will permanently change the way many teachers work.

Education Ministry figures show a quarter of Auckland's 503 schools had enrolled more students than their official classroom capacity by the middle of the year.

The Auditor-General has warned that the national polytechnic could lose $53 million this year and double that amount next year.

New Zealand's bad results in an international maths and science test are being blamed on factors including grouping children by their ability and the previous government's national standards in…

School principals hope a new set of off-the-shelf classroom designs will eliminate frustrating delays in building new rooms.

Some rural school principals say they will have to resort to online teaching next year because they cannot find enough staff.

The government has announced a deal it hopes will create a cohort of foreign students who will be ready to enter New Zealand when the borders open.

The Teaching Council has backtracked after warning the government this year that it lacked the statutory power to prosecute people who teach illegally.

The Auditor-General is warning that hundreds-of-millions of dollars of school income is at risk because of the pandemic and schools must budget carefully to avoid financial problems.

Academics and teachers are warning a new mandatory NCEA literacy and numeracy test could be too tough for some teens.

Teenagers had about 300,000 fewer NCEA results in the bag last month than at the same time last year, according to Qualifications Authority figures.

A national study of primary school children has found a fall in performance in writing for some eight-year-olds but next to no change in reading.

The number of teenagers leaving school with no qualification rose for the second consecutive year in 2019, with boys and Māori worst affected, Education Ministry figures show.

In new guidance to schools, the Ministry of Education also says teachers cannot stop parents taking their children from classrooms during emergency lockdowns.

A quarter of the roughly 4000 early childhood teachers surveyed said they could not endorse the quality of the places they worked.

A thousand early childhood teachers have so little confidence in the early learning centres they work in that they wouldn't send their own children there.

NCEA and Scholarship exams start this morning, involving 140,000 teenagers over the next four weeks.

The Education Ministry expects there will be enough primary teachers to meet demand for the next three years while a shortage of secondary teachers will continue.

An ongoing fight between the secondary teachers' union and the Teaching Council over fee increases for teachers' practising certificates is heading to court.

The Ministry of Education is planning a series of rule changes that will make it easier to crack down on poor-quality early childhood centres.

A public health specialist is backing plans to raise the minimum temperature in early childhood centres from 16C to 18C, saying it will reduce the spread of viruses.

The Qualifications Authority is considering using computer systems to monitor students for possible cheating while they sit online NCEA exams.