Stories by John Gerritsen

Teachers are contributing to Māori children's poor performance at school, the head of the Education Ministry says.

The Labour Party's Māori MPs are confident the government will not shut down the Māori-run charter schools they support.

Disturbing complaints about racism in schools have emerged from a study involving nearly 1700 children. Audio

The number of study visa applications lodged with Immigration New Zealand in India plummeted last year, as did the proportion of failed applications, Immigration figures show.

Charities and budgeting services have warned that some families will struggle with back to school costs as schools begin to reopen next week.

The principal of a school cited in a report by the Office of the Auditor General earlier this week has refused to answer questions about other expense payments and practices at his school.

The government has ignored Treasury advice by ditching the national standards in reading, writing and maths before developing a replacement.

Nearly half of Auckland primary schools are finishing the year unsure if they will start 2018 with a full complement of teachers.

Nearly half of primary and intermediate schools are cutting teacher aide hours in order to make ends meet next year, a survey by the teacher union the Educational Institute indicates.

Too many new teachers aren't prepared for the realities of the job, warns the Education Review Office.

Some polytechnics are at risk of tipping over and more needs to be done for children with special needs, government agencies are warning the Education Minister.

School leavers have enthusiastically welcomed the government's zero-fee tertiary education policy and say they hope it will encourage friends and relatives to enrol. Audio

Polytechnics are under pressure with falling enrolments, bad audit reports and expectations that some will end the year with multi-million-dollar deficits.

The government is considering the future of an embattled West Coast polytechnic, the first to fail an NZQA audit.

One in five exam papers has already been marked, the Qualifications Authority says.

Schools need to do more to reduce the number of children falling behind in core subjects, the Education Review Office says. Audio

Mandatory reporting of hundreds of cases of teachers physically restraining children will show the scale of the behaviour problems they're dealing with, school principals say.

Figures reveal how often teachers are physically restraining students, following the first three months of new rules for reporting the incidents.

Nearly every school in the country was paid the wrong amount in the first run of a new funding pool that targets at-risk children.

The Qualifications Authority is moving to stop tertiary institutions that enrol foreign students from compressing a week's teaching into two or three days.

New Zealand 15-year-olds are among the best in the world at group work, but the country's girls are a lot better than its boys, an OECD study says.

Lincoln University is in a delicate state and needs significant course cuts, more Māori and Pasifika students, and more donations, an advisory board says.

The government has indicated it could exempt English language schools from plans to cut work visas for 20-30,000 foreign students.

Auckland's teacher shortage has reached the point where some secondary schools are considering cancelling subjects next year, principals associations say.

Teachers want more training so they know how to handle violent children after a teacher was censured for carrying a struggling child to the principals' office.