Dr Michael Johnston is a Senior Fellow at the New Zealand Initiative. He leads the workstream on education.
Prior to his time at the Initiative, Dr Johnston held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington from 2011-2022. From 2020 until 2022 he was the Associate Dean (Academic) in the University’s Faculty of Education.
Prior to his time at Victoria, Dr Johnston was the Senior Statistician at the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, a position he held for 6 years. Before that, he was a lecturer in psychology at the University Melbourne and a Research Fellow at Latrobe University.
Dr Johnston holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne.
Phone: 044990790
Dr Michael Johnston about the new NCEA certificate requirements and NZ students' low pass rates on RNZ. Listen below. Read more
Wellington (Tuesday, 19 December 2023) – The New Zealand Initiative proudly announces the appointment of its Senior Fellow, Dr Michael Johnston, as the Chair of the Government’s newly established Ministerial Advisory Group to review the primary school English, maths and statistics curricula in New Zealand. Dr Johnston is a cognitive psychologist with an extensive background in the education sector. Read more
In our final episode of the year, Oliver and Michael discuss how things are sitting now in NZ with a new government, the challenges they're facing, some of the early decisions they've made and what the prospects are for the new year. To listen to our latest podcasts, please subscribe to The New Zealand Initiative podcast on iTunes, Spotify or The Podcast App. Read more
Dr Michael Johnston talks to Tim Dower on Newstalk ZB's Early Edition about the Government delaying plan to make online numeracy and literacy tests a prerequisite for NCEA from 2026. Listen below. Read more
Two decades ago, a new term – ‘PISA shock’ – entered the German lexicon. The Germans had prided themselves on a world-class education system. Read more
Dr Michael Johnston recently spoke on RNZ's morning news about NZ's poor PISA 2022 results following their release earlier in the week. Listen below. Read more
Every three years since 2000 - except during the Covid-19 pandemic - the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) has assessed the reading skill of 15-year-olds from an ever-increasing range of countries. From 2003, mathematics was assessed as well. Read more
Wellington (Tuesday, 5 December 2023) – Changes are coming to the way New Zealand students will be tested for reading, writing, and numeracy for NCEA. From 2026, if students fail any one of these new tests, they will not be able to achieve any level of NCEA. Read more
From 2026, students will have to pass new assessments in reading, writing and numeracy to attain any level of NCEA. However, pilots of the new assessments in 2022 and the first full-scale assessment round for these new standards in 2023 indicate that if they are adopted as a corequisite for NCEA as planned, completion rates for the qualification will fall precipitously. Read more
Dr Michael Johnston talks to Dr Claudia Rozas Gomez, who is a lecturer in Critical Studies in Education at the University of Auckland. In this episode, they discuss issues and criticisms around university-based teacher education. Read more
Dr Michael Johnston and Ben Macintyre talk about the impact of classroom streaming in NZ, which is the subject of their new research report. It is a topic of debate in NZ, with calls for the practice to be banned by 2030. Read more
Classroom streaming – the separation of students into classes based on their prior attainment – is currently a topic of debate in New Zealand. Some commentators have called for the practice to be banned. Read more
Wellington (Monday, 20 November 2023) – There have been calls to ban streaming in New Zealand schools. Streaming is the practice of separating students into different classes based on their prior learning. Read more
When it comes to the annual NCEA exam round, no news is good news. News about exams almost always signals that something has gone wrong. Read more
Dr Michael Johnston talks to Glenn Fahey, who is the Director of the Education program at The Centre for Independent Studies based in Australia. They discuss the problems of Teacher Education in both NZ and Australia and the differing solutions they both came up with, which highlights the differences in both countries' systems. To listen to our latest podcasts, please subscribe to The New Zealand Initiative podcast on iTunes, Spotify or The Podcast App. Read more