In our recent members’ survey, many of you rated education as a key area of work for The New Zealand Initiative.

There is indeed much work to do in education. Years of failed policies have left our once great education system teetering. Our literacy and numeracy rates are plummeting. Our young people are truant in record numbers. Our classrooms are being transformed into massive barns to enable dubious and ideological teaching practices.

We are currently working on a manifesto for election year, to save school education in New Zealand. It will bring together the Initiative’s research on education over the last decade, covering curriculum, qualifications, teachers’ training and career structure and school quality and choice. The manifesto will be made available to all political parties early in 2023, with an invitation to use it in forming their education polices.

We would love to collect your thoughts to contribute to the manifesto. We therefore invite you to a lunch on 18 November in Auckland, at which we will seek your views. Dr Michael Johnston, our Senior Fellow on education, will speak to the issues the manifesto covers. He will then invite you to contribute your thoughts and will draw on your contributions to inform the final version.

The lunch will also be an opportunity to meet two other new Fellows of the Initiative, Matthew Birchall and James Kierstead.

If you indicate that you’ll be able to attend the lunch, we will send you a draft of the manifesto early in November, to give you a chance to read and think about the problems and policies it cavasses.

We believe that the collective wisdom of our members can make a strong contribution to this important document.

Venue: Auckland

Please contact Chelsy at chelsy.killick@nzinitiative.org.nz for further information. For more information about being a member please visit our Membership page.