Education Forum Update

Welcome to the Education Forum Update, a regular round-up of all that is new at the Education Forum and its website.

Visit our home page ( http://www.educationforum.org.nz) for links to the following recently added items:

Report: Released yesterday and featured on National Radio's Morning Report programme and Radio Pacific, Who Should Pay? Tuition fees and tertiary education financing in New Zealand, written by Norman LaRocque, looks at tertiary education funding in New Zealand and overseas to find best-practice policies for improving access to, and results from, tertiary education.

Press releases: In a release put out last week we said that some 'commendable' ideas for the implementation of fee maxima, released in a government report, hide the fact that over-regulation will not solve tertiary education's problems; and in another we commented that NZUSA criticism last month of using private savings to finance tertiary education ignores the realities of life in New Zealand. It takes "money to run a tertiary education system. That money does not grow on trees".

Hot topic: Following months of public debate and speculation over the direction of higher education policy, the British government last month unveiled radical reforms designed to make universities "more open to all students and more competitive in the world economy". We highlight the reforms and responses to them.

Op Eds: Issue 34, published in the New Zealand Herald on 30 January - Nanny knows best - education fails us, by Deborah Coddington, looks at zoning and school choice. Issue 33, 'Outcomes-based' curriculum fails international comparisons, by Kevin Donnelly, executive director of Education Strategies. Issue 32: In defence of an ideal, published in the New Zealand Herald on 5 December, 2002, and written by John Taylor, Headmaster of Kings College, Auckland.

The latest in education news: Report shows potential of e-learning in Africa; NCEA too easy, say principals; Associate Education Minister Steve Maharey outlines new tertiary fees structure; Christchurch's new, radical secondary school Unlimited opens its doors; measures proposed in the UK to help 'bad' teachers quit; and much more.

Quick facts: Tertiary education spending in New Zealand.

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