If you want to know where New Zealand will be in 30 years time, our education results today tell us. The decline in our Pisa results from 2006 to 2018 has been forecast to effectively reduce our social and economic living standards by about 4%. Fixing that would make a bigger difference than every election pledge made this year combined.

More than four out of 10 kids in Singapore hit the top levels in maths; only one in 10 here. I don’t think Singaporean kids are naturally smarter at maths. They’re doing something different.

Research by the new Parents’ Alliance has found that parents are ambitious for their children across ethnicity, income and political belief. If 18% of Māori and 17% of Pasifika students are chronically absent, compared to 8% of Pakeha and 6% of New Zealand Asian (as the ERO’s Left Behind report found in 2024), it’s not because their parents want less.

It’s because we expect less.

Josie column on education reform is here.

Josie met Andrew Doyle, the author behind the character Titania McGrath—“an activist committed to intersectional feminism, social justice, and armed peaceful protest”— who has a bestselling book sharing advice and slam-poetry on how to be woke.

Andrew says left and right woke have more in common than not.

Both perceive humanity through the lens of identity. For the woke left, it’s finding victimhood in race, gender, sexuality and the alphabet. For the woke right, it’s finding victimhood in a white ethnic identity. Both believe liberalism has failed and some things should be censored. Heretics must be exposed. There’s a nasty overlap of anti-semitism. Both share disdain for modernisation and the West. Authoritarians on both sides lack a sense of humour.

Liberal versus authoritarian works better than left versus right. Most people are generally liberal, don’t judge people by their skin colour or their gender, and believe in everyone having a fair shot.

Read about it here.

It’s time to stop being complacent.

I’m not predicting war is imminent, but you have to admit there’s a non-trivial risk. A conflict or blockade in Europe or the South China Sea will make fuel issues look trivial.

In Sweden, citizens are told to keep a week’s supply of water and food “in case of crisis or war”. Similar leaflets have been issued to Norwegians, Danes and Finns.

Businesses here need to prepare for what will happen if conflict disrupts trade with China and Europe.

Josie outlines why the world is in a perilous security state and we can't rely on the US.

Josie joined Heather du Plessis-Allan and Trish Sherson on the Huddle to discuss the government's plan to ban social media for under-16s, and Labour's new election slogan.