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.