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Kia ora koe, welcome to the 2026 Term 2 NZ Principal magazine. As we push further into this election year, we’ve really ramped up our advocacy work to influence political policy. The 2026 election manifesto has been a significant undertaking by the NZPF, led by our outstanding Research and Policy Officer Kim Hailwood. Moot in […]
Quite a bit has changed in the NZPF offices over the past few months. We have a new president, we’ve farewelled long-standing executive officer Liz Hawes, and I came on board in late November! I’ll be editing the NZPF magazine from here on out and providing communications support to the President and the organisation. It’s […]
Editing the New Zealand Principal magazine has been an exhilarating experience for me these past fifteen years. I have visited your schools and classrooms, school fairs, special assemblies, farewell parties, sports days and pet days. I once witnessed the triumphant pride of an entire community, gathered at the pub on Stewart Island, to welcome home […]
There’s a strong theme running through this issue of NZ Principal magazine. It is that politicians create a crisis of educational failure to justify introducing a standardised curriculum with rigorous testing. That is what Education Minister Hon Erica Stanford is engaged in right now. Stanford is motivated to see New Zealand in the top ten […]
Dame Whina Cooper, one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s renowned trailblazers, once said, Take care of our children. Take care of what they hear, take care of what they feel. For how the children grow, so will be the shape of Aotearoa. Her words are a powerful reminder to keep our eyes on what is important. […]
We tend to think of Artificial Intelligence as a new phenomenon, coinciding with the emergence of ChatGPT and the like, but in fact it was invented in the early 1950s. In 1950, Alan Turing, a mathematician, computer scientist and logician, published ‘Computer Machinery and Intelligence’. This publication formed the basis for what became known as […]
NZPF and APPA (the Australian Primary Principals’ Association) are good friends . . . who have become great friends. There is nothing quite like meeting up with your Aussie neighbours for a cheap and cheerful dinner, a drink or two, a bit of sparring, and a few laughs. And where better to do this than […]
Eighteen months from now, the city of Tamaki Makaurau will be inundated with school principals from across the globe as we host the International Confederation of Principals (ICP) World Convention. They will come from every continent, not just to enjoy our beautiful country, but to observe our unique approach to teaching and learning. Whilst school […]
We’ve been hearing about the poor school attendance rates of young people in Aotearoa New Zealand for years. Attendance rates began a gradual decline in about 2015. Reports on declining attendance vary in perspective. Some refer to non-attendance as truancy, which directs responsibility at the school. Truancy is a wilful act of deliberately skipping class […]
We start the year with a new, three-party-coalition government. Predictably, our new government has ushered in a suite of new education policies. So far, they include banning cell phones during school hours, reintroducing charter schools and teaching reading, writing and mathematics, for one hour each a day. This column will examine just the ‘one hour […]
‘I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.’ Albert Einstein Einstein died 34 years before Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. It was originally created to meet the demand for automated information sharing between scientists in universities across the world. Another […]
Principals across the country are desperate for staff. If you live on the West Coast (see story p.6 of this issue), in Auckland or Northland, very few, if any teachers are applying for advertised vacancies. So fraught is the staffing situation that recently, Kyle Brewerton, the Auckland Primary Principals’ Association President said, ‘Some schools may […]
