Rural bias?
OPINION: After years of ever-worsening results from our education system, the startling results from a maths acceleration programme stood out like a dog’s proverbials – the trial producing gains of one full year in just 12-weeks.
OPINION: A mate of yours truly reckons rural Manawatu families are the latest to suffer under what he calls the Government's "performative restraint" - penny pinching on needed community stuff while the bureaucrat head count and wasteful spending in Wellington charges on undiminished.
He says the disruptions "have been as massive as the savings have been minimal".
He says, over the past year, the Ministry of Education has been reviewing school bus routes, quietly tightening eligibility rules that determine who qualifies for state-funded transport.
Students are increasingly required to attend their "nearest" school to qualify for a Ministry bus.
Routes that once served rural communities feeding into a range of secondary schools are being cancelled, merged, or redesigned.
Hundreds of families have apparently been affected.
Dairy Women's Network (DWN) has announced that Taranaki dairy farmer Nicola Bryant will join its Trust Board as an Associate Trustee.
Rural Women New Zealand (RWNZ) says it welcomes the release of a new report into pay equity.
Red meat exports to key quota markets enjoyed $1.4 billion in tariff savings in the 2024-25 financial year.
Remediation NZ (RNZ) has been fined more than $71,000 for discharging offensive odours described by neighbours as smelling like ‘faecal and pig effluent’ from its compositing site near Uruti in North Taranaki.
Two kiwifruit orchards in the Bay of Plenty and one in Northland are this year's finalists for the Ahuwhenua Trophy competition.
The Government's chief science advisor, Dr John Roche says the key objective for the science sector in the coming year is bedding down the reforms which sees the merger of the previous entities.