This is the fifth annual report that NZCER has prepared for the Sorted in Schools, Te whai hua–kia ora programme, a financial literacy programme for secondary school students, led by Te Ara Ahunga Ora Retirement Commission.

In 2024, our focus is to explore how Sorted in Schools is used and valued in English-medium educational settings. We used a survey to collect data about key programme goals, and reporting on the ...

Te Ara Ahunga Ora Retirement Commission (Te Ara Ahunga Ora) contracted Te Wāhanga, Rangahau Mātauranga o Aotearoa | New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) to conduct a kaupapa Māori evaluation of the Sorted Kāinga Ora programme from 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024. 

The evaluation began with a scoping phase. NZCER held a workshop (23 August 2023), with Te Ara Ahunga Ora and the Sorted Kāinga Ora delivery ...

Climate change presents escalating risks to young people and communities, including risks to the achievement of educational outcomes.  

In the years NZCER has been researching climate-responsive education, we have noted a steady increase in activity, interest, and concern about climate change amongst educational policymakers, school leaders, and educators in Aotearoa New Zealand. We have also noted scattered references to education, schools, and young people in New Zealand climate action ...

Decolonising our approaches to educational research— Learning from our shared experiences at Rangahau Mātauranga o Aotearoa (NZCER) shares insights from a recent workshop at NZCER focused on the questions, tensions and challenges our kairangahau are grappling with in research and evaluation. 

It includes a description of the workshop structure and processes, and summaries of workshop presentations given by kairangahau. Our work in decolonising our approaches to educational research is constantly ...

“In the end, decolonization simply means having faith that we can still be brave enough to change an imposed reality”—Moana Jackson (2018, p. 2) 

This paper explores the origins of the term “decolonisation” and its various definitions within the literature. It also gives some examples of contemporary usage. In this paper we privilege the work of Māori and Indigenous writers who have paved the way for the ongoing work ...

This research report, produced for National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa (National Library), focused on a Pūtoi Rito Communities of Readers project carried out in Dargaville in 2023-24. 

Pūtoi Rito is a National Library initiative that works with communities to design, develop, and deliver support for reading engagement among children and young people. The Dargaville project focused on young people during their primary and intermediate school years, as ...

Ready for Partnership? will help you to create written or visual texts which welcome ākonga Māori. We hope that this tool will give you ways of reflecting on texts as you create them, before you then go on to do further work with kaupapa Māori colleagues. 

Ready for Partnership? has two sections. Section 1 provides seven lenses which focus on the ways in which we’re using various Māori cultural perspectives ...

Poipoia ngā tamariki: How whānau and teachers support tamariki Māori to be successful in learning and education is the third COMPASS report from the collaboration between NZCER and Professor Melinda Webber (The University of Auckland), on the analysis of data collected through her national research project Kia tū rangatira ai: Living, thriving and succeeding in education. 

This latest kaupapa Māori study analyses data from Kia tū rangatira ai to ...

This report focuses on the perspectives of whānau Pasifika as they express their attitudes and beliefs about what success looks like for their tamariki and why success is important. It employs the Indigenous practice of wayfinding to frame discussions of success through a range of values whānau Pasifika hold, and supportive characteristics they enact that steer their tamariki towards achieving their educational aspirations.

In 2022, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) identified a range of schools at which the University Entrance (UE) attainment of ākonga Māori and Pacific students was at least 10% higher than their decile (now EQI) band average. 

In 2023, NZQA asked Rangahau Mātauranga o Aotearoa NZCER to work with six of these higher UE attainment schools to explore how they support ākonga Māori and Pacific students to attain UE ...