Kindergarten Teachers Conference

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 Posted in Education, Featured, Labour's Achievements | No Comments »

Last night I had the opportunity to participate in a political panel discussion at the Wellington Kindergarten Teachers Annual Conference. My fellow panellists were candidates from National and the Greens. I was pleased with the reception I received, although it ...

Chris Carter visit to Upper Hutt schools

Sunday, July 6th, 2008 Posted in Education, Local Issues | No Comments »

Last week I arranged for the Minister of Education, Chris Carter, to visit Upper Hutt and Heretaunga Colleges. Earlier in the year I had the opportunity to look around both schools and I share their concerns about the state of ...

National calls school funding “pork-barrelling”

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 Posted in Education, National Party | No Comments »

In the busy week that was Budget week 2008, I missed this little gem from the National Party's education spokesperson, Anne Tolley. Commenting on the news that the Labour-led government would be increasing schools operational funding by 5 percent next year, Tolley complained ...

Industry Training Day demonstrates great progress

Monday, May 5th, 2008 Posted in Education, Employment, Labour's Achievements, Local Issues | No Comments »

Last week I had the opportunity to visit two Hutt Valley workplaces as part of Industry Training at Work Day, an opportunity to showcase on-the-job learning. As I used to work in the industry training field, I already had a ...

The NCEA is in good shape

Monday, January 21st, 2008 Posted in Education | No Comments »

What a pleasure it was to read the coverage over the past week of students receiving their NCEA results for 2007. We've come a long way over the past few years. Just three years ago the NCEA was one of ...