Articles

The New Zealand Government has developed a new schooling strategy to improve social and academic outcomes for all students. Making a Bigger Difference for All Students: The Schooling Strategy 2005–2010, prepared with input from the schooling sector and community interests, will guide policy and activities across the sector over the next five years. Overall the Strategy aims to create significantly improved opportunities and outcomes for New Zealand students in terms of knowledge, skills, attitudes, values and identity.

Universal primary education is far from a new idea, but it has for good reason been dubbed ‘the ever receding goal’. Today about 104 million children of primary school age are out of school, and about 55 per cent of these are girls. As world leaders gather in New York to consider the Millennium Development Goals, Lindsay Rae asserts the primacy of universal primary education as an achievable and necessary goal.