School ball costs have soared as social pressure leads more girls to spend up to $300 in salons.

Auckland University of Technology's Manukau campus will be expanded to allow the number of students to more than quadruple by 2020, Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment Minister Steven Joyce announced today.

Promising Maori academics are being given a hand to study in some of the world's leading universities - with a dash of magic thrown in.

More New Zealand employers are ignoring candidates with the best university grades in favour of those who clearly demonstrate skills, a conference has heard.

NZ's education system has been treading water and its students will lose out in the global race for the best jobs unless change is embraced, a visiting expert warns.

New Zealand schools have less of a mix of rich and poor students than in the past, a new report shows.

The Post Primary Teachers Association have released research they believe shows it is inaccurate and simplistic to say one in five New Zealand students is failing in education.

Michael Burgess gets totally immersed in a foreign language.

The Novopay debacle is being blamed for delaying the release of National Standards data - an excuse described as odd by a leading unionist.

Being underprepared and not getting enough sleep are reasons why New Zealand school children are lagging behind their international counterparts, research has found.

A teacher at a childcare centre has been censured after she was caught on camera stealing food from the lunchboxes of her pupils.

A hardline Government policy to recoup student loan debt by arresting serious defaulters at the border has proved popular in a Herald-DigiPoll survey.

Wellington's new Anglican Dean was surprised the church would want to hire him, as he was a "dodgy Baptist" pastor with criminal convictions.

Look up "policeman" in an online Maori dictionary and you used to find a suggestion that police carrying warrants should be "kicked in the backside" and thrown out.

A Christchurch school has today launched a last-ditch legal battle in a desperate bid to stay open.

The first panicky headlines that came out of Timbuktu in January this year announced that thousands of ancient texts in the town's library had been incinerated.

When Tristan Cosio started school a fortnight ago he was ready and prepped. New school bag? Yes. New lunch box? You bet. Ministry of Health B4 School Check? No.

An intermediate school had to partially compensate parents for a box of students' phones stolen during school hours.

Huntly College has led a handful of schools in doing away with donations - a change principal Tim Foy said was driven by the needs of parents.

Parents are paying hundreds of dollars to prop up free school education with one of the country's top colleges asking for close to $1000, a survey has found.

Primary school students spend nearly an hour each night doing homework, a national survey says, but some parents and teachers question the value of after-school study.