The Government will invest $80.5 million of operating funding over four years to lift educational achievement, including funding for behaviour programmes.

It's exam time for applicants hoping to run charter schools, the Act Party's competitive prod at state schools which are said to be failing too many Maori, Pacific and other "disadvantaged" kids.

United Future leader Peter Dunne has said he won't support a bill to introduce charter schools. However, the bill will go ahead with National, Act and Maori Party support.

There are no plans to replicate the way Christchurch schools have been rationalised elsewhere in the country, Education Minister Hekia Parata has assured primary school principals.

A teacher from an exclusive Auckland school is subject to investigation, understood to be over a mystery illness and claims she behaved inappropriately with a student.

Education Minister Hekia Parata has corrected an answer to Parliament about the resignation of Education Secretary Lesley Longstone.

Education Minister Hekia Parata is refusing to budge on Thursday's Christchurch schools closure and merger deadline in spite of an Ombudsman's Office investigation into the consultation process.

The Education Minister has accepted there's room for improvement after a rare move from the Ombudsman to investigate Education Ministry consultation processes

The Ministry of Education is bloated, inefficient and making the jobs of principals more difficult, says the outgoing president of the Secondary Principals' Association.

In this environment it almost defies belief that people continue to think they can fool the system, writes Shelley Bridgeman. Anyone who tries to cheat like this is clearly not thinking straight.

Oh-kayyyy. So Mike Williams, a former Labour Party president, calls parents who try to get their kids into higher decile schools "dumb", writes Deborah Hill Cone.

The chances of the most disadvantaged students getting any benefit from a PPP school may be no better than the toss of a coin, writes John O'Neill.

It is many years since our primary schools adopted "new maths".

The country's medical schools are lending support to a music teacher who has sounded an alarm over talented students ditching arts to pursue science studies.

In plain language, the Wanganui Collegiate integration is a taxpayer bailout for a failing private school, writes John Minto.

Parents can now pay school fees in some bookstores while picking up stationery packs as the battle for back-to-school dollars heats up.

The nerves of thousands of high school students remain on edge after NCEA results were released yesterday only to be withdrawn and the website shut down.

The release and quick withdrawal of some NCEA results early this morning has upset students and been described by one as "highly unethical".

The recent small surge in reports recounting child poverty in New Zealand make grim reading, writes Paul Moon, especially as so many of the conditions blighting children's lives can easily be remedied.

A visiting cyber-bullying expert is urging schools to make students take driver licence-style tests before they can take mobile phones and tablets to class.

Using the NCEA framework, the employment-focused model will allow students to choose a career and work towards gaining the skills they need to succeed in that job.

As students look to next year, the Herald begins a week-long investigation into why so many are leaving school without the skills they need.

Catherine Isaac says it is wrong to propose that limiting the concept in such ways could have improved the focus on helping disadvantaged children.

North Shore students have been banned from hugging during school hours because too many of them were consistently arriving late to their classes.