Education

Labour has had more success fulfilling its education promises than in areas like housing and health, although its wins have not been uniform across the board.

Education Minister Chris Hipkins clearly likes to centralise things. He is moving ahead with his huge programme to roll all the polytechs and institutes of technology into one gigantic institution, against considerable lobbying.

Hipkins also commissioned a massive review of the Tomorrow's Schools framework which has set out how schools have been governed since the late 1980s. He is yet to respond to the findings of that review – which recommends sweeping changes to make schools far less competitive and less reliant on their boards of trustees.

He's also ended the charter school experiment pushed by ACT – a big win for the teacher unions – and negotiated his way through the teachers' "mega-strike", eventually finding $1.4b extra money for them, and restoring pay parity between primary and secondary school teachers.

In tertiary education the Government moved quickly to establish its "fees-free" policy for first academic students, so students in the 2018 academic year could take advantage of it. Students at university can access it for their first year while those in apprenticeships can access it for their first two. The scheme has not significantly lifted enrolment numbers, which has ended up making it cheaper than the Government expected, and led to some criticism.

Hipkins has argued that the Government is a victim of its own success here, as the tight labour market means it is much easier for young people to get jobs and opt not to study. Either way, there are thousands of kids with less student debt than would otherwise be the case.

The minister also moved fast to boost the student loan living costs and student allowance (that doesn't have to be paid back) by $50 per week, as promised. But a commitment to restore the post-graduate student allowance is missing, presumed dead.

It is not the only promise in trouble. The pledge to end school donations by offering schools $150 per student if they promised not to ask for donations has been shrunken to only cover decile 1-8 schools, and has only been taken up by about a third of the schools eligible.