Education  Tags: education educ teaching teach curriculum  

A good place to start looking for New Zealand education information is the library catalogue. As well as books on the topic, you will find research reports from the Ministry of Education and the New Zealand Council for Educational Research etc., theses, conference proceedings and more.

Use one of the databases below to search for references to New Zealand journal articles and newspaper articles.

To find theses from other New Zealand universities, search on the Australasian Digital Theses Program. You can read the abstracts or full thesis online.

For New Zealand articles we recommend starting with Index New Zealand or the Australia/New Zealand reference centre, but you can also look in the international databases, such as ERIC, PsychInfo, or Education Research Complete.

If you are doing a keyword search to find articles on a topic, pop in Zealand as a keyword along with your topic keywords.

Remember that some of the international databases, such as ERIC may need the American spelling or term to understand your search. You can use truncation to cover both spelling options, ie. labo*r, will get you results for labour and labor.

Tutorial on finding articles.

Index New Zealand

Index New Zealand is the main database for finding New Zealand and/or Maori articles. It does not give you the full article, but will tell you which publication and issue it comes from. Then you will need to go and find an electronic or paper copy of the article from the library's holdings. If we don't hold it, you may be able to interloan it.

There are various ways of searching Index New Zealand. If you are starting with a topic, then you will need to do a keyword search.

A Keyword Relevance search will look for words located anywhere in the record. When more than one keyword is entered, the records retrieved will contain all of the keywords. Search results are displayed with the most relevant records appearing first.

Type in the word(s) or phrases you want. 

Focus or expand your search

For effective searching, use special characters to focus or expand your search:

• Use ? after a term to truncate, eg: child? will retrieve child, childhood, children.  The truncation symbol can also be used before and within words. (NB. The truncation character used in most other databases is *)
• Use quotation marks for phrases, eg: "yellow eyed penguin"
• In advanced search you can choose "as a phrase" from the dropdown box which will keep the keywords together in much the same way as the quotation marks do in the above example.

Online

Education Counts
The Ministry of Education's online space for you to access statistical data, quantitative information and research about the education sector.

Statisphere
Information about NZ's official statistics searchable by subject.

Books in the Library

Education statistics of New Zealand
LB 745 .N532e
Education Library Level 2

A range of mainly historical education statistics can be found in the Official Publications Collection on level 3 of the Central Library.

 Journal articles

Education statistics are often published in newspaper or in journal articles. Remember to use the word 'statistics' in your search. Key databases for New Zealand statistics are:

This is a brief introduction to some historical sources of information held in the Education Library. For specialist help, ask at the Macmillan Brown Library.

For information on the structure of Government education information, see Archives New Zealand's reference guide to education.

1. Ordinances of the Province of Canterbury

These contain a few education ordinances which include such things as the setting up of schools and employment of teachers.

2. Education Reports from the Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (A to Js):

Education: Annual Report to the Minister of Education 1892-1894, 1901-1916
Includes lists of schools, teachers' names, reports of (regional) Education Boards

Report of the Minister of Education/Report of the Department of Education 1925-1989
Contains all sorts of useful info about schools and education but no lists of names

Education: annual examinations, reports 1904-1915
Contains lists of candidates and copies of exams for teachers' certificates, admission to or promotion in the Civil Service, Junior National Scholarships, and junior and senior free places in secondary and technical schools.

Education: Higher Education: annual report of the Minister of Education 1909-1913
Includes, amongst others, the Report of the Canterbury College which includes, the 'normal' departments, Boys' High, Girls' High and Canterbury Public Library)

Education: Industrial Schools 1902-1908

Education: Manual and Technical Instruction 1900, 1903-1914

Education: Native Schools 1905-1915

Education of Native Children 1930-1934, 1945-46

Education of Maori Children 1946-1953

Education: Primary Education 1909-1912, 1914-1915, 1918

Education: Primary and Post-Primary 1940-1943, 1946-1953

Education: Secondary Education 1903-1924

Education: School for the Deaf/Special schools, and infant life protection 1904-1915
Includes schools for the deaf, the blind, and the "feeble-minded"

Education: Reports of inspectors of schools 1903-1907

Education: Public school cadets 1902-1908

These are in the Education Library's lending collection. Full runs of the Appendices are in the Law Library, almost full runs at Central and MB.

3. Reports of district/provincial Education Boards

Report of the Board of Education/Province of Canterbury Report /Education Board of the District of Canterbury Report /Education Board of the District of North Canterbury covering 1872-1964
Includes such things as inspectors' reports, lists of staff and salaries, students receiving scholarships, reports on candidates for provincial government scholarships and reports for Christchurch Training College.
Held in Stack Reference.

4. Acts and Papers relating to Education 1959-1988

This is a collection of material compiled by the Education Library. It includes: Acts, Regulations, Reports on primary, post-primary and Maori schools, teachers registers and salaries, OECD reports, education statistics and more.
Held in Stack Reference.

5. New Zealand Education Gazette 1921- current

This is the official publication of the Education Department. It includes official notices, articles, appointments (early copies) and job adverts.
Held in the lending collection.

6. Other long runs of journals include:

Education 1949-1982
National Education 1919-1989 (later became NZEI Rourou)
Journal/Post Primary Teachers' Association 1955-1980
These are in our lending collection.

7. Searching for books:

Finding specific topics requires some persistence. To get an idea of useful subject headings, try the subject keywords education Zealand history then browse through the results, looking at the subject headings of useful books.

For broad historical overviews of education, try a subject begins with search:
Education - New Zealand - History
Maori - Education - History

For school histories (held at Macmillan Brown library), try a subject begins with search using this structure:
High schools New Zealand -- Havelock North - History
Elementary schools New Zealand - Cheviot History