ACT's Simon Court

The government has set new literacy and numeracy standards that students will need to take alongside NCEA.

However almost two-thirds of students failed the writing standard assessment in the latest NCEA literacy and numeracy pilot.

For our weekly catchup with the ACT Party, News & Editorial Jessica Hopkins spoke to David Seymour about their response to the results of the pilot. 

It was announced yesterday that the Ministry of Education will step in to fund Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand, which recently lost its Creative New Zealand funding.

In a statement, Creative New Zealand clarified that they support Shakespeare being in schools but that they can't meet the demand for funding.

For our weekly catchup with ACT party deputy leader Brooke van Velden, Jess asked Brooke why the ACT party is against Creative New Zealand's decision.

The ACT party are renewing calls to reduce the mandated isolation period for those who test positive for COVID-19.

Previously they've called for a reduction down to 72 hours of isolation in line with Singapore's requirements but their latest push has been to match Australia's recent scrapping of the mandated isolation period altogether.

For his weekly catchup with the ACT party, Casper questioned David Seymour about his stance on isolation periods as well as a recently announced Ukraine aid fundraising event that the party will be hosting in a couple of weeks' time.

On Monday the government announced the scrapping of the traffic light covid-19 protection framework, as well as the easing of many key restrictions.

Mask wearing will now no longer be required outside of healthcare settings, household contacts don’t need to isolate, and all vaccine mandates will cease at the end of the month.

For Casper's interview with ACT Party deputy leader Brooke van Velden, which he has taken over from Alex, they spoke about this announcement and how it has been received by the ACT Party.