OH, WHAT FUN! HOWICK SANTA PARADE ❯❯ SEE MORE PHOTOS INSIDE
Botany and Ormiston
Est. 2015
SKY IS THE LIMIT Rescued by Mother Teresa, how polioafflicted Gautam Lewis got wings – page 3
A NAME YOU CAN TRUST! Thursday, December 8, 2016
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EDUCATION
POLITICS
Another slip-up for NZQA
Race to top J
ohn Key’s sudden resignation as Prime Minister and leader of the National Party created shock waves around New Zealand and the world on Monday. The National Party caucus will hold a meeting this Monday (December 12) to decide the new party leader and Prime Minister. That is also when Mr Key will tender his resignation. He has endorsed Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Bill English as his replacement. On Tuesday, Mr English announced that he would contest the National Party leadership and so did Police and Corrections Minister Judith Collins and Health Minister Jonathan Coleman. At the Times’ deadline yesterday, other ministers had also not ruled out contesting the leadership.
Vol 2, No 48
Mr Key will stay on as MP for Helensville for now, to avoid the need for a byelection, but will stand down before next year’s general election. Botany MP Jami-Lee Ross, reacting to the shock announcement, said: “A sad day for the country. John Key is an amazing man and we have all learnt so much serving in his caucus.”
■ BY LAURA BROOKES
I
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Deputy Prime Minister Bill English who was in our neck of the woods at the formal launch of the Ormiston Town Centre has been highly recommended as next PM by John Key. Times Photo Wayne Martin.
t was the news that left Botany Downs Secondary College students reeling with frustration: NZQA’s latest round of mistakes made across all levels of this year’s examinations. On November 24, Year 12 student Kimberley Jayapalen sat the Level Two calculus and Level Two probability papers, only to receive a text from her tuition centre later that day, asking whether she had seen the reports about errors in examination papers. “I thought maybe it was the algebra exam because that’s the one I found difficult, but it turned out to be the two exams I thought I was doing okay in...I was completely freaked out about it, so I checked online. It’s a national embarrassment,” she says. Year 12 student Idreis Abdo sat the same papers, and with future plans to study software engineering at university, the 17-year-old said he was very frustrated at the extra pressure put on students as a result of the mistakes. In addition to the Level Two papers, there have also been mistakes in an NCEA scholarship statistics exam, a Level One maths exam and a Level Three statistics exam.
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