The latest figure of 987,000 16-24-year-olds not in work, education or training has risen by 110,000 in a year. Read...

The school lunch programme has been `turned upside down` due to the Associate Education Minister`s changes, Labour`s deputy leader says. Read...

The school lunch programme has been `turned upside down` due to the Associate Education Minister`s changes, Labour`s deputy leader says. Read...

The Prime Minister has arrived for his first trade mission of the year, with a business delegation of tech, food and beverage, and education heavy-hitters in tow. Read...

Alexander Westwood, who appeared in Netflix series Sex Education, is described as predatory. Read...

The education minister says easier residency rules for primary teachers will make New Zealand a more attractive place to move. Read...

Checkpoint obtained an email that was sent to Ministry of Education officials by a Ka Ora, Ka Ako Nutritionist after they visited some Auckland schools. Read...

Education officials say they have a `range of feedback` on the new school lunches, but have not maintained an official record of it. Read...

Back in October, we reported that Google was testing out YouTube Premium Lite, a cheaper and stripped-down subscription plan that promised a reduction (but not elimination) in ads, all without the special features in Premium (like video downloads). At the time, Premium Lite was only available to a limited number of users in Australia, Germany, and Thailand. Now, Bloomberg reports (and The Verge confirms) that Google is officially launching YouTube Premium Lite for all users in those countries while also expanding the subscription option to users in the United States. What is YouTube Premium Lite? YouTube Premium Lite offers ad-free viewing of videos without all the extra bells and whistles that come with normal Premium. If you don’t care about downloading videos for offline viewing, playing videos in the background, or the inclusion of YouTube Music, then you’d be better off paying less per month for this cheaper plan. Note, however, that YouTube Premium Lite will still display ads before music videos. How much is YouTube Premium Lite? Google hasn’t yet revealed when exactly YouTube Premium Lite will be launched in the US or how much it will cost. If you visit the YouTube Premium Lite page, it currently says “This offer is not available.” For a ballpark estimate, however, users in Australia have reported seeing Premium Lite offered for $8.99 AUD per month versus the $16.99 AUD per month of regular Premium. With YouTube Premium costing $14.99 per month in the US, Premium Lite could be $6.99 per month. Furthermore, while YouTube Premium offers Family and Student plans on top of the Individual plan, it’s unknown whether Premium Lite will offer similar accommodations. For reference, Premium Family supports up to five users for $22.99 per month while Premium Student is $7.99 per month for full-time students at higher education institutions. Further reading: I block every ad on YouTube and I’m not ashamed Read...

Could you fix your laptop if it breaks? And I mean physically fix it with tools, not just install some driver updates. According to an industry report, you might be okay if it’s an Asus or Acer model. But if you’re using a recent laptop from HP, Apple, or especially Lenovo, you’ll have some serious issues getting it up and running again. That’s according to the US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund, which commissioned a report (spotted by Ars Technica) analyzing repairability for both laptops and smartphones available to US buyers. While smartphones are getting easier to repair with better options for screen and battery replacement, the PIRG report says that improvements on the laptop side have been slow and inconsistent. The fiscal year 2025 edition gave Lenovo an “F” score, the lowest among major manufacturers. But there are some details in the data that might give you a little hope if you bought a laptop from the world’s leading PC manufacturer by volume. The PIRG gave Lenovo an abysmally low score because the company submitted only one laptop model that’s also available in the US to France’s repairability index, upon which the data is based. That one model actually scored a 7.3 out of 10 for the test, 7 for the heavily weighted disassembly portion, which isn’t terrible. Framework The French repairability index, a system that the PIRG compares to mandatory gas mileage testing on cars, will be replaced by a consolidated European system by the time next year’s report comes out. That should mean far more data available for both consumers and researchers, and hopefully a little more consistency for the PIRG report. But in the meantime, a lack of data from Lenovo means it gets a default failure. Last year’s grade for Lenovo, based on an also-low 6 models, was 5.5. That’s only above one major manufacturer, Apple, which scored a terrible 4.3 for its laptops for fiscal year 2024. For the latest set, everyone but Lenovo had either 9 or 10 models to assess, and Asus averaged 7.2 while Acer scored 7.1. Asus also got the highest rating for disassembly at an impressive 8.3. Apple showed some laudable improvement in the latest report, rising from a 4.9 to a 6.6 disassembly score. Not counting Lenovo’s disqualification, HP and Microsoft scored the lowest, with 5.9 and 6.5 grades, respectively. Both are modest improvements over last year’s scores. Repairability is not the same as upgrade options, which are still generally limited to RAM, SSD, and sometimes a network card, and only on laptops that even offer user-accessible slots for those parts. If you want the ultimate in desktop-style modular upgrades, you should check out Framework’s laptop designs. Intel has also suggested some modular laptop options that would increase both repairability and upgradability, though these recent proposals haven’t gone into production for any finished laptop designs yet. Read...