News 4/6 – Storing Sauvignon, Staff Shakeups and Singing

June 4th 2010 at 8:03am, By Dave Guerin

Jiayi Li A third arrest has been made in connection with the murder of Chinese student Jiayi Li. Reports are also being sought by the MOE from the education institutions that she was enrolled with during her time in NZ, but that really does seem like butt-covering to me. Are we really going to find much out from it other than having Ministers and the MOE look like they’re doing something?
NZQA & PTEs Stuff has picked up on the story of NZQA threatening PTEs with deregistration unless they send in their forms.
Lights Out Power was lost to engineering buildings at the University of Canterbury yesterday. I guess it would be embarrassing if the electrical engineers couldn’t get the power back on.
Cheese Rolls The ODT has turned the press release about the cheese roll competition that University of Otago staff are judging into quite a substantial story.
Car Racers’ Eyes …are pretty good, according to a University of Otago research study – this may not surprise you.
Export Academy NZI Business ran a story on the Export Academy, a PTE based in Napier that trains people how to be exporters.
Put the Sauv in the Fridge…because that’s the best place to store it, according to University of Auckland scientists.
$$ for Wine earlier in the week I wrote a post about Education NZ’s claim for more government marketing funding. I wrote that wine, along with other industries, doesn’t get such funding, but yesterday a story ran about $1.2m being given to a group of wineries to promote to the US (matched by the industry). What a waste of government funds.
Singing Competition Waiariki Institute of Technology is sponsoring New Zealand Aria, a singing competition, on the basis that they want to be associated with world class events. Personally, I don’t see the brand fit.
Tall Blacks NMIT fitness tutor Claire Dallison is the new Tall Blacks team manager.
SkyCity Training It’s great to see SkyCity being so proud of their apprentices in HSI’s annual awards – employer support for learning is so important.
Staffing Issues There are a few staffing issues on the boil right now.
- Massey University is challenging an Employment Relations Authority decision at the Employment Court. It centres on how much information should be given to staff made redundant about the process applied for decisions about appointments to new positions. The TEU had welcomed the ERA decision earlier.
- At the University of Otago, social work academics are arguing against job cuts and want social work to come first in any new departmental name. Teacher educators also want to avoid job cuts and changes to what is taught to students.