If you have a minute, check out NZQA’s new website - it looks attractive and replaces the old, rather less attractive site. It has a more accessible navigation structure and the search function has useful subcategories all in one place.

1. $45m Waihi School A $45m development outside Waihi is starting to open its doors to foreign students. The Waihi Academy of Studies will take up to 320 students and is focused on intermediate and high school students - the location and facility are designed to stop students getting into trouble, like some do in the big city. The formal opening isn’t until next year and they haven’t decided who will run the operations yet – some trial groups of 50 students are coming through this year. It has been set up by The Flying Phoenix Trust, a group of Taiwanese NZers, but they haven’t set up a PTE themselves. It’s a new development for export education in NZ and it’ll be interesting to see how it goes.
2. How R U Feeling? The Open Polytechnic is part of an international wellbeing study. You’ve got until June 30 if you want to be part of it.
3. Students’ Struggle Allison Rudd at the ODT had a long feature at the weekend about students struggling to pay the bills, with a smaller story about an Otago Poly student using the  foodbank. And some Massey students were without power for a week when rats created an electical fire, althrough the rats end up being quite crispy.
4. What you can buyfor $1.8m The University of Otago paid $1.75m for the Gardens Tavern, which might now be used as a study centre. The University has denied paying extra to have the pub close a day early – I think I suggested that, amongst others, and I’m happy to withdraw my comment. Meanwhile the University of Auckland has got a $1.8m gift to be used for fellowships in brain and bioengineering research.
5. Nappy Art An Otago Polytechnic student is making garments out of disposable nappies – there’s a good story and a photo here.
6. Boat RaceFirst year engineering students at the University of Waikato took part in an annual boat race last week on a campus lake.
7. Model Patient/Students The University’s of Otago’s Chch campus has just installed a human simulator (Alex) that can “speak, bleed, cough and pass urine”. Down in Dunedin, school students were taking part in an innovation challenge.
8. Aoraki Result Aoraki Polytechnic’s annual report is out and they had a bigger surplus than in 2008.
9. House Building Bay of Plenty Poly carpentry students are building 2 houses this year to sell for charity. You can follow their progress on this blog set up by the Poly.