John Lewis

Ann Venables is adamant she has not retired - she has just stopped teaching.

Associate Education Minister Craig Foss has announced a $4.6 million to upgrade Carisbrook School, but principal Ben Sincock is livid at how long it has taken the ministry to get the redevelopment approved.

Concerned about the number of Chinese people becoming Dunedin residents without knowing anything about their new home, Kevin Zhang has begun showing them what the Southern city has to offer.

An announcement is expected this week on funding for the proposed upgrade of Carisbrook School - nearly three and a-half months after the building work was supposed to have been completed.

Shania Hutton may be absent from school, but she has certainly not been forgotten by her St Clair School classmates.

It's not unusual to hear beatboxing or rap music spilling down the corridors from Tom McFadden's work space in the division of sciences at the University of Otago.

As the bagpipes played Going Home, the ashes of Norman MacLeod were scattered across a long-lasting monument he built with his own hands.

The Royal Albatross Centre at Taiaroa Head is to close to the public for two months during the winter while the facility is refurbished.

China is now home to about 1.3 billion people, and only a fraction of them have ever heard a brass band.

Questions have been raised about a claim by Sotheby's Auction House in London that it is about to auction what is believed to be the first golf clubs made in New Zealand.

Education Minister Hekia Parata's claim that teachers and principals are the only people who can raise achievement levels in New Zealand schools, is a "thinly disguised veil" of her intent to introduce performance pay for teachers, a senior lecturer at the University of Otago College of Education says.

She's thin, 2.3m tall, fiery and quick to fly off the mark.