Making kids less dumb, National's shame

On this week's Raw Politics video and podcast: Why the flurry of activity by the Government on school achievement and education reforms? And how does National ever get control over its scandal-prone candidate list? All of a sudden, Labour is changing its policies on schools and student achievement. The Raw Politics panel analyses its two announcements to recruit more teachers for Years 4 to 8, and marginally cut class sizes, and to delay by a year the planned NCEA testing regime for subjects other than reading, writing and maths. Plus, we return to the National Party's hapless candidate selection process, another one resigning this week even after the party's promise to weed out those with skeletons in their social media feeds. And the team looks at the report into the policing of the anti-mandate protest at Parliament, and the slim chance of Chris Luxon achieving a free trade agreement with India. Every Friday, Jo Moir, Sam Sachdeva and Tim Murphy talk through the big issues and scrutinise politicians’ performances in a lively 25-minute show aiming to take viewers and listeners inside the actions and motivations of our elected leaders.Moir is Newsroom’s political editor, having been in the gallery for eight years also with Stuff and RNZ, Sachdeva is our national affairs editor, former political editor and was a Stuff political writer and Murphy is Newsroom’s co-editor, a former member of the Parliamentary press gallery and former editor-in-chief of the NZ Herald. You can watch Raw Politics on YouTube, listen in your favourite podcast app.Send us your burning political questions to [email protected] and we’ll endeavour to find out the answer and explain the issues.