Michael Johnston: Modern learning environments have exit doors after all

For most of the 2010s, if schools wanted funding for new classrooms, the Ministry of Education insisted that they build Modern Learning Environments (MLEs). These are large, open-plan classrooms, sometimes housing more than a hundred children and their teachers.

In 2022, The New Zealand Initiative published a report on MLEs. Its title was No Evidence, No Evaluation, No Exit, and that seemed to sum it up.

Well, the first two were right, anyway.