NZ schools get top marks from James Nesbitt

October 8, 2012


International screen star James Nesbitt has given New Zealand's education system top marks. The Hobbit star was most impressed with his kids' schooling during his stay.

Nesbitt, star of numerous hit British television dramas such as Murphy's Law and Jekyll, moved his young family to Wellington for a year while filming a role in The Hobbit and he has been raving about the time his daughters Peggy, 14, and Mary, 11, spent at school there.

The 47-year-old told Britain's Daily Telegraph he was impressed with the way Kiwi schools do not have the same preoccupation with targets and exams that they do in England.

Mary loved having lessons on the beach on hot days, he added, and his eldest daughter Peggy, who attended high school in Wellington, enjoyed herself so much she didn't want to go home.

New Zealand's does not measure children's achievement as rigorously as the UK, nor subject them to standardised tests till the end of high school, and that, said Nesbitt, was a good thing.

"It was a very good education, actually," he explains. "They don't have the same notion of targets, or the obsession with exams, or the same nightmare amount of homework."

The Principal of the Wellington school said he had just returned from a visit to London, so he could understand how Nesbitt's kids would enjoy themselves here.

"Over there, there are high walls and fences around a lot of the schools and as a visitor I had to be buzzed through an electric gate," he said.

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