Allison Rudd

Six teaching positions are likely to disappear at Otago Polytechnic after an unexpected decline in student numbers.

Child Youth and Family is "fully reviewing" its involvement with a Dunedin family, whose 22-month-old girl died last week, to see if it could have done more to help.

A Community day which brought together southern police officers and other agencies tackling family violence, for the first time, will be repeated, its organiser says.

Health managers from the South Island want all district health boards to stop paying for private patients' laboratory tests.

The success of the University of Otago's Leading Thinkers funding programme has helped the institution reach a budget surplus of $26 million for the 2007 year.

The first of 10 University of Otago students who will receive scholarships to study Theravada Buddhism have been named.

The cost of a tertiary education is shaping up again as a major election-year issue. Student debt levels are spiralling and student leaders have renewed calls for a universal student allowance. But, as tertiary education reporter Allison Rudd discovered, that goal appears to be an unrealistic expectation and the country's half million or so students face more years of "scrooging it".