Education Studies top of the class at University of Auckland

At 33rd in the world, Education Studies is the highest ranked subject offered at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland, in the latest Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings by Subject.

The 2026 ranking evaluated 830 universities from 88 countries and territories across education studies, teacher training, and academic studies in education.

It focuses on five core areas: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry and international outlook, says head of the School of Education and Social Practice, Associate Professor Aaron Wilson.

“In its scope are things like teacher reputation, student-to-staff ratio, doctorate-to-bachelors ratio, research reputation, quality, income and impact, outcomes from industry partnerships and patents and ‘international outlook,’ meaning numbers of international students and staff, and the degree of research co-authorship across countries.”

He says the ranking particularly reflects the high quality of the school’s academic staff, many of whom are so notable in their fields, they regularly rank in the top two percent of researchers globally in areas like high teacher expectation, linguistics, and language and multilingual education.

“I’m immensely proud of the outstanding work of my colleagues whose research, teaching and partnerships with practitioners, policy makers and other academics within and beyond Aotearoa have led to this fantastic result.”

And Wilson says help is on the way for the current teacher shortage, where there are around 450 vacant teaching and principal roles nationwide, especially in Northland, and particularly in subject areas like maths and physics; a 12 percent increase on the previous year.

“This year we’ve had a pleasingly large number of postgraduate diploma students enrol in both primary and secondary teaching, so that’s great news.”

Other areas of research expertise in the broad area of education studies at Auckland include literacy improvement, maths education, equity in physical education, sexuality and relationship education, arts-based disaster and trauma recovery, applied theatre, curriculum design, achievement assessment and education in disaster zones.

The school of Education and Social Practice sits within the Faculty of Arts and Education at the University of Auckland.