WHAT’S ON TOP? CHOICES . . . Helen Kinsey-Whiteman
It is a fact of 21st century living that we expect to be given choice. But does more choice in government funded education mean higher quality education? Do we have enough information to make good choices? Do countries with greater choice in education do better for their children? I am currently on my biennual trip to the UK to visit my family. This year we flew to Paris. Despite the amazing pastries, the view over Paris from the Eiffel Tower and the stunning art in the Louvre – my favourite moment was queuing for my Paris Visité transport pass at 6am in the Gare du Nord. I decided I would attempt to purchase this en Français – 5 years of French at High School should have made this easy. After 10 minutes of queuing during which I endlessly rehearsed my request, the girl behind the counter smiled and I gave it my best shot – miraculously she nodded, asked how many days I wanted the pass for (in French!)
and gave me directions to the platform. Despite the early hour and the jetlag, I was jubilant! Back at home I checked out my school reports and found that I achieved my best grades in French and yet did not continue beyond Year 11 – I have no idea why. I have spent most of my adult life in countries where I did not speak the first language – would I have felt more confident about acquiring those languages if I had made the choice to continue learning French? Our educational choices can have a long standing impact. When we return to New Zealand my 2½ year old will start Kohanga Reo. Since we left Manu has celebrated his bicultural heritage by performing a haka at full throttle in every airport and railway station with the acoustics to ensure that his efforts will be appreciated. Being an intelligent 2 year old he always gets a gleam in his eye when he gets to “whakawhiti te ra.” I appreciate that we are able to choose a pre-school where he will learn Te Reo and I know that he will learn fast – it’s just that we may not be able to keep up! However, my small triumph at the railway station has given me the confidence to have a go. Parental choice is a recurring theme in the British media at present. Firstly because the UK is currently experiencing a measles outbreak, this is attributed to research published 15 years ago which incorrectly linked the MMR vaccine with autism and deterred a great many parents from having their children vaccinated. The well-intentioned choices of these parents are having an impact on the nation. Parental choice is a theme in education too. The performance of both academies and newly introduced free schools is a hot topic. As part of the discussion leading to legislation allowing the introduction of Free Schools, a 2010 British Parliamentary briefing paper stated: “Successive governments have aimed to promote greater diversity of school provision to improve school standards. Academies are independent publicly-funded schools, established and managed by sponsors, and mostly funded by central government. Individual academies must be run according to their funding agreement with central government. They are not allowed to make a profit; no fees are paid by parents, and the School Admissions Code applies.” The paper concludes, “The evidence relating to the educational performance of free and charter schools is mixed, and some argue that free schools increase social segregation, with pupils attending such schools coming from better-off, more educated families.” Free Schools are a type of academy set up by groups of parents, teachers, charities, businesses, universities, trusts, religious or voluntary groups, but funded directly by central government. They can be run by an “education provider” – an organisation or company brought in by the group setting up the school – but these
firms are not allowed to make a profit. The schools are established as academies, independent of local authorities and with increased control over teachers’ pay and conditions, the length of school terms and days and their curriculum – although government guidance does not permit free school bids from religious groups advocating creationism as an alternative to evolution. Media attention is currently focussed on the financial manage ment of academies. Two of the major academy groups have been issued notices preventing them from opening more schools pending inquiries into their finances. One of these chains paid its director almost $300,000 (NZ $550,000) in pay and pension contributions in 2011. As parents it feels empowering to think of ourselves as consumers of education and to make choices about the education our children receive. However, there seems to be little if any hard evidence that market type systems in education do improve standards. A review entitled Recent Research on Parental Choice and School Autonomy in Three Countries by Geoff Whitty carried out in 1997 concludes that: “Many advocates of choice and school economy base their support on claims that competition will enhance the efficiency and responsiveness of schools and thus increase their effectiveness. Many hoped that market forces would overcome a levelling down tendency that they ascribed to bureaucratic systems of mass education, while others saw them as a way of giving disadvantaged children the sorts of opportunities hitherto available only to those who could afford to buy them through private schooling or their position in the housing market. Yet these hopes are not being realised and are unlikely to be realised in the context of broader
policies that do nothing to challenge deeper social and cultural inequalities . . . In current circumstances in England, New Zealand and US not only have the positive benefits claimed for the reforms yet to be forthcoming, research suggests that far from breaking the links between educational and social inequality reforms may even intensify these links unless appropriate safeguards are put in place.” It is interesting to note that Sweden, where the free school model used in the UK originated, has shown a significant decline in performance on PISA whilst the OECD report on 2009 results states that, “The best performing school systems manage to provide high-quality education to all students . . . regardless of their own background or the school they attend.” It seems that, if we know what is good for our children, we may need to ask our government for less parental choice in education. An election winner? Maybe not . . . References 1 Quasi-Markets in Education: A Review of Recent Research on Parental Choice and School Autonomy in Three Countries. By Geoff Whitty, Review of Research in Education Vol. 22, (1997), pp. 3–47 Published by: American Educational Research Association 2 PISA 2009 Results: Overcoming Social Background Equity in Learning Opportunities and Outcomes 3 Why is school choice a major area of political debate? Parliamentary briefing paper 2010