Editor
Much is happening in education at a political level. Every day the media reveals another reason for the Minister to continue the government’s crusade of radical reform. A recent headline in the Dominion Post drew attention to some examples of school finances not being properly managed. Whether these examples represent tiny or larger transgressions from perfect practice, the story fuels the Minister’s desire for a review of the governance structures of schools. This is not an isolated example. Over the past few years we have witnessed countless media stories giving support to educational reform. They have led to the justification for standardised assessment in the form of National Standards, discussions about merit pay, the introduction of public–private partnerships, governance review and now to US model charter schools. In this issue (pp. 5–7) Emeritus Professor Ivan Snook reports on a study he and others are undertaking on charter schools and concludes that they are unlikely to make a positive difference for New Zealand children. If we look at these reforms collectively, as Paul Drummond does in his president’s column, we can see how they fit together. They all draw breath from the same source. The source is a particular world view and is common in conservative thinking circles. It is a thinking that views education first as a product. From this point of view you start by defining the product you want. You identify the needs, make the plans to produce the product, implement the plans and then check whether what has been produced matches the original objectives. Such productbased approaches involve working on, not with, people. The focus is on changing individuals in ways set out by others. It entails teaching skills and attributes which employers and politicians consider desirable. Such approaches are not driven by dialogue. Anti-conversational and anti-democratic tendencies mean that product approaches are not compatible with much that educators, parents and children currently value about educational experiences. It is easy to translate the current education reforms into this product approach. First you define the product you want. In this case the Minister has announced she wants 85 per cent of students gaining NCEA Level 2 in five years’ time. She has made it clear that NCEA Level 2 is the most basic qualification that employers require. Next is to identify what needs to be done in order to achieve the target. In this case it is to reduce underachievement by introducing National Standards at primary and middle school. Next is to devise a plan and implement it. This involves producing the National Standards and implementing them in all primary-level schools, identifying opportunities to trial some charter schools, incentivising teachers through performance pay, producing school league tables to provide competition between
schools to incentivise higher performance, encouraging a culture of competition within and between schools to lift performance. The next step is to check whether what is produced matches the original objectives. That is a simple calculation of whether there are 85 per cent of students with NCEA Level 2 in 5 years’ time. Under a product approach, where the education output has the specific purpose of placing more people in employment – that is assuming that there are jobs for all these NCEA Level 2 graduates – it is not unreasonable to think that you could calculate how this output might affect the GDP of the country. We can be certain that in New Zealand, there is such an intention because the Secretary to the Treasury has already calculated a financial return for the country’s future educational investment. Mr Makhlouf predicts that by lifting the student achievement rate 25 PISA points, the GDP of our country can be lifted by 3–15 per cent by 2070. Whilst Mr Makhlouf ’s prediction has received a high degree of criticism, including that he fails to take account of other factors that might influence GDP such as world wars, economic recessions or natural disasters, nevertheless, the product approach does attract such predictions. It invites a simple ‘cause and effect’ argument, only in education things are far from that simple. Dr John Clark gives Mr Makhlouf ’s predictions a thorough critique on p. 26 of this issue. The product approach is a simple process and works very well if you are producing, for example, a car. First, you can produce the car under controlled conditions. Second, you want every car coming out looking the same. You want all the component parts the same and the way the bits fit together will not vary. You can easily measure progress and even incentivise your work force to work faster, longer hours or more efficiently by offering staff bonuses. Finally, you can easily check whether you have reached your stated target of increasing the number of cars coming out of your factory by a simple comparative calculation. It is accountability made easy. Educating children is not, however, like producing cars. Children do not arrive at school like car parts arriving in a factory. Not only are they all individuals, the variation amongst them spans the entire spectrum of ability. They arrive from vastly different family backgrounds. Their family resources are all different too and each of them arrives with a particular set of attitudes and cultural knowledge which may or may not sit comfortably with the values of the school. Their expectations and the expectations of their families are different, so to set an end target and expect that there is national consensus about that target is misguided thinking. The product approach is simply the wrong model. Keep it for the cars, not for educating kids.