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Late last year Education Minister Parata, along with her Ministry of Education, announced intentions to ‘update’ parts of the Education Act 1989. A pretend consultation exercise was part of their game plan with an eye towards an Education Amendment Bill that will most likely go before Parliament this year. The timeframe for the consultation was a meager few weeks, with submissions closing at one of the busiest times during the concluding days of the school year. In effect, opportunity for widespread and well-considered public discussion was largely denied, despite the Ministry of Education saying we all had an important role to play in this consultation. Yet again, there is justification for thinking that Ms Parata’s mind is already made up on the changes she intends to make – regardless of what others might think or say. The Tomorrow’s Schools reforms introduced in the late 1980s were enshrined in a new Education Act. In spinning up her justification for the latest changes to that Principal Act (others changes to the Act have already been made by this Minister), Ms Parata said ‘A lot has changed since then (1989), but the Act which sets the legislative framework for schools remains the same’. This statement is blatantly untrue, and can only be interpreted as manipulation of a naïve and oft ill-informed public mind. In fact, the present Government along with its predecessors has made a considerable number of changes to the 1989 Act (NZPF found 79 amendments in total) as well as significant changes to the regulations governing schools (the National Education Guidelines). National Standards, mandatory reporting systems for school boards, charter schools, and a new Minister-appointed Teachers’ Council are recent examples. A lot has changed in the Act since 1989, so why did Ms Parata say there had been none? After all, she would know! Let’s be clear that not everything is up for review in the Act. Matters the Minister has specifically excluded, are the tertiary sector, early childhood and school curriculum (good), changes that would increase government spending on education, her government’s National Standards, Partnership (Charter) Schools, the Education Council and, of course, its highly problematic scheme coined ‘Investing in Educational Success’. The topics permitted for discussion include the goals for education, setting national priorities for learners aged 0 to 18 so that schools will know what is expected of them, making clear what is required of school boards (including how they plan and report), more flexible arrangements for the governance and management of schools (such as one principal managing several schools), and allowing schools to admit new entrant groups of students at set times in the year rather than on their 5th birthday.
Political justifications for proposed changes to the Act should be carefully scrutinized, and not simply taken at surface level. It is not enough for the Minister to repeat ad nauseam that it’s all about putting kids first, raising their achievement, or improving the quality of teaching. The public is entitled to see the evidence that irrefutably proves the proposed law changes will confidently achieve such ends. Precedent, however, gives reason for serious doubt. National Standards, for example, were sold to the public on the promise of addressing poor achievement by one in five children who struggle to reach competency in reading, writing and maths. Yet Ministry of Education data make clear that there has been negligible true improvement over the five years of their implementation, despite the huge concentration of time, energy, resources and reporting rules required of schools. The problem of
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underachievement is simply not a matter that schools alone can resolve; yet repeatedly the impression is given that they are the most responsible and accountable. There seems to be an official denial of true causations behind chronic underachievement, probably because they are politically inconvenient. In updating the Act, the Minister is wont to set down in law the purpose and goals of education, probably as she sees it. Her wellworn catch cry of ‘raising student achievement’ is predictable, despite serious issues of narrow interpretation by regulators and others that are becoming all too evident. On the surface, enshrining the State’s purposes and goals for education in law might seem laudable, but New Zealand already has these in its mandatory National Education Guidelines, and they would be very hard to argue. The first such goal, for example, is The highest standards of achievement, through programmes which enable all students to realise their full potential as individuals, and to develop the values needed to become full members of New Zealand’s society. Another of the 10 national education goals states Development of the knowledge, understanding and skills needed by New Zealanders to compete successfully in the modern, ever-changing world. Right up the Government’s alley, I would have thought. So what, then, is the justification for changing such goals, or for putting them in the Education Act when already they are well conceived and have the force of law? There is none.
And is it something of an impertinence to say that the Act needs to be changed so that schools will know what is expected of them, and make clear what is required of school boards? These matters are already sufficiently spelled out in the National Administration Guidelines – a set of regulations that were instituted for that very purpose. Then again, if the intention is to reign in some of the excesses of those wayward Board members who descend upon some schools from time to time, that could be a good thing. Perhaps an EDUCANZ equivalent to oversee school boards that is independent of NZSTA? The Government’s eagerness to open the way for different forms of school control and leadership, resourcing and organization, is perhaps the key intention behind the changes to the Act, with items of the kind mentioned above being mere deflections. These are likely to stem from its Investing in Educational Success (IES) scheme, which is essentially about grouping schools into clusters being called ‘Communities of Learners’ with a ‘lead principal’ and ‘expert teachers’ who are given significant financial enticements to oversee the performance of others. So far, there has been little appetite for this, and many have serious doubts that this will actually lead to improved student achievement in its richest sense – despite all of the spin. The question remains, therefore: will changes in the law really prove to advance the best interests of schools, their students, teachers and communities? The Government will undoubtedly go ahead with them regardless, because that’s the way it does its business.
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