Editor
By the time you receive the next issue of NZ Principal you will be tracking down the nearest polling booth site to vote in the general election. NZPF sees election time as an opportunity to tell all political parties what values and philosophies drive us and therefore what sort of policies we believe will build a sound and successful education system. The NZPF executive put together a manifesto which is published in this issue of NZ Principal on page 25. We hope you read it and share it with your colleagues and friends. You will see that the manifesto is prefaced with a set of principles and core values and beliefs. These include that we aspire to equity for our country; that we want collaborative and constructive relationships with Government; that schools are given equitable and adequate resourcing; that students leave school with lifelong competencies and skills; that schools are locally controlled through their own Boards of Trustees; that we have high quality teachers in front of children. We also believe that students must be central to any educational debate; that empowered and supported principals enhance the quality of education and that equity of access to life-long learning for principals is essential for a quality education system. What follows in terms of the particulars can then be understood because every statement is consistent with the values and principles. We expect that our political parties do the same. An examination of the websites of the major political parties participating in the up-coming election shows that they all list a set of values or principles for their party somewhere on their party website. I thought it may be interesting to check out the current Government partners’ websites in relation to education and see how true they have been to their values. Given the constraints of space, I have chosen the National and Act parties since they are the two leading education policy currently. The ACT party is a minor party in the Government’s coalition arrangement and the ACT leader has an Associate role in Education. The ACT website states in the values section that ACT will ‘empower individuals and households by expanding their options for educating their children.’ There is no denying that the ACT party has been true to its value statement. ACT has always promoted the expansion of Charter schools as an additional option for parents and has openly espoused the idea that freedom of choice is a good thing. More choice promotes competition and higher performance, according to ACT’s statement of beliefs. These beliefs are completely consistent with classical liberal principles upon which the ACT party was formed.
The National party is less specific about education in their values statements but the party website tells us they value enterprise, hard work and the rewards that go with success. They aspire to a New Zealand where all New Zealanders can flourish. Their values include loyalty to democratic principles, equal citizenship and equal opportunity, individual freedom and choice, personal responsibility, competitive enterprise and reward for achievement, strong families and caring communities. From these we might extrapolate that success leads to rewards; there will be equity across the country with all New Zealanders having equal opportunities and equality of status as citizens and democratic practices will be the norm. In applying these to education, let’s look first at democratic processes being the norm. We immediately see one bright coloured blot on the landscape. It is the Education Council and the appointment by the Minister, of its members. It is a very sore point with the sector and will remain so. It is also a very obvious example of National not following its own values. National should be called out on this one. We’d score them a fail grade for democratic practices. On the equity issues, National recognised that we were not achieving equality of results for New Zealand students. They calculated that one in five New Zealand children was not getting a fair deal from education. These included Māori, Pacific Island children, children with special needs and children from low socio-economic backgrounds. Their answer to the problem was to introduce national standards. Many would suggest that a better solution might have been to first address biculturalism, poverty and the lack of specialist support services for schools. The question is however did the national standards policy fix inequities? The national standards scores across the country in reading, writing and maths, after eight years, have hardly shifted. The investment then is not paying with results. One thing we do know is that our Māori children, who are one of the target groups don’t get a mention in any of National or ACT’s education policies. National standards data however do tell us that national standards have not significantly lifted the achievement of Māori students nor any other targeted group. The inequities remain. So, a second fail grade. That said, the National Government was not wrong to address Māori success rates. Had they sought solutions democratically and in collaboration with the profession they would almost certainly have been more successful with the equity issue and scored two pass grades at once.