School Lines Education Policy Dogma and Obsessive-Compulsive Ideology: Wonderful or Wonky? Virtuous or Vexatious? Lester Flockton
lester.flockton@otago.ac.nz
Wonderful: marvellous, glorious, superb Wonky: not straight; off-centre, lopsided, skew-whiff
cause arises out of tensions between intent (often ideological) and reality (or achievability), and the ability or inability to make insightfully critical distinctions between the means to Virtuous: correct, praiseworthy, right-minded, worthy the espoused ends. While most would willingly subscribe Vexatious: bothersome, tiresome, troublesome, problematic, to the intent behind many policy packages as virtuous (e.g. lamentable raising student achievement), many have been shown to have serious misgivings about the means (e.g. National Standards) Over the past five or so years, schools, their principals, because of the serious lack of robust evidence of efficacy, and boards and teachers have been the constant targets of a barrage of the dubious likelihood of the realisation of decreed outcomes. double-barrelled dogma from former Education Minister Parata So they desist (although in the case of National Standards, they and her servants, who have repeatedly given the impression that weren’t allowed to). Others, however, will enthusiastically enter they alone have been ordained with into practice or a package dangled the privilege of knowing what is best To take a further example: before them, believing that they are for their subjects (i.e. those subjected professionally obliged because the to their ideological dogma). Any communities of learners intent is virtuous (or wonderful if collaboration has been strictly on – a policy package that was you’re the excitable type). their terms – and no recording To take a further example: devices allowed in the room! communities of learners – a policy designed by Government Moreover, since the high and package that was designed by mighty hold the guns (make the and senior bureaucrats for Government and senior bureaucrats rules, decide where the money goes, the declared purpose of raising for the declared purpose of raising who gets how much, and who is student achievement, and most chosen to step up to the footlight student achievement, and particularly in National Standards parade for celebratory medals), and NCEA. Thinking outside of the there has been an expectation that most particularly in National Government’s square, communities the sheeple will come to fall in line Standards and NCEA. of learners are known to be as old for fear of consequences from falling as the hills. They are nothing new. out of line. On one occasion, for example, when the high-and- Done well, they are intrinsically virtuous! But ‘heighdy, heighdy, mighty addressed a meeting of principals, it was said that if they misery me, lackaday dee’, they have been cast by Government couldn’t ‘hack it’ they should get out! She is always right. They are into a wonky and vexatious formulaic paradigm riddled with invariably wrong. Such is the climate that has been created in the bureaucratic rules and intrusiveness. midst of the relentless chime of ‘raising student achievement’ and Take yet another example (and there are many): school decile ‘improving the quality of teaching’, albeit according to ill-proven rankings. ideas typically imported and reconstituted from others’ systems. The once-upon-a-time education minister was intent on One of the most disastrous consequences of this ‘rule and scrapping them. Justification? They have created an offensive conquer’ dictum has been what we might call professional stigma for lower ranked schools and failed to more accurately divisionism. There are those who gladly put their hand up target discretionary money where it is needed. Again, on the (for whatever reasons – and I’m being polite), those who surface, this seems virtuous. And that’s the level at which most of reluctantly and unbelievingly put their hand up (life involves policy rationale has been formulated – on the surface. After all, compromises), and others who steadfastly keep their thumbs most are ignorant of what sits below the surface and underlying pointing resolutely down (they are not convinced, and it’s not a causation, particularly the all-important voting sheeple and matter of disobedience). This spiraling trend towards divisionism media people. So what does sit beneath the surface in this matter? among principals must be of very considerable concern to David Lange, former Prime Minister and Minister of Education, those charged with leading their professional organisations. It had a determined commitment to equity in his Tomorrow’s puts them on a tight rope. Indeed, this whole degeneration is Schools reforms. He understood that some communities in ripe for a revelationary and award winning PhD dissertation, if our society are severely disadvantaged while others are highly you’re keen! advantaged. The evidence was clear. Those in advantaged areas An analysis of this parlous state suggests that the underlying prospered in education, whereas those in disadvantage struggled.
To help redress this imbalance of opportunity to succeed, there would be a new provision of ‘equity funding’ under the reformed administration of education. Those with less should get more. But a system requires an administrative mechanism for this to be put into practice, hence the ranking of schools according to deciles. Moreover, additional funding would need to be sourced for the scheme, so his solution was the considerable down sizing of Government and quasi Government bureaucracies then redirecting the money to schools. The Ministry of Education was honed down to around 800 staff, giving huge savings. (Today, the bloated Ministry has over 3000 staff. They're everywhere. They even needed a much bigger building in Wellington. The number of servants required to serve the Minister is clearly out of control.) So equity funding was born. Deciles were the administrative arbiter or tool for this form of funding allocation. They were expressly intended for administrative purposes. But then the rot started to set in. ERO Chief Reviewer Judith Aiken ‘discovered’ that students in lower decile schools were performing poorly relative to those in higher decile communities. Their schools needed to be publicly admonished, shamed, and reviewed over and over and over again. And as a result of mindless and misleading media stories arising from all of this, the public started to associate low decile schools with low quality and poor teaching. The seemingly irreversible corruption of the administrative purpose of decile assignments was set alight, only to be further weakened by cries from higher deciles schools bemoaning that they were missing out. So now Treasury has cooked up a replacement for school deciles, presumably with every encouragement from Minister
of Education, Hon Hekia Parata. Paradoxically, their ‘targeted funding’ policy package would disallow schools from knowing the identity of their students who are to be the recipients, whereas the designation of a school’s decile has been published at every opportunity. What an extraordinarily odd affair. What a totally wonky scheme. As many have correctly observed and as endless irrefutable evidence has repeatedly shown, children living in disadvantaged communities struggle to achieve to the levels of those enjoying advantage. It’s not just those whose mother was poorly educated, or whose dad is in prison. It’s much more complex and deep rooted than that. But alas, the deciles have been an absolutely invaluable index for gauging and revealing where additional support is needed and the success or otherwise of Government interventions – which for the most part have failed because they have failed to understand and address underlying causation. I suspect that this kind of evidence has been of great inconvenience to the former Minister – so let’s get rid of these deciles! Virtue and Vexation is the unpalatable stew that the previous Minister of Education has left for us to sup on! Her claim that the system is much the better for what she has done over the past few years is highly disputable.
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