Over the past week we have been subjected to the unedifying spectacle of a Prime Minister engaged in political confrontation. This is not what we have come to expect. We find ourselves confused and bemused.
John Key has taken to the hustings (well, a press conference), flanked by his Education Minister to reassure parents that he is committed and resolute about introducing standards testing for reading, writing and arithmetic into government run primary schools. It turns out that government owned and operated schools don't like this idea--well, at least that's what we are told.
We are surprised that the Prime Minister has the mettle to front up. The cynical amongst us suspect he won't last the distance. The reason is that the government owned and operated schools have long been controlled by teacher and principal unions. Simple rubes may think that schools should be focused upon their precious charges--their pupils. But sadly, the government school system has for decades now, existed primarily for the interests and sinecures of teachers.
This, of course, is not surprising. It had to be this way. It would be this way in any other economic or social activity. The government education system is like no other enterprise or activity in the country insofar as it operates under a state run, state funded, compulsory monopoly. If, for example, the airline industry or any other activity were similarly structured and operated it would rapidly likewise devolve to the control of employee unions. Were the government to decree that airline travel was compulsory and that everyone were compelled to fly on airplanes owned by the State at least five times per year; and if the government used tax money to fund both its own airlines and pay fees of the compelled travellers so that they travelled "free", within two years the entire state owned and operated airline system would be controlled by airline unions. Not influenced by unions--controlled by them. The airline unions would have standover control of their employers, the government, and the public.
The same would be true in any other industry. In every monopoly control passes from the consumer to the enterprise operators. It becomes "my way, or the highway"; "take it or leave it". And there is no monopoly more tightly protected and enforced than the government owned and operated education system. The government is compelled to fund it; clients are required by law to use it. Therefore, union control of the government education system in New Zealand was always inevitable. Neither will it change whilst the current galactically stupid monopoly endures.
We were reminded of this hard reality yesterday by Colin Espiner. He has argued that the government is foolish to attempt a major change in the government owned and operated education monopoly without sign off and consent by the education unions.
. . . you can't bulldoze your way through a sector as highly unionised as teaching without taking the unions with you. . . . . Far better to take the union with him than try to bash it into submission.Quite correctly (although expressed sotto voce) he implies that the government is not the master here, but the servant. Well, duh! Of course it is.
We believe that the only way Key can succeed under the present arrangements is to persuade the unions that it is in their best interests to support the policy. One way to deal with standover tactics is to buy people off--to pay the price. It works with Maori. Pay people off and they stop complaining. Offer to increase the unionists wages because of the extra "hurt and humiliation" of needing to measure how their precious charges are doing in literacy and numeracy and the opposition will fade as quickly as Bangladesh batsmen.
Espiner also reminds us of a little history. No government in recent decades has won a confrontation with the teacher unions in the state education system.
The history of the National Party in particular is littered with the corpses of education ministers who thought they could prevail - from Merv Wellington's ridiculous idea of making all school children salute the flag each morning to Wyatt Creech's opposition to pay parity for primary teachers, to Lockwood Smith's plan to bulk-fund secondary school teachers' salaries.Bulk funding was a great concept: it failed because the actual controllers of the system did not want it since it did not serve their vested interests. Interestingly, the Labour Government tossed bulk funding out, declaring how wicked and evil a policy it was--only to introduce and employ bulk funding in the public health system--at the very same time--where apparently it was not wicked at all.
Smith's dream in particular should provide a salutary lesson to Key and Education Minister Anne Tolley as they declare war on the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI), the primary teachers' union.
Like national standards, bulk funding was (in the opinion of the National Party) for the good of the country. It would lead to higher standards, more accountability, and more freedom of choice for schools in the way their allocated their staffing. Students would be the winners.
Except the unions didn't see it that way. Indeed, they were implacably opposed. Cue strikes, marches, communities divided, and angry parents and students. The row severely eroded relations between the education sector and the National Party - indeed the divisions have taken 15 years to (partly) heal.
They could get away with it in the state run health system, but not in the state run education system because the unions in the former do not control the government health system. And why not? Because the government health system is not a state enforced monopoly and the law does not force people to use the public system. Therefore union control has not been able to be achieved.
What is disappointing in all of this is the apparent naivety of the Prime Minister. He has stated many times that the introduction of measurement to discover the progress of each pupil in basic reading, writing and numeracy skills was the most important policy initiative of his government. But he apparently has failed to understand that the government does not control the state run education system.
So, there are three options. Either Key will fulminate and breathe fire and brimstone, but control will remain firmly in the hands of the teacher unions and the national standards will die an ignominious (albeit quietly shelved) death. Or, Key can face reality, and realise that he needs to get the approval of those who really control the government education system. He will then move to pay them off if they will stop their standover tactics. Or, he can decide that this is a fight the country absolutely needs to have and that he is going to win it, in which case he has to break the control of the education unions--which requires breaking their monopoly stranglehold over education.
In order to do this he would need to play chicken with the unions and with schools. He could threatened to remove the monopoly of government education if the teacher unions fail to co-operate in good faith. Needless to say we do not think he will take this route because we are convinced that Key wants to be seen as a nice guy and does not like confrontation. We also think is he naive about the monopolistic attributes of the government education system.
However, it would have been extremely easy to bring the unions to heel. Firstly, remind all government run primary schools that they are obligated to apply the National Standards programme.
Secondly, require a formal commitment to carry out the policy in good faith from each Board of Trustees, school Principal, and union representative in each primary school.
Third, where a school failed to commit to carrying out the policy the government would provide to all parents in that school an education voucher to the value of 75% of the annual cost of educating a child in the state monopoly system, to be redeemed at any registered private school of their choice. That's all. Nothing more. Effectively this would put parents back in control of their local (non-complying) school--as consumers.
It would be a standover threat in reverse which would raise the prospect of breaking the state education monopoly. It would almost certainly eventually bring the teacher unions into compliance--but even then it would be a bruising and bloody battle, where the government would have to stand publicly for parents' rights as opposed to teacher union control. We doubt that the Prime Minister has the stomach for the fight--even were he to understand the issues and political realities of the state education monopoly--which we suspect he does not.
2 comments:
Why do you think that this is a battle for one man to fight alone?
My question would be can "he", this one man Prime Minister, control his Cabinet.
If he can, then there is a much better than even chance that this group of Ministers can prevail.
So this is a matter of collective political will.
The collective will of the teachers and their Unions however has become a habit where their past successes are expected to be repeated, endlessly.
You and I know that everything has an end, it's just a matter of creating a public perception and the placement of a lever against a suitable fulcrum and that "rock and a hard place" will move.
Look for an iPredict issue.
Hi David,
We tend to agree that the only way to win a head on fight with the teacher unions (apart from the crunchy options in our post above) is to get parents enthusiastically supporting the reforms. But that is easier said than done when little Mary's teacher is upset at what the nasty government is doing.
What is disturbing is that John Key (and his Cabinet for that matter) appear not to be prepared for this fight. Key seems to have assumed he could bring the unions along with him in a non-confrontational way.
Now it may have been smart politics to take things slowly at first and do plenty of talking with the unions, but we understand it became pretty clear, pretty early on that the unions were not going to go along.
One would have expected that the Government, knowing the likely fierceness of the resistance, would have had a well-thought out campaign ready for execution.
So far the government appears to have done a poor job in what is essentially a propaganda war--explaining clearly and repeatedly to parents the features and benefits of the reforms. The implies that it has underestimated its opponents, and it has misunderstood who really controls the state education system.
Mobilising the Cabinet will not do much good if Key and Tolley do not have a well-conceived, long term plan of battle.
We expect that Labour will swing full bore behind the teacher unions and that the reforms will be cast as undermining quality education, damaging to children, harmful and distracting to quality teaching, etc. etc. Whatever strategy the Government has it had better include confronting and exposing all these misdirections.
We will watch developments with interest. For the present, our money is on the real controllers of the state education system.
JT
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