Utopian Boondoggle, Part II

Bureaucratic Control Versus Free Choice

We are all familiar with the blight of the bureaucratic mind needing to write an instruction manual for hammering in a nail.  That manual would run to well over one hundred pages.  There would be chapters on different types and weights and shapes of hammers, plus an extensive checklist on how to determine the appropriate hammer for the job at hand.  There would be several chapters on different kinds of nails--their strengths and weaknesses--and the most appropriate type of nail for the job at hand.  There would be a chapter on which substances are amenable to being nailed, and which are not.  There would be chapters on how to hold the hammer and the most ergonomic way of swinging it.  And, of course, the manual would conclude with three chapters on health and safety in hammer use.

Now, imagine that same bureaucratic mind let loose on designing a high-school syllabus and qualification system.  We hear you groan.  Well you might.  But to this, add the utopian dream now operative in New Zealand government schools.  Under this Neverland dream it is believed that any subject or topic or industrial skill can be included in the syllabus, each requiring its own "manual".  That's what is meant by New Zealand's National Certificate of Educational Achievement ("NCEA") being a "multi-field qualification".

One of the complaints made by the teachers union is that under NCEA a never-ending avalanche of extra work has fallen down upon teachers that is far removed from actual teaching.  They have been swept up into writing and administering manuals for an open-ended list of subjects and qualifications.  In effect, the NCEA system has become a vast manual writing bureaucracy, where the writing, critiquing, studying, refreshing, moderating, and improving the manual has become more important and more time consuming than teaching.  Work loads have increased dramatically, we are told, and that has meant far less actual teaching in schools.

Consider the following union lament:

The NCEA requires extensive collaboration between teachers within and between schools, especially for marking and moderation purposes. . . . (T)eachers need to be "socialised" into an understanding of what a [subject] standard looks like in practice.  This is an ongoing demand, with new teachers entering the profession, and constant change of standards.  But time for collaboration has never been provided, and professional learning opportunities have been woefully inadequate.

The NCEA also requires time for administration for every teacher: monitoring students' submission of work, entering and checking results, providing further  opportunities for assessment, etc.  The time demands on middle and senior leaders are even greater.

Furthermore, the qualification's potential to shape innovative curriculum, pedagogy and assessment for the benefit of students has never been realised.  Most teachers are too busy just keeping their heads above water to find time to work together to share ideas about innovation.

Workload research being conducted currently by PPTA is revealing that the hours worked by secondary teachers continue to rise inexorably to levels which are simply not sustainable.  Yet it seems from the point of view of government officials who make these decisions, teacher time and good will are bottomless resources.  They are not.  [PPTA Annual Conference Papers, 2015, The NCEA: Can It Be Saved?, p. 18.]

What is being described above is what happens when a government bureaucracy (the Ministry of Education) and government employees (government school teachers) get to design a universal national curriculum and an n education qualification system.  The only predictable outcome is manuals so thick their only real use has something to do with keeping doors open.

Yet even in this hive filled with bees working themselves to exhaustion there are signs of common sense.  (The teachers union views these remarkable signs of hope as archaic betrayals of the NCEA utopia--which in a sense they are.)  Some government schools have effectively dumped NCEA ideology and have opted to use  independent, external examination qualifications that are recognised globally.  The current government allows them to do so, much to the union's chagrin, but there is no guarantee this would survive a more left wing, union controlled administration.  The union's view is that these dastardly schools and selfish teachers are alike traitorous, undermining the NCEA cause.

Reading the following, one cannot help but be impressed with the commitment to Statist control and the hatred of freedom and free choices.

While unfettered operation of markets is a fundamental tenet of capitalism [as controlled universal constriction is a fundamental tenet of socialism, Ed.] no-one involved with the early development of the NCEA could possibly have suspected that this would extend to governments allowing a free market in qualifications using public money.  Yet that is exactly what has happened, with our indigenous qualification, the NCEA, having to fight for its place alongside overseas qualifications.

Successive governments have proven gutless against conservative state schools who seek competitive advantage by offering overseas qualifications such as Cambridge or the Baccalaureate instead of the NCEA. . . . As a result of this the credibility of our national qualification is undermined. [Ibid., p. 14.] 

Ironically, some schools are choosing the external international qualifications, rather than the NCEA, because they require less work from teachers, and allow more actual classroom teaching time.  In other words, the bureaucratic dead-weight overhead, being thereby stripped away, allows more teachers to teach more, rather than being diverted to construct and maintain an educational system designed by bureaucrats.  One would have thought that the union--being a body supposed to represent the best interests of teachers--would be lauding and congratulating these "rebels".  But no.

Because Cambridge, in particular, is largely externally assessed and therefore requires significantly less teacher effort than the NCEA, there is a body of teachers within the state system who advocate for it as alleviating workload stresses.  These teachers may well be part of the 21% of teachers who continue to not support (sic) the NCEA.  Politicians must decide whether they want a national school qualification at all, and if so, move with urgency to address the NCEA issues . . . . The alternative is a steady drift to foreign qualifications because they are more manageable for students, teachers, and schools. (Emphasis, ours.)

On the one hand we have a vast bureaucratic government boondoggle masquerading as a national syllabus and a school qualification.  On the other we have internationally recognised qualifications that are more manageable for students, teachers, and schools.  Which should we support and encourage?  The rational man would choose the latter in a heartbeat.  But the blinkered, utopian, socialist educrat would stamp out the international, external qualifications so everyone could be deployed writing, critiquing, comparing, revising, and testing more and more subject content and standards.

The Achilles heel of NCEA is that it is constructed to be an educational jack of all trades, but master of none.  It will not survive.