The Mess of State Education in NZ

Desperately Seeking Susan

The NZ Government education system is contradiction in terms.  In just about every other area of human existence in the country, government control is regarded not just with scepticism, but as something to be avoided like the plague. 

True, back in the day New Zealand used to be as socialistic as any small tin-pot Eastern European country.  But that is now long, long gone.  However, a few rusting remnants of socialism remain in this country.  The compulsory state education system is one.  It is patently failing.  New Zealand's educational standards are slipping down OECD rankings to a beat more steady than a metronome. 

But, have no fear.  The Ministry of Education (the very name of the beast sounds Orwellian) has proposed a BIG REFORM.  It involves a lurch back towards a more pure Stalinism.  At least that's what some of our leading (and successful) educators are saying.

. . . at some of the bigger secondary schools, especially in Auckland, anger is mounting. In this week's strongly-worded attack, Macleans College principal Steven Hargreaves wrote to parents and staff in the holidays to say the proposed changes would "destroy the school system in New Zealand as we know it".

Hargreaves joined other heads, including Auckland Grammar's Tim O'Connor, in revolting against the proposals.   Taking power away from boards would create "bland, one-size-fits-all" institutions and destroy the role of communities in schools, Hargreaves said.  He called on parents to oppose the recommendations and said parents had already been quick to voice their backing for him.

Parents wanted to know they could have an impact on their children's education through the board of trustees' parent representatives, he said. "To think that that's going to be passed over to another faceless bureaucracy is what really worries them," he said.  [Stuff]

 Imagine a world in which New Zealand decided ice-cream was so important to the national wellbeing that it required central government planning to produce a product that universally met the very highest of standards.
  The whole country was divided into around 20 regions, each of which would produce this most excellent ice-cream.  The State grandly proclaimed that it would run an an "overlord mechanism" to ensure that all 20 regions were producing high quality ice-cream to the same high standard.

The Ministry of Ice-cream claimed that the whole point of the State overlording ice-cream manufacture in New Zealand was that it would create an equal manufacturing environment to ensure highest quality in every place.  So, from Bluff to Cape Reinga  Stalinist national standards would be met.  The hokey-pokey 1kg block would be consistent, wherever it were produced.

Within twenty minutes a massive state bureaucracy would come into existence to ensure equality.  The race to the bottom, to the lowest common denominator, would begin.

Instinctively, most people in this country know that the Ministry of Ice-cream would be an abject failure.  Moreover, most people know that the quality of ice-cream would erode downward to the lowest common denominator.  But for some reason, Education is put into a different category.  Free  market competition is essential to maintaining the highest quality world-beating ice-cream.  But when it comes to education (which is deemed so much more important) its very importance needs special government care and controls. 

Stalinism failed in the USSR and the Eastern-bloc.  It is failing in New Zealand.  But some folk are very slow learners.  One should think of the Ministry of Education as being a vast government department run and operated by special needs students.  Actually, that's an insult to special needs students.  They would never be so purblind nor stupid to create "20 education hubs" to protect egalitarianism in NZ schools.

One of the country's most successful school principals had this to say about the re-emergence of Stalinism in the government education system:

Auckland Grammar School headmaster Tim O'Connor, though, said proposed education hubs to force schools to work together weren't necessary – because the competition they would be trying to address didn't exist. "It's a myth that we all operate in silos," he said. "Competition to me is when Rangitoto College beats us in physics."

The "one-size-fits-all model" failed to recognise the special character and culture of schools, and the fact they catered to their communities, he said. He vowed to resist the report "at all costs".   [Stuff]

All power to Principal O'Connor.