Taking the Log Out of One's Own Eye
The Ministry of Education is engaged in a power grab. It is seeking to acquire new, additional grounds to de-register private schools. It is proposing that private schools lose registration unless they maintain "adequate physical and emotional well-being of students" ostensibly to the same standard as government schools.
What could be wrong with that, we hear you ask? "Heaps", as the dung merchant said.
Here is one submission made to the Ministry on the matter:
Education Consultation
Ministry of Education
PO Box 1666
Wellington 6140
Thank you for seeking
views on the proposed change to the registration criteria for private
schools. We wish to focus exclusively upon the matter of student
“emotional welfare”.
One central question is
begged in the proposal to empower the Minister to deny registration
for (or to) a private school over inadequate “emotional welfare”
lies here: by what standard will the Minister determine that
the emotional welfare of students would be, or is, at risk in a
particular school? How will the Minister define “emotional
welfare” is another way of putting the issue. (For the avoidance
of doubt, we are using the title “Minister” to cover whatever
officials within the Ministry that will be involved in the
registration or deregistration of a private school.)
Will the Minister
proceed to determine whether a private school is fit for maintaining
the emotional welfare of students after consultation with the
respective Board of Trustees, Principal, senior school management
team, staff, and parents involved in the school? Or, will the
Minister make a determination by consulting only with himself? Or
will the Minister have recourse to a panel of expert therapists
specialising in the “emotional welfare” of young people? Or will
the Minister succumb to a facile following of medical-fads-ju-jour?
The Minister and senior
officials at the Ministry will be aware that the history of state
intervention in such matters is not exactly covered in glory.
