by Catherine Delahunty
After 20 years it’s high time to reflect on the value of the “Tomorrow Schools” model and exactly who has benefited? This is particularly important when the new Government and especially their coalition partner are making worrying noises about reform of the public system. “Tomorrow’s Schools” was a Labour baby and ostensibly an opportunity for parents and communities to become more involved in school through Boards of Trustees. Looking back it seems a fairly transparent strategy to dump work and costs on to communities and break the national education system into competing parts. As Principals have become administrators and marketers many parents have struggled to be accountants, professional fundraisers and managers of individual schools.
“Tomorrows Schools” appears to have strengthened the privileges of the wealthy schools and thus increased the equity gap in public education. A once collegially orientated profession has shifted emphasis. Parents are harassed into paying “donations” of several hundred dollars per year per child except where schools have given up because parents simply cannot afford it. Corporate sponsors can now claim “ownership” of schools and it is normal for little children to wear the colours of a company combined with the school crest. So the corporate sponsor is now the partner of the underfunded public sector institution. To date I have yet to see a köhanga reo or kura branded as “Pepsi cola mauri ora”, so lets tautoko that at least.
Although most public schools have resisted bulk funding and have fought valiantly to provide the best for their children, there are multiple issues which may entrench the original competitive model. If ACT has their way we will see more “parental choice’ for people who actually have choices about where they live and what schools they can access, performance based pay for teachers and more causalities of the ethos In any review of “Tomorrows Schools” we have to look at the context which has evolved since the 1980s. Ever since that time the public school system stopped being a bastion on equity and fairness as Rogernomics undid many social structures, and the resulting social chaos is very apparent. Numeracy and literacy are important tests of success and so too are levels of teacher satisfaction with their role.
Anecdotally young teachers have told me that they are not social workers and many students cannot focus on study due to the pressures of social and economic inequity in their lives. So “Tomorrow Schools” need to be reviewed against the criteria of educational equity otherwise all the “sound and fury” will have signified very little gain for our children and our nation.
Stop Press – The Budget has given $35 million to private schools but educational organisations are less happy about more money for buildings but far less certainty
about the ongoing core funding for schools, teachers and professional development.
Published in Justice & Democracy by Catherine Delahunty on Fri, May 29th, 2009
Tags: Budget, Catherine Delahunty, Education, tommorow's schools
More posts by Catherine Delahunty | more about Catherine Delahunty
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Choice!!!
Perish the thought , imagine being able to choose if your kid gets a good education or not.
Perhaps if our schools were not infested with left wing feminists spewing out their hatred and bile the kids might learn something.
I also note that Mad Cath continues the left wing tradition of blaming others for the failings of certain sectors in our community without putting the onus on them to do something about it themselves.
Any chance you guys can make Cath the new co leader?
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Preaching to the converted much. Why is all of this bad?
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For that matter – has ACT actually figured out how to measure teacher performance?
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big bro: the problem is that the person making the choice is not the one who suffers from that decision. The even bigger problem is that parents are asked to trade how much money they have against the quality of education their children get. From the child’s perspective, is it fair that the quality of education you get is proportional to how much your parent earns? All that this does is keep the poor down and the rich at the top, rather than basing it on merit. We will be wasting some of the best natural talent in the country if they can’t get a decent education because their parents were too poor to get them a foot in the door. So ‘choice’, as the right wing means it, is actually a code-word for taking opportunities and choices in life away from children, not giving them opportunities.
Performance based salaries for teachers would be a good idea if it could actually work, but how do you measure it? And however you measure it, people will simply game the system, and focus on maximising the performance score rather than actually doing a good job of teaching. So it is ultimately a good idea which is in practice unworkable to do systematically.
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I think it’s pronounced ‘school vouchers’.
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A1kmm
If the poor want to improve their lot in life they can do what I and many others who started off with humble beginnings did , they can work hard and show some initiative.
Our system is not designed to keep anybody down, the only people doing that are people like you who insist on telling the poor that they cannot expect anything better in their lives.
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“If the poor want to improve their lot in life they can do what I and many others who started off with humble beginnings did , they can work hard and show some initiative.”
The problem with that is under the current system working hard and competing for scholarships is the only way for the poor to achieve what the rich can simply buy, regardless of merit. Otherwise the brilliant kids of poor parents are relegated to climbing out of blue collar beginnings instead of with the head start of a better education that may be squandered on the spoiled rich.
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…Except that with the interest free student loan that entire effect is negated…
…Then if they work hard and are thus deserving of the education they will have no problem paying it back…
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Barbara
I hope you have NOTHING to do with poor people, I hope you do not work with them or mix with them.
Who said life is fair Barbara?, some people have to work harder than others, that’s just the way things are.
However there is not one single kid in New Zealand who cannot make the most of his ability, there is NO excuse to fail and the very best thing you could do for the poor is to get out of their way and let them get on with it.
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BB you say the system is not designed to keep anybody down. I wish that were true. In my business career THE SYSTEM has been 100% set up to impede every initiative I have undertaken.
They say the best way to protect the world from an alien invasion would be to get them to seek consent for landing permission!
If you get a job and work for someone else (ideally in the public service) then you are fine, THE sYSTEM is there for you all the way. But try to show a bit of enterprise and do something, anything, for yourself? Yeah right!
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Good luck to those who can afford to send their children to a private school.
The next tier are those who can afford to move so they are zoned for a decent state school.
Then there’s the rest of us. If we’re unfortunate enough to be zoned for a rubbish state school there is nothing we can do about it, because the system is operated for the benefit of the politically powerful teachers’ unions rather than for the children, and because – like the Jesuits – the left wants to control the curriculum.
- ‘If ACT has their way we will see more “parental choice” ‘
Why the scare quotes around “parental choice”? A voucher system would do more for poor children than anything else imaginable.
And how can you not see the glaring contradiction between the Greens repeated mantra about the evils of economic growth and your plans to throw more and more money at issues? If there’s no ecnomic growth then there is no extra money, for anything.
- “Anecdotally young teachers have told me that they are not social workers and many students cannot focus on study due to the pressures of social and economic inequity in their lives”
Yes, that’s the sort of thing that students say, isn’t it.
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‘Yes, that’s the sort of thing that students say, isn’t it.’
Don’t know, but anecdotally that’s what young teachers might be saying…
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There is no such thing as a “right to an education”.Education is a service that people should quite rightly pay for…and if you have earned the means to afford a better one than someone else then thats just hard cheese.
Life isn’t fair Comrades…get over it and do your best.
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Would the comrades please explain why someone should be denied their freedom to choose because someone else may end up “unequal”with them….and why that matters?
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We could argue all day if education is a ‘right” or not.
Instead, we’d more likely agree that it makes bloody good sense that all citizens are educated.
You might want to take a look at empirical facts that back up why we want quality education for ALL kids – and not just the rich ones. Have a read of the following
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID258182_code170891.pdf?abstractid=258182&mirid=5
Although the World Bank etc may be a tad to lefty / liberal for your world view.
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last para, “to” s/b “too”
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“We could argue all day if education is a ‘right” or not.”
No because it isn’t…end of story.There are no rights to things others must provide…that involves a contradiction and contradictions don’t exist in an objective universe.
“Instead, we’d more likely agree that it makes bloody good sense that all citizens are educated.”
Certainly….and for totally selfish reasons…educated people are less likely to negativley impact on your own life. Think how much better off we would all be if Maori were better educated and applied that to their lives.
But stealing from some to provide education to others is still wrong….and destroys any gain you may think you will get.
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Cath -
One of my souvenirs of time in the public service is a document that was posted to every secondary school principal, when Tomorrow’s Schools policy was rolled out nationwide.
I could see the problems with the final output as I was shoving them in envelopes. Hence I kept one, knowing that at some future stage it would seem to be the most cynical of glossy marketing bumph.
I never imagined it would take over 20 years for that moment to come.
Co-incidentally, the policy development for NCEA was going on at that time, too. We were being told it would be implemented within 2-5 years, in 1986.
Obviously, someone in the hierarchy of Dept Ed (now Min Ed) had to die/retire before that baby got out of swaddling clothes; a re-think of the way we’ve crippled a large chunk of NCEA generation should be done sooner, rather than leaving that argument to fester as this one has done.
Even faculty teaching staff at the Uni are grumbling about how unprepared the majority of new students are, as they have to suddenly teach ‘first-principles’ information that was usually absorbed in 6th or 7th forms (years 12 & 13).
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Oh Catherine – you are a late-comer to the problem.
When the Tomorrows schools was introduced the aims and objectives were very laudable.
Trouble is the labour party forgot to cover its greatest weakness – which is that just because the ‘public service’ body vote for them, it doesnt mean that they will let a government remove their powers.!!
The Tomorrows Schools was to remove the power and the authority and the responsibility from the public servants at the Ministry and give it to the Boards of trustees.
But there is nothing so selfish or venal or underhand as a public servant who is about to lose their power to say ‘No’ (because thats all the power they have. We have seen what happens if you ever give them the power to say ‘Yes’ – leaky buildings!).
So the boys and girls at the ministry set out to make sure that only the costs and the liability for decisions was passed to the boards – and that authority remained at the ministry. At this point ‘Tomorrows Schools’ was rendered simply a big con.
The Private schools however had some authority that the ministry didnt have over them and obviously and inevitably they took advantage of what they could. The goings on at private and integrated schools is something that the PPTA and the NZEI have overlooked at their peril. For some reason they see the private and integrated’s as the class enemy. But they could learn a lot from them. From the Anglican schools for taking outright anything they can get and for placing in their students a desire to succeed. The Catholic schools for lessons learned. The Catholic girls schools were living proof of the influence women had in the catholic church. There was nothing more independent in thought than the nuns. And the boys schools for learning from their mistakes (after they ran out of priests that had been watched for years for their leadership skills – thus great Rectors , they then had to go to the open market and they got some real duzzies. Now theyre all on fixed term contracts.) And there are plenty of other aspects to learn from in the private/integrated school area.
To fix Tomorrows Schools several things need to happen. They are:
1. Teachers (ie: PPTA and the NZEI ) need to take a stand re teaching or social work. They cant do both and the teachers are doing nobody a good turn by allowing themselves to be forced to do both.
2. Schools need a better structure. Theres not a lot to be learned from the USA, but one thing that is worth it is district school management. Several schools are managed for non-teaching matters by a group of professionals. Maintenance, ground keeping, pay, resource sour, etc are both better managed by professionals and better deals can be done. Some of this group could be teachers, but they dont have to be teachers. The teaching or academic matters are run from within each school . Curricular programmes and timetabling and exams and marking and etc, etc are left to those who are teachers; non- teaching property matters are left to those who are better skilled at it.
3. Teachers have to be rated. It is immoral to continue with the current belief that all teachers are excellent. Its not true you know. And its immoral because this practice puts useless teachers in front of some children and the children deserve better. I know this is a difficult thing to face. It involves recognising that some teachers have to get the boot because they are no good. But that happens in all other areas of employment and in teaching there is a moral argument that only the best should be at the front of the class.
If Teacher rating is not brought in, then there is no other option than to give parents the right to take their children to better schools (and some do this by going private where in variably the best teachers are because they are both sought and they go there. They will get children who are encouraged to do well. The teachers dont have to fight the parents)
Catherine – when you went to school the teachers had the support of your parents (or should have had) and teachers didnt have to spend half their time doing the job they were not trained for – social work. Your teachers concentrated on the basics. Those basics set you up for life – the ability to communicate being the main one. If teaching (especially in primary schools) reverted back to this then maybe the simpler curriculum would enable a wider range of lower skilled teachers to be allowed to stay – but only the blind cant see that more children leave school today less able than you were when you left school.
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My experiences with “Tomorrows Schools” have been a challenge I must admit. As a parent of five children I have served on the BOT of two smaller rural schools as a trustee and chairperson. Despite the workload I never felt that this was the “govt.s way of dumping costs and responsibilities on communities”, rather an opportunity to be involved with the development and future direction of the school. Some trustees did find the job too much and resigned – no problem.
Involvement in the running of a school can have some positive outcomes for everyone involved – teachers,students and parents – when things are done properly. The sense of professionalism can be empowering to individuals and flows through to other aspects of their lives.
I would be sad to see a return to central control. I don’t think that communities are that caught up in their own very busy lives that they would just drop the responsibility of educating their own children and breathe a sigh of relief as they hand it over to the ministry …….but I could be wrong.
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The joy of tomorrow is that it’s always a day away!
The sadness of tomorrow is that it is always a dream, never a reality.
So it has been with the schooling system of the last 20 years.
However, the comments above are clearly focused on administration, teacher rating and governance. How about we focus on the work of the school system?
For instance, the basic proviso of society funded schooling is that transforms young children into socially integratable young adults. That is its role, and that role must never be lost sight of. The concept of ‘social integration’ is multi-faceted, and needs some depth of understanding, but it is not beyond the ken of the average citizen (tax-payer, education funder).
Social integration at its most basic level means, to me, ready and able to take on a role in society appropriate for their abilities. Some are suited to be Brain Surgeons, others are suited to be road sweepers; this is not a ‘put-down’, it is fact. However, we currently provide both with the same curriculum and assessment, and so fail both!
While ‘all children are equal’ is a delightful phrase, and one I agree with, it is not synonymous with ‘all children have the same abilities and aptitudes’. Those abilities and aptitudes can be tested for and identified – and should be. Children with high intellectual aptitude and ability should be taught together to ensure they are given appropriate challenge and development. Children with high practical aptitude and ability should be taught together, as should children with low intellect and low practical aptitude and ability. There is NOTHING wrong with identifying these characteristics of our children and using them as a basis for long-term development, it is recognition that while we are equal we are different, and so are our potentialities.
Instead, what do we do? We classify our children on the street they live on, and consign them to an education based on that! This is not an act of equal opportunity, it is an act of social discrimination. It takes a child with high intellectual potential – perhaps able to become the next leading brain surgeon – who happens to be born in a low decile/low average intellectual potential area – say South Auckland – and sends them for schooling with their neighbours – NOT their peers! Their education stimulus is pitched at the lowest common denominator level (well below their minimum stimulus point,) and so they drift into mediocrity and never live up to their potential. We call this “equal opportunity” but it is only equal opportunity to fail, not to succeed. This, to me, is the worst form of social discrimination imaginable.
Schools have deliver to society the brilliance that New Zealand’s gene-pool can create from the most unusual pairings, despite the income demographics of birth. Until it does, our future is one of reductions in the average standard of living and un-competitiveness in the global economy of the 21st century. The time to start the change is NOT TOMORROW, it is today!
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