Archive for May, 2004

In 1989, the Lange Labour Government introduced the revolutionary concept known as “Tomorrow’s Schools” – a world leading experiment in self management and self governance for New Zealand schools. Centralised control was gone; local Education Boards and the Department of Education were abolished. A slimmed down Ministry of Education was established and each of the country’s 2700 schools were governed by a locally elected Board of Trustees with wide ranging responsibilities for site based management and governance including staffing, maintenance and full control and discretion of the school’s bulk grant. Section 75 of the Education Act 1989 states:

“except to the extent that any enactment or the general law of New Zealand provides otherwise, a school’s board has complete discretion to control the management of the school as it thinks fit.”

Schools ran with this brave new concept from the beginning and never looked back. The shackles of centralised control had been broken and schools were free to take control of their own destinies. They appointed their own staff, maintained their own buildings and built new rooms, new amenities and undertook new initiatives. We entered a world in which education was both progressive and entrepreneurial. The self management concept was further extended in the 1990′s with the introduction of bulk funding where schools who wished could also self manage teacher salaries and determine how and what to spend this money on. A government white paper explored the possibility of making teacher’s resource centres and Advisory Services contestable ie: the money would be redirected to schools who would then buy in services from the best provider. Another change of government and intense pressure from teacher unions saw the concept of bulk funding and contestable advisory services dropped.

It’s ironic that the Labour government that introduced the then radical concept of self management and self governance a decade or so later has also been responsible for its demise. Events in the last three years have seen a resurgence of centralised control, a gross increase in compliance and compliance checking and an erosion in local control and autonomy. The empire strikes back! The strangled death of Tomorrow’s Schools by present government policy is de-motivating to principals and Boards of Trustees and flies in the face of current developments in Britain, Australia and parts of the United States – again ironic in that Australia in particular looked to our system as a model of excellence.

What are the changes? As previously mentioned, local control over teachers salaries (bulk funding) was removed and contestability of teachers centres and advisory services never saw the light of day. The previous independent Special Education Service has now become part of the Ministry of Education and renamed Group Special Education (the “Directorate” was considered for its new name). Where as schools could previously act as their own fundholders, this ability has now been considerably curtailed.

Compliance has greatly increased with most returns to the Ministry now have to be co-signed by the Chairman of the Board and in the case of one form relating to foreign fee paying students, having to be witnessed by a Justice of the Peace. Many primary schools had got into the lucrative foreign students market but the Minister changed the regulations so that foreign students under 10 years old were prevented from coming to New Zealand schools unless accompanied by their parents. This has deprived schools of significant amounts of extra funding which was used to employ extra staff, build extra facilities and buy extra resources. In addition to three yearly reviews by the Education Review Office, and annual financial audits, schools are also subject to review for roll audit and E.S.O.L. funding audit.

All schools are required to complete both 10 year and 5 year property plans. As a result of new requirements in regard to School Planning and Reporting, all schools had to review and basically re-write school charters, provide annual plans and annual goals and then report on variances to the Annual Plan goals to the Ministry. Regardless, of both Ministry and Ministerial protestations to the contrary, this requirement imposed considerable work and consultation for schools and is regarded at best as just another extension of bureaucratic accountability. Good schools have always strategically planned and set achievement targets to improve achievement. The consensus among principals is that the new plans do nothing to increase the achievement of children, just satisfy the current political whim.

More and more, New Zealand schools are having their self management eroded, replaced by a centralised, bureaucratic, “one size fits all” model. The degree of self management allowed is now determined by the level of competence of the lowest common denominator.

To restore true self management and governance and give schools the freedom and challenge to pursue excellence, new reforms are necessary. A restoration of bulk funding / direct resourcing is essential. As many support services as possible should be made contestable with their budgets distributed to schools who would then buy the service from the best possible provider. All Ministry reporting requirements should be reviewed by user groups and either simplified or removed. Different forms of school governance organisation could be considered with opportunity for successful schools to operate over several campuses (ie: take over unsuccessful schools). Compulsory school zones should be abolished and market forces allowed to determine successful / failing schools. Reporting requirements to the Ministry could also become more meaningful with schools requirement to report to the Ministry (and the community) how they had spent specifically tagged money and on achievement standards. Although contentious to the teacher unions, national standardised testing would give good benchmark levels for achievement improvement.

We need to return to site based autonomy of management and governance where local needs can be prioritised and actioned by local decision making and by encouraging competition, higher standards of achievement can be achieved. However, for those schools without the necessary skills or personnel, a Ministry supported model should also be available. Under the present political regime, “Tomorrow’s Schools” have become “Yesterday’s School’s” and we again need to look forwards, not keep stumbling backwards.