Online fix for schools sinks

One of the current Government’s traits is an abundant love of technology – from pizza delivery drones to self-driving cars. Another is a deep suspicion of the nation’s schools. These two tendencies come together in Education Minister Hekia Parata’s latest big idea.

Instead of a presumption that children will attend a local, physical school, Parata proposes that the law should allow any child to spend their school days online instead. The connective power of the web will sweep away fusty old teachers resistant to change.

Here, as with Parata’s previous ill-fated exercise in expanding class sizes, it is best to trust the commonsense reaction: a frown.

The questions are very basic. Where would a child who doesn’t attend a school be while they did their learning? How would a ‘‘community of online learning’’ keep an eye on a cohort of disparate students around the country? What about the social aspects for children of being at a school – learning to interact with peers, relate to teachers and so on? Where is the evidence that this would work for kids?

The Government answers such concerns with a series of non-sequiturs. Prime Minister John Key says that students in Stewart Island are learning Mandarin online and how could anyone object?

That’s indeed laudable, but they do so at school. Perhaps the example serves better to show that the supposedly outmoded education system is working better than Key believes.

Parata says schools themselves can become providers of online tuition – one source of new competition for the Correspondence School. That’s well and good, but what about the child at the other end of the exchange, sitting on a computer in their bedroom all day?

The Government might have introduced a more limited and more convincing reform. It is reasonable that schools grapple aggressively with new technologies. ‘‘Blended learning’’, where pupils spend perhaps part of the day learning specialist subjects online – on school premises and under supervision – seems a useful option.

Requirements to be on site can justifiably be more flexible for older pupils, too, who are beginning to specialise and enjoy more autonomy. And of course it is true that there are a few thousand pupils who rely on the Correspondence School because they live somewhere remote or because they have been ‘‘alienated’’ from schools. Improving these children’s experience is necessary, and experimentation in this area justifiable.

But is it enough to overturn the default idea that children go to a bricks-and-mortar school?

No. The international evidence is unconvincing. Locally, Correspondence School results suggest that students learning remotely do worse than those in face-to-face environments. Even the Education Ministry’s overblown case for change concedes that exclusively online learning can ‘‘mask wellbeing concerns such as illness, abuse and neglect’’.

The Government should drop the idea that all kids should be able to learn remotely. It’s more reasonable to believe both that the web is a wonderful, liberating educational tool – and that learning in the company of others is still a generally good idea.

Learning with others is still generally the best idea.