Run-down education system needs imagination overhaul
The education system is in major trouble. The gaps between New Zealand’s Asian population (67 per cent of school leavers with UE), European (44 per cent), Pasifika (22 per cent) and Ma¯ ori (19 per cent) are a national disgrace and we have given up on believing it can be different.
We are sliding rapidly in international measures and our schools are among the worst in the OECD for closing the gaps. Socio-economic advantage has a stronger impact on achievement in New Zealand than in many OECD countries.
Our best university is no longer in the world’s top 100. Teacher training is a mess. The pay rounds have turned into whinefests that are putting off anyone looking for a positive profession to join.
If the education system was once a performance car it was built in the 1950s. Successive governments have crashed and bashed it and worn down the engine, the Ministry of Education sits firmly on the bonnet and the unions have run off with the keys. Those establishments continue to preserve their power and the children miss out, especially the vulnerable.
Legislation has crushed the charter school model. In one sense it will mean little. The highly irrational sorts in education who were entirely triggered by innovation can go back to their knitting. The established charter schools will continue to run under a different model because the good people who set them up will stay around, at least for a while.
Experts had concluded the model had significant success factors that ideologues such as Associate Minister for Education Tracey Martin could not grasp.
The schools will continue in another form so what has been lost? It may not be obvious for a while. The innovators will commit to at least see the new form up and running and the Government could mitigate against the loss of freedoms from the removal of bulk funding, a different governance model and being able to have staff outside the collective contract.
The ministry may also come to grips with the need to be less controlling and conformist. A better “designated character schools” policy and establishment process, if developed as promised, may effectively see an expansion of some of the successful operations.
Something much bigger has been lost, however. That is a sense that creative people and social entrepreneurs (let alone philanthropists) are not welcomed by the stale, outdated educational establishment.
Our ageing teaching population, our vast educational bureaucracy, many of the failing schools, the teacher unions, bizarre social media sites and blinkered politicians who use slogans and parrot nonsense to attempt to impress those in their own bubble, all lost the plot over 12 out of 2600 schools.
It came to a head in Parliament when some politicians felt they were naming and shaming these individuals and organisations in the House. One said that they had treated children “like dogs” and the Minister of Education even used the word “dodgy”.
The messages: If you are an educator who thinks there may be other ways to do things, keep your head down. To families; you’d better hope your child fits the one-size-fits-all model or that you have the money to make choices in terms of where you live or schools you can access.
To those who don’t — including many Ma¯ ori and Pasifika families — the inequities will be perpetuated in succeeding generations.
The political and education system has sent a strong message. They will keep the 1950s humdinger (no Tesla for them) and pretty soon we will be well short of drivers, let alone good ones.