Make-up of schools panel hints at shakeup

Simon Collins

A leading critic of competitive selfgoverning schools has been appointed to a five-member taskforce charged with rethinking “Tomorrow’s Schools”.

Dr Cathy Wylie, a chief researcher at the NZ Council for Educational Research (NZCER), wrote a book in 2012 calling for about 20 regional education authorities to provide “vital connections” between schools.

She also proposed “a single government educational agency” to take over the work of supporting schools from the agencies created by the Tomorrow’s Schools reform in 1989, including the Ministry of Education, Education Review Office (ERO) and NZ Qualifications Authority (NZQA).

However her voice on the new taskforce will be balanced by four other members including a former NZQA deputy chief executive Bali Haque, who will chair the group. The other three members are: Barbara Ala’alatoa, principal of Sylvia Park School, whom Education Minister Chris Hipkins says he will reappoint as chair of the Education Council when her term ends in July.

Professor Mere Berryman, director of Waikato University’s Maori educational research centre Poutama Pounamu.

Professor John O’Neill, head of Massey University’s Institute of Education and head of the NZ Council of Deans of Education.

Haque was principal of three schools — Napier’s Tamatea High School, Papakura’s Rosehill College and Pakuranga College — and wrote his own book in 2014 advocating bulk funding for schools and performance pay for teachers.

“Readers will note that no suggestion has been made to do away with the current Tomorrow’s Schools model, despite its obvious problems,” he wrote in the book. “In my opinion it is far too late to do this.”

Like Wylie, he advocated a single new agency for “all aspects of early childhood education, primary, secondary and tertiary provision”.

Berryman’s appointment is a sign Hipkins was serious when he drew up terms of reference stressing “better support, equity and inclusion” in schools and exploring Tomorrow’s Schools’ effect on schools’ ability to meet Maori students’ needs.

O’Neill, a leading member of the Child Poverty Action Group, is also a radical critic of what he has called “marketplace or commodity progressivism in schooling”.

School Trustees Association president Lorraine Kerr said her initial reaction was that the taskforce members were “a pretty good group”. She was not concerned that they did not include any parents on school boards.

Hipkins has asked the taskforce to report by November 9.

Haque will be paid $1000 a day, and other members $750 a day.

Hipkins has also created 30-member advisory panel. a