Kaye: Education system isn’t broken
National MP Nikki Kaye was nearing the end of her eight weeks of public meetings across the country when she arrived in Kaitaia to explain her party’s view of the Tomorrow’s Schools reviews of the education system, and had a clear understanding of the prevailing mood.
The current system had some failings that needed to be addressed, she said, but mostly it worked well. And while many of those she had met at 70 public meetings and around 40 discussions with principals, smaller groups, students, parents and stakeholder organisations saw room to improve, they did not want radical restructuring, or the proposed hub model.
National had already confirmed its support for some of the recommendations around additional learning support and scrapping the decile system, a decision it made while it was in government. The work of the NZ Initiative provided further evidence for scrapping the decile system.
“Many people said the proposed hub model was a return to the past, when education boards held sway. Their shortcomings were a major driver for Tomorrow’s Schools being introduced three decades ago,” Ms Kaye said.
“People are concerned that principals and teachers could be muzzled and lose their autonomy if they were employed by hubs, and parents could end up disempowered. There were significant concerns that the proposed governance of hubs could see them stacked with political appointees.
“Another way to look at it is that this is potentially the largest restructure of the jobs of more than 19,000 trustees and more than 2500 principals, and it could significantly affect the employment of teachers in schools.”
The proposal that hubs would appoint teachers and principals, reducing parents to an advisory status, “scares the hell out of us and a lot of communities”, she said.
National would formulate its final position on the Tomorrow’s Schools report over coming months, but had not resiled from its statement at the outset that it wanted to be constructive and engage with both the taskforce and the government to ensure that any improvements to the education system were enduring.
That had not been the case in the past, the Education Act having been amended about 20 times over the last couple of decades, while the public were calling for cross-party agreement on the current reform process.
Ms Kaye told the Kaitaia meeting that it was crucial that early childhood education be “got right”, while the system had to ensure that quality teachers were employed where they were needed. That would require scrutiny of teacher training, and looking at people who were teaching but did not want to be there.
In terms of school infrastructure, National had increased funding, and the current government had continued that.
“So must the next government,” she said.
National also recognised the gap between what schools needed to teach children with extra needs, while she believed that some problems resulted from parental shortcomings, displayed by symptoms such as a decline in children’s oral language skills.
“A lot of people are saying we need less politics in education,” Ms Kaye added. “We should also be co-designing the structure of education with communities.”
She also defended partnership schools, which she said had shared a huge focus on pastoral care, and had got results. They had been highly innovative and flexible, and would be restored by a National government. And she noted the proposal to close small schools. ‘Small’ had not been defined, but some were saying it would apply to schools with fewer than 100 pupils.
“There are some significant issues when it comes to funding some small schools,” she said, “but what we need to do is strengthen governance and provide them with the resources they need.”