In his January 26 column, Grant argued that Education Minister Erica Stanford’s reforms to New Zealand’s school system are destined to fail. He believes that without market-based competition in the education system, there can be little improvement. Grant favours parents freely choosing schools for their children, with schools competing for their business.
Free markets are excellent at improving quality and delivering value for money. The state is bad at both of those things. Just ask anyone who has lived under communism.
So, Grant is right that a free market in education could drive improvement, as it does for all manner of things. If parents had real choice in their children’s schooling, schools that provided the best outcomes would thrive.
Charter schools will provide such choice, if enough of them are established. An ongoing test of the quality of mainstream schooling will be whether or not it loses students to charters.
Stanford favours the state taking direct responsibility for education. Her approach must be backed by sound policy and accountability to succeed.
Until the late 20th century, New Zealand had a high-quality state-run education system. Twenty-five years ago, we were near the top of the international test rankings.
But the state dropped the education policy ball. It introduced a curriculum that is nearly bereft of knowledge. It gave control of initial teacher education to universities, which has not worked out well. In university programmes, teachers spend too little time in classrooms. Their focus is on theory and ideology rather than evidence-informed practice.
Stanford inherited a broken system and is determined to repair it. She is introducing a new, knowledge-rich curriculum and has signalled her intention to reform teacher education.
Whether an education system is market-driven or state-run, accountability is key to ongoing improvement. If school leaders cannot prove that their students are making the expected progress, there must be a mechanism to replace them.
But accountability is lacking at present. Failing schools are allowed to continue failing. If Stanford can solve the accountability problem her reforms will yield improvement.
New Zealand’s past success shows that a high-quality state-run school system is possible. Stanford is making the right moves to regain that success.
Dr Michael Johnston has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington for the past ten years. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne. This article was published HERE
So, Grant is right that a free market in education could drive improvement, as it does for all manner of things. If parents had real choice in their children’s schooling, schools that provided the best outcomes would thrive.
Charter schools will provide such choice, if enough of them are established. An ongoing test of the quality of mainstream schooling will be whether or not it loses students to charters.
Stanford favours the state taking direct responsibility for education. Her approach must be backed by sound policy and accountability to succeed.
Until the late 20th century, New Zealand had a high-quality state-run education system. Twenty-five years ago, we were near the top of the international test rankings.
But the state dropped the education policy ball. It introduced a curriculum that is nearly bereft of knowledge. It gave control of initial teacher education to universities, which has not worked out well. In university programmes, teachers spend too little time in classrooms. Their focus is on theory and ideology rather than evidence-informed practice.
Stanford inherited a broken system and is determined to repair it. She is introducing a new, knowledge-rich curriculum and has signalled her intention to reform teacher education.
Whether an education system is market-driven or state-run, accountability is key to ongoing improvement. If school leaders cannot prove that their students are making the expected progress, there must be a mechanism to replace them.
But accountability is lacking at present. Failing schools are allowed to continue failing. If Stanford can solve the accountability problem her reforms will yield improvement.
New Zealand’s past success shows that a high-quality state-run school system is possible. Stanford is making the right moves to regain that success.
Dr Michael Johnston has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington for the past ten years. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne. This article was published HERE
3 comments:
>"Free markets are excellent at improving quality and delivering value for money. The state is bad at both of those things. Just ask anyone who has lived under communism."
In the case of education, the Soviet system appears to have broken these rules. Soviet education, particularly science education, were very strong. No constructivist bullshit, just good old-fashioned teaching and learning - and streaming. One of the things the Soviets did was identify school students strong in science and let them experience holiday camps that centred on science and of course politics to ensure the new generation of scientific bright lights would be good Marxist-Leninists.
I am interested in NZ educational history since as a third generation educationalist and reformer I have lived through six decades of educational change and consequently have very different and decided ideas on education.
I do believe in parents' freedom to choose but like Erica Stanford also believe in attempting to improve the state system for the benefit of lower SES children whose parents mostly , I think
have difficulty in eg transporting their children bigger distances to
schools they prefer.
My focus , at the moment is on the availability of school materials for parents particularly in the basics. The structured literacy course for year 1 costs $700 to buy. Why could this not be made available for even viewing at public libraries ?
I would be interested viewing the new maths workbooks but they are unavailable to parents and those not attached to a school. Once again why couldn't it be possible to view these at a library?
Before about 1950 when damn academics started dictating the nature of early literacy for infants, the Whitcombe's Progressive Readers were owned by the parents who shared responsibility and the teaching of the structured phonics with the class teacher. Many parents spent some time teaching their pre-schoolers the most basic phonemes and common sight words at home , using the inexpensive Progressive Readers and accompanying Phonic Progressive Readers. These stayed in homes for generations.
Even semi -literate parents were able to use these books since they were devoid of technical terms or psychobabble. Just spending 15 minutes a day on these basic reading skills was sufficient to start the preschool child reading.
I am sorry to say this but academia is largely responsible for destroying this tradition of a beautiful synergy between the home and school. Intellectual arrogance that proclaimed that even early learning in reading was for the teacher only who was the so called
'professional.' However, even up to the 1970s it was possible to buy very cheaply at supermarkets newsprint workbooks with phonic and basic arithmetic exercises. Libraries should have material like this for sale. Singapore schools with the highest academic test scores , have shops on their premises selling quality workbooks and other
home help books.
Perhaps Maori plan to remedy this by sending their own brightest and best ( assessed by ethnicity) to top world unis. .... everyone else will flounder in tribal mythology.
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