Kiwi slang uses the word ‘choice’ as a way of saying something is really good, of top quality. You might say, for example, “that was a choice party” or “that’s a choice car” etc. When it comes to education and schooling in NZ, what is desperately needed is a ‘choice’ education of another kind, as in the literal meaning of the word. Parents should be able to choose from a number of alternatives in the type of schooling and education best suited to their children’s needs. For too long, state schools and successive governments have monopolized the education scene in NZ.
Most people, when it comes to education, would probably put fairness and accountability high on their list of desirable features with regard to teaching and learning. I would like to add a third ingredient. One that is at times, contentious and not popular with bureaucrats, ‘educrats’ and the ‘political left’. It is, of course, ‘choice’, where parents are given real options and choices about the type of schooling they want for their children. After all, parents are the key stakeholders in this whole business of schooling, teaching and learning.
Choice has the power to change the educational landscape and improve educational outcomes for all children regardless of ethnicity or socio-economic background. Choice is an answer to the continuing slide in our international OECD rankings in reading, maths and science. The latest round of results from OECD’s Programme for International Study Assessment (Pisa) report, confirms New Zealand’s entrenched trend of a continuous downward decline in our international ranking.
This, of course, flies in the face of the mantra, “NZ has the world’s best education system”, which has been incessantly chanted for years, by incompetent politicians, bureaucrats and short-sighted teacher unions. All kinds of explanations, reasons and excuses have been put forward by ‘experts’ to account for this persistent slide into mediocrity. Choice, making real, tangible choices available to parents has the potential to turn things around.
However, there are a number of barriers obstructing the benefits of choice and its introduction into the current education scene. Two ‘roadblocks’ are politicians, particularly those on the ‘left’ and the narrow-minded education bureaucrats fighting fiercely to hold on to the status quo and their own considerable power base. Many commentators have accurately pointed out that we continue to have an education system largely shaped by political whim. Politicians and successive governments somehow always presume that they know best. Long term strategic thinking and planning in education will never happen while politicians preside over it.
One example of this political arrogance occurred early on in our current Labour coalition government’s tenure. The newly appointed minister of education, Mr Hipkins, was quoted as saying that the benefits of the competitive model ‘have run their course’. How would he know? He doesn’t! He just decided that the concepts of ‘competition’ and its close ally, ‘choice’ don’t fit with his party’s ideological and philosophical views on education. Perhaps Mr Hipkins should spend some time looking at successful state, integrated and private schools all around the country and then ask some hard questions. For example, “Why are parents sending their children to these preferred schools? What are these schools providing that many others aren’t?” The answers are not rocket science. Preferred schools are providing what parents value and believe is important and not some political utopian vision of mandated conformity.
State schooling is all about compulsion and ‘one size fits all’ model. The Labour coalition government’s closing down of the charter school model, when it came to power, is a case in point. Isn’t it funny how we believe and value freedom of choice in most other aspects of life, but not when it comes to education?
New Zealand’s educational woes will not be solved by just focusing on the key specific components of our education system. Rather there is an urgent need for government and education policy makers to examine why there is a lack of choice, fairness and accountability in our current education system.
Choice and fairness for parents do not exist, especially for families from lower socio-economic groups. Government state schools hold a virtual monopoly and real choice is only available to those families who are able to afford private school fees. These taxpayers, who have already paid taxes for our state education system, have to pay again to make a choice and on top of this, suffer the indignity of paying a third time with the added GST component.
Much has been written about the concept of ‘money follows the child’ or as it is more commonly known ‘the educational voucher system’. Nearly everywhere this has been deployed around the world, it has resulted in vastly improved educational outcomes, particularly in poor ‘low decile’ areas. It is a simple but powerful idea. Every parent is given a voucher which they can redeem at any registered school of their choice. Parents are able to lever some real accountability. They can choose to invest their educational dollars in schools which get results and meet their child’s needs. Suddenly overnight, schools become far more parent and family-focused; the ‘educrat’s’ power and influence is reduced commensurately. School performance and educational outcomes rise.
Achieving any real change and improvement to our current education system will require political will of courage and strong convictions. Teacher unions and the bureaucrats have systematically opposed just about every reform of note in the government-run education system for the past twenty-five years. The principles driving this reactionary bias are fairly obvious: firstly, teacher jobs and conditions must be preserved at all costs; secondly, if any proposed government policy would threaten teachers or the control of the unions over the sector, it will be vociferously opposed.
It will take visionary leadership of conviction and purpose, not pragmatism, to make inroads into a system badly in need of a complete makeover. Unless this happens, we will be destined to continue our downward decline in education rankings and a further round of ‘hand wringing’ accompanied by a plethora of reasons and excuses for further failures, delivered by ‘the experts’ several years on from now.