I was intrigued this morning to read an opinion piece on Tomorrow’s Schools written by Bali Haque.
Now Bali Haque is an educational consultant. He has been a principal, deputy principal, head of the department, teacher and deputy chief executive of NZQA. He’s a guy who back in February, said the teachers call for a 14.5 per cent pay rise was not just reasonable but not enough. He wrote in his opinion piece on teachers pay that a teacher is worth as much as a backbencher MP and using that logic a teacher should be paid $164,000 a year.
Now what was so intriguing about Bali Haque’s editorial this morning, was that it said that the Tomorrow’s School model belongs in the past and that’s interesting because Bali Haque is the chairman of the Independent Taskforce charged with reviewing the Tomorrow School’s system but it appears before the end of that review he’s already wanting to take the system apart. Maybe I’m just being naïve but it doesn’t sound like the reviewer of the system is going into the review with an open mind.
I also wondered whether it was appropriate for him to be writing such thoughts while he’s deep in the process.
But the piece was interesting as it went through the history of the model. It sprung out of the Picot report into education by Brian Picot who was a supermarket director and business leader, who believed in market forces and competition and wanted some of those principles introduced into schools
So under David Lange, Tomorrow’s Schools was launched in the 90s and it is the most devolved education system in the world. At its essence, it devolved power away from a centralised bureaucracy to the schools themselves and their independent boards. It was thought that they would know more about the community and its needs than faceless administrators in Wellington. And then the schools could do the best job, become the best they could be and win their community.
It’s that aspect of competition and bulk funding that gave many the jitters. After all, with competition, you have winners, but you also have losers.
Bali Haques' opinion piece focuses on this as the main reason for a new system. As he says “Most of us would expect that our children should have access to quality schooling regardless of where we live, but how can this be achieved when the system is designed to create winner and loser schools?”
But I worry that Bali Haques review is about to throw the baby out with the bathwater. New Zealand schools have never been truly competitive with each other with zoning in place. Loser Schools have been rescued by commissioners and central bureaucracy.
The devolved power base to the schools themselves though does mean greater flexibility and adaptability to a community’s needs.
In this time, when people bemoan the amalgamation of councils and the loss of local representation due to the super cities, why would we want to do the same to our schools?
The question I have with you is whether we really want to go back to the old days where the Ministry of Education building in the centre of Wellington was all powerful over the schools in New Zealand from Bluff to Blenheim, Buckland to Balclutha to Bulls.