Putting ‘Investing in Educational Success’ into context
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1406/S00060/putting-investing-in-educational-success-into-context.htm
Tuesday, 10 June 2014, 2:37 pm
Article: Martin Thrupp
Putting ‘Investing in Educational Success’
into context
Opinion: Martin Thrupp
June 9,
2014
Last week saw the release of a report on
the Government’s Investing in Educational Success (IES)
proposals as announced by John Key in January. This is
‘the detail’ of the proposal to introduce new teaching
and leadership roles (although there are some more
particulars to come) as developed by a working group of 11
early childhood, primary and secondary education sector
organisations. These organisations were asked to be ‘in
the tent’ with the Ministry of Education to influence the
detail of the policy, the broad outline of which had already
been decided by Cabinet and that came out in January. Some
of the organisations went in willingly and some with much
more reservation. The divergent press releases put out on
Scoop by the PPTA and NZEI reflect these tensions.
The IES
working group report is a lot to grapple with but in some
ways I think it is the ‘backstory’ that is just as
important to understand. Here I mention various broader
contexts within which I think the latest report needs to be
read and understood. I look at the problems of inadequate
media scrutiny, of valued and ignored expertise, and of the
school system becoming hollowed out and less principled.
Then towards the end I make some more direct comments on the
report. I write as an established academic in the area of
New Zealand education policy but also in the spirit that as
academics we sometimes need to give a broad account of what
we are seeing.
Media coverageIt would
be nice to think that potential problems with the IES
proposals would be highlighted by the scrutiny of the media.
But these days it is hard to find really searching
mainstream coverage of New Zealand educational reform,
although Radio New Zealand has generally been better than
print or TV. Given the sheer scale and complexity of the IES
and the number of people within the process, good coverage
of this particular reform seems even less likely. When the
policy was announced in January it seemed to catch most
journalists in holiday mode, as they dutifully reported it
but with little investigation. The situation was not helped
by various uncritical voices from within the sector.
Now
this sizeable two-part working group report has come out and
it appears the media won’t really have the time or
inclination to follow it up. Good on the Manawatu Standard
for a front page article, there has been an article in the
Wairarapa Times-Age and there have been opinion pieces on
Stuff from the NZEI and from right-wing think tank, the New
Zealand Initiative. Perhaps we will see only see more
coverage if National wins the election, the policy moves
forward and practical problems start to emerge. With the
National Standards policy there was no substantive print
media coverage of concerns in the year leading up to the
launch in October 2009. It was only afterwards that it
started to become feasible to get better coverage of the
issues around the National Standards. But it may also be
that the IES reform will prove too complicated for the media
to feel they can make much of a story of it for the general
public.
Valued and ignored
expertiseMy first response to the IES is to ask
where the Government has been getting its ideas from, as it
wouldn’t be my choice of how to spend an extra $359
million to improve our education system. (I would go for
reinforcing professional cultures through higher quality
professional development and more resources especially more
teachers and teacher aides. And I would put more money into
special education). There is a section of the report on
‘Evidence’ but despite its various qualifiers it is
weak. In particular few of the sources are from refereed
academic journals. We should be concerned about the repeated
use of McKinsey reports, described by Frank Coffield in the
Journal of Education Policy as having ‘an impoverished
view of teaching and learning’, a ‘thin’ evidential
base and ‘implausible’ arguments. The IES working group
report also draws on the education ideas of the OECD and
Andreas Schleicher but these have been causing concern to
education experts around the world. And then there is
Michael Fullan, whose perspectives are ambiguous enough to
have wide appeal.
There are a few New Zealand academics
referenced, ones often cited by the Ministry of Education.
They are not all bad, but it would be good to see the
Ministry trying to get alternative advice for a change. Its
unlikely though, as this has been a particularly
‘tribal’ government in the sense that people with
expertise are considered either ‘in’ with it or not, in
which case they are persona non grata. I’m certainly in
the latter group although when I ran into Hekia Parata
recently, she told me not to take her Ministerial dismissal
of my research personally. And when the Hon. Anne Tolley
mentioned me in the newspaper, it was to invite me to keep
my seditious views to myself.
The IES working group report
also includes a statement from the NZEI that explains that
the evidence section was only produced by the Ministry
towards the end of the deliberations underlying the report.
This is interesting as the limited depth of analysis does
indeed suggest post-hoc rationalisation. (Again a similar
thing happened with the National Standards). Originally the
proposal might have been partly about PISA shock - the sense
of political crisis and knee-jerk policy reaction that
typically occurs when a country drops in the OECD’s test
rankings. On the other hand the IES is very much a business
approach to quality – using financial incentives to get
the job done – and such corporate perspectives are
pronounced within the Wellington beltway. Finally there is
bound to have been enthusiasm to rein in ‘the teachers’
as they have not taken well to many of the policies of this
Government.
Hollowed outThere are
good reasons for teachers to be unhappy (and why primary
teachers are especially unhappy, see below). It seems to me
that what is happening to New Zealand schools involves a
thinning or hollowing out of the education culture that most
New Zealanders grew up with. I am talking about the
not-so-gradual decline of professional development,
professional resources, educational research, teacher
education, curriculum coverage, special education, funding,
support for leadership, morale, moral purpose and security
of work. There may be a few brighter spots in this generally
gloomy picture of schools such as some kinds of targeted
interventions and parent involvements, digital learning and
‘modern learning environments’. But in general it’s
hard to see that much has really been getting better in New
Zealand schools since the 1980s, with some substantial steps
backwards under the current government.
What is happening
is that children and young people are being commodified and
schooling is becoming less genuine. There is a
foreshortening of possibilities for school leaders and
teachers in resolving their daily problems and a general
decline in the vitality of teaching and less opportunity for
progressive practice. Where teaching is not in decline it is
often because educators are working against the grain of
policy rather than being supported by it. To borrow from
Brian Picot, it's a worsening system but still some good
people.
There are already some significant elements of
privatisation in all of this and it seems there will be much
more to come unless we have a change in direction at the
election. One of the concerns about the IES is that there
are other policy developments occurring in the background
around legislation, funding, roles, structures and digital
technologies to which the IES will be linked in ways that
are yet to become apparent. This is why the working group
requested information about the links to other policies as
outlined in Part Two of the report.
It is into this
general context of decline and uncertainty/threat that the
IES is being dropped and seen variously as a silver bullet,
a life raft, another form of control or as largely
irrelevant to the real problems faced by schools. Although
it is described in the report as ‘a system change’ (in a
favourable sense), this requires much faith in this form of
collaboration and incentivising having a positive impact on
school culture. Its easier to see the new arrangements being
harmful or not making much difference. The IES is also not
going to simply undo the various problems within the system
as mentioned above and these should not be overlooked during
the debates around the new policy.
Finally it is important
to be realistic about the impact of wider social pressures
on schools, a point made repeatedly by the NZEI over the
least few months. The changes mentioned above are coupled
with wider shifts that are also hollowing out society such
as insecure housing and increasingly unequal incomes. The
IES could easily contribute to the politics of blame where
schools are being increasingly held accountable for the
effects of these wider concerns. Certainly the evidence
section of the working group report gives the most
optimistic reading of research around teacher and school
effects. A more realistic reading would not attribute so
much power to any school-based intervention.
Less
principledOur school system is also becoming
less principled by the day as it is infected by
managerialist politics and as it gradually becomes more
privatised. The problem is most acute in the education
agencies as they are in a contractual relationship with
their Ministers and it is that relationship that has to be
prioritised. And a profit motive is generally central to the
private organisations the agencies contract out to. But
other national organisations that support schools are also
in trouble. STA is clearly in the pocket of Government
rather than really representing the interests of the boards
it works with. University researchers and teacher educators
have the benefit of their ‘critic and conscience’ clause
but are reluctant to bite the hand that feeds. NZCER is the
same. Funding for university-based professional development
has become insecure from year to year, or even a few months
ahead.
Within the school system the rot is mostly in the
early childhood sector (now highly privatised but fighting
to stay authentic) and in secondary. Secondary school
principals are effectively running large businesses and
schools compete with each other for students. Where they
enthusiastically market themselves, there is often little
honesty about how schools gain advantage on the back of
their intakes nor much concern about the impact of marketing
on other schools and on the good of the overall student
population in the area. It is the prosperity of the
individual institution that nearly always counts.
The
primary sector is the least infected by managerialism so far
(less privatised, less need to be competitive, less big
business, less able to cope with ‘paperwork’) with most
within this area remaining committed to a broad,
progressive, child-centred education. This is why they were
willing to create such a fuss over the introduction of
National Standards and it was a wonderful thing to see
people standing up for what they believed in. But the
Government pushed on with the Standards and the tone of the
primary sector is also now slowly changing towards making a
virtue out of political necessity.
This situation probably
helps to explain the very different responses of the PPTA
and NZEI to the IES (along with the more obvious differences
between the sectors). Whatever other justifications they may
raise, PPTA would struggle to go further in promoting a
social justice agenda to their membership ahead of the
undoubted financial incentives. The environment of
collaboration implied by the IES is also seen as a good
thing by the PPTA given the competitive climate within their
sector. In contrast the membership of the NZEI will see
little merit in the IES for the culture of the primary
sector. Their concern will be its potential for being
controlling and divisive and many will see it as yet another
blow to the work they are committed to.
And a few
other points about the reportThere are some
other noteworthy points in the report. It’s not going to
be compulsory for a school to be part of a ‘Community of
Schools’. But it effectively will be as promotional
prospects are involved and ‘access to the new roles …and
to Inquiry Time would be contingent on membership of a
recognised Community of Schools' (p.1).
The new roles open
up plenty of scope for new power differentials and
resentments within and between schools. Tensions will also
arise because ‘Communities of Schools’ are expected to
be especially responsive to particular groups who are
currently not achieving well. This is fair enough as
national policy but at the local level within communities of
schools these groups will be very unevenly distributed
across schools.
It is noted that ‘Boards will need
support to fulfil their role in IES’ (p.2). Boards of
Trustees already have too much responsibility for a
voluntary role. In many schools it falls back on the
principal to know what to do anyway.
Finally, there is to
be the development of new sets of professional standards for
each role and the use of independent experts to assess them.
The problem with this plan is that professional standards,
except of the broadest kind, tend to stultify practice and
be unresponsive to local contexts. These ones are clearly
not intended to be of the broadest kind (see p.12). They
will be very time-consuming to develop and assess. Lucky old
those who end up on the ‘Writing Group’, don’t you
think?
*************
Martin Thrupp is Professor of Education at the
University of
Waikato.
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