Maori language classes at a primary school in Te Koha, New Zealand.
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Key figures, New Zealand
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Total population (millions, 1999): 4
Adult literacy rate (1998): 99%
Gross enrolment ratio (1997):
- Primary education: 101%
- Secondary education : 113%
- Tertiary education: 63%
Private share of expenditure in educational institutions : n.a.
Sources: World Bank, UNDP. |
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The country with the most
free-market public education system in the West is now trying to rescue schools caught
in a downward spiral
 The case for bringing the ideas
and values of the private sector to primary and secondary education sounds fine on
paper. Give local schools operational autonomy. Then abolish geographical enrolment
zones and allow parents to choose which school their child will attend so that schools
have to compete to attract students. In the resulting educational “marketplace,”
schools will improve their teaching and student achievement records.
Such was the thinking that New Zealand applied to the running of its state education
system in the 1990s under a series of legislative changes known as Tomorrow’s Schools
reforms. The reform plan was the boldest experiment with market-based education ever
carried out by a developed country.
Overnight,
the system goes local and parents take charge
What were the
results? The answer is at best mixed. It was good for some schools and some students,
but disastrous for other schools, many of which served disproportionate shares of
disadvantaged students. As New Zealand policymakers now busily retreat from the reforms,
their experience offers some warnings for other countries thinking about moving down
the same road.
The application of market principles to the delivery of public education was a natural
step for New Zealand. This island nation of 3.8 million people had gone through a
serious economic crisis in the early 1980s that had left the country close to bankruptcy.
In 1984 a new Labour government was elected that decided to break with tradition
and restructure the country’s economy around neo-liberal themes. By the end of the
decade, the government extended the restructuring effort to the social sectors of
the economy. First came the national health system, then housing and welfare. Education
was next.
In 1989, Parliament abolished the national Department of Education and turned control
of primary and secondary schools over to locally elected boards of trustees, dominated
by parents. Virtually overnight, one of the world’s most tightly controlled public
education systems became one of the most decentralized. The central government continued
to fund the education system, negotiate teacher contracts and enforce accountability
through an inspectorate system.
Innovation
versus the downward spiral of low-performing schools
Two years later
a new government controlled by the conservative National Party ratcheted the stakes
up another notch. Parliament abolished neighbourhood enrolment zones and gave parents
the right to choose which school their child would attend. Primary and secondary
schools found themselves competing for students in an educational agora. Public relations
and marketing skills became as integral to the job description of principals as knowledge
of curriculum and the ability to manage a faculty.
Many schools prospered under the new arrangements, especially those serving middle
and upper-middle class students. Such schools had the social capital among their
parent bodies to elect boards of trustees with the governance, financial, legal and
other skills needed to run an educational institution, and some principals with entrepreneurial
instincts took full advantage of their new-found autonomy to offer innovative educational
programmes.
The Gladstone Primary School in Auckland, for example, began offering a programme
organized around the theory of “multiple intelligences” articulated by Harvard University
psychologist Howard Gardner. “No one is restricting us,” said Colin Dale, the principal.
“The potential is now there to do whatever you want. It’s all about meeting needs
and performing. If you get it right, people will flock to you.”
Self-governance did have its price. The workload of principals and teachers increased
substantially and many schools serving large numbers of disadvantaged students found
it difficult to muster boards of trustees with the requisite governance skills.
For their part, New Zealand parents enthusiastically embraced their new right to
choose where their child would go to school. Substantial numbers of students began
venturing outside their local neighbourhoods to attend classes. Their numbers included
many Maori and Pacific Island students from low-income families who saw an opportunity
to flee low-performing urban schools.
From the point of view of parents, moving up the scale in choice of school is understandable
and even rational. But in New Zealand, parents judge the quality of schools by the
ethnic and socioeconomic mix of their students. Schools with a preponderance of European
students are seen as superior to those with large numbers of Maori and Pacific Islanders.
In the new educational marketplace, schools serving predominantly white students
have grown in size during the 1990s, while those serving large numbers of minority
students saw their rolls decrease. They could not compete for either high quality
teachers or motivated students. The cost of transportation and optional school fees
have also limited minority access to the most desirable schools.
Although other countries might design a competitive system somewhat differently from
New Zealand, the forces unleashed by parental choice are under any circumstances
likely to push systems towards greater polarization. By definition, in any competitive
environment some participants will be successful and others will fail. That’s the
way markets work. We observed situations in New Zealand where schools operating on
a level playing field were engaged in vigorous competition for students that probably
redounded to the benefit of both. The problem is that the playing field is not always
level. Enrolment data show lower income and minority students are disproportionately
represented among schools that are unable to compete. There has been an enhanced
concentration in schools at the bottom of difficult-to-teach students—those from
poverty-stricken homes, those whose English is weak, those with learning difficulties
and those who are suspended from other schools for disciplinary reasons.
New Zealanders describe the loser schools as “spiralling” downward. Once they begin
to fall behind in the educational marketplace, downward spiralling schools find their
problems compounding and feeding on each other. Lower student rolls means fewer teachers,
which means a less attractive academic programme, which means even fewer students.
Schools become losers; so do the students and families served by them.
The
return of the state and the need for policy safeguards
By the mid-1990s
public pressure began building on the Ministry of Education, a policy-oriented successor
to the abolished department, to assist these spiralling schools. The ministry began
offering managerial assistance, then moved toward more direct intervention. By 1998
top ministry officials were conceding that the educational marketplace would never
work for as many as a quarter of schools.
One may ask whether it is defensible, on moral, practical or other grounds, to organize
the delivery of public education so that you know from the outset that a properly
working system will seriously exacerbate the problems of some schools. The creation
of losers might be justified if competition led to an overall improvement of the
system as a whole and the losers would still be winners in absolute terms. Or it
might be justified if the Ministry of Education, aware that competition leads inevitably
to unsuccessful schools, stood ready with a safety net. Neither condition, however,
was present in New Zealand.
The country’s decade-long experience with market-based reform demonstrates there
are no panaceas in school reform. The trick is to adopt reform strategies that will
protect the positive values of self-governance and competition while minimizing their
negative consequences through appropriate policy safeguards.
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