Step Change is just a splutter

A potential watershed moment for New Zealand education seems to have just passed.

After the report (‘Step Change’) from the Inter-Party Working Group (IPWG) on school choice was released, it seems only a quarter of school students stand the chance of benefiting from more flexibility, more freedom, and more choice in their education.

The boat has sailed on the opportunity for wider systemic adjustments, which could have benefited all students in the country.

While there is much to celebrate in New Zealand schooling, such as high average levels of literacy compared to other OECD countries, there is also a lot that should cause concern.

For one, 33% of school leavers are not achieving NCEA Level 2 or higher.

The figure jumps markedly for Maori students.

As the IPWG’s report Step Change indicates, “Educational underachievement of the magnitude found in New Zealand carries the effect of a permanent economic recession.”
Given this situation, National and ACT agreed at the last election, “to work, overtime, to increase the education choices available to parents and students so that families have more freedom to select schooling options that best meet the individual needs of their children.”

This was the moment students, parents and many schools across the country had been waiting for; the hope was that the Report, comprising the Maori Party, ACT and National MPs, would be able to advocate for more freedom, less control, less bureaucracy, so that diversity and creativity could become hallmarks of education in New Zealand.

Instead, the Group chose to focus on just the bottom 20 and top 5% of students.

If the Government follows the Group’s advice, one in four pupils will have more freedom in their educational choices, gaining options about where they go to school  and receiving “personal learning plans.”

The other 75% will continue as they always have.

Depending on how such an initiative was enacted, this could potentially be great for 25% of students. Or, without holistic change taking place to the system more broadly, it could simply become another programme requiring more red tape, without schools having enough freedom to really respond to the needs of their students, leading to merely a splutter of change for even those 25%.

The direction towards which the Group is heading is generally good.

More choice, more flexibility, more creativity and diversity in schooling are all great things. Unfortunately, the changes run the risk of being undermined by the small scope of their vision.

The minority report released simultaneously painted a much more farsighted and comprehensive image of where schooling ought to head.

This should have been the report endorsed by the Group.

It seems students in New Zealand will have to wait even longer for the sort of education system they deserve.

-Maxim Institute