The Empty Aisles of Marketplace Reform - free choice of school as means to improve education

School Administrator, Nov, 2000 by Edward B. Fiske, Helen F. Add

Tamaki and other schools in South Auckland had faced such problems well before the Tomorrow's Schools reforms of 1989 and 1991, of course, but being thrown into the educational marketplace exacerbated the problems. Thousands of families and students took advantage of the right to enroll in schools in other areas of the city. Declining enrollment meant that schools lost teachers, which in turn made it more difficult to offer coherent academic programs. New Zealanders refer to such schools as downwardly "spiraling."

In October 1995 one of New Zealand's major broadcasting networks, Television 1, aired a prime-time program titled "The Forgotten Schools" that documented the shattering effect of the Tomorrow's Schools reforms on several secondary schools in South Auckland.

The television reporters showed how enrollments and staff sizes at these schools had plummeted because of the large numbers of students opting for secondary schools elsewhere. They interviewed teachers and principals about their struggles to halt the spiraling, and questioned students about what it was like to feel trapped in a school that had been shunned by many of their peers and where half of the students ended up with no formal academic credentials, Among those interviewed was Eliza Osterika, a student at Tangaroa College who said she dreamed of going into medicine but quickly added, "At our school dreams seem so far away."

"The Forgotten Schools" was a milestone in public perceptions about the Tomorrow's Schools reforms, For many New Zealanders it provided the first concrete evidence that the reforms had seriously compounded the difficulties of some schools. Aware of the impact that the program might have on public opinion, a nervous Ministry of Education chose the eve of the broadcast to announce the release of some previously promised funds to assist schools in South Auckland.

Government Intervention

Since then, the Ministry of Education has embarked on an escalating series of programs under the rubric of the School Improvement Project aimed at providing assistance to schools that turned out to be the losers in the educational marketplace, most of them in distressed urban areas.

At first, ministry efforts were aimed at improving the managerial capabilities of schools such as Tamaki and Tangaroa. This approach was consistent with New Right principles, dear to the National Party leadership at the time, affirming that the key to setting up a successful school system was to give schools operational autonomy and the right kind of incentives and then let them loose in an educational marketplace.

The schools in South Auckland had operational autonomy, and they also had strong incentives to offer a strong academic program and to attract students. In many cases they had manifestly good leadership and management. Despite all these assets, they still found themselves unable to compete successfully in the educational marketplace.

With political pressure mounting to come to the aid of failing schools and the students they served, the National government in the late 1990s gradually expanded central support to "losers" in the educational marketplace. Clusters and coalitions were formed and given financial support to encourage them to work together--not compete--in solving common problems.