Both Sides Archive

 School Choice Is Mainstream Policy

 

With National's recent announcement of policies giving more freedom in education - choice for parents, self-management for schools, decreased bureaucracy - came, not surprisingly, a massed choir of largely self-interested criticism.

But contrary to the claims by the Associate Education Minister, teacher unions and others that these policies are a 'trip back in time', National's plans are very much in the mainstream of education policy trends worldwide.

Its policy proposals regarding choice and self-management are well-tested and focused on achieving good education outcomes.

Far from being the pariahs of modern education thought, or a precursor to a privatisation of state education, as it might appear from the cries of the teacher unions, school choice and self-management are grounded in solid policy platforms from several well-performing OECD countries.

Countries such as the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, Australia, Chile and Canada - among others - all have school choice in one form or another.

It's not a radical idea, as is portrayed by many - indeed the Netherlands has had school choice since 1917!

In Sweden, where school choice has been operating since 1992, the opening up of the education system has seen competition from independent schools, and this has improved test results in state schools.

And it's not a left/right political argument. Support for choice spans the political spectrum.

The Democrats in the United States support school choice. They have also been strong advocates of charter schools, essentially the same as National's proposal for self-managing schools. There are some 3,000 such schools with more than 700,000 students in the US today.

The British Labour Party has introduced the concept of city academies - schools developed through public-private partnerships that have a particular academic focus and greater self-management.

British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair had enough confidence in choice and self-management policies to make them a key component of his education platform in the coming general election.

When Blair launched his education mini-manifesto in February, he said: "In education, as in health and the other public services, we want the user - the parent and the pupil - to drive the system."

It's what National is aiming for, too, and it's already a key component in New Zealand early childhood and tertiary education levels. Why not at the school level?

All the signs in the school sector are that parents want choice.

The expansion of our Catholic and other integrated schools is a good example, as is the new integrated and private schools being built and the many with waiting lists.

And the increasing numbers of non-Catholic parents looking to get their children into Catholic schools is a particularly striking illustration of the demand for choice.

Another indicator is the number of parents going to great lengths - including shifting house or lying about their address - to get into 'popular' school zones.

Supporters argue that school zoning, by requiring that schools enrol all children from a local community, gets rid of biased student selection, thus leading to a student body that reflects the socioeconomic, ethnic and political mix of the wider community, less segregation and a universal quality education.

Zoning, in fact, is likely to achieve the opposite.

 

 

More rigid school zoning laws do not remove 'selection' from the school system; they simply change the mechanism used to do it. Instead of students being selected by schools, they are selected by whether or not their families can afford to buy a house near the school of their choice. In other words, it's selection by mortgage.

Zoning has helped to lift the prices of houses in popular schools' zones and the children of low-income families are excluded from attending such schools simply because they cannot afford to live near them.

The key to introducing real choice in education is to move to a school funding system that ties funds to each student, so all schools - whether public, private, not-for-profit, for-profit, community or church - receive the same funding for similar students.

In other words, parents make the choice over schools and the funding follows the child, irrespective of what school they attend. In such a world, choice becomes real and zoning a relic of the past.

National's package is a good first step toward that ideal.

And it's not just theory. School choice works in many forms around the world, often giving schools the freedom to mould themselves into the institutions that their communities want.

It makes sense to allow communities to develop their schools in a way that best reflects local needs. A school is more than just the buildings; the learning and social environment is what matters, and principals should be trusted to work with parents, staff and children to build that environment.

National's focus on self-management for schools will be welcomed by those who believe that school governors, teachers and principals are professionals and should be trusted to do the right thing for New Zealand children.

While teacher unions and other vested interests try to present these options as 'tried and failed', the reality is that it is their industrial age thinking that is backward and reactionary.

The education policies of the last five years have been based on Jurassic era policy 'DNA' that was no doubt discovered lying dormant in a dust-covered cabinet at teacher union headquarters.

National's policies provide a platform from which winning education outcomes can be built. Many of our competitors in the global knowledge economy already know this and are using in the school sector to pull themselves ahead.

It's mainstream stuff overseas and it should be for New Zealand, too.