Twenty five years ago New Zealand faced a crisis of school system accountability. Then Prime Minister David Lange responded by introducing a “self-managed schools” system that turned the whole education world upside down. With that sweeping education reform, New Zealand became the test case for employing school-based governing boards to re-engineer the public school system.
The Tomorrow’s Schools reform plan of 1989 implemented nation-wide “self-governing schools,” eliminated school district bureaucracy, and delegated much of the responsibility to elected school council governing boards. Most decisions affecting students and teachers would be made at the school-level and closer to the point of implementation. It was particularly aimed at providing more flexibility to accommodate Maori schools and improve the educational opportunities for Aboriginal children.
Lange’s government went even farther than the Edmonton Public Schools in utilizing the model to reduce education bureaucracy and to create greater cost efficiencies. Seeking to improve system responsiveness, organizational flexibility, and public accountability, New Zealand’s model also held out the promise of more immediate delivery of services and resources, more parental and community involvement, and greater teacher responsibility for managing local schools.
Today New Zealand has a well-established “self-governing schools” system. Successive educational reviews, mostly conducted by Cathy Wylie of the NZ Council for Educational Research, have sustained the experiment and addressed a few early phase shortcomings, including the high turn over of the initial cohort of school-appointed principals. Current Education Minister Hekia Parata is again reviewing the education system, assessing its effectiveness, and looking at making a few reforms.
Many Canadian provinces are saddled with a school board governing system that is floundering with expanding centralized administration far removed from students and parents. Back in 2013, a Canadian School Boards Association study, conducted by Memorial University’s Gerald Galway and a respected research team, issued a stiff warning that elected boards were in serious jeopardy. Elected school boards were no longer perceived to be the “voice of the people,” feeding the growing public concern that boards had lost their “raison d’être.”
The only real policy options presented in a subsequent Journal of Canadian Education Administration and Policy article (September 2013) were crystal clear: “quiet acquiescence to centralization” or “take action to save the sinking ship.” Rather sadly, the warning and the call to action went largely ignored, particularly in the Maritime provinces.
The CSBA research report identified the crux of the problem facing elected school trustees. For elected school board members to be credible, they must be perceived to be “accountable and committed to their mandate and their electorate; ensure a level of openness and transparency…; demonstrate a responsiveness (ensuring) that decisions are made within reasonable timeframes…; make the best use of their resources; (and) work to mediate different interests for the best outcome.” By adopting the corporate designation “board member” and adhering strictly to a “policy making role,” they had become distant from parents and communities and, in far too many boards, were suffering from a loss of democratic legitimacy.
School councils, proposed in Nova Scotia Premier Dr. John Savage’s 1995-96 Education Horizons reform plan, may well have filled the void in strengthening school-community relations. In their initial form, they were “school governing councils” designed as the centrepiece of a New Zealand-like “school-based management model.”
The original conception of school governing councils was rejected by the Nova Scotia Teachers Union and many of its NSTU-member principals, one of the principal victims of the 1995-96 NSTU campaign against Savage’s Education Restructuring plan. While school councils were sanctioned in the Education Act reform, they were reduced to “advisory bodies” with no power to appoint principals, manage the school budget, or pass binding resolutions contrary to school or board policy.
Today the SACs still limp along in Nova Scotia with mostly a handful of ‘hand-picked’ members functioning as little more than a sounding board for local principals. Elected board members are not only barred from membership in their local SAC, but actively discouraged from attending unless invited by the principal. A survey of the October 2011 School Advisory Council Handbook reveals that SACs “exist in most schools” but not all. With only six members, the principal and staff representatives hold half the SAC seats, and motions require 2/3 majorities, so none ever pass without teacher support. Any such school reform activity is strictly limited because the Handbook recommends “all decisions be made by consensus or be deferred until the next meeting.”
New Zealand’s system of self-managing schools may not have lived-up to its initial aims, but we know why and can address the identified shortcomings. School councils populated by elected trustees have succeeded in “bringing together school and community” and, at their best, allow local interests, including those of Indigenous peoples, to be reflected in education-policy making. The ideal size for a SGC of elected trustees is 10 to 12, double the N.S. SAC number, and a clear majority must be parents or community members, including representatives of local business employers.
Even with school-based governance, there is still a critical need for district education administration, albeit a much scaled-down version. There is also a continuing need for Regional Boards of School Trustees, possibly the elected SGC Chairs, to ensure proper linkage among and between local schools. All Regional School Trustees should be elected from, and remain ex-officio members, of the SGCs in their district.
District school administration would have to be re-purposed for their “support circle” role. All school councils, we know now, still need professional support in the appointment and appraisal of principals, the development of provincially-aligned school plans, the provision of school-by-school student performance data, and in resolving periodic school-level disputes.
School Governing Councils, like those in New Zealand, Edmonton and Quebec, have never been given a fair chance in most Canadian provincial school systems. It’s high time to seriously consider turning the whole system right-side up by focusing on building school-based education governance, redefining the role of elected school trustees, and providing improved democratic representation in all provincial public schools.
Would a school governance system based upon elected school-level trustees improve educational accountability and help to expand the number of “good schools”? What can be learned– 25 years on– from the New Zealand Tomorrow’s Schools educational reform? If educational research suggests elected board members have little impact upon student learning, how and why did it become their narrowly-defined mandate? Would community-school based governance help to spark innovation and strengthen community partnerships?
One of our avid blog followers, Moira MacDonald, alerted us to a feature story she published in The Toronto Sun in September 2000 taking a close-up look at the impact of New Zealand’s Tomorrow’s Schools reform initiative. With her permission, I’d like to share her findings:
“Every few years, the New Zealand primary school where Colin Tarr once taught received a new piano, whether it needed one or not. At one point the school had two and, according to a government supply schedule, a third was on the way.
“We would have liked to use the money for the piano to make a downpayment on a photocopier but no, we were entitled to a piano, that’s what the schedule said, so we were getting a piano,” recalls Tarr, a spokesman for the New Zealand Educational Institute, the country’s primary school teachers’ union.
Likewise, decisions on which teachers and principals schools would get were centrally determined. Getting money for a capital renovation often involved giving “a good tea” to government officials, as much as making a good case for why the school deserved them.
All that ended 11 years ago when a market-oriented Labour government handed over most managerial powers to individual schools and put New Zealand at the forefront of the world’s charter school movement.
The blueprint was a 1988 document called Tomorrow’s Schools, whose brief 47 pages belied the scope of the change.
Since then, both of New Zealand’s top political parties, the right-of-centre National and left-of-centre Labour, have had turns at governing. Each has put its own stamp on the school system, at a time when controversy continues to rage in North America about whether charter schools will eventually spell the death of the public school system.
“There are people who won’t like certain aspects of what we’ve got, but one thing that everyone is agreed on is they don’t want to go back to the old way,” says Ray Newport, a spokesman for the New Zealand School Trustees Association. “They enjoy running their own schools … they enjoy not having to go cap in hand looking for money for special projects.”
TRUSTEE BOARDS
Today the country’s 2,650 fully funded public schools (another 117 private schools receive partial funding) serve 681,000 students and operate under individual charters written within a national framework. These are carried out by small trustee boards elected every three years from each school’s local community by the students’ parents.
The boards are responsible for hiring (and firing) the school principal, for budgeting, curriculum delivery and serious discipline cases. The national Education Review Office (ERO), set up under Tomorrow’s Schools, does regular performance reviews of every school while a drastically downsized education ministry is responsible for policy development, including curriculum and funding the $4-billion ($3 billion Cdn.) system.
How the South Pacific island nation ended up with charter schools did not follow a script those familiar with the debate in North America would recognize. In New Zealand, there was no parental outcry about falling standards, illiterate students or teachers not working hard enough. Overall satisfaction rates with the system have remained consistently high both before and after the reforms, about 80%, according to Cathy Wylie, a veteran Kiwi public school system researcher.
Instead, it was the national education department itself that was widely seen as dysfunctional and inefficient.
In 1988, a government task force concluded New Zealand’s school system was unresponsive to technological change and weighed down by too much bureaucracy and centralized decision-making. Many in the system felt powerless before it.
The response was to put decision-making “as close as possible to the point of implementation,” resulting in a faster delivery of school resources, more parental involvement, greater teacher responsibility and better learning opportunities for students, supporters of the new system claim.
When change came, it came fast. Within a year, the national education department saw its staff sliced from 4,000 to 400.
Some principals and teachers fled. Those remaining were often “shell-shocked. We were left on our own,” recalls Geoff Lovegrove, head of New Zealand’s Principals’ Federation.
Newport agrees, but notes that going slowly might have aborted the entire project. “Ours was the big bang theory and it was probably the only way we could have done it,” he says.
Parent Harriet Knox, whose 18-year-old daughter, Sam, attends Papanui High School in a Christchurch suburb, was “a bit cynical” initially. She became a convert when the local Maori community, which was entitled to appoint its own member to the Papanui board, made her its choice in 1993. Since then, she has been elected twice and is the board’s deputy chairperson, helping to oversee a $1.2 million (Cdn.) budget.
The reformed system, she says, “is one of the best things that has happened in New Zealand education. The community runs its own school … we see it as a community service.”
Excerpted from Moira MacDonald, The Toronto Sun, September 9, 2000.
Sounds like total chaos. Anarchy. I would choose what we have any day over NZ chaos. Where is NZ in PISA scores? Exactly. Where is NZ in % post secondary education. Exactly.
Sounds very similar to grant-maintained schools in the UK. Devolve control over local schools to the principals and teachers who work in them rather than the local school boards. I’ve since worked in three countries and two provinces and I’ve still not seen a better system where the teachers were as committed to providing quality education, primarily because we felt our views were actually being taken into account, rather than just being paid lip-service to. As for the absence of NZ in post-secondary education, last time I looked it was looking pretty good in 4th place. Oh, and the growth in post-secondary education in NZ over the last 25 years is mainly as a result of New Zealanders getting degrees rather than as a result of immigrants with post-secondary education achieved elsewhere, like other countries you may care to name.
Decentralization of education takes too much pressure off the central government to fund education adequately and makes life too easy for privatize.
I believe in Maori control of their education system with an elected board.
I hate specialization. The upper middle class takes too much advantage with IB, French Immersion, Gifted, AP whatever.
As much as possible I want every school to be identical with a phase out of streaming.
Decentralization makes this impossible.
Not all kids, not all communities are identical. It is the industrial model, the standardization and
formulaic management that make school so unpleasant for most kids and fails our communities.
I don’t know enough about NZ to know if it is the best system but I can’t imagine it’s not better than ours. Free children to learn, free teachers to help children learn.
A luxury that is difficult to afford.
When there is school diversity the working class and poor kids always get the short end of the stick.
Total population of NZ is 4.5 million.
Same as GTA. They could have two boards on north island, two boards on south island plus one for Maori, all smaller than TDSB.
An interesting concept but unfortunately fiscal accountability and responsibility are major issue these days in Canada (a result of the influence from our neighbours to the south). There are many people that feel the taxes they pay to a province means that they should have a voice towards how it is spent in far off areas of a province. This is why self-governance has a limited future right now. Self-governance requires self- financing.
When the corporate reform movement says “let 100 flowers bloom” they really mean “give us public money for private schools”.
Answer -NO.
Public money is for public schools – democratically controlled, 100% publicly funded, unionized public schools.
What I have seen/experienced during this River John Hub process has left me some what jaded — I realize this — BUT witnessing bullying & oppression of teachers, parents, children,principals, and long time systemic targeting of rural & coastal communities -mostly the poorest and a not to subtle effort to destroy and not preserve sense of identity and “neighbourhood'” is not hyperbole. I saw what I saw. I have worked in public education 30 years, in the classrooms and in those schools and watched the death of community that is Atlantic Canada and same all over Canada. But I did not know how dysfunctional boards were. Would love to run away altogether from that but private alternative schools are not an option in poorer communities. This is a very real class struggle and maybe we need to call it that. One in six kids in Ns live in poverty. It’s simple, where there are children and parents who pay taxes, they are entitled to delivery of education in a way that is child centred and family friendly and sane. I used to think elected school boards were necessary ) I still do, but what I’ve seen is board staff like good hired henchmen/women doing dirty work for Dept of ed. Or not. And when not it’s just as bad — power struggle over heads of children. And oh, the board politcs-please! The lack of true advocacy for children for the convenience of or even egos of — adults. But I see now that Boards are big employers and thrust seems to be –we want schools as factories to spit our kids with good test scores. Simple does not equal easy and equality doe not mean sameness and serving some of the children some of the time and actually perfecting the art of lying to justify what is wrong –well, yes, we are talking anarchy before sanity can be found. An evolution not revolution in education will only happen if you let parents whose children go to those schools be heard and respected and given true respect not just merely tolerated. SAC’s a joke because again top down structure instead of collaborative group. And for God’s sake, no one should be able to be Board Chair for 17 years or be a board member for 30 years, unless of course ,they keep up with ever changing realities. Dinosaurs will became extinct, So will school boards if they don’t go to bat for children and communities not cater to political agendas. Anyhow, two books will be out before next election that highlight River John’s process. As we prepare to go back to Board and search for affordable alternative for a small school as back up I appreciate all the voices here. It’s hard hard work, working in diversity of community. It is worthwhile.There’s hope We are looking forward with meeting with Coady next week.
Lots to agree with such as term limits for school boards members and ALL elected officials—and maybe non elected reps too, from CEOs to Union presidents.
Last year the huge Toronto District School Board got 11 new trustees out of 22. But much damage had been done ever since the amalgamation days of 1997. One reason for new members was that a couple of 40 year vets retired.
Mond you, the City of Toronto elections for councillors resulted in almost NO change.
You are, Sheree, what inspires us to keep fighting the good fight. When I saw you step up to the mic at that February 2013 River John School Review meeting, I had a sense that something was going to happen to change the trajectory. In the three decades that I’ve been working to reform education in three Canadian provinces, a handful of people stand out. You are one of them. You can inspire people with your goodwill, storytelling and pizzazz. It’s exhausting to keep trying to restore public accountability, but you are a true inspiration. Stay focused and don’t spread yourself too thin. That’s been my story.
Thanks Paul.
Not sure I knew what I was getting into though I thought long and hard before I went that night. I am 4th generation Nova Scotian but a come from away here to River John and it was listening to the people in River John and getting to know this community that inspired me. Learning the history with the school board, the obvious bias from some board members against this community, the past shenanigans for lack of better word that made me see a great injustice done here and know that extends pretty well to other small communities for some time. As you know,endless work. Yes, focus. Focus. We’d be nowhere without NSSSI –but because every situation is so different –each community has to find own solutions and that is problematic — just so easy to dismiss because it’s not convenient to go case by case. Rollout the STANDARDIZED plan. We wonder what has shattered our region. A weird view of progress which includes bigger is always better. Sometimes but not always. I really think Atlantic Canada needs to unite in this now not just province by province. The more unity in community, the better? Can’t we collectively apply pressure on premiers to hold a people’s forum/ summit on education? We have a lot to learn from NFLd. (:
So we all do what we can where –so many hardworking invisible people — BUT there are many many many energized leaders in Atlantic Canada. It was a fisherman in River John, a grandfather of two of the children, who made the strongest point in our whole case to the Board. A senior,. The RJ seniors are on this. And so are many other seniors and youth in NS. Because they’ve seen it happen too much over and over.
Anyhow, I just wish we could get all who care together in a VERY positive way in Atlantic Canada – and a way that would allow gov’t to want to talk and listen with open minds and find real answers, ones that will do better for our children AND communities. And teachers too. AND maybe even benefit gov’t and economy. Who knows. And Paul, my heroes in this,besides parents on Sos team were RJ teachers and staff who handled the pressure of working with children and parents in a school under threat of closure for so many years. Then to have hope and be denied by a tie vote. In Rj, they were amazing. Grace under pressure. I asked “Honorable” Minster Casey in person, verbally, if she would at least write a letter to the teachers and staff of RJ to acknowledge they went above and beyond their call of duty. As far as I know so far, no letter was received. I’lll check again. I know she’s a busy woman, especially now, as her role in Treasury, cements her position as the most powerful politician in the province. I know when we sent her letters and how many, when we made phone calls and how hard we tried. I know she ignored real need in real time. I know she’s still throwing it back on board to let them be bad cops. She could have and should have intervened when the board asked such outrageous financials of Rj & Wentworth and Maitland. It is now on record that she has done and is still doing whatever she wants whenever wherever she wants. I get it! I finally get it ! . Politicians really do not have to listen to “the people” -at all–unless their pockets are deep,stripes are right, or until it might cost them or their party the next election. Children’s well being? Too often lost in the midst of a horrible game.