Decentralization in New Zealand

Abstract

In 1989, New Zealand embarked on a dramatic decentralization of its education system, part of a much larger set of changes across all public services in the country. Each school was given a large degree of independence, including having its own charter, governing board, budget, and control over staffing and facilities. This was one of the most radical decentralizations in the world; it drew a great deal of international attention in its early years as other systems considered such a move. More than 20 years later, based on several visits to New Zealand, conversations with many of its leaders, and reading quite a bit of the research about the system, it is possible to draw some conclusions about the New Zealand reforms and their potential implications for other places (keeping in mind how dangerous it is to assume that copying education policies will lead to similar results in differen places), Noted New Zealand education researcher Cathy Wylie, who has studied the reforms since their inception, drew this conclusion: We remain unique in having stand-alone schools that operate on their own, without being part of a school district, or a local authority. And we cannot point to any great systemwide gains in student performance or learning, new approaches to learning, or greater equality of educational opportunity that have clearly arisen from taking the radical path (2009, p. 4). In theory, the New Zealand model requires schools to compete with each other for students and funding, with the idea that competition will drive improvement. In practice, however, much of New Zealand is still quite rural with a large number of small schools separated from each other by considerable distances, so competition is limited in much of the country. The reforms also had some unanticipated consequences. For example, collaboration on shared services such as special education became more difficult. Although the first rounds of elections of governors for schools were contested, many schools have difficulty finding enough people willing to serve as governors, and actual elections for governing body members are uncommon. Not surprisingly, school governing bodies vary widely in their capacity. Moreover, New Zealand principals work harder and spend more time on nonacademic matters than school leaders in most other countries because they're responsible for all aspects of the school including transportation and its physical plant (Wylie, 2009) Student learning However, the most important outcome must surely be around student achievement. New Zealand has been, and remains, a high-achieving country in international assessments. The country has skilled teachers and school leaders, and New Zealanders have a strong positive ethos toward education as well as a generally positive and practical view of the world. On the other hand, New Zealand has a high degree of inequity in education outcomes, connected mainly to social class and ethnicity. As everywhere in the world, students who come from poorer families tend to have significantly poorer education outcomes. However, in New Zealand, there is a particular challenge around Maori and Pasifika students, who come from the smaller islands in the Pacific Ocean. These groups make up, respectively, about 20% and 10% of all students and are growing rapidly so that they may become a majority of the school system in the foreseeable future. Maori and Pasifika achievement levels are on average much lower than those of European-origin New Zealanders (referred to as 'pakeha') New Zealand doesn't conduct its own national assessments, but the best available data show that achievement levels don't seem to have changed very much in recent years, and that achievement gaps at all levels remain very large (Robinson et al., 2009), even within schools. Indeed, in a finding all too familiar to U.S. readers, there is evidence that Maori and Pasifika student achievement is lower than pakeha students even after controlling for socioeconomic status, and that this is related at least in part to educators' lower expectations for these students. …