The New Zealand State and Educational Reforms: ‘competing’ interests

Abstract

The starting point of this paper is the remarkable success of a relatively coherent, and strongly transnational, set of ideologies in securing a process of market-oriented educational reform in a number of nations; not the least in Britain, the United States and New Zealand. In order to explain this success, it is necessary to understand the relationship of this set of ideologies to two factors. First, market educational reforms are the corollary of the more general shift from Keynesian to neo-liberal forms of national economic management, with implications not just for education but for the state as a whole. Secondly, the shift to neoliberal forms of economic management was itself predicated on the failure of Keynesian policies to solve the economic and political crises of many nations which began in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Thus the basis on which market educational reforms can be understood as transnational, if not global, is as part of a solution to a common set of economic circumstances, including the falling rate of profit, the growth in multinational corporations, increasing national debt, rising unemployment, high levels of inflation and spiralling welfare costs, to name just a few. However, the relationship between economic' problems and political 'solutions' is far from direct and clear. In claiming a common economic basis, rooted in a global crisis of capitalism, for the ideologies of neo-liberalism, I would not wish to argue that political responses have been the same in every country. Whilst similar themes can be identified in the literature, major differences are also evident. These differences can be explained by those element of states that are nation-specific. Examples of such factors include the previous political settlements (CCCS, 1981), broad historical forces, the institutional arrangements of state agencies and governments and the nature of social expectations within civil society. It is the particular mixture of national specificities and transnational trends that allows for national comparisons to be made about the implementation of market reforms in education (as well as in many other aspects of the state). A central issue is what kind of education system pre-existed the move to market reforms. Bruce Cooper (1990) lists a number of differences between the education systems of Britain and the United States, a key issue being the level of decentralisation of control over education preceding the reform processes (p. 133). He notes that the high level of decentralisation of education in the United States has impeded the implementation of market reforms. In contrast, the relatively centralised British system allowed for a much more direct implementation of new policies. New Zealand's education system has been for many years one of the most centralised in the world. Whilst Britain's system relied heavily on the intermediary role of the Local Education Authorities, New Zealand had only a minimal regional level of organisation,