There's no doubt some schools – generally already top-echelon organisations, in wealthy areas – have been able to work the decile-based zoning and funding system of the current regime to their advantage; some would say rort it.
And that under the "centralised hub" approach proposed they would lose much of their ability to pick and choose pupils and staff, and their standards might be expected to drop a tad as a result.
To the assumed uplifting benefit of everyone else. But do you cut the top off your best performers just to level the playing field, or is some superiority – done well, mind you – a good thing?
Then there's the question of "special character" schools, nowadays including charter schools. How will one be able to maintain that character lumped in with 124 others?
Taikura Rudolf Steiner School in Hastings is an example. These days an "integrated" school – which means it runs itself with state interference – Taikura has a lengthy waiting list but has struggled to attract funding from MoE for new buildings because it's seen as competing with "proper" State schools, which apparently have empty classrooms.
Several years back the Board bit the bullet and went into considerable debt to expand to meet demand. Will the new system help them manage? I very much doubt it, because all their neighbouring schools will be vying for the same slices of pie.
While replacing decile-based funding with funding on the basis of "recognised learning disabilities" – now there's a piece of string! – should help schools and students who are currently failing, a "quiet achiever" like Taikura is likely to be worse off.
And that's the big problem with unilateral reform. There's bugger-all room for exceptions – which means less choice for parents and children alike.
The same can be said of the parallel reforms proposed for our tertiary polytechnics; lumping them all into one body may help the failures survive, but it threatens to destroy the successes.
Colleges that have achieved outstanding learning outcomes may suddenly be restricted to "ordinary normal" ones – and that would be a travesty of the whole aim of getting a "good education".
There's also one major aspect entirely missing from the proposal: the age at which a child starts school.
Increasingly, progressive educators recognise a child's first few years are just for play, and 6 or 7 years old is the best time to begin formal learning. But that's not even in the picture, here.
Whatever your own views, you have until April 7 to make a submission, at tomorrows.schools@education.govt.nz
* Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet. Views expressed are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's.
