But jumping up and down does appear to be working. The glacial progress of the last three years has been succeeded by progress at what in bureaucratic terms equates to the speed of light. Within two days of Mr Luders going public he was talking with associate Minister of Education Nikki Kaye (who by all accounts is a very good minister but not always well informed by her officials). The ministry's assistant deputy secretary was booked to travel to Kaikohe to meet Mr Luders and Mr Saunders, and yesterday Mr Luders was to meet with the ministry's head of property.
With all due respect to the ministry, this sudden sense of urgency does it little credit. Head of school property Kim Shannon says the ministry became aware that the college had been allowed to get into a very poor state in 2012 (that is highly debatable), and "stepped in straight away." Since then it had been working on plans for a "vastly re-developed" school with new classrooms, a new library and a new technology block. It was a necessarily slow process, "but we're nearly there." It got a sight closer to being "nearly there" in the days immediately after the school's plight made the national headlines.
To be fair, Northland College reportedly needs an investment in the order of $15 million, and no one would expect the ministry to have that sort of money sloshing around just waiting for someone to ask for it. But a delay of this magnitude is unconscionable. While ministers, ministry officials, teacher unions, Uncle Tom Cobbly and all prattle on about national standards, school clusters, whole-child teaching and how our kids are doing compared with their counterparts in Finland, here we have a school with classrooms that no one is disputing are unfit for human habitation.
How teenagers are expected to excel in that sort of environment defies explanation, although there has reportedly been significant improvement in achievement levels since Mr Luders' arrival in 2013.
That speaks volumes about his leadership and the dedication of his teachers, but does not absolve the ministry of its most fundamental obligation to the school, its staff, students and community.
One stands to be corrected, but one does not recall the ERO ever giving a school that wasn't making the grade in terms of administration or the education it was delivering three years to get its act together, and the same sort of demands should be made of the ministry. Last week's response to adverse publicity clearly suggests that, had it chosen to do so, it could have shifted itself much more quickly and effectively than it has done. If the talk of last week turns into action, and the school undergoes the required transformation in much shorter order than Mr Luders has been given reason to hope for, that will be the result of criticism, not someone in the ministry doing their job in an effective and timely manner without need for a cattle prod.
Mr Luders might have been wrong, however, when he mused last week that his school would not be languishing at the bottom of the priority list if it was in Auckland. It transpires that Clayton Park School in Manurewa has an ever sorrier tale of woe, another victim it seems of the ministry not rushing the big jobs. Principal Paul Wright claimed last week that issues there had been raised at least a decade ago, issues that might well give Northland College a run for its money as the country's most dilapidated school.
Children and staff were reportedly suffering on-going respiratory problems, and the ministry had agreed, if belatedly, that the classrooms were not safe, but even that hadn't engendered any sense of urgency. The ministry has been quoted as saying that safety is always its first priority, and it acts immediately when schools report a safety risk, but again, planning and building take time, and the ministry has to make sure that everything is done right the first time. It had promised Clayton Park six relocatable classrooms, at a cost of $1.3 million, which were expected to arrive next month, but most of the 500 students would continue to be taught in the old classrooms. Mr Wright had been told that his school was on the list for a rebuild, but the ministry had not been able to give a start date.
Property reports had first noted the problems, including 'significant weathertightness issues' and asbestos, in 2011. Ministry support had been forthcoming for patching roofs and drying out specific areas where there were high levels of mould or spores, but Mr Wright predicted that another building would leak next time it rained and spore counts would reach poisonous levels once again. In his view the school was beyond repair.
For all the ministry's protestations that it is doing all it can with maximum haste, publicity remains the most potent weapon available to those who are failed by bureaucracy. The speed with which issues are resolved once they are in the public domain can be quite extraordinary, and Northland College and Clayton Park might well prove to be the latest beneficiaries of that phenomenon.
It could be that the ministry is genuinely doing all it can, in which case it is the process that is stuffed. If it really was doing its very best it might have recognised that by now, and done something about it. The apparent fact that it has not suggests that this is just another example of the needs of the bureaucracy overriding all else, an escape route that does not apply to schools themselves.
The Ministry of Education's role is to provide a system that delivers a sound education in an environment that is conducive to learning. In the vast majority of cases it is no doubt achieving that. In some it is not. Perhaps it's time to let the ERO loose on head office.
