Tapu Misa: School principals have had to change their principles

COMMENT

Cynical souls might find many unkind things to say about Cambridge High School's departing principal, Alison Annan.

They might say, for instance, that the reason the immaculately coiffed Mrs Annan is so sad to have been forced to resign her job is that she was on such a good wicket.

All that school-funded overseas travel with her husband, for example, where no expense appeared to have been spared. All that dictatorial, hard-ball dealing to parents and their children; that alleged bullying of staff and parents.

It's not how we like to think of our principals. But, frankly, we're a little behind the times. Principals today aren't the cuddly, cardigan-wearing public servants of old - they can't afford to be.

The new educational environment brought to us by the 1989 reforms known as Tomorrow's Schools, based on the notion that competition and choice would improve the quality of our kids' education, has created a new breed of principal - a corporate model, epitomised by Mrs Annan, not so much an educator as a business manager and marketer. And the reality is that schools today are businesses.

Given the shortfall in Government funding and the (some would say unreasonable) expectations of parents, most schools have to run as if they were corporate machines to survive, and principals must be skilled managers of staff, students, community and the board of trustees.

Only a business manager could have presided over the decision to close the school library. A plain, old-fashioned educator couldn't have done it. An educator would not have seen the bottom-line logic that a manager like Mrs Annan applied.

"Books, schmooks," she might have said. "That's so last century, so inefficient. Let's have an internet cafe instead."

Or more cost-effective still, let's have an achievement recovery room where failing students can work their way through booklets, without the need for teachers.

You see, as hard as everyone is being on Mrs Annan, I can see where she's coming from. When you're running a business, it's the bottom line that counts. And for today's principals that means trying to reconcile the financial bottom line with the academic.

And you can see why a little creative tweaking in the achievement stakes would seem to make perfect business sense, even if it meant some students were being prepared for little more than a career in garbage collection. The important thing is that the "clients" (their parents) were getting what they wanted.

You can also see why suspending what a 2003 Education Review Office report called "a higher than might be expected" number of students might seem like good management. Troublesome students can be a drain on resources.

It is much more cost-effective and efficient to stand them down, or summarily expel them as a number of parents have complained, than spend time and resources trying to work with them.

Troublesome students are also bad for a school's image, which, as we all know, is all-important in the corporate world. You need a good image and a good standing on the academic league tables to attract more students, including that lucrative trade from Asia, where Mrs Annan and her husband are accused of spending an inordinate amount of time, marketing Cambridge High, and, some have alleged, the private school in which they are said to have financial interests.

In the end, though, Mrs Annan failed, despite all the support she has been able to garner. Despite the frequent overseas trips to recruit the paying overseas students, which contributed so much to the school's finances, Cambridge High had an ongoing financial deficit.

She seemed to lose sight, too, of the need to serve the educational needs of all her students.

We might not like the Alison Annans, but we probably have to get used to them.

At one school I know of, the principal demanded a flash European car as part of her contract, and refurbished her office as soon as she took the job. The fact that about 30 teachers left within a year of her taking over was neither here nor there. It wasn't her fault that they couldn't adapt to the new environment.

At my sons' school, extra funds have had to be found for more than just sports equipment, computers and new chairs for the school hall. It pays for extra teaching time.

This is a reality for many schools. Who can blame schools for trying to find ways to make up the shortfall, for finding ways to get around the system, for marketing themselves to the highest bidders?

And really, we should get used to it. This seems to be the road we're heading down in tertiary studies, too, where funding is now being tied to research.

Teachers are under pressure to do research and present internationally to be promoted, or simply to keep their jobs. It takes the focus away from teaching, laments a teacher friend, who is contemplating leaving a profession she loves.

Who should we blame for this new environment?

The reforms have played their part and we, the parents, have aided and abetted. The more demanding we get, the more schools are pressured to give us what we want - those measurable results that we think constitute a good education.

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