Peter O'Connor: Schools chance to bridge class gap

While many children starting school will be well-dressed and already reading and writing, others will be hungry and still toilet training.

The Government’s neo-liberal policies reinforce social inequality when it should be levelling the playing field

As schools return, thousands of 5-year-olds will be having their first day at school. They, and their parents, approach these first days of schooling with a mix of anticipation, fear and uncertainty.

For nearly all of the children it will be one of the most exciting and looked-forward-to days of their young lives. We also know that the experience of these first days of school will be very different for each child.

Some children will arrive on their first day already able to read and write a little, be driven to school after weeks at the beach house with mum and dad. Some will be attending schools where the fees are far more than the annual income of people on minimum wages. There will be lunch in their schoolbags, shoes on their feet and coats for when it rains. There are books in their insulated houses and food in the kitchen for when they get home. Some will go to private schools because their parents think that it isn't what you learn or how you learn but who you learn with that makes the biggest difference.

Some will go to school on their first day having lived their short lives in New Zealand without seeing a beach. Some won't have anything on their feet, no food in their stomachs and not be fully toilet-trained. They will learn to look forward to Duffy Books coming in and giving them a book they can call their own.

The kinds of schools that these 5-year-olds will go to differ greatly too. Some schools have an abundance of resources and are able to provide rich curricula with ample opportunity for learning about science, history and the arts. School days will be supplemented with after-school classes in everything from gymnastics to flute playing and horse riding.

In other schools, the relentless pursuit of achievement in National Standards in literacy and numeracy has meant the curriculum has narrowed. Disciplinary knowledge across the curriculum is sacrificed as these schools play catch-up to avoid the public shaming of league tables that merely confirm that schools can't be expected to overcome all the problems of poverty.

Some children will be off to charter schools. Only a few hundred children will go to these schools, part of a multi-million dollar taxpayer-funded experiment. After all the political noise about charter schools these schools have so far proved to be a disappointment for everyone on both sides of the debate. They appear to be so ordinary and devoid of innovation they seem barely worth criticising. Yet many children who go to these taxpayer-funded schools will go into smaller classes, some with funded uniforms and stationery. Parents should rightfully question why these schools have been so generously funded at the expense of other state schools.

There will be another group of schools in Christchurch whose doors won't open this year. After being the refuge and rock for thousands of children through the last four years, many children will now walk past these closed schools on their way to new or reformed schools. These children have already learnt the hard lesson, also learnt in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, that natural disaster is no match for the wilful destruction of communities by a neo-liberal approach to education.

The Government's blinkered focus on changing funding models, on achievement standards that provide dodgy information, and their unashamed support for private schools will do nothing to make a real difference to the most vulnerable of those 5-year-olds starting school. These educational policies reinforce the growing class divide between those with too much and those with out enough.

What might make the difference to the life chances of all those 5-year-olds about to start school would be education policies which focus on success rather than narrowly defined achievement. Policies which invest in public rather than private education. Policies which return to schools the opportunity to teach a broad and rich curriculum.

These policies in education should be part of a wider set of policies that recognise that inequality is a social cancer with the potential to cause irreparable harm.

The way forward is to ensure that schooling doesn't reinforce social inequality but can be a force for genuinely levelling the playing field.

• Peter O'Connor is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Auckland.