Peter O'Connor: Lessons to be learnt on education overhaul

Auckland Grammar School students in the crowd celebrate a try in the annual First XV Rugby match between Auckland Grammar and King's College. Photo / Richard Robinson

Bali Haque's new book, Changing our Secondary Schools, raises important and timely questions about teaching. His acknowledgement that the single most important contribution to student success is the cultural capital they bring into the classroom is supported by all the international evidence.

Strikingly, the single most reliable indicator of future academic success is the number of books you have in your home when you grow up. But Haque's critique then moves on to what schools might be able to do to make the difference, and in many cases play catch up, with those students left behind by poverty.

Haque is correct when he suggests that the reforms in New Zealand education dating back to the introduction of Tomorrow Schools in the 1980s have been characterised by sloppy and at times plainly incompetent implementation. Whether you agree with the policy directions or not, the introduction for example, of national standards and charter schools has resulted in chaos and confusion largely because of the breakneck speed with which these changes were brought into the system. The most obvious example of Haque's critique of poorly handled implementation was the disastrous management of the Christchurch school restructuring after the earthquakes.

Haque understands that the flagship Government policy of IES, or as it has been characterised, the super principal, super teacher idea, is not about rewarding classroom teachers for staying in the classroom. It is about creating new management positions in and across schools. It fails then to provide viable career pathways for teachers dedicated to remain in their classrooms, teaching.

The problem Haque boldly identifies is that we still don't have a system to reward good teachers and manage poor or barely competent teachers out of the system. His idea that principals could make a good stab at it isn't good enough. There is clearly a Government and public desire to build a sense of greater teacher accountability (it could be seen as being one of the most significant drivers behind many of the reforms of the past 30 years).

Wisely, the notion of performance pay based on student outcomes is rejected in Haque's analysis, especially if based on dodgy data derived from national standards and NCEA pass rates. This has long been recognised internationally. Teacher unions and the Government will therefore need to work together constructively to find solutions to this issue in the coming year. It would be a disaster if major Government policy on performance pay is developed which automatically places teacher unions in opposition because they have been entirely excluded from the formation of policy. Alienating teacher unions might make good electoral sense for National led governments but it is clearly a poor practice for achieving reform agendas.

There are a number of ways to read Haque's analysis of teacher holidays. What he recognises is that the way we organise our school year needs major overhauling. I spend a lot of time in and out of schools and talking to teachers and principals. Most of them would be grateful for a guaranteed five weeks leave per year based on a rationalisation of the many tasks teachers and principals are required to fulfil beyond the classroom. That rationalisation should involve reconsidering what the 12-week non-teaching time means for teachers.

Haque's book is timely because we have witnessed more than 30 years of education reforms in this country and yet we haven't made the real progress such attention suggests we could or should have made. Poorly implemented, poorly thought through policy that has pitted governments against teachers has meant we still haven't addressed some of the big and hard questions facing us.

It is time for a true step change in education.

Peter O'Connor is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Auckland