The little yellow schoolbook

After a decade, are today's schools what was promised in Tomorrow's Schools?

Ten years ago this month, then Prime Minister and Education Minister David Lange launched a 45-page yellow booklet.

Seldom has so small a document promised so much for a public sector, a generation, and indeed a nation.

According to Lange, Tomorrow's Schools: The Reform of Education Administration in New Zealand was "one of the most important proposals for education reform ever announced by a New Zealand government."

Its aim was no less than to make all schools good schools.

The booklet had its origins a year earlier, in July 1987, when Brian Picot received a phone call asking him to head a task force to review the country's education system.

Picot was startled. "Hey, I'm just a grocer," said the former head of Progressive Enterprises, owner of Foodtown.

"I haven't got any university qualifications."

But he had other qualifications -- experience on the Auckland University Council, the Auckland Technical Institute Trust, and in social welfare -- and he would need them.

At the time, the education sector was in danger of sinking under the weight of its own bureaucracy. It was also being torn apart by a schism between liberal and conservative approaches to teaching.

Some stressed the importance of traditional subjects and academic excellence; others pushed instead for social engineering topics and fostering self-esteem. The debate raged.

Parents felt powerless, especially if they disapproved of the local school. Their only options were to move or go private.

The bureaucracy was all powerful but cumbersome. Picot recalls an "enormous amount of duplication."

"The Ministry was huge and there was a major paper overload on key players, particularly principals. But our biggest problem was suspicion of the motivation for change, coupled with some very pro-active opposition, particularly from the PPTA [Post Primary Teachers Association] leadership, to what we were trying to do."

In their 137-page report, Administering For Excellence, Picot's task force recommended reducing central administration, giving schools more control over their own destinies and parents more control over the schools.

Lange's Tomorrow's Schools did not adopt all of Picot's report, but it promised "more immediate delivery of resources to schools, more parental and community involvement and greater teacher responsibility."

It was to "lead to improved learning opportunities for the children of this country ... [and] be sufficiently flexible and responsive to meet the needs of Maori education."

Significantly, it endorsed Picot's plans for self-management of schools. The Education Department (primary) and Education Board (secondary) were replaced by parent-dominated Boards of Trustees, one for each school.

It created the Education Review Office as education's police force, and it imposed business disciplines on principals.

Notably, the original plan did not adopt Picot's proposals for bulk funding and the abolition of zoning. These two controversial features were later introduced by National.

For Tomorrow's Schools did not begin and end with David Lange's little yellow book. That was only the start of 10 turbulent years of education reform.

These days education analysts talk of a decade of self-managing schools. We call them "Today's Schools." So are they what was promised?

Do parents have real power? What have been the costs? And, most importantly, is education now any better or worse than it was before the Picot and Lange-inspired revolution. This weekend and next week, we will bring you the answers.