The Pigeonhole

What’s the real story on this crazy report from the from the rogues gallery that calls itself the inter-party working group. 

From the look of the report (available here http://www.act.org.nz) not a lot of working went on and almost zero thinking. 

That wouldn’t normally matter because usually MPs on working parties can mitigate their ignorance by drawing on the full resources of the State to provide information.

In this case though, the Ministry of Education wasn’t asked to provide any information to the group – probably because it would have raised some awkward questions about the huge cost of setting up a school anywhere that a parent wants, the expense involved in creating an unqualified  bureaucracy to mediate between schools and parents, the difficulties of simply closing a school when there is a whole cohort of students still in it, the cost and traffic problems created by transporting kids all across town and  the cost and difficulty of  developing a “weighted funding formula based on student need”. 

Cost neutral? Hardly. 

The report avoids words we all know and understand replacing them with politically correct econospeak.  Schools become “providers” or occasionally “institutions”; students are “learners” or “clients”; assessment is “context value added measure” and teachers are “learning brokers”.  That’s what we need in the New Zealand education system – more jargon. 

And talk about picking favourites - MacLean’s College and Christchurch Boys have been given special slots in the document to advertise their wares. 

Apparently,     “Christchurch Boys’ High School is one of a number of schools that is trying to creatively serve public demand for places. It has a well-founded and excellent reputation, yet students are consistently denied access to the school…”  and Maclean’s College “stands out for its concern over teacher effectiveness and for its management of staff.”  Byron Bentley, the principal of Maclean’s college was quick to release a media comment endorsing the report, with his other hat on – chair of the right-wing Education Forum.  Is it just me or is that plain tacky?

The other oddity about this report, well reports since there’s actually two of them - Roger Douglas issued his own report because extreme and ridiculous as the step change report is, it didn’t go far enough for our Roger – is that they can be found only on the ACT website.  Usually such reports have their own dedicated sites and are on the Beehive site.  Doesn’t look as if anyone else wants to be to closely connected with such dire examples of political vacuity.  Step Change? More like a*** over tip.