The final spur for a review of Tomorrow’s schools?

25 June 2012

The final spur for a review of Tomorrow’s schools?

The revelation that 36 of 47 secondary schools in Auckland have skewed their enrolment zones to favour children from high incomes areas while excluding children from low-income areas is no surprise and should be the final spur for a full review of Tomorrow’s Schools.

The research by Professor Lubienski of schools “gerrymandering” enrolment zones is just one aspect of the Tomorrow’s Schools reforms where some schools manipulate the system at the expense of parents to improve the perception of their school in the community.

Other unsavoury practices by schools include:

• Manipulation of enrolment ballots. In Professor Lublienski’s study one principal admitted removing “undesirable” students from the list before the ballot while others have conducted multiple ballots – the first to accept a smaller number of students then a later poorly-publicised ballot with a nod and a wink to students with high academic or sporting ability.

• Exclusion of children from sitting external exams so they don’t reduce the school’s pass rate.

• Creating unreasonable barriers to students enrolling in some courses for the same reason.

• Discouragement of the enrolment of children with special education needs.

These practices are designed to improve a school’s image at the expense of reduced educational opportunities for students and parents.

Regional Parent Forums

Regional Parent Forums were proposed 22 years ago as part of Tomorrow’s Schools but the National government discarded the idea.

Had those parent forums been established then much more effective oversight of unsavoury school practices could have taken place.

These days when a parent complains they are simply told by the Ministry of Education to take their concern to their school board of trustees which will usually include those who the parent sees as the source of the problem in the first place.

There is no doubt that many parents, particularly from low and middle-income communities, have been disempowered by Tomorrow’s Schools.

QPEC has for many years called for a comprehensive review of these reforms. We are pleased most parties in parliament now support such a review and we hope this latest research will be a spur to get this moving.

ENDS

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