By 1991, the pace of reform had slowed, but high workloads continued. It was now clear that professionals could work well in partnership with parents on the new boards of trustees. Teaching salaries had been kept separate from operational grants, and pay was not performance-based. Teachers continued to work co-operatively and to enjoy good relations with trustees. But there was little sign of innovation in teaching and learning. Increasingly, resourcing depended on the economic circumstances of school communities.
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This report aims to provide a comprehensive picture of the way the Tomorrow’s Schools reforms were felt at Primary and Intermediate school level in October – November 1990, eighteen months after board of trustees were first elected, and towards the end of the first year of school responsibility for managing and spending operational grants. Material for the report comes from postal surveys of trustees, principals and teachers at 239 schools across the country, and of parents at 26 of these schools.
This publication contains the papers from the third semi-annual NZCER conference on research into educational policy, Self-Managing Schools, held in Wellington, New Zealand, 28 June 1991.
The papers represent widely differing viewpoints on school self-management. Overall, "People from schools were not yet convinced that full bulk funding would solve their present problems of under-resourcing and workload, or allow better progress toward the goals of equal educational opportunity and improved learning outcomes" (p. 142).
In January 1989, Cathy Wylie developed the idea of an annual national survey over the next three years to see how primary and intermediate schools were faring through the radical changes to the administration of New Zealand's Schools, Tomorrow's Schools.
The first survey on the impact of the 1989 education reforms showed that they were greeted with both caution and interest. Before the reforms began, parental satisfaction was already high and most parents had some involvement in their child's school.
People in schools were working hard to introduce the reforms, but were often sceptical about their long-term effects. They were more interested in holding on to what they had than in making changes.
In 1973, led by Dr Richard Benton, the newly established NZCER Māori Research Unit (Te Wāhanga Kaupapa Māori), embarked on the first sociolinguistic survey of te reo Māori in New Zealand.
The survey stands as a landmark sociolinguistic work in New Zealand. In all, 6915 individuals in 6,470 Māori families, covering 33,338 individuals throughout the North Island of New Zealand were interviewed in depth.
When we analysed a student dataset that included data from a number of schools, we found that the survey items clustered into four groups which broadly paralleled the five key competencies (see the table below).
Literature that included descriptions of the key competencies
- The New Zealand Curriculum: Draft for consultation 2006 descriptions of the key competencies (Ministry of Education, 2006)
- Papers and articles written about the New Zealand key competencies (Hipkins, 2005; Hipkins, Boyd, and Joyce, 2005; Hipkins, 2006)
- Curriculum Stocktake Report descriptions of the revised essential skills (the precursor to the key competencies) (Ministry of Education, 2002)