A journal article in the New Zealand Annual Review of Education.

Abstract:

In 1989 the Tomorrow’s Schools reforms brought in self-managing schools as the unit for educational administration. The government’s stated aims included a mix of outcomes and processes, which were to: improve educational opportunities, meet Māori needs more effectively, give local knowledge real responsibility, and encourage flexibility and responsiveness. The system was to be more efficient, and provide greater accountability ...

This background paper was written to provide some background about national standards. It was completed in late 2008, at a time when the incoming National Government had said it would introduce national standards in literacy and numeracy in New Zealand schools. A number of NZCER researchers contributed to the thinking in this paper. It sets out the principles NZCER believes are key to any discussion of national standards. It then ...

This is a report on a one-year action research project aimed at encouraging and strengthening children's Samoan language and literacy learning within an a'oga amata. 

It reports on:

•  the beliefs teachers held about language acquisition and early literacy
• the action research process
• the changes that occured in the teachers' pedagogical practice

The main approaches to making pedagogical change to strengthen laguage and literacy learning were:

• developing an environment saturated in the ...

This paper explores some of the theory underpinning the Key Competencies and what this tells us about possible ways of measuring progress in, and assessing, the Key Competencies.

Download paper: Documenting learning of the key competencies: What are the issues? A discussion paper.

The Curriculum Innovation Projects (CIPs) contract offered four schools and a school cluster two years of additional Ministry of Education funding, over 2003–2004, to assist them to find new ways to provide authentic learning contexts and support students to develop lifelong learning behaviours.

Three key areas were addressed in the evaluation:

• how the CIP schools planned and initiated change
• what the outcomes were for the schools as a whole, and ...

The problem of transfer of learning has been an enduring one.  

On transfer explores the learning and transfer experiences of learners enrolled in a Bachelor of Business degree with a distance education institution.  Such a degree is designed for practical application, and those who enrol in the degree expect to be able to use or transfer what they learn to new and different contexts. 

Learning to transfer has ...

This research was designed to provide evaluative data to the Ministry of Education on models which would enhance further programmes for developing liaison between schools and Pacific Islands parents.

This was planned to be the final report in the New Zealand Council for Educational Research’s series of national surveys monitoring the impact of the Tomorrow’s Schools reforms, which began in 1989. These reforms shifted substantial financial and administrative responsibilities from the former Department of Education and Education Boards to staff and trustees at individual schools. The aim of the series has been to describe the experiences of people in ...

The end of the beginning

The material presented in this report comes from NZCER’s third annual survey of people’s experience at school level of the radical Tomorrow’s Schools reforms of educational administration, which began in 1989. Separate questionnaires were sent to principals, trustees, and teachers at 239 schools nationwide, and to parents at 226 of these schools in mind October 1991.

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 ...