Showing posts with label economic policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economic policy. Show all posts

Monday, 6 March 2017

Back to the Future: How has economic policy influenced the development of education policy and how the educational achievement of children in New Zealand primary schools is measured?

This is my final assignment for my Masters of Education paper, Education Policy. 

It traces the history of Standards in primary education and how we have come full circle from our original Standards based education, when compulsory education was established in New Zealand in the late 19th century, to the disestablishment of the Standards in the 1950s, through the development of a variety of assessment tools from the 1960s through into the 2000s and then the reintroduction of Standards in 2009.

I wanted to know how much economic theory and policy played a part in the measurement of children's achievement.


The children in class at Makowhai School in 1909.  Alexander Turnball Library.



Abstract

In some respects, it appears that the New Zealand public education system has come full circle from 1885 when the public education system was formally established: standards.

Until 1955, the only way a student progressed through their primary years was by passing the standards set for their class – be it either by a written and oral examination conducted by a visiting inspector or, later, under the direction of the school’s head teacher.

Today’s modern student is confronted by the National Standards, implemented in 2010.  While today, moving onto the next year level is not barred by failing to meet the standard, a label is attributed to the child declaring their level of achievement.

So how did New Zealand’s education system go “back to the future”?  How did the system come full circle on the implementation of standards, to their phasing out of and back to implementing them again?  How has economic policy influenced how New Zealand primary school students are assessed?

The purpose of this article is to outline the road taken by policy setters towards National Standards and the role of neoliberalism as the vehicle to achieve this.

 

Key Words:  National Standards, neoliberalism, education, student achievement, New Public Management, accountability, Public Choice Theory, The New Right.

 

A Land of Plenty

“Every person whatever his able ability, whether be rich or poor, whether he live in town or country, has a right as a citizen to a free education, of the kind for which he is best fitted and to the fullest extent of his power... That idea was deep in the public consciousness, deep in the public aspirations, and deeper still after the war. When again, like after the Depression, the country felt a sense of guilt for what they'd done for the young. And nobody! nobody! nobody would challenge that.” – Clarence E. Beeby, Director of Education 1940 – 1960 (NZIFF: The heART of the Matter, 2016).

Prior to 1984, New Zealand’s government practiced a policy of full employment for the nation, believing that everyone who was able to had the right to work and would have a job.  Successive governments achieved full employment, through work schemes and public service positions when times were tough, for nearly forty years – the price being that the government had central economic control (Someone Else’s Country, 2002).


CE Beeby (on the left) receiving the first NZEI fellowship award.
Acknowledge: John Cleland Photo Studio Ltd, photographer. New Zealand Educational Institute Te Riu Roa collection. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, N.Z.

As the famous Beeby quote alludes, the country was deeply wounded by the Depression and the effects of World War II, especially in regards to the children growing up in the 1930s and 1940s.  For those who served in the armed forces overseas, they came back to New Zealand expecting they would have a job that paid a fair wage so they could support a wife and family.

The government set up a free public health system, built state housing and provided opportunities for people to own their own homes.  The government had heavily invested in infrastructure for a modern post war New Zealand to ensure a strong network supplying electricity to the whole country.  Roads were being sealed and the railways reached every city, major town, industry and port.  New Zealand was considered a wealthy country with a high standard of living that recognised what was needed for a modern society.

There was also the welfare state, established late in the Depression years, to support citizens until they were able to go back to work.

The First Labour government had already begun a programme in the late 1930s to reinvent the education system guaranteeing universal free primary and secondary education.  “It was assumed that where ever people lived, they would have access to a school offering the same range of opportunities as any other school.”  (Gordon, 1997).

Education policy was developed using best practice, the latest pedagogy and research.  Teachers were supported with a network of advisors across the syllabus from within the Department of Education.  The health and wellbeing of students was supported with school milk each day. 

Minimal educational success was measured by achieving School Certificate at the end of fifth form (now Year 11).  If you were capable you would achieve UE or University Entrance at the end of sixth form (Year 12) and go to university, or stay another year to do the Bursary exams at the end of seventh form (Year 13) – although this was not commonplace until the towards the end of the 1980s and early 1990s.  To be the first in your family to achieve a qualification at university was to be celebrated.

In 1980, New Zealand had slipped from being the sixth wealthiest country per capita in 1965 to 19th place.  Prompted by rising inflation and unemployment impacting heavily on the economy, then Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon, announced a wage and price freeze in June 1982 to attempt to control and deflate both.


Prime Minister Robert Muldoon in October 1983.
Robert Muldoon. Dominion post (Newspaper) :Photographic negatives and prints of the Evening Post and Dominion newspapers. Ref: EP/1983/4156-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/23196315

In 1984, the snap election called by Muldoon set in motion the biggest economic and social upheaval in New Zealand’s history since the welfare state was instituted by the First Labour government in the 1930s – and it was a Labour government doing it again.

Economic Reform

Prior to the fourth Labour government being elected in 1984, many people were unhappy with the very controlled nature of the New Zealand economy and were looking elsewhere for answers.  Ganesh Nana, a New Zealand economist, quotes John Maynard Keynes in Rashbrooke (2013, p.55): “The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood.  Indeed the world is valued by little else.  Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”

The New Zealand economy was in dire straits in 1984 with record unemployment and soaring double figured inflation resulting in interest rates being well above 20%.  It had its roots in the economic theory of Keynes, which tried to explain how the Depression happened.  Post-World War II, Keynesian economic theory was dominant.  The ethos behind it is a theory of total spending in the economy called aggregate demand, and its effects on output and inflation.  One of its key tenets was full employment.  Spending on big projects (Think Big) and controlling wages and prices (Muldoon’s wage and price freeze) are also features of Keynesian economic theory (Blinder, 2008). 


US President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990).


People began to look overseas for another option to improve the economy.  They looked towards how Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain and Ronald Reagan in the USA were dealing with similar issues in their economies.  Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were heavily influenced by the writings and direct advice from economists following the Chicago School of economics, in particular, Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. 

Friedman’s ideas on monetary policy, taxation, privatisation and deregulation under the virtues of the free market are clearly seen in the policy settings of Thatcher and Reagan (Wikipedia, Friedman).  Hayek argued that socialism could not be compromised with, that all forms of collectivism could only be maintained by a central authority of some kind and that maintaining the rule of law should be the only concern of the state.  As Ball (2003, p.38) quoted Morrell (1989), “Hayek is particularly concerned to argue against the involvement of the Government in the life of the citizen.”  This meant that the state had no business in services such as health, education, or the provision of electricity, water and waste for example.  These should be in the realm of private businesses (Wikipedia, Hayek).

Margaret Thatcher was part of a movement called The New Right.  Their thinking encompassed the musings of Friedman and Hayek in having their roots in the laissez-faire viewpoint, such as leaving things to take their own course without interfering.  Again, this means the government should stay out of the free markets.  It is all about the individual over the common good.  This led into neoliberalism - where we sit today - a modern politico-economic theory, with its roots in classical liberalism from the 1800s, favouring free trade, privatisation, minimal or reduced government expenditure on social services and minimal government intervention with business.

The ideas of The New Right, in turn, also influenced economists in New Zealand who had the ear of key Labour MPs leading up to the 1984 election, such as Treasury Official Doug Andrew, who was attached to the Leader of the Opposition’s office in mid 1983 (McKinnon, 2013).

Economic policies of The New Right, pushed by sectors of the Treasury department, were put into practice by the new Minister of Finance, Roger Douglas after that election.  Government departments and services became State Owned Enterprises (SOE) and restructured, many with the goal of privatising and selling off to the private sector.  This resulted in large scale redundancies and loss of jobs for thousands of New Zealanders as former government services were rationalised. 

When Labour was voted out in 1990, the new Minister of Finance, Ruth Richardson continued the programme of privatisation and SOE sell offs.  But those in Treasury wanted The New Right doctrine taken further and New Zealand’s renowned welfare system to be dismantled.  In 1991, Richardson announced the Mother of all Budgets in which benefits were slashed across the board in order to encourage beneficiaries to compete for jobs and sanctions were brought in for eligibility to benefits (Someone Else’s Country, 2002).

On top of the highest employment statistics since the Great Depression, continued redundancies and job losses from SOE restructuring and private companies responding to the times, depressed wage increases and instability of work due to the Employment Contracts Act and the loss of power by the trade unions, the cuts to benefits impacted local communities extremely hard.  Over $400,000 was no longer flowing through the community of Porirua alone, resulting in less money spent in local businesses resulting in further job losses and business closures (Someone Else’s Country, 2002).

The Lead Up to the Education Reforms

Russell Marshall, Education Minister at the
1985 NZEI Annual Meeting.
Acknowledge: the New Zealand
Educational Institute Collection.
After the 1984 election, the Minister of Education was Russell Marshall.  He saw that education needed rationalisation as the make-up of the Department of Education was cumbersome, and, after watching reforms being conducted in other government departments, decided the best course of action was to set up his own review of education before it was initiated by other certain members of caucus or pushed by Treasury officials so he could control its direction (Butterworth & Butterworth, 1998).

Prime Minister, David Lange, was very concerned at the possibility of an education review being taken over by people who may steer education away from its role of public good.  “Lange sent Annette Dixon to talk to John Wilcox, Marshall’s executive assistant to make it clear that he did not want people appointed who would ‘take a blow torch to education’.”  (Butterworth & Butterworth, 1998, p.66).  The man recommended by Wilcox to lead the taskforce was Brian Picot. 

Prior to the 1987 election, Marshal announced to his colleagues that he was launching a review.  Brian Picot, the head of the supermarket chain Progressive Enterprises, insisted he would only lead the review if it was not to be used as a vehicle to slash funding to the education sector.  It was “only to identify costs, benefits and possible efficiencies” (Butterworth & Butterworth, 1998, p.76).

After the election, David Lange appointed himself as the Minister of Education.  “Lange was concerned about an imminent Treasury attack on social expenditure, and that he wanted to send a strong signal to the electorate of his continuing commitment to social policy.”  (Butterworth & Butterworth, 1998, p.68).

The Picot Report was released in April 1988.  Some of its recommendations were based on work from other committees and unpublished work by other teams.  In August 1988, the document Tomorrow’s Schools was released, which was essentially the Picot Report with a few relatively minor amendments.  The biggest adjustment was the inclusion and emphasis of the Treaty of Waitangi, which was anticipated by the Picot Taskforce.

An Overview of Education Policy Reform in the 1980s and 1990s

Under Tomorrow’s Schools, the result of the Picot Report in 1987, the centralised Department of Education was dismantled and replaced by a small policy focused Ministry of Education (MOE).  The NZQA (New Zealand Qualifications Authority) was set up to monitor qualifications and assessment.  Special Education services became another standalone agency (Gordon, 1997).

Primary and secondary schools became self-managing entities with parents and community members elected to a Board of Trustees (BOT) for each school.  BOTs and schools would take over the functions previously undertaken by the local Board of Education (Gordon,1997).  Advisors (formally part of the Department of Education) became part of the Advisory Service usually managed by the nearest School of Education/Teachers’ College. 

The Education Review Office (ERO) was established to hold BOTs, schools, principals and teachers to account for the financial performance and achievement success of the school in place of the inspectors from the previous regional Boards of Education.  This was in line with an international preoccupation with reviewing schools under the New Public Management doctrine (Thrupp, 1997).

In 1995 the decile funding system was introduced.  The right of parents to choose the schools their children would attend, under the theory of Public Choice, implemented in 1991, lead to white flight from low socio-economic schools, particularly combined with the perception by parents that decile level could be a stigma and may mean the education provided at a low decile school was not adequate (Thrupp, 1997).  Ball (2003, pp.32-33) quoted Lauder, et al (1999) discussing how choice was being used by New Zealand parents who were financially mobile:  “Students from high SES background have the greatest opportunity to avoid working class schools, and most take it.”

The Curriculum Review conducted under the Lange government went into full overdrive in the 1990s, starting with the Curriculum Framework published in 1993 (Philips, 2000).  Each year a new Curriculum document for a new learning area was released in draft form, which was compiled without direct consultation with teachers and academics concerned with the curriculum area under the concept of provider capture.  Each draft had to be commented on and trialled in schools before being confirmed, published and gazetted.  This meant each year one curriculum area would be consulted on, while a second was gazetted with schools writing the document into their policies and a third curriculum area was being implemented into schools.

This really was the ignition of an assessment led curriculum, with Learning Objectives becoming the driving force behind any learning planned with an assessment to prove its effectiveness.  This was how the government and the public would assess children were learning and teachers were effective or not.  But how was this different to previous eras?

A History of Primary School Assessment up to the 1980s

In the school days prior to 1955, a student was required to pass the standard set for their year level.  The Education Act of 1877 established a national system of curriculum and exam standards for all state primary school.  They were formulated in early 1878 and gazetted later that year in September.  Originally this was assessed by an external inspector using an oral and written examination once a year.  Rote learning was rife with the threat of the inspector’s visit looming.  Competition between schools, and even education boards, was rife.  One Napier school announced it would pay a bonus to teachers whose students produced desirable exam results.  The results of the annual exams were published each year and it enabled the public and the Department of Education to evaluate the performance of individual schools and teachers (Lee, n.d.).  Like today, teachers of that time complained the syllabus was being narrowed as a result of the standards set for each year level. 

This evolved to a test administered by the head teacher.  However this process led to accusations of gaming the system by teachers teaching to the test or assisting students with their assessments – not unlike some of the arguments of today’s era of National Standards or evidence of overseas jurisdictions using a national testing regime.  Consequently a set written test was developed (Hill, n.d.).

Prior to the Second World War and after it, a lot of research had been conducted into the science of how children learned and how successful teachers taught.  Beeby put a lot of weight behind this and it influenced the pedagogical approach that he encouraged through the various units in the Department of Education.

Post World War II, changes were made to how teaching and learning was approached and assessed.  Passing the standards to move up was abolished in 1955.  Norm based testing was the focus with a five point scale.  After the 1962 Currie Commission Report, The New Zealand Council of Education Research (NZCER) were engaged “to prepare and administer national standardised tests in the form of ‘checkpoints of attainment’ in basic subjects” for certain year groups (Lee, n.d., slide 63).  In 1965, NZCER were tasked with the responsibility of designing assessments based on norm based standardised testing for each year group, resulting in the PATs (Progress Achievement Tests) for reading comprehension, reading vocabulary, oral listening and mathematics being launched in 1969 (Hill, n.d.).  PATs are still one of the assessment tools in use today.

During the 1970s and 1980s, other advances were made in the assessment of reading and writing.  Marie Clay’s Running Record and the Six Year Net for the assessment of reading behaviours and Donald Graves writing conferences to assess and feedback on the craft of writing were established as core assessment procedures for teachers and are still in use today (Hill, n.d.).

Assessment in the 1990s Era of Reform

As part of the market focus of the reforms initiated when Tomorrow’s Schools was implemented in 1989, schools and teachers were to be held accountable for the learning achievement of students publicly.  “The insinuation was that through these accountability measures, student achievement and the quality of learning programmes would be improved.” (Hill, 2002).

In 1990, a document called Tomorrow’s Standards was published as a result of the Ministerial Working Party on Assessment for Better Learning.  Following that, a wider range of assessment tools were developed to assist classroom teachers with formative (used to improve teaching and learning) and summative (a summary of where the individual is at) assessments to ensure students were achieving the tightly specified outcomes of the New Zealand Curriculum (Philips, 2000).

Teachers and schools developed their own methods and resources to assess their students’ learning while the Ministry worked on developing examples of assessment activities, co-ordinating teacher development in assessment and releasing support material such as Assessment: Policy to Practice in 1994 (Philips, 2000).  Philips said Hill (1999) referred to ‘assessment frenzy’ becoming epidemic in the 1990s primary school setting.

During this time, common place assessment tools used included the School Entry Assessment, Six Year Nets, Standard Two Survey, Running Records and PATs.  During this time the Assessment Resource Banks (ARBs) were developed by NZCER to provide a variety of standardised assessment items in mathematics, English and science.

The National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP) was established in the mid 1990s based at the University of Otago.  “The stated purpose of NEMP is to provide a national picture of trends in educational achievement, which may assist policy development, resource allocation and review of the New Zealand Curriculum.”  (Philips, 2000).  A sample of students in Years 4 and 8 (or Standard 2 and Form 2) were selected to complete tasks in various curriculum areas to demonstrate their skills and achievement in that curriculum area.

In the mid 1990s, international assessments emerged to measure educational achievement in OECD countries.  The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) was one, and it enabled New Zealand students to be compared to students in the other OECD countries.

In 1998 a Green Paper, Assessment for Success in Primary Schools, was a beacon for what was to come.  The Green Paper said there was a need to know how children were achieving in primary schools and that schools needed better information “to ‘benchmark’ or check their professional judgement” and compare to nationwide cohorts (Philips, 2000, p.148).  While acknowledging the range of assessment tools in operation already, the Green Paper deliberately downplayed their importance and sophistication to promote the need of national, externally referenced tests (Lee, n.d.).  Recommendations included additional diagnostic test to provide specific next steps for learners, along with the mandatory externally, referenced tests with multiple choice questions to be administered at Years 6 and 8 (Standard 4 and Form 2).

The external mandatory tests were opposed by the teaching profession, citing fears of narrowing the curriculum, league table and teaching to the test, not unlike the calls over a hundred years previous to this (Lee, n.d.).  Three proposals for new diagnostic tools, exemplars of students’ work and changes to NEMP were supported however (Philips, 2000).


This is the report in the NZEI Rourou (12/10/1999 volume 10, issue 10 1999) of then Education Minister Nick Smith's speech to the 1999 NZEI Annual Meeting - the first Annual Meeting I ever attended.  The silent protest was powerful.


However, with in late 1998 it was clear the government was still working towards external mandatory tests when it announced a new goal for literacy and numeracy (Philips, 2000, p.144): “By 2005, every child turning 9 will be able to read, write and do maths for success.”  Lee (nd) said the new Education Minister in 1999, Dr Nick Smith, stated that an external mandatory test regime was still on the table post-election, while Labour leader, Helen Clark, ruled it out under a Labour government.

Assessment in the 2000s

Upon Labour becoming the government in November 1999, the proposal of a national external test regime for primary schools was extinguished.  Otherwise the new Labour led government carried on the majority of the policy agenda set under the previous National led government.  The 1998 Green Paper had some initiatives in motion and the emphasis was on Literacy and Numeracy driven from the failed attempt by the previous government to introduce a national testing regime. 

Unlike the National led government before it, this Labour led government during the 2000s actively engaged the teaching profession in all initiatives, believing that if the teachers had buy in they would more likely have successful student outcomes.  “Accordingly, when students fail to achieve the prototypical classroom teacher becomes the scapegoat…  In this ideal, Labour is attempting simultaneously to secure the active support of the teaching workforce as a partner of the state and to persuade the wider electorate that it is the watchdog of educational standards.”  (O’Neill, 2005, p.119).

With the focus being on Literacy and Numeracy, several key contracts were initiated in 2000.  One was the Numeracy Project, a new way to assess children’s capabilities to express their understanding of number and computation and how to teach Numeracy, as maths came to be known.  Contracts for writing and reading to improve a schools performance in these areas under the Literacy Project were also initiated as well as clusters of schools for ICTPD (Information and Communication Technologies Professional Development).

The new Education Minister, Trevor Mallard, announced the development of a new assessment tool called asTTle to be developed by the University of Auckland under the guidance of Prof John Hattie.  This tool would be used on a voluntary basis by schools, with assessments chosen by teachers to suit their learning programmes and the varied nature of these assessment meant the development of league tables would be highly unlikely.

Other new assessment tools, as a result of the 1988 Green Paper were developed too.  Between 1999 and 2003, NZCER developed and trialled a new literacy assessment tool call STAR for students Year 3 and up (NZCER, n.d.).  The National Curriculum Exemplars were examples of student work at each level of the curriculum identifying features that were characteristic of the achievement expected at that level.  Alongside matrices for writing, for example, these enabled teachers to level a student’s writing sample against the Curriculum expectations.

Assessments in use over the 2000s included: School Entry Assessment, Six Year Nets, Numeracy diagnostic tools like NUMPA and GloSS, National Curriculum Exemplars, Year Four Survey (aka Standard Two Survey), Running Records, asTTle, ARBs, PATs, STAR and NEMP.

But rather than a focus on assessment to improve student outcomes, the spotlight turned to how to identify best practice in teaching and learning, how to better analyse and use the assessment data collected to inform teaching and learning, and to place further responsibility and accountability upon teachers to meet the needs of individual students (O’Neill, 2005).  As O’Neill (p.119) wrote, “On the surface, then, the discourse under the Fifth Labour Government has simply shifted from ‘summative’ to ‘formative’ in its emphasis.”

The government also initiated a long-term study conducted by Adrienne Alton-Lee called Iterative Programme of Best Evidence Synthesis, focused on reviewing the best evidence of teaching and learning in an effort to find out how to best improve teaching and learning to improve student outcomes (Boyask, 2010 and O’Neill, 2010).

International tests of student performance were an increasingly important sign post under the Labour led government to prove the system was delivering.  PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) and PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) joined TIMSS as a way for the government to compare New Zealand student performance internationally.  In comparison to New Zealand developed assessments, these international assessments failed to factor in the cultural currency of the New Zealand student, especially Māori and Pasifika students.  This was due to the assessment being focussed on the knowledge considered to be essential for the global knowledge economy.  None the less, the reports from these assessments remained central to the narrative of the MOE literature (Boyask, 2010).

Nationals Rationale for National Standards

When National left office in 1999, it was with a sense of unfinished business in regards to getting more accountability for student achievement outcomes to be measured.  The had not achieved their goal of a national testing regime. 

John Key.
John Key, the National leader, signalled in 2007 that when National got into government, National Standards would be central to his government’s plans in education and the focus would be on the basics, Literacy and Numeracy.  Lee (n.d.) quoted from the National Party’s 2007 Education Policy, “National Standards will give schools from Kaitaia to Bluff a set of shared expectations about what students should be achieving as they move through primary school.  Teachers will use national standards to clearly identify students who are at risk of missing out on basic skills and becoming a permanent part of the “tail” of under-achievement.”  Teachers argued this was disingenuous, as they already knew which children were not meeting the expected stages for their age and year level in various subjects.

Three key ideas underpinned this policy: national standards, effective schoolwide assessment and upfront reporting to parents.  National based this policy on two ERO reports, The Collection and use of Assessment Information in Schools (March 2007) and The Collection and Use of Assessment Information: Good Practice in Primary Schools (June 2007), which claimed 49% of schools were not implementing effective schoolwide assessment, teachers were not using the huge potential of the assessment tools for their programmes or efficiently reporting to families (O’Neill, 2007). 

However, National did back off from an external mandatory testing regime in favour of teachers using the existing assessment tools.  Instead they would be making Overall Teacher Judgements (OTJs) when comparing assessment results to National Standards.

Anne Tolley, Minister of Education at the
NZEI 2011 Annual Meeting in Rotorua.
I was in attendance for this controversial
address to Annual Meeting as well.
After the election in November 2008, the new Prime Minister, John Key, appointed Anne Tolley as Minister of Education.  Within weeks, under urgency and avoiding the select committee process, National Standards legislation was before the House and passed by the National Party MPs and their Coalition Support Partners, Act, United Future and the Māori Party.  Tolley insisted that parents wanted National Standards, despite few voters actually knowing that it was part of their election manifesto as both National and Labour released their education policies one week before the election.  She told principals in February 2009 that consultation would happen during that year and implementation would be in 2010 (Lee, n.d.).

Tolley continued to use the previously mentioned ERO reports to justify National Standards, using statistics in her speeches and media briefings to prove her point, her favourite one being one in five children were being failed as part of the long tail of underachievement.  However a closer look at the data from the ERO reports, according to Lee (n.d.), shows these reports did not actually bare out what Minister Tolley was saying to justify the policy.  She had cherry picked statistics to make her case.

In Conclusion

It is clear throughout the history of the compulsory primary school era that what children learn and how it is proved has been a consistent tension for politicians and the public.  The politicians wanted justification that the taxpayer dollars they had dedicated towards compulsory education were indeed value for money.

Post-World War II, this did not change, but pedagogy had more influence over assessment than economics when the need to pass a standard each year was abolished in 1955.  However, politicians still insisted on some form of measurement of achievement resulting in new tools such as the normative PATs, Running Records and so being developed over the next thirty years more in line with how experts knew students learn.

With the advent of The New Right and the evolution into neoliberalism, the drive for teachers to be accountable for student outcomes has come “back to the future”.  While a national testing regime similar to the UK, USA or Australia has been kept at bay during the 2000s, National has implemented National Standards.  Now children are assessed according to OTJs made by teachers using the assessment results collected against the Standards.  These are collated, reported to the MOE and, through the work of the media, league tables have emerged comparing the performance of schools against one another.

While economic policy does not specifically drive the desire to know how students are performing, as that is definitely an area parents and politicians have stake in knowing, economic policy does drive the form that the accountability will take.  Under the Fifth Labour led government the desire for education policy to be seen as reminiscent of the Fraser/Beeby egalitarian era dampened down the standards debate.  But with the return of a National led government under John Key, the neoliberalist desire to have every dollar spent on social policy accounted for and justified has come to the fore.

 
References:

Ball, S. J. (2003). Class strategies and the education market: The middle classes and social advantage. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Blinder, A. S. (2008). Keynesian Economics. Retrieved October 10, 2016, from http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/KeynesianEconomics.html

 

Boyask, R. (2010). Learning and Diversity in Schools. In Thrupp, M., & Irwin, R. (Eds.). Another decade of New Zealand education policy: Where to now? (pp. 21-34) Hamilton, N.Z.: Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research (WMIER), Faculty of Education, The University of Waikato.

 

Butterworth, G. V., & Butterworth, S. (1998). Reforming education: The New Zealand experience, 1984-1996. Palmerston North, N.Z.: Dunmore Press.

 

Friedrich Hayek. (2016, October 10). Retrieved October 12, 2016, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek

 

Gordon, L. (1997). ‘Tomorrow’s Schools’ Today: School Choice and the Education Quassi-Market. In Olssen, M., & Matthews, K. M. (Eds.). Education policy in New Zealand: The 1990s and beyond. (pp. 65-82.  Palmerston North, N.Z.: Dunmore Press.

 

Hill, M. (2002). Focussing the Teacher's Gaze: Primary teachers reconstructing assessment in self managing schools. Educational research for policy and practice, 1(1-2), 113-125. Doi:10.1023/A:1021172303647

Hill, M. (n.d.). Assessment at primary level: An historical overview. Retrieved October 10, 2016, from https://edlinked.soe.waikato.ac.nz/research/project/item.php?id=120

 

Lee, H. F., PhD. (n.d.). The Politics, Context, and History of National Standards and Testing in New Zealand Primary Schools. Retrieved October 11, 2016, from http://www.nzpf.ac.nz/uploads/7/2/4/6/72461455/profhowardlee_massey_ed.pdf

 

Milton Friedman. (2016, October 10). Retrieved October 12, 2016, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman

 

McKinnon, M. (2013). Treasury: A History of the New Zealand Treasury 1840-2000. Auckland University Press.

 

Nana, G. (2013). The Cost of Inequality. In Rashbrooke, M. (Ed.). Inequality: A New Zealand crisis. (pp. 55-67). Wellington, New Zealand: Bridget Williams Books.

NZCER. (n.d). STAR reading test.  Retrieved October 10, 2016, from http://www.nzcer.org.nz/tests/star

 

NZIFF: The heART of the Matter. (2016). Retrieved August 28, 2016, from http://www.nziff.co.nz/2016/auckland/the-heart-of-the-matter/

 

NZ On Screen. (1996). Someone Else's Country | Film | NZ On Screen. Retrieved September 16, 2016, from https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/someone-elses-country-1996

 

O’Neill, J. (2005).  Policies on teachers and teaching: More of the same?  In Codd, J. A., & Sullivan, K. (Eds.). Education policy directions in Aotearoa New Zealand.  (pp. 115-126).  Southbank, Vic.: Thomson Learning Australia.

 

O’Neill, j. (2010). Teachers and Teaching. In Thrupp, M., & Irwin, R. (Eds.). Another decade of New Zealand education policy: Where to now? (pp. 1-20) Hamilton, N.Z.: Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research (WMIER), Faculty of Education, The University of Waikato.

 

Philips, D. (2000). Curriculum and assessment policy in New Zealand: Ten years of reforms. Educational Review, 52(2), 143-153. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.waikato.ac.nz/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/235109973?accountid=17287

Thrupp, M. (1997). Shaping a Crisis: The Education Review Office and South Auckland Schools. In Olssen, M., & Matthews, K. M. (Eds.). Education policy in New Zealand: The 1990s and beyond. (pp. 145-161.  Palmerston North, N.Z.: Dunmore Press.

Wednesday, 18 January 2017

How does child poverty affect access to education and success in achievement for New Zealand children?

This was my final assignment for my Masters of Education paper, Global Citizenship and International Development Education.

This paper is focused on how child poverty affects access to education and success in achievement for New Zealand children.

Considering the current debates and concerns regarding child poverty in New Zealand, this is a very relevant question.  I was surprised at what I learned in relation to how economic theory has been used to increase our unemployment rate in order to reduce inflation, and reminded again about the even more callous way beneficiaries have been treated for the last 25 years.



Source:  www.childpoverty.co.nz


Abstract

“As many as 28 per cent of New Zealand children – about 305,000 – currently live in poverty. 

“When a child grows up in poverty they miss out on things most New Zealanders take for granted. They are living in cold, damp, over-crowded houses, they do not have warm or rain-proof clothing, their shoes are worn, and many days they go hungry. It can mean doing badly at school, not getting a good job, having poor health and falling into a life of crime.” (Unicef, 2016)

New Zealand was once a country with full employment and poverty was something that happened in other countries.  The reality of 2016 is that poverty is a prevalent issue in our communities across New Zealand that affects many children. 

Success at school is a strong asset for a young person to engage in further study, employment and to participate in society.  However, New Zealand has a long tail of underachievement.

This paper will discuss the how policy has led to child poverty in New Zealand, how this affects access to education and achievement success for New Zealand children, and a possible way forward.

 

Key Words

Poverty, neoliberalism, privatisation, achievement, The New Right,

 

A Land of Plenty

“Every person whatever his able ability, whether be rich or poor, whether he live in town or country, has a right as a citizen to a free education, of the kind for which he is best fitted and to the fullest extent of his power... That idea was deep in the public consciousness, deep in the public aspirations, and deeper still after the war. When again, like after the Depression, the country felt a sense of guilt for what they'd done for the young. And nobody! nobody! nobody would challenge that.” – Clarence E. Beeby, Director of Education 1940 – 1960 (NZIFF: The heART of the Matter, 2016).

For nearly 50 years, 1938-1985, successive governments practiced a policy of full employment through the public service and work schemes.  The belief was everyone who was able to, had the right to work and would have a job.  The price paid was the government had central economic control (Someone Else’s Country, 2002).

As the famous Beeby quote alludes, the country was deeply wounded by the Depression and the effects of World War II, especially for to the children growing up in the 1930s and 1940s.  Those who served in the armed forces overseas, came back to New Zealand and expected to have a job that paid a fair wage so they could support a wife and family.

The government set up a free public health system in 1938.  They built state housing and provided opportunities for people to own their own homes.  The government had heavily invested in infrastructure for a modern post war New Zealand.  For example, ensuring a strong network supplying electricity to the whole country.  Roads were sealed and the railways reached every city, major town, industry and port.  New Zealand was considered a wealthy country with a high standard of living that recognised what was needed for a modern society (In A Land of Plenty, 2002).

Official opening of the first state house in Hastings, 6 March 1938.  Source: Digital NZ
There was also the welfare state, established late in the Depression years, to support the unemployed until they were able to go back to work.  Mothers were also directly paid a universal family benefit for the support of each child (Baker, 2011).

The First Labour government had begun a programme in the late 1930s to reinvent the education system guaranteeing universal free primary and secondary education.  “It was assumed that where ever people lived, they would have access to a school offering the same range of opportunities as any other school.”  (Gordon, 1997, p.66).

Education policy was developed using best practice, the latest pedagogy and research.  Teachers were supported with a network of advisors across the syllabus from within the Department of Education.  The health and wellbeing of students was supported by providing each child with free milk each school day from 1937 until 1967 (End of free school milk, 2016). 

Minimal educational success was measured by achieving School Certificate at the end of fifth form.  If capable students would achieve University Entrance (UE) at the end of sixth form and go to university, or stay another year to do the Bursary exams at the end of seventh form – although this was not commonplace until the towards the end of the 1980s and early 1990s.  To be the first in your family to achieve a qualification at university was to be celebrated.

All of these actions were designed to ensure families were able to achieve their potential and would be able to contribute fully in society.

Prime Minister Robert Muldoon anouncing the 1984
snap election to waiting journalists.
By 1980, New Zealand had slipped from being the sixth wealthiest country per capita in 1965 to 19th place.  The oil shocks of the 1970s and Britain turning towards the European Community for trade rather than the Commonwealth deeply affected the New Zealand economy.  Prompted by rising inflation and unemployment impacting heavily on the economy, then Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon, announced a wage and price freeze in June 1982 to attempt to control and reduce inflation and unemployment (Te Ara, 2012).

In 1984, a snap election called by Muldoon set in motion the biggest economic and social upheaval in New Zealand’s history since the welfare state was instituted by the First Labour government in the 1930s – and it was a Labour government doing it again.

Economic Reform

Prior to the fourth Labour government being elected in 1984, many people were unhappy with the controlled nature of the New Zealand economy and were looking elsewhere for answers.  Ganesh Nana (2013, p.55), a New Zealand economist, quotes John Maynard Keynes: “The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood.  Indeed the world is valued by little else.  Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”

The New Zealand economy was in dire straits in 1984 with record unemployment and soaring double figured inflation resulting in interest rates well above 20%.  Reasons for this can be explained using elements of Keynesian economic theory, which was the dominant theory post-Depression.  The ethos behind it is a theory of total spending in the economy called aggregate demand, and its effects on output and inflation.  Blinder (2008) explains one of its key tenets was full employment.  Another feature was spending on big projects (the Think Big projects) and controlling wages and prices (Muldoon’s wage and price freeze). 

US President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990).
People began to look overseas for another option to improve the economy.  They looked to how Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain and Ronald Reagan in the USA who were dealing with similar issues in their economies.  Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were heavily influenced by the writings and direct advice from economists following the Chicago School of economics, in particular, Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. 

Friedman’s ideas on monetary policy, taxation, privatisation and deregulation under the virtues of the free market are clearly seen in the policy settings of Thatcher and Reagan (Wikipedia, Friedman).  Hayek argued that socialism could not be compromised with, that all forms of collectivism could only be maintained by a central authority of some kind and that maintaining the rule of law should be the only concern of the state.  Morrell (1989) wrote, as quoted in Ball (2003, p.38), “Hayek is particularly concerned to argue against the involvement of the Government in the life of the citizen.”  This meant that the state had no business in services such as health, education, or the provision of electricity, water and waste for example.  According to Hayek, these should be in the realm of private businesses, not government (Wikipedia, Hayek).

Margaret Thatcher was part of a movement called The New Right.  Their thinking encompassed the musings of Friedman and Hayek in having their roots in the laissez-faire viewpoint, such as leaving things to take their own course without interfering.  Again, this means the government should stay out of the free markets.  The New Right was all about the individual over the common good.  This led into neoliberalism - where we sit today - a modern politico-economic theory, with its roots in classical liberalism from the 1800s, favouring free trade, privatisation, minimal or reduced government expenditure on social services and minimal government intervention with business. 

This was the end of the We Society and the launch of the Me Society – the individual ahead of the collective.

The ideas of The New Right influenced New Zealand who had the ear of key Labour MPs leading up to the 1984 election (Revolution – Part 1, 1996), including Treasury Official Doug Andrew, who was attached to the Leader of the Opposition’s office in mid-1983 (McKinnon, 2013).



Prime Minister David Lange with Ministers from the fourth Labour government, Michael Bassett, Richard Prebble and Roger Douglas.
Economic policies of The New Right, pushed by sectors of the Treasury department, were put into practice by the new Minister of Finance, Roger Douglas following the 1984 election.  Government departments and services became State Owned Enterprises (SOE) and restructured, often with the goal of privatising and selling off to the private sector.  This resulted in large scale redundancies and loss of jobs for thousands of New Zealanders as former government services were rationalised. 

Finance Minister Ruth Richardson
When Labour was voted out in 1990, the new Minister of Finance, Ruth Richardson continued the programme of privatisation and SOE sell offs.  Those in Treasury wanted The New Right doctrine taken further and New Zealand’s renowned welfare system to be dismantled.  In 1991, Richardson announced the Mother of all Budgets which slashed benefits across the board in order to encourage beneficiaries to compete for jobs, and brought sanctions for benefit eligibility (Someone Else’s Country, 2002).

On top of the highest employment statistics since the Great Depression, continued redundancies and job losses occurred from SOE restructuring and private companies responding to the times.  Depressed wage increases and instability of work due to the Employment Contracts Act and the loss of power by the trade unions, plus the cuts to benefits impacted local communities extremely hard.  Over $400,000 was no longer flowing through the community of Porirua alone - the result was less money spent in local businesses leading to further job losses and business closures (Someone Else’s Country, 2002).

How Education Policy Reform Contributed to the Entrenchment of Child Poverty

The government departments which were sold off were not the only areas to face reform.  In the second term of the Fourth Labour government, the government turned to departments with a more social function.  To pre-empt the agendas of others, Russell Marshall, the Education Minister from 1984-1987, initiated his own review of education before either Treasury or certain members of caucus could moot it. 

Prime Minister David Lange was very concerned at the possibility of an education review being taken over by people who may steer education away from its role of the public good.  “Lange sent Annette Dixon to talk to John Wilcox, Marshall’s executive assistant to make it clear that he did not want people appointed who would ‘take a blow torch to education’.”  (Butterworth & Butterworth, 1998, p.66).  The man recommended by Wilcox to lead the taskforce was Brian Picot.  Following the election, Lange made himself the Minister of Education as he “…was concerned about an imminent Treasury attack on social expenditure, and that he wanted to send a strong signal to the electorate of his continuing commitment to social policy.”  (Butterworth & Butterworth, 1998, p.68).  The Picot Report was presented in April 1988, with the plan for Tomorrow’s Schools presented in August 1988.

When Tomorrow’s Schools was implemented in 1989, as a result of the Picot Report, the Board of Education and its regional entities, who ran the schools, were replaced by a small policy focused Ministry of Education (MOE).  Primary and secondary schools became self-managing entities with parents and community members elected to a Board of Trustees (BOT) for each school.  This meant each school was now reliant on the capabilities of their community members who were elected to their BOT to make decisions on policy, financial and governance matters necessary to run a school.  This worked well in communities with business people and professionals, but in some communities there were a lack of people with the skills necessary to make up effective BOTs (Gordon, 1997, Gordon, 2010). 

In 1991, the National government abolished school zones, under the auspices of public choice theory.  Public Choice Theory is a derivative of The New Right ideology, and allows each individual to make a rational choice as the individual is the best judge for their own interests, needs and life goals (Olssen & Matthews, 1997).  This allowed parents the right to choose the schools their children would attend (Gordon, 1997).   

The decile funding system was put in place in 1995 in an effort to fund schools equitably.  The range decided was 1-10, with one being the lowest, due to the highest degree of socio-economic disadvantage, and receiving significantly more funding per child than a decile ten school.  The decile ranking of a school factors in household income, parental educational qualifications and occupations, household crowding, income support payments and ethnicity of a small geographic area, or ‘mesh-block’, in the school community (Harrison, 2004).  There was a variety of reasons behind this initiative, such as a decile ten family having more opportunity to access educational learning in alternative ways compared to the opportunities afforded by a decile one family.  It was also considered that the decile ten schools had more ability to maximise effective fundraising measures from their community in comparison to a decile one school.

The impacts of this system included what is commonly called white flight – parents moving their children from low socio-economic schools as they believe the decile level could be a stigma and may mean the education provided at a low decile school wasn’t adequate (Gordon, 1997).  This changed the nature of communities as parents who could afford to would purchase or rent homes in communities with schools with higher decile ratings, ghettoising many areas as low socio-economic communities.

Education reforms in the 1990s entrenched many families with limited resources into the cycle of poverty generation after generation.

Neoliberal Policies and the Impacts of Benefit Cuts, Mass Redundancies and Changes to Employment Law

The Fourth Labour Government

When the Fourth Labour government came in, they gave the job of trying to reduce inflation to the Reserve Bank.  The theory was that once inflation went down, the other pieces would fall into place.

The reality was interest rates rose even higher.  This meant people had to pay even more for mortgages and they had less disposable income.  Consequently, people did not spend as much money in the shops, which meant low stock turnover.  With the products staying on the shelves, factories did not need to produce as much, so then did not require a full workforce and so began the redundancy process of factory and retail staff.  These people often became beneficiaries.

This graph below shows unemployment rates (blue line) increasing from 1986 from approximately 4% to 8% in 1990.  The dotted line represents actual numbers of unemployed people (Trading Economics, 2016).


On top of the redundancies from restructured government departments into SOEs, the rate of unemployment soared throughout New Zealand, particularly between 1988 and 1990.

Effectively, the Reserve Bank was using unemployment to deflate the inflation rate.  To lower inflation, the unemployment rate had to rise.  If the country had full employment, then businesses had to pay more for employees.  By forcing inflation down, unemployment rises and employers do not have to pay as much for workers (In a Land of Plenty, 2002).

As part of the free market economy, tariffs were removed from imported goods.  The tariffs were put in place to protect New Zealand manufacturers and jobs.  Without the tariffs, the New Zealand manufacturers could not compete with the cheaper goods being imported.  More redundancies happened as businesses shrunk or closed down completely, adding more people to the unemployment lines.

The numbers of unemployed rose forcing people onto benefits.  With less money to spend, standards of living began to drop, and this had impacts on local economies all around the country.

By late 1988, the Reserve Bank and Treasury were pushing for a deregulated labour market and the abolishment of the minimum wage.  This was a final straw for David Lange who resigned as Prime Minister in August 1989.  Labour was in turmoil with two new Prime Ministers leading the party before the 1990 election.  But these radical ideas to deregulate employment laws found a home with the new National government, who passed the Employment Contracts Act in 1991, leading to a huge loss of union membership, wages decreasing and employment becoming unstable.

 

The National Government of the 1990s

In 1972, the Royal Commission on Social Security had reinforced the role of welfare as “to ensure, within limitations which may be imposed by physical or other disabilities, that everyone is able to enjoy a standard of living much like that of the rest of the community, and thus is able to feel a sense of participation in and belonging to the community” (Kelsey, 1995, p.271).  The new National government of 1990 decimated this social contract in 1991.

Treasury’s Social Policy Branch decided they needed to determine what American economists called a minimum income standard – a poverty line.  They contracted some home economy researchers in Dunedin, who investigated four dietary budgets on which to feed a man, woman and several children of various ages for a week.  They came up with four budgets: liberal, moderate, basic and low.  At the low end, the researchers determined it would take careful shopping and considerable time and cooking skill to ensure a healthy diet, but that it was not healthy or sustainable long term.

Treasury took the lowest plan, without telling researchers, and reduced it by 20%.  They called this the New Zealand Income Adequacy Standard and used it as the recommendation for the new beneficiary payment levels.  The unemployment benefit was cut by one quarter.  Jenny Shipley, the Minister of Social Welfare, claimed it was required to “create a gap between work and welfare” (In a Land of Plenty, 2002).  The family benefit was also stopped and merged into a means-tested family support tax credit (Baker, 2011).

The impact of this move was devastating across the country and plunged families below the poverty line.  If Porirua alone had $400,000 a week slashed from its local economy, other communities around the country also faced similar circumstances, including the flow on of businesses closing and further job losses. 

The changes to the employment laws, continued restructuring and redundancies, plus the impacts of less money in the local economies caused unemployment to rise to over 11%, as can be seen in the graph below (Trading Economics, 2016).  This was key to poverty gaining a foothold in many communities who had lost significant and large, long term employers forever.


Flessa (2001) argues the results of schooling are determined in large part by preconditions over which schools have no control, such as the employment status of a parent.  However, schools can make a huge difference by implementing strong teaching and learning programmes.  Above that, policymakers have a huge part to play in ensuring positive outcomes. 

According to Cremin and Nakabugo, education goes hand in hand with strengthening social and community bonds and developing the individual person – without these three legs, the stool of sustainable economic development will wobble about and crash those who try to ‘sit’on it.  When large, long term employers closed down in the rural towns and communities, the legs of their stool collapsed.

The Fifth Labour Government

When the Fifth Labour government came into power in late 1999, they did not raise the rate of the benefits above the poverty line.  However, the Labour led government did make a commitment in June 2002 to eliminate child poverty, a pledge not dissimilar to one made by then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and other international leaders (Perry, 2004).

In the 2004 Budget, the Labour led government announced the Working For Families (WFF) package, to commence the following 1 April, 2005.  It had three basic goals: to make work pay; to ensure income adequacy; and to support people into work (Perry, 2004).  This policy was aimed at families of people in work at the low to mid income stream.  Beneficiary families were excluded.  It supplemented peoples’ income and was a tool designed to help get people off the benefit and into work, believing they would be better off financially.  Jacinda Ardern claimed on Checkpoint on 12 October 2016 that WFF reduced child poverty in working families by an estimated 30%.  Labour never got to finish the work towards reducing poverty in beneficiary families before they were replaced by a National Government in late 2008 (Checkpoint, 2016).

In 2012, Jonathon Boston led a wide ranging inquiry into the causes, consequences and possible remedies to child poverty.  Boston and Chapple (2014, p.4) define child poverty as “those children who have insufficient income or material resources to enable them to thrive.  Consequently they are unable to enjoy their rights, achieve their potential and participate as equal members of society, now and in the future”.  New Zealand as become a mediocre performer compared to other rich countries in terms of child income poverty and child hardship.  Boston and Chapple argue child poverty needs to be addressed because it is unfair to exclude poor children from full societal participation and to do nothing will cost society more.

While WFF enabled more children access to their rights as a citizen, this was still to be achieved for the children in the families on a benefit below the poverty line.

The graph below shows WFF may have had an impact on unemployment figures, as from 2005 to 2008 the unemployment figures were close to full employment levels (Trading Economics, 2016).  Consequently it did relieve some of the aspects of poverty some families had previously experienced.


The Current National Government

When the current National led government came to power at the end of 2008, they did keep WFF, despite calling it communism by stealth at its introduction.  However, they did make a number of changes early on to the entitlements of beneficiaries, such as taking away the Training Incentive Allowance in 2009 (Haines, 2009).  This action resulted in people unable to finish or gain qualifications to enable them to secure stable, gainful employment which would have taken them off the benefit, further trapping families into poverty on the benefit. 

In 2013, National abolished the Domestic Purposes Benefit (DPB), Unemployment and Sickness benefits and gave them all new names and eligibility criteria (Changes to benefit categories from 15 July 2013, 2013).  If a beneficiary did not meet a criterion, such as sending their pre-schooler to fifteen hours of early childhood education or failing a drug test, then their benefit was cut until compliance was met.  (See video below for the exchange, particulary from 2 minutes 25 seconds in).

A telling quip demonstrating National’s attitude to poverty was expressed in Parliament in August 2012 by Paula Bennett, the Minister of Social Development: “One week they can be in poverty, then their parent can get a job or increase their income and they are no longer in poverty… This is the real world, and actually children move in and out of poverty at times on a weekly basis.” (Trevett & Shuttleworth, 2012).

In the 2015 Budget, Finance Minister Bill English, announced benefits for families would increase by $25 a week from 1 April 2016 (Kirk, 2015).  While this has helped, it is claimed that accommodation supplements were reduced to counter the extra $25 (Logie, 2016).

The graph below demonstrates the unemployment rate increasing when the current government came to power and the Global Financial Collapse was in progress.  However, under the current Rockstar Economy, the unemployment rate has not gotten back to the lows the Clark government enjoyed (Trading Economics 2016). 


Jonathan Boston (2014) argues that the scale of the issue of child poverty had to be understood before solving it.  He repeated the findings of a taskforce he led in 2012 which said there should be a standard measure for child poverty in New Zealand and this measure and reporting of it should be embedded in legislation.  The taskforce also recommended boosting incomes of poor families, improving housing, access to health and other social services and a Child Payment, reminiscent of the Family Benefit introduced by the First Labour government.

However, Prime Minister John Key’s refusal to set a definitive measure of child poverty (Moir, 2016) demonstrates the entrenchment of child poverty and its consequences in New Zealand society.  Even when challenged by the new Children’s Commissioner, Judge Andrew Becroft, to set a definitive measure of child poverty along with a target of reduction (The Nation, 2016) and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCROC) calling for more action on child poverty (John Key hits back at UN report on child poverty in NZ, 2016), John Key remains defiant that his government is failing the children of New Zealand below the poverty line.

Criticism of Government Policy and Inaction on Child Poverty and its Consequences

Prior to the 2011 election, Bryan Bruce’s documentary Inside New Zealand: Child Poverty was made and screened on TV3.  Bruce visited schools, parents and health professionals to learn how child poverty manifests.  He uncovered the number of school children who needed a charity to feed them at school.  He visited homes with mould growing on the walls or water running down them, impossible to heat.  Families often slept all in one room together due to cold, damp homes.

Sose Annandale, the principal of Russell School in Porirua, said she could not expect children to achieve in Literacy and Numeracy if they had not been fed at school (Inside New Zealand, 2011).  This view backs up the stand of the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) in (2012) that children were missing out on educational opportunities or even missing school due to their level of poverty. 

The public health nurse said she calls once a week at Russell School and was so busy treating health conditions she did not get time for preventative action (Inside New Zealand, 2011).  Chronic and acute skin conditions, respiratory and throat infections were rife, along with rheumatic fever in low income families.  Rheumatic fever a direct consequence of poor housing and overcrowding.  Poor housing affects children’s ability to learn at school and study at home through many mechanisms – through recurrent or chronic illness, stress, and overcrowded conditions making study and concentration difficult. As a result they may have lower educational attainment, and greater likelihood of unemployment later in life, and poverty.”  (Child Poverty Action Group, 2015, p.5).

Pirrie and Hockings (2012) discuss the importance of strong leadership and vision within a school to combat the effects of child poverty and engaging parents to be active in their children’s learning journeys.  Leaders like Annandale have to make decisive and bold moves to ensure students in their school have the best opportunity to succeed despite poverty.  By including parents and community members in the food in schools, she has engaged parents in ensuring the children are ready to learn.

Popular discourse is that the government has abandoned its social contract to help those most in need and are leaving it up to the non-government organisations (NGOs) to meet the shortfall in schools and the wider community.  Such NGOs include church and community foodbanks and those who provide meals to the homeless; budgeting services’ women’s refuge; programmes like KidsCan, Milk in Schools, the breakfast programmes and Eat My Lunch for food in schools or basics such as shoes and a raincoat; and the Salvation Army for emergency shelter and a variety of other services.

Bryan Bruce from his documentary Mind the Gap
In 2014, in the documentary Mind the Gap, Bruce investigated how New Zealand had gone from a land of plenty to the country with shocking statistics in child poverty.  He laid it at the door of the economic policy of The New Right and neoliberalist governments from 1984 to the present day and said we now live in the Me Society.  Bruce quoted Australian economist Prof John Quiggin in labelling the neoliberal trickle down economic theory as Zombie Economics and agreed it had not benefited those in the middle and lower economic levels in this country.

Continued economic deprivation of New Zealand’s most vulnerable has caused, what John Key termed leading up to the 2008 election campaign, a growing underclass (Key, 2008).  Nana (2013, pp.60-61) summarised how policy since the 1990s has impacted on families when he wrote “…when people are deprived of the opportunity to achieve their full potential, we are ensuring that these members of society are not fully utilised”.

In 2015, the New Zealand Herald did a series on education, specifically looking into the effects of poverty on children’s education.  In Johnston’s article, Prof John O’Neill pointed out a student’s home background is a huge factor in student achievement.  A poor income often results in a lack of books in the home, along with transience, truancy and family dysfunction leading to the cause of 80% of under achievement.  Education Minister Hekia Parata countered that socio-economic factors account for only 18% and cites research about teacher quality, expectations, school leadership and relationships having a higher impact.  She calls it deficit thinking, and this was echoed by former Secretary of Education, Lesley Longstone (Clark, 2013), who stated in a radio interview she did not consider poverty to be the reason for underachievement. 

But to say poverty in not an excuse is merely an excuse for ignoring poverty.  Snook and O’Neill (2012) say it would be neglectful not to acknowledge the impact of child poverty on students and their learning.  They also wrote that schools could not counter the effects of poverty on their own, focusing on improvements in one part of poverty will not negate poverty in general to allow students to achieve to their potential.  Clark (2013) also argues that child poverty is a leading factor that can not be ignored and must be dealt with to help children achieve their potential.

Constructive Solutions to New Zealand’s Child Poverty Issues

Machin and McNally (2006) stated policies designed to alleviate child poverty need to be better integrated with education policies if child poverty is to be eliminated.  Repeated governments have failed to place children at the centre of policy design and implementation, leading to an entrenchment of poverty in New Zealand society inhibiting children from reaching their full potential.

The Child Poverty Action Group produced a series of videos in 2014 to discuss solutions to child poverty.  In one of these videos, Dr Nicky Turner, an Auckland University GP, advocated for a range of integrated policies to improve outcomes for children currently in poverty.  These policies included universal health and dental care access for children as well as prescription glasses, warm healthy homes and an adequate income.  She claims once we have this right we can look to education as a means to reduce poverty.

From www.childpoverty.co.nz
The Child Poverty Action Group’s 2012 submission to the Inquiry into the determinants of wellbeing for Māori children, headed by Dr Mike O’Brien, argued for reducing child poverty through income assistance, employment, improved housing and better access to health and education, as does The Child Poverty Action Group’s July 2014 publication called Our children, our choice: Priorities for policy.

Communities and schools have been finding their own solutions.  Some schools have developed gardens to support their own food in schools programme, such as Rhode Street School in Hamilton.  Some have established a community garden to supply fresh vegetables to their school families and the community, such as Unity Gardens at Epuni School.  Community gardens have been established by members of communities up and down the country to supplement fresh vegetables for those who struggle.

Haig (2014) made a case for schools to be the community hub, the provider of a range of services that would benefit the community the school serves, such has access to health and social agencies, adult education, parenting programmes or whatever was deemed necessary for the benefit of the community.  Victory School in Nelson is held up as an example of a school developing its own community hub based on the needs identified by their community.  The Green Party had a similar policy to the one Haig proposes in their 2014 Election Manifesto and held Victory School up as an example of what is possible (New Zealand Green Party, 2014).

Every Child Counts was a conference in Wellington in 2012.  Dr Airini spoke about the $4-5 billion still to be tapped into the New Zealand economy if Pasifika incomes were to match non-Pasifika incomes.  She had four key elements to her plan to enable this to happen:  plan for impact; an Every Child Counts Research and Development network; make progress in Auckland; and zoom in and scale up what works.

The New Zealand Principal’s Federation focused on how to fix the tail of under achievement from a school’s perspective.  It simply is to properly fund existing successful programmes such as Reading Recovery, First Chance, Ka Hikitia and Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L) and ensure access to more students.  This would require extra resourcing for a lot of schools, as many of these programmes are currently outside of their current funding parameters.

But initiatives from schools, the community and businesses will not solve New Zealand’s child poverty problem if the government will not recognise their role in forming and implementing policies to provide income adequacy, provision of universal health care and a truly free compulsory education system.

Final Thoughts

New Zealand has the potential to solve its issues with child poverty and consequently improve the outcomes for students and their ability to achieve.  The drivers of poverty are clear: a lack of income, a lack of stability in employment, a low wage economy.  Combine these, and there is a cycle which entraps people.

The symptoms of poverty are clear: acute and chronic health conditions, poor quality housing, low attainment of education success, a greater potential to be either a victim or a perpetrator of crime (or both), increased risk of mental health issues, increased chance of abuse.

From www.childpoverty.co.nz
The solutions to poverty are clear: put children at the centre of all policy developments and implementation plans; stop using the unemployment rate as a mechanism to control inflation and keep wages low; increase all benefits to a level which enables a healthy diet to be maintained; increase the minimum wage to the level of the living wage; ensure free universal access to health, dental care and education; and improve the housing stock of New Zealand by demanding a minimum standard for state and private rentals.

Until New Zealand implements a full suite of policies to target the root causes and symptoms of child poverty, outcomes in student achievement will not be improved or maximised.  When a child starts from a deficit due to the impacts of poverty, schools spend most of their time, effort and money into plugging the gaps left gaping by the deficit.  To ignore that deficit is to ignore the needs and wellbeing of the child.

But the biggest deficit is in the government’s social contract with the nation.  Until it attends to that deficit by implementing the previously mentioned solutions for child poverty, New Zealand will continue to have students from the most deprived families who will struggle to succeed as learners or productive and active members of society.



 

 

References:

Baker, M. (2011, May 5). Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved October 17, 2016, from http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/family-welfare/page-4

 

Baker, M. (2011, May 5). Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved October 17, 2016, from http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/family-welfare/page-6

 

Boston, J. (2014). Child Poverty in New Zealand: Why it matters and how it can be reduced. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 46(9), 952-988.

 

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