Commitment works miracles but it's not enough

By Charmaine Pountney

Today's schools are much like yesterday's except that most of them are better.

I am a passionate enthusiast for many of the reforms implemented as a result of Tomorrow's Schools. One of the most important, the establishment of the Education Review Office, has provided a vital independent voice to name what is poor, as well as what is good, in our schooling system.

We now know that our poorest schools, in money terms, are by no means always the worst in terms of the education they offer.

In Otara last year I saw at first hand the enormous efforts being made in some schools to give children the best possible education. According to the ERO, 40 per cent of the schools in Otara and Mangere are doing a good job, as they are on the East Coast, or in Northland.

That's a miracle. It has little to do with Tomorrow's Schools. It's a miracle brought about by fine principals, dedicated teachers, committed board members, parents, volunteers, and sometimes business firms and other community groups working together.

The educational reforms implemented since 1988 have given good principals and boards of trustees greater flexibility to manage their schools in creative and effective ways.

Whether in decile one or decile 10, good schools are even better than they used to be.

There are two unpalatable truths with which we must now grapple.

The first is that there are too many schools, many of them in economically deprived areas, which fail children. The second is that in even the best decile one schools, the educational achievements of children, as we measure them at present, are still too far below those of their peers in good decile 10 or even decile five or three schools.

There is no provision for the Ministry of Education to intervene in poor schools (except by persuading the minister to sack the board of trustees and appoint a commissioner) or to demand assistance from other schools. This situation is ridiculous.

The law must be amended to permit rapid, appropriate local ministry intervention to save children from education which is clearly damaging them -- as soon as any school receives a second negative ERO report, for instance.

Second, the differential in operational grants between decile one and decile 10 schools is pitiful, if you look closely at the gulf between the educational resources of families in such schools.

Every class in a decile one school needs at least two teachers, as well as four or five voluntary helpers. Each one should have a nurse and a social worker available on-site.

Five computers per classroom and vastly enriched class and school libraries are essential. The staff need to be the best available, attracted by excellent contracts, and borrowed for a year or two when necessary from other schools.

All the teachers in decile one schools need coordinated on-going training in language teaching across the curriculum. The language of schooling is a foreign language to almost all children in decile one schools, and must be taught as such.

There are four ways in which decile one schools can be helped to produce the same outcomes as decile 10 schools, and we need all four. More taxpayer funding is one. Support for each other among neighbourhood schools -- no undermining of each other, no bussing of Otara children to Howick, for example -- is another.

A new paired-school buddy system, sharing the learning resources of very different schools (remembering that students in decile one schools have social, cultural and linguistic capital to offer) through visits, exchanges and technology links, is desirable. And every decile one school needs a business partner.

If we want a top education system, we must turn all our decile one schools into top schools. If we don't, we are doomed to maintain another generation in dependency in urban and rural ghettos.