Figure 1.--.
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Figure 1.--. |
The New Zealand Independent Schools Association in 1990 asked the country's two major political parties to provide a policy statement on private education. Minister of Education Phil Goff provide the following statement for the Labour Party. The statement was presented in the runup to national elections.
While the New Zealand education system has always been a predominantly public one, independent schools have provided an alternative for those parents who have exercised their choice for a different style of education.
Under Tomorrow's Schools, some of the strengths of independent schools have been drawn upon to modify the public education system.
The reforms reduce the heavy centralization of the old Departmental system, allowing schools much greater freedom over their operational and managerial decision-making.
The new system allows local decisions to be made locally, though issues such as national curriculum, national standards and requirements designed to enhance equality of opportunity continue to apply to all schools in the public sector.
The greater empowering of parents under the new system to exercise the role of governance also brings Tomorrow's Schools closer to the model of independent schools, where parents have greater choice over the style and emphasis given to education in the schools in which their children are enrolled.
While less affected by the major changes in school reforms, reforms in other areas of preschool and tertiary education will clearly have an impact on parents whose children currently attend independent schools.
In the preschool area, with a growth in funding of $74 million since 1988/89, considerably more resources have been invested to improve the quality of early child-hood education and, in the case of child care centers, to reduce costs to parents.
In the tertiary sector, the emphasis has been to vastly expand learning opportunities with a growth of some 40,000 extra full-time student places in universities, polytechnics and colleges of education in just 6 years.
More income support assistance has also been given to mature students, as well as younger students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
In 1991, with a small contribution from student tuition fees and an investment of a further $100 million of public funds, the Government has undertaken to fully fund growth in tertiary places to maximize openness of entry to tertiary education and improve New Zealand's skill base.
A further recent change which will indirectly influ-ence independent schools is the adoption in principle by Government of the recommendations of the Working Party on Assessment for Better Learning.
New Zealand needs a more rigorous and compre-hensive system of assessment to monitor pupils' perform-ance and the overall effectiveness of schools.
The report "Tomorrow's Standards" underlines the Government's commitment to maintaining and enhancing high standards throughout education.
As well as recommending skills testing for young people at various stages in their schooling, the report encourages closer parental monitoring of their children's performance through new reporting procedures.
A new national certificate of education, while not replacing other national awards, will provide more comprehensive information about a pupil's actual skills and achievements when they leave school.
The School Certificate , examination will remain in place until such time as parents, schools and employers can be confident about -the effectiveness of achieve-ment based assessment measured in a way which allows the maintenance of national standards.
Implementing the recommendations will provide the means for more effective and systematic monitoring of pupils' learning.
It will also provide better information on how well the education system as a whole is meeting the high standards expected of it by society.
