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We know better what Hipkins dislikes than likes

Max Rashbrooke Senior associate at the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Victoria University of Wellington-Te Herenga Waka

Policies, promises, compromises: if you want to know what Chris Hipkins might do as this country’s leader, it’s all there in his record as minister of education, the post he held from 2017 until this week.

Sure, he loves DIY, sausage rolls and Cossie Clubs. But to understand the ideas he’d implement, we should examine his achievements, or lack thereof, to date.

For his approach to schooling – to take just one part of his legacy – is a microcosm of this Government’s record, where ambition has outstripped actual change.

Of course, some problems that bedevil New Zealand education – like the slow-motion collapse of our global rankings in literacy and numeracy – are long-standing and driven partly by forces of poverty and discrimination that are well beyond Hipkins’ control.

He’s had to battle obstacles ranging from Winston Peters, in his first term, to Covid, in his second. And he’s done repair work. Cathy Wylie, a respected education researcher, points out that under National, the ministry’s curriculum section ‘‘was pretty well disbanded’’. That hollowing-out of capacity had to be fixed.

Hipkins always knew what he didn’t like. National Standards and charter schools were both swiftly – and rightly – dispatched.

What he does like can be harder to discern. Clarence Beeby, the legendary post-war director of education, once described schooling’s mission thus: ‘‘All persons, whatever their ability, rich or poor, whether they live in town or country, have a right as citizens to a free education of the kind for which they are best fitted and to the fullest extent of their powers.’’ It’s safe to say nothing so clear or inspiring has emerged from the ministry in recent years.

And the two big wins on Hipkins’ watch – the replacement of the flawed decile system with an ‘‘equity index’’ for funding poorer schools, and the new history curriculum – owe much to his predecessors as education minister (Hekia Parata) and prime minister (Jacinda Ardern).

He has, however, been willing to address deep-seated, oft-neglected issues, something Wylie believes made him ‘‘a very ambitious minister of education, one of the most ambitious we’ve had, probably’’.

The curriculum, the structure of NCEA, vocational education, school property, early learning: all have been put up for grabs.

The problem is that, instead of decisive action, this has often produced a morass of reviews that move very slowly, all tangled up in each other like badly cast fishing lines. Consultancy spending has ballooned.

Some planned policies, meanwhile, are actively harmful. Confronting the decline in literacy and numeracy, Hipkins could have focused on the upstream sources of the issue, but is instead piloting compulsory tests that vast numbers of 15-year-olds will flunk, derailing their education.

Other moves have been more positive.

Wylie was a member of the 2019 review of Tomorrow’s Schools, which exposed the system’s big flaw: the way that competition isolates schools from each other, leaving struggling establishments to their fate and making it harder for successful strategies to be shared.

The review’s solution – greater co-operation between, and support for, schools – is slowly being adopted. The ministry has been restructured to help it interact better with teachers and schools. A new education service agency, Te Mahau, will assist those who are struggling. Leadership advisers have been appointed to support principals, and the ministry has removed schools’ ability to manipulate their zones and steal others’ (well-off) pupils.

In my judgment, only a few changes have built enough momentum and popular support not to be overturned if Hipkins loses October’s election.

The foundations of reform are being laid. But how many will endure? In my judgment, only a few changes have built enough momentum and popular support not to be overturned if Hipkins loses October’s election.

Transformational moments have come and gone. When Covid struck, the ministry scrambled to get computers into low-income homes, to aid remote learning. But this never developed – as it should have – into a national mission to ensure every home had the devices and the broadband needed to eradicate the digital divide.

A final anecdote is telling. When the Tomorrow’s Schools reviewers got underway, Hipkins asked them to speak to other political parties, including National and ACT, to test their ideas. ‘‘He wanted something that was robust and defensible, and likely to get support,’’ Wylie says.

Though sometimes labelled a ‘‘tribal’’ politician, Hipkins is, ultimately, a pragmatist, she adds. So there you have it. Collective values and solid analysis, but in the service of pragmatism; greater clarity on what is opposed than what is supported; good intentions that get bogged down in reviews; foundations laid but with little guarantee they’ll endure; Covid opportunities passed up: as it is with this Government, so has it been in education.

Don’t expect too much new from prime minister Hipkins, in short. The singer changes but the song remains the same.

Opinion

en-nz

2023-01-28T08:00:00.0000000Z

2023-01-28T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281685438979475

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