This month's agenda for the Te Moemoea School board is a little longer than usual. The Appointments Subcommittee is making its recommendation for the junior school vacancy. Just yesterday, the Ministry of Education's description of the new mandatory item resource banks to be used for assessing children in forms 1 and 3 (equivalent to grades 6 and 8) arrived in the mail. The principal and three teachers stayed up late digesting and translating the document for the five parent members of the board.
On the fund-raising front, the treasurer and chair have some disappointing news to report—the school gala was well-attended, but people did not spend as much as they had in previous years. Board members are anxious that they'll end the financial year with a deficit. Perhaps they can hold off the repair work in the boys' toilets until next year? But the principal has news of unexpected leaks in the senior block roof. They look glumly at the figures. They could cut the third semester hours of either the school secretary or the librarian. Actually it's not a real question: the school secretary has become the school administrator. Teachers and volunteer parents will have to keep the library open.
Tonight there's a parent attending—a rare event even when the board holds its annual general meeting. And he wants to raise the issue of mixed-grade classes. It's a new issue for most of the board, who were only recently elected. The chair and the principal exchange looks of resignation before the chair asks the principal to explain why the school chose to group its classes this way. Both have been spending extra time with the new board members so that they'll understand their role, and approach it in a spirit of partnership rather than confrontation.
The chair thinks the principal is showing the strain of the heavy workload she's been carrying for the last five years. He tries to increase his share of the board work, but his own business is also becoming more time-consuming. He reminds himself how fortunate they've been: they've managed to run things pretty smoothly on the whole and the quality of the school is still high, though sometimes they've had to fly by the seat of their pants.
A Common Scenario
Since school-based management was introduced in New Zealand six years ago, a scene similar to this one has played out every month in each of the country's 2,666 state schools. New Zealand schools really have become stand-alone units. There are no districts, education boards, or county bodies telling them what to do or how to do it—or giving them support to do it. Every school has a board composed of five parent trustees (elected by parents); together with the principal, one staff representative, and, in secondary schools, a student representative. The board is responsible for a host of matters: for appointments and dismissals of all school staff, for managing and allocating the school's budget other than teacher salaries, for maintenance of the buildings and grounds, for staff development, and for the school's general performance.
The Ministry of Education provides the funding and broad curriculum guidelines for all state schools, as well as new standardized assessment tasks for all elementary schools. The Education Review Office inspects schools every two to three years to check their compliance with legislation (including employment and health and safety) and with education regulations (known colloquially as the NIGS and NAGS). Schools that appear to have major problems complying are followed up with further audits that identify problems for the schools themselves to solve. Currently, the office is concentrating on program quality and student achievement. Individual school results are often published in local newspapers.
So what are the major visible effects of such systemic school-based management six years after it was introduced? To find out, I have conducted four surveys since 1989, querying principals, trustees, and teachers at 239 elementary schools, and parents at a representative sample of 26 of these schools (Wylie 1994). I also draw on the research of Gordon (1994), Livingstone (1994), Mitchell and colleagues (1993), and Waslander and Thrupp (1995).
Learning: Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment
With one exception, no radical departures have been made from existing curriculum guidelines and instructional methods. Modifications that have been made can be traced to previous or current developments and resources at the national rather than school level. This absence of major changes could be because both teachers and parents were well satisfied with the curriculum and activity-centered learning approaches before 1989. Nor was there any groundswell of public doubt about the quality of most of New Zealand's schools.
Indigenous Maori language immersion schools have been growing as fast as capped government funding will allow. Teachers in these schools initially put a great deal of effort into developing their own curriculums and resources. But they found the required effort too great on top of their regular teaching loads. As in all state schools, no allowance is made for teacher planning or development during regular school hours.
Has the shift to school-site management had any impact on students' learning? There are no definitive answers. New Zealand had no standardized elementary tests before 1989, and subsequent changes in secondary school qualifications also rule out such comparisons. By 1993, 41 percent of elementary teachers surveyed reported that the switch to school-based management had had a positive effect on the children's learning in their class. Most of these teachers, however, had also been introducing some curriculum change, usually inspired by the national curriculum revision. So national policy changes were still highly influential at the classroom level.
This was also true of assessment. Elementary teachers certainly do more assessment now, using a wide assortment ranging from work samples to spelling tests. In junior classes (grades K–2 equivalent), spelling tests have increased since 1989. But the only other kind of assessment to show a marked change is the growing use of profiles, which describe children's social skills as well as their academic progress.
Teachers also pay more attention to reporting to parents, though few new structures or forms have emerged: parent-teacher evenings with their 10-minute slots, and regular school reports with their careful wording, still remain the main contact points in the school-home relationship.
The school boards were expected to focus on learning. But although the majority of boards receive regular updates of school activities at board meetings, property and finance decisions dominate their time. Innovations that schools reported in the survey were mainly improvements to school buildings and equipment, especially computers. The main issue that parents bring to boards, however, is discipline.
Staff Development: Unmet Needs
Staff development usually accounts for 5–8 percent of a school's budget. Most staff training occurs in-house. Individual staff members also attend courses on behalf of the school.
Staff development usually accounts for 5–8 percent of a school's budget. Most staff training occurs in-house. Individual staff members also attend courses on behalf of the school.
Significantly more elementary teachers are now training on their own time, up from 42 percent in 1989 to 70 percent in 1993. They make more use of holiday and weekend time for in-house training. Specific curriculum areas are the main topics.
Workloads Up, Morale Down
Elementary principals, teachers, and trustees now identify workload as the aspect of their work that they find least satisfying. It's also one of the major issues facing school boards.
In 1989, elementary principals were working a 48-hour week, on average. Since 1990, their average workload has been 60 hours a week. Principal turnover is around 40 percent. Anecdotal evidence suggests that senior school staff are losing interest in training or applying for principalships. Principals now have an even more complex role to play. Administration often swamps educational leadership, especially for teaching principals. They need to spend more time in the community, keeping the school profile high and soliciting support from local business, or scouring the area for the best deal on equipment or repairs. By 1993, elementary teachers no longer cited principals as a major source of their information and advice about curriculum, instruction, or assessment.
Teachers' workloads have also risen, but much less dramatically, from an average 46-hour week in 1989 to 48 hours in 1993. Teacher morale, however, has declined noticeably over the same period.
Trustees give their schools an average of 3.5 hours a week. The involvement of other parents in school life has not increased since 1989, whether it be in classroom help or other voluntary activities, or attending parent-teacher evenings. School trustees usually hear from those they represent only when there is a complaint. This sometimes makes their job a lonely one—but it also heightens their sense of team membership with school staff.
The numbers of parents running for the school board declined between the first and second elections, held three years apart. Most schools do fill their slates, often by shoulder-tapping. Schools in low-income areas find it hardest to get a full complement. They are the ones most likely to turn to non-parents, who can be either co-opted, or, since 1992, elected. Non-parents have generally shown little interest in serving on school boards.
Most school boards experience tension at one point or another—either within their own ranks, between themselves and the principal or school staff, or with the local community of parents. Yet most boards resolve their own tensions and issues (other than finance)—often with outside help. The elementary teacher union (NZEI) and the national school trustees' association (NZSTA) have played a vital role here. Members have been willing to help people in individual schools find workable solutions, and to provide them with written resources. The school trustees' association support is dependent on government funding.
Tight Budgets: The Bucks Stop Here
School operational grants are generally somewhat lower now than they were in 1989. By 1993, only a third of elementary school principals thought their government funding was adequate. Most schools have raised their voluntary (by law) school donations, and increased fund-raising activities since 1989.
This greater reliance on school fund-raising has also widened the already existing resource gap between schools that are in low-income areas and those that are not. “Equity” funding for schools in low-income areas was increased slightly in 1995, but mainly by pooling separate program funds for these schools, and making entitlement criteria more stringent. With a cap on funding for education, it would be politically difficult to change the general funding formulas. Any increases for the schools with the fewest resources would result in less money per student in other schools, even though those other schools have insufficient resources themselves. Although juggling budget priorities is a commonplace reality, Ministry of Education figures show that 35 percent of elementary schools and 61 percent of secondary schools were in deficit in the 1993 financial year (Minister of Education 1995).
Funding is the major issue facing school boards. And they do not keep this fact to themselves, but bring it to the attention of the media and politicians. Parents facing growing class sizes and more demands for money do not blame their school boards. They still see adequate—and equitable—school funding as a government responsibility.
One major achievement of the reforms has been the growth of an education lobby, which includes trustees (parents) as well as teachers. Both have joined together to resist the government's desire to include teacher salaries in schools' government grants, and both groups have sought a role in the national policymaking process. Teachers and trustees do not always agree, or agree for the same reasons, but certainly now the community has a better understanding of how schools work, and what helps their work.
Classroom teacher salaries do remain government paid and centrally negotiated between union and government. Principals have a collective national agreement similarly negotiated, but their salaries—at the existing level rather than the average level initially intended by government– have been put into government grants for the schools. Initial indications are that schools see little benefit in this for the extra work entailed.
Old Tensions for New
One major rationale for site-based management is that those most affected by a decision should be the ones to make it. But the New Zealand experience shows that national policymaking, from which people in schools are largely excluded, continues to play a significant role in what actually happens in schools. The tension between schools and their sources of funding, regulation, and review does not end with school-site management; it simply changes form.
For example, many principals and trustees complain about paperwork. In return for funding and school-site decision-making freedom, schools must provide information and account for their work to different government agencies. People in schools do create zones of further autonomy for themselves by picking and choosing the requirements, requests, and deadlines they will respond to: those that relate to funding or public image will usually take precedence. But so far, accountability requirements have proved neither the carrot nor the stick for school improvement that some anticipated.
The New Zealand experience with school-site management does show that it can be mandated, that professionals and parents can work together, and that schools will continue to function. It shows that principals, school staff, and those parents who like being involved in school decision making generally enjoy making decisions for their school.
What the experience shows too, however, is that when site-based management occurs in a vacuum, devoid of external interest, support, initiatives, and well-grounded information, it will not encourage school improvement or innovation. The gap between home and school will not be bridged simply by introducing a reform that includes parent representatives.
School-site management is also unlikely to bring in sufficient new resources to make up for any cuts or inadequacies in government funding. It only increases the resource gap between schools serving low-income communities and other schools—unless such inequities are acknowledged in initial funding formulas. Perhaps in some places cutting government agencies may make more educational dollars available to schools—but it did not do so in New Zealand.
The experience in this small, reasonably culturally homogeneous country would suggest that school-site management may work best as one of a related set of strategies centered on improving schools at learning sites. Otherwise, expect only modest gains from it, and some cost.
