Today’s Budget will deliver the first tranche of money for a major restructure of the Ministry of Education and how it manages schools, writes political editor Jo Moir
In the next five years most schools will have handed over property management to a new agency as part of a massive overhaul of Tomorrow’s Schools.
The Labour-New Zealand First coalition government announced the reforms – the biggest in three decades – in March 2018.
In November 2019, the Government laid out what shape it would take following a significant consultation process.
Just this month Bali Haque, a former principal who spearheaded the reform proposal, told Newsroom the Minister of Education Chris Hipkins hadn’t gone far enough.
He argued an agency entirely separate from the Ministry would have been a better solution, which is what the Tomorrow’s School Independent Taskforce proposed.
In the way Health NZ - the new agency set up to replace the country’s district health boards - will be separate to the Ministry of Health, the Education Service Agency (ESA) will not.
Today as part of the ‘Securing our Recovery’ Budget, a decent chunk of money will be allocated through Vote Education to kick the ESA into action after Covid-19 put the reforms on hold last year.
The ESA will sit alongside a Māori Education Group and a Te Marautanga Curriculum Centre under a redesigned Ministry of Education.
The intention is that resources will be shifted to the “front line” - in other words away from the Ministry and toward the ESA.
The move takes power and decision-making away from schools and elected boards of trustees.
It’s designed to allow them to instead focus on things like curriculum delivery, rather than property issues like painting classrooms.
Three regional delivery groups (northern, central and southern) will be set up to work directly with school boards and help them manage their budgets, teachers, support staff and pupils.
While Covid-19 slowed progress on the reforms it also showed schools and ministry officials how they could co-operate.
During Level 4 lockdown the Government provided the Ministry with fast money so it could be flexible and innovative with distance learning and IT while children were kept at home.
Newsroom understands that is the sort of work the new agency wants to achieve through the three regional delivery groups.
Hipkins acknowledged earlier this month that there has been a postcode lottery in the provision of school education.
“I think there has, and I think that’s a feature of Tomorrow’s Schools,’’ he said.
“You’ve had some very strong schools and some very weak schools. And I think historically, over the past 30 years, governments have been too slow to respond to weak governance and weak leadership within schools.’’
