Education hubs should be set up to support schools as part of a sweeping away of bureaucracy in education, the chair of Tomorrow’s Schools taskforce has said.
Bali Haque told TVNZ1's Breakfast the taskforce he chaired had recommended completely "reorganising the way in we which we think about the education system really, the compulsory education system".
"For the last 30 years since the Tomorrow's Schools system was put in place I think what we’ve had is a system which has been based on individual schools reinventing the wheel really," he said.
"What we found in our review is that hasn’t worked as well as we would have liked, boards of trustees (BOTs), teachers, school leaders have too much to do and the result of that has been if you look at our performance across the board as a system, there are some worrying signs."
Mr Haque said more needed to be done to support boards of trustees, teachers and principals.
"What we want to do is provide support mechanisms for schools and teachers and BOTs so that the work that they are doing is doable and supported," he said.
"One of our main recommendations is to sweep some of the current bureaucracy that currently exists in the schooling system and to create what we’ve called education hubs."
"Those education hubs would be close to schools, they would provide support for BOTs, professional development for teachers, advice for leadership, business support.”
"What we want to see is those hubs getting schools to work together rather than compete and focus on children rather than the reputation of a school."
Inequality among schools was put down to there being no incentive for schools to work together, Mr Haque said.
"One of the things we have found is that the system actually creates inequality," he said.
"If you have 2500 independent Crown entities, all competing with each other, then one of the things that happens is that advantaged schools become more advantaged and disadvantaged become more disadvantaged and that occurs because we have no systems, no mechanisms to encourage schools to work together."
Mr Haque encouraged parents to prove feedback about the education system.
"We’re really keen to hear from parents, this is about children not being well served by the education system, as a country we’re at real risk, we really do want to hear from parents about how they do see it," he said.
The politicisation of education was a concern often repeated by parents, according to Mr Haque.
"One of the things we’re hearing really strongly is that parents are getting a bit fed-up of education being a political football, every three or six years when a government changes, everything else changes as well."
"We have very strong messages from parents saying that we want a cross-party accord around this education system so that we can move forward and think 10 or 20 years rather than three or six."
"We think that this report we’ve produced provides an opportunity for cross-party conversations and an accord which we can all agree to and support."
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