Reforming New Zealand Secondary Education: The Picot Report and the Road to Radical Reform

The book is part of the series Secondary Education in a Changing World that seeks to “provide a venue for scholars in different national settings to explore critical and controversial issues surrounding secondary education” (p. vii). Accordingly, Roger Openshaw traces in detail the origins and impact of the radical reforms of educational administration in the late 1980s in New Zealand that effectively dismantled a 110‐year‐old three‐tier public education system and established a decentralized yet bureaucratized system. There can be little doubt that the report Administering for Excellence (the Picot Report) and the resultant policy response Tomorrow's Schools, by the then Labour Government ushered in a significantly new era in New Zealand education. Across the three overlapping parts of this book, Openshaw traces the historical antecedents of educational reform and argues they were a product of longstanding unresolved educational issues that reached a crisis point in the 1970s and early 1980s. Crucially, Openshaw locates his analysis within the wider context of public policy making and offers “an enhanced understanding of the international and global context in which secondary education has developed” (p. ix).

This book is divided into three parts: Tensions and Contradictions, Crises and Solutions, and Elusive Consensus. These headings clearly signal the central focus of Openshaw's argument and provide for the reader a preliminary overview of the conclusions to be drawn. In the opening chapter Openshaw documents the extensive research that underpins the book thereby establishing the provenance of his arguments and his contribution to the historiography of policy debates.

Tensions and Contradictions concentrates on the historical origins of New Zealand education generally and secondary education more specifically and highlights the formal struggles that have permeated education and educational systems since 1877. Further, Openshaw identifies two diametrically opposed views on the motives and overall impact of recent reforms and seeks to interweave these arguments through his analysis. In tracing the origins and trajectory of right‐wing debates as well as the cogent arguments of critical theorists, Openshaw challenges a number of long‐held explanations for the content and direction of both the Picot Report and Tomorrow's Schools. He contests the view that Picot was the beginning of an era of reform but rather at “the end of a continuum” (p. 15). Until now, this argument has not been fully considered.

Crises and Solutions surveys the economic, social and cultural crises that permeated debates over education in the 1970s and early 1980s. In this section, Openshaw argues that liberal scholars and activists within the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) played a central role in shifting debates from equality of access to equality of outcomes. Coterminously, intellectual attention to tensions and fragilities about culture and ethnicity tested the direction of education policy and showed that the education bureaucracy was out of touch with the needs and aspirations of Maori. In Chapter 4 in particular, the author shows the extent to which biculturalism offered New Zealand a unique opportunity to forge new relationships within and across schools and the education bureaucracy. It is a moot point as to whether the radical re‐formation of teachers has occurred (p. 74) as deficit thinking is not altogether absent in today's classrooms or staffrooms.

Elusive Consensus documents the establishment and work of the Picot Taskforce in responding to mounting public pressure to reform educational administration. Drawing on extensive archival evidence, media reports and interviews, Openshaw contests contemporary views that the taskforce was the neo‐liberal puppet of Treasury. The membership of the taskforce and their long‐standing involvement in education at all levels provided a significant level of social representation that outweighed business interests. Although Openshaw argues that the taskforce was able to deflect pressure exerted by the Treasury and the Social Services Commission, the continuing influence of the neo‐liberal reform agenda is not fully explored. The struggle over centralization vs devolution, equity vs economic progress, control vs flexibility and more recently, local vs global remain at the centre of policy research and policy debates. Further, while arguments concerning the capture of education by right‐ and left‐wing factions (including the “left liberals” of the teacher unions and academy) are a welcome addition to this book, less attention has been paid to ways in which neo‐conservatism continues to influence education policy at a global level. As the work of Stephen Ball, Michael Apple, John Smyth, Sharon Gewirtz, Jenny Ozga, Susan Robertson and others has revealed, the architecture of these more invidious reforms lies in the educational reform agenda of the 1980s.

This book considers the reform of educational administration in retrospect. Through close examination of newly available archival material combined with an analysis of existing evidence, Openshaw calls attention to the need to historicize debates and to constantly re‐evaluate material. Wisely, Openshaw does not offer definitive answers but instead poses a significant question – who really won? – a question that will continue to occupy the minds of scholars for some time to come.