Big gaps feared with ‘Tomorrow’s Schools’

Press, 22 June 1989, Page 4

Big gaps feared with ‘Tomorrow’s Schools’

By

JENNY LONG

Visits to schools in the United States and Britain have convinced a Christchurch principal that unless “Tomorrow’s Schools” is handled carefully, there is a serious danger that it will increase the gulfs between schools.

Mr Ward Clarke, principal of Hillmorton High School, visited the overseas schools last year on a Woolf Fisher Trust Fellowship. He says that while “Tomorrow’s Schools” has a great deal which was good, “I fear that in two or three years we will see even greater gaps emerging in our schools between independent and State schools, and between State schools which draw their students from more favoured suburbs, and those whose students come from lower socioeconomic areas.” Divisiveness would increase in New Zealand unless the Government •offered considerable positive discriminaton to less favoured schools, Mr Clarke said.

Parents who wished their children to be strivers were understandably careful in selecting a school for their children. However, overseas, as

in New Zealand, the public’s perception of what factors made a good school was commonly based on very flimsy evidence, he said.

For example, if a particular school had significant numbers of scruffy looking students, it could be that the parents were unemployed, and could not afford new clothes for the children. Mr Clarke asked what the school could reasonably do about that. “Expel the students?”

In another case, parents might see that school A had lower School Certificate pass rates than school B. But ‘school A drew its pupils from lower-socio-economic areas, where pupils were less likely to have been given help and support at

home. School A, starting with students who were less advanced, might in fact have given more to its pupils. “In England and America, there is considerable competition between schools for new entrants, hence the public’s perception of how good a school is is crucial to its future health.” Mr Clarke said all schools should take a share of seriously disturbed pupils, who commonly come from unloving, violent and drunken homes.

“The school has an obligation on behalf of society to lavish care on those young people.

“Or should a school improve its reputation by kicking those students out, as some successful schools

are prone to do?” Competition for students had led to a growth of elitist State schools and a large gap between successful and less successful schools, Mr Clarke said. This in turn motivated many good and ambitious teachers to seek jobs in successful schools, leaving the rough schools with even more problems.

Principals, students and parents expected high levels of teacher accountability in successful schools, with lower expectations in rough schools, Mr Clarke said. user pays was increasing in State schools and so schools in more affluent areas would often have better programmes and better facilities than schools in poorer areas.