Regular Stuff columnist Damien Grant is a great friend of The New Zealand Initiative. In fact, he’s a member. From time to time, though, even friends disagree. Today, I am going to disagree with him, partially at least. 

In his January 26 column, Grant argued that Education Minister Erica Stanford’s reforms to New Zealand’s school system are destined to fail. He believes that without market-based competition in the education system, there can be little improvement. Grant favours parents freely choosing schools for their children, with schools competing for their business.  

Free markets are excellent at improving quality and delivering value for money. The state is bad at both of those things. Just ask anyone who has lived under communism. 

So, Grant is right that a free market in education could drive improvement, as it does for all manner of things. If parents had real choice in their children’s schooling, schools that provided the best outcomes would thrive.  

Charter schools will provide such choice, if enough of them are established. An ongoing test of the quality of mainstream schooling will be whether or not it loses students to charters.  

Stanford favours the state taking direct responsibility for education. Her approach must be backed by sound policy and accountability to succeed.  

Until the late 20th century, New Zealand had a high-quality state-run education system. Twenty-five years ago, we were near the top of the international test rankings.  

But the state dropped the education policy ball. It introduced a curriculum that is nearly bereft of knowledge. It gave control of initial teacher education to universities, which has not worked out well. In university programmes, teachers spend too little time in classrooms. Their focus is on theory and ideology rather than evidence-informed practice.
 
Stanford inherited a broken system and is determined to repair it. She is introducing a new, knowledge-rich curriculum and has signalled her intention to reform teacher education.  

Whether an education system is market-driven or state-run, accountability is key to ongoing improvement. If school leaders cannot prove that their students are making the expected progress, there must be a mechanism to replace them. 

But accountability is lacking at present. Failing schools are allowed to continue failing. If Stanford can solve the accountability problem her reforms will yield improvement.  

New Zealand’s past success shows that a high-quality state-run school system is possible. Stanford is making the right moves to regain that success.