The release of the Tomorrow's Schools Independent Taskforce report recommendations on the current state and future of New Zealand's schooling system has, not surprisingly, drawn both praise and condemnation across the national spectrum.
As a teacher who came up through the Tomorrow's Schools system and almost two decades as a secondary principal, I thought I would add my perspective.
Most would agree that our system supports and creates unequal and unfair outcomes for many children across our network.
Some of these inequities were already present before the inception of Tomorrow's Schools.
However, available measures as well as a mountain of anecdotal evidence shows they have increased significantly.
Undoubtedly, some schools have done tremendously well under the freedom that Tomorrow's Schools allows - and not just the higher-decile schools.
However, ''successful'' schools often have natural advantages, including governance/community expertise, leadership skills, effective teaching capacity and the financial resources to meet massive (often parent-driven) expectations.
These schools also leverage this into spaces such as the lucrative international student market, or alliances with commercial partnerships in the private sector.
They are free to make decisions to cater for their community, be innovative, invest in the latest tech pedagogy, build the second gymnasium or new performing arts centre, and, at the extreme end, use scholarships to buy the best sports talent or academic pupils.
By and large, the educational outputs of these schools, whatever qualifications system they adopt, is generally seen as successful and desirable.
Parents, pupils and prospective teachers flock to these schools.
That desire creates an ongoing cycle of performance and expectation that perpetuates itself.
Schools are often blamed for some of these excesses but we forget that each school is largely a reflection of its community.
In that sense, Tomorrow's Schools has been very successful, as that is what it was designed to do - give power at the local level for self-governance and determination.
As we know, not all communities are created equal.
At the other end of the spectrum it is a whole other world.
The decile system we use to classify schools is a blunt instrument, but at least everyone understands it.
Decile 10 equals rich school/community, decile 1 equals poor school/community.
It is not a fait accompli that all lower-decile schools are failing schools - far from it.
A number do buck the trend but not nearly enough for us to turn around the national shame that is pupil underachievement for some sections of society.
Creating the conditions for success to take hold in a school is a complex equation and those conditions are not easily replicated, especially when the odds are stacked against you.
Having worked at both ends of the spectrum as a principal, the lower-decile environment is much, much tougher.
The biggest stress factor is resourcing - money or lack of it.
Trying to deliver the best quality education you can with what little is available, is the trip wire for so many other things.
Keeping up staff and pupil morale, attracting high-quality teachers and retaining the ones you have, was at times a pride-swallowing siege.
On average, the number of high-needs pupils as a percentage of the school roll, in both learning and behavioural areas, can be significantly higher than in a high-decile school.
This puts more pressure on relatively fewer staff and your internal school system's limited capacity, to deal adequately with pupils and families at risk.
An imbalance emerges and it's not long before you become the school where pupils need a second start.
The phone rings constantly from various government or community agencies, looking for a home for the lost, indolent and marginalised.
Too many are those pupils turfed out of ''successful schools'' for whatever reason - some justified, some for spurious reasons or a shady due process of suspension and expulsion.
You are told, ''We hear you are doing such a wonderful job with these students'', which invariably you are.
Some parents perceive that their child is now exposed to children they would rather not have their dear one associated with.
Those parents start to decamp to other schools because the ''curriculum has more options''.
Like ''successful'' schools, a self-perpetuating cycle is created but it is negatively inverted and becomes very difficult to break.
In other areas, the annual financial accounts were always a whisker away from the school being technically insolvent.
Post financial audit time in May, you could expect a call from the Ministry of Education ''adviser'', concerned about your working capital position.
In worse case scenarios, schools face statutory intervention, where a manager or commissioner is appointed to oversee the errant board or principal or both.
Thankfully I haven't had the pleasure, but we did skirt the border a few times, enough to keep me awake at night.
Backing that up is the Education Review Office (ERO) report that almost damns you with the faint praise it offers.
Nothing quite like being told you're doing a mediocre job after you and your staff have busted your gut.
If you achieved a three-year review cycle, it was gold.
Education in and of itself becomes the lesser - survival is the only thing that matters.
It is survival of the fittest, and in a nutshell, that is the story of Tomorrow's Schools.
Despite its laudable intentions, some of the taskforce's recommendations are confounding.
For example, the notion of new education hubs with an array of wide powers has some merit.
Taking some of the admin burdens and bureaucratic processes off those schools and boards that are ill equipped to manage them is a step in the right direction.
However, I cannot connect the dots to see how things for those schools and communities currently on the bottom will be impacted in such a way that their living reality changes and pupil outcomes are improved.
A very long bow is being drawn.
Moreover, these new mega hubs will suck huge amounts of resource out of the system, much like the current bureaucracy does.
Instead of funds being directed to the tip of the spear where schools need it, millions of dollars will go east and west to all manner of consultants, who will be lining up in their droves for a piece of the action.
More reports will be written telling us all how to do it, with only a trickle of funding left for where it's needed most on the ground.
There also seems to be some intent to clip the wings of the high-flying schools by limiting things like parent donations.
Why?
Hamstringing the ''haves'' to save the ''have-nots'' will not take us where we want to go.
Furthermore, we need to ensure we don't create a system-wide capacity loss to satisfy some egalitarian idealism. That ship has sailed.
Besides, wealthier schools and communities will always find ways around the regulations, or cleverly subvert the rules completely.
Those things are a sideshow and will have little substantive effect in improving outcomes for struggling schools and pupils.
Nor will replacing one amorphous bureaucratic quagmire with another.
We currently have a three-tier system in New Zealand. Winners, losers and the sorry state of special education and those with acute learning and behavioural needs, who sit well and truly at the bottom of the pile.
For all its good intentions, the taskforce review was only mandated to take an educational lens to the problem. We need to go wider.
Yes, effective school leadership and quality teaching are critical education levers that need to be enhanced to produce the biggest effect size in pupil outcomes.
But that only works on a level playing field when school conditions are ideal and daily survival no longer becomes the struggling school's prime focus.
If the taskforce's goal is to ''ensure every single child in New Zealand receives the best quality education possible'', then we also have to look outside the education sphere as well.
Across sector interventions and support for targeted pupils and families most at risk from the cradle to early childhood, is the place to start. This means education, health and social sector services, and local agencies working hand in glove.
Currently we have no joint national strategy and a mishmash of supports for at-risk pupils that are hard to access, let alone implement with any effectiveness if you're lucky enough to get them.
So many of our funding mechanisms to support pupils are contestable, and the high-jump is so high many parents and schools just give up.
If things work out for an at-risk pupil, it is just as likely by accident as design.
We also have to find a way to incentivise our top graduates and successful teachers and leaders to take their expertise into schools that are struggling.
All of the incentives at present are working in the wrong direction.
Many of our struggling schools already have fine leaders, teachers and support staff, but they need more support to really ramp up their success.
Likewise, ''successful'' schools need to be incentivised to support more pupils and families at risk.
Currently the bottom half of the system that is the most poorly resourced, is doing the bulk of the heavy lifting.
The equal approach to pay and conditions for teachers and leaders in an unequal market environment is not working, and is in fact hugely damaging at both ends of the spectrum.
Of course, the devil will be in the detail and whatever comes out of the review will also have to go through the political morass which may further weaken its coherence.
I fear the current proposals of reorganising the bureaucracy will have only limited impact where it's needed most, and do little more than move the deck chairs around the patio.
Some of the taskforce's suggested levers, if pulled, could be quite damaging long-term to the system as a whole.
Whatever we do, we have to attack these issues at their source and create collaborative structures across all sectors, not just education.
We need to reimagine schooling and create a holistic system that also works for our most vulnerable and the generationally excluded.
This review falls well short of that.
