Copyright is owned by the Author of the thesis. Permission is given for a copy to be downloaded by an individual for the purpose of research and private study only. The thesis may not be reproduced elsewhere without the permission of the Author. A case study of a contentious education policy: The origins and operations of the bulk funding of teachers’ salaries in New Zealand: 1815-2015 A thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education Doctorate in Education at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand Perry David Bayer 2015 Abstract Bulk funding as an education policy was immensely controversial, and served to polarise the New Zealand educational community and the wider New Zealand public throughout the eight years of its operation between 1992 and 2000. Even now, fifteen years after its demise, the research undertaken for this thesis shows that bulk funding still has the power to divide people and to excite strong passions. Both the supporters and the opponents of bulk funding tended to demonise the opposite side. Each side would also tend to feel that they had uncovered profound educational truths and that they had the right arguments on their side. Therefore, each side tended to believe that their opponents could negate their arguments only by resorting to ‘slanderous’ speech and to ‘libelous’ writings. Some of the key participants in the bulk funding debate were able to be interviewed for this thesis. It quickly became apparent just how wide the gap between the two parties was during the 1990s and is still today. The research undertaken for this study has discovered that there are often tensions between the central education authorities who devise and impose policy and the local authorities who have to implement it. Bulk funding would seem to be a classic example of the perennial tensions between the centre and the localities. These tensions are a thread that runs throughout the course of New Zealand educational history. Bulk funding did not emerge out of a vacuum. Therefore, it was decided to adopt a “forward moving” historical narrative approach instead of a “history of the present.” My research showed that there have been precursors to this policy right from the time of the first mission schools in the Bay of Islands from 1815 onwards. This study found that these distant historical forebears had to be investigated in order to make more sense of what occurred in the 1990s. Finally, being at a distance from New Zealand and working as a secondary school teacher in Hong Kong where teachers are generally well respected as Chan (2008) noted, it was interesting for me as a ‘distant researcher’ to look back to New Zealand and to the case of bulk funding. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I acknowledge the invaluable support of my supervisors, Professors Roger Openshaw and John Clark, as well as that of my wife, Liliana Bayer (LLB). I also acknowledge the gracious co-operation of my eight interview subjects who appear in the Appendices as well as in the body of the work. The patience and professionalism of staff at Archives New Zealand and the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, New Zealand, is also very much appreciated. Lastly, my heartfelt thanks go to Dr. Annie K. C. Chan, my patient and supportive Principal at CCC Ming Kei College here in Hong Kong. Thank you to Dr. Chan for also serving as my Co-Supervisor. Perry David Bayer Hong Kong 28 February 2015 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I - The Research Problem…………………………………. 1 Chapter 2 - Historical Sources………………………………………. 24 Chapter 3 - Localisation and later trends towards Centralization: 1815-1942……………………………… 4 8 Chapter 4 - The centralised education model mostly in the ascendant: 1942-1975…………………………. 81 Chapter 5 - Seeds of change: A decade foreshadowing a new direction: 1976-1987…………………………… 105 Chapter 6 - Picot presages the future: 1987-1989…………….... 134 Chapter 7 - A state of siege: 1989-1991…………………………... 155 Chapter 8 - Careers at stake: 1992-1999 …………………………. 176 Chapter 9 - Afterglow – Life after Dr. Smith: 1996-2015 and the bulk funding policy: 1999-2015………………… 195 Chapter 10 – Conclusion ……………………………………………... 214 References……………………………………………………………….. 236 Appendix I – Austin interview ……………………………………….... i Appendix II – Brash email interview ………………………………… ix Appendix III – Fancy interview ………………………………………… x Appendix IV – Gordon interview …………………………………… xviii Appendix V – Hearn Smith interview ……………………………... xxix Appendix VI – Peachey interview ………………………………….. xxxv Appendix VII – Shattky interview……………………………………… xlv Appendix VIII – Smith interview ………………………………………… li CHAPTER ONE THE RESEARCH PROBLEM I orea te tuatara – Ka patu ki waho (A problem is solved by continuing to find solutions). This proverb from Massey University’s own Maori Proverbs: Whakatauki aroha (2012) is a useful one when thinking about the public policy problem presented by the bulk funding education policy which operated in New Zealand throughout most of the 1990s. There had been a dream from both within and without New Zealand that bulk funding could work well in New Zealand. The Treasury’s Government Management (1987) volumes, in particular, reflected this vision, a vision itself derived from Friedman’s (1978) theories about supply side economics. Yet this offshore dream was to be undercut by the onshore reality within New Zealand during the 1990s. One aspect of this reality was the extreme polarisation in opinion provoked by bulk funding at the time. Both New Zealand educators and the wider public ended up divided in their attitudes towards bulk funding. The Collectors’ Library Essential Thinkers: Socrates (2004) volume has quoted Socrates as having said that “When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser”. Since the formal removal of the bulk funding policy in June 2000, each side in the bulk funding debate has tended to believe that the other side lost the debate and, as a consequence, resorted to slander. As shall be seen, participants’ intense feelings about bulk funding have persisted right up until the present day. 1 1. 1. Introduction to an Historical Problem I remember having a discussion with senior Post-Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) leaders who said to me that their one priority, above everything else, was to defeat bulk funding. And the bastards did it! (Peachey Interview, 2011, Appendix VI, p. xl). The look of outrage on the face and the passionate expression in the voice belonged to the late Allan Peachey, one-time Principal of Rangitoto College and National Party Spokesperson on Education. At that stage, in May 2011, he was also the Chairperson of the New Zealand Parliament’s Science and Education Committee. As an overseas based teacher and researcher I had been expecting a routine series of cool recollections, and was both struck and taken aback by the vehemence and heat of Mr. Peachey’s utterances. Being based in China, I was distant both geographically and culturally from New Zealand educational politics. It was hard for me at first to fathom the raw emotion aroused by the historical policy of the bulk funding of teachers’ salaries which, after all, had operated in practice in the 1990s – some twenty years previously. I would have assumed that any emotional fallout aroused by the policy back then had long since evaporated. However, this assumption proved not to be the case and in various interviews, exemplified and personified by the Peachey interview, the bitterness lurking within came freely to the surface. Now that I have come to write up my findings for this doctoral thesis, I have discovered that I have a dramatic story on my hands. This is a story of lust and loathing; lust for a policy of wholesale educational change and the loathing that this threatening change provoked. In short, bulk funding as an educational policy promised the devolution of power over schools from the state to the school authorities themselves but, in so doing, it threatened the teachers as workers. The loathing that this sweeping change promised to bring was still very 2 much in evidence in this second decade of the twenty-first century. As I was personally to find out, the drama of the 1990s had never subsided for its main participants who in many ways were glad for an opportunity to relive it. I had investigated the bulk funding policy once before – for my Master’s thesis between 1998 and 2000. However, back then I had focused on an ethnographic approach which concentrated on two primary schools in the upper North Island and on their real life experiences under bulk-funded teacher salaries’ regimes. This doctoral thesis presented me with an opportunity to explore the bulk funding policy in much greater depth and over a much longer historical time period. This was because it had become evident over the course of the research that the roots of bulk funding and local financial control over teachers’ salaries could be traced right back to the early nineteenth century and to the very beginnings of the New Zealand state. Although bulk funding has largely disappeared from the political agenda of the major political parties in New Zealand today, the issue retains its power to polarise commentators on either side of the debate. As stated in the opening paragraph, in May 2011 I interviewed the late Allan Peachey. In response to a question of mine, Peachey declared that “the abolition of bulk funding was the greatest crime against the education of New Zealand children in my life time as a teacher” (Peachey interview, 2011, p.xli). Peachey went on to paint a highly favourable picture of bulk- funded teachers’ salaries as having been “a stunning success”. He followed this claim up by asserting with evident pride that “the people who worked for me, when Rangitoto College was a bulk funded school, would, to a person, say that, too” (Peachey interview, 2011, p.xxxviii).