When study school personnel finally accepted that their schools needed external help, they found it difficult to obtain in a timely way from the MOE. The process of obtaining and managing the support was fraught with problems, delays, frustrations over response time, bureaucratic requirements and contests over control and ownership of solutions.
Lateness of response/ reluctance to act
When decline began in the study schools58, shortly before the introduction of Tomorrow’s Schools, the responsibility for schooling support or intervention lay with the DoE. I have been unable to locate any evidence to indicate that DoE staff were aware of study school problems or of supportive or intervening action.
A small number of research participants who were involved in the study schools prior to Tomorrow’s Schools cited instances where the inspectorate had failed to identify serious problems with the performance of some principals.
I remember reading one of those reports and it was glowing about (the principal). They had it (wrong). (Senior leader)
It must have been blindingly obvious to inspectors and department personnel that we were getting deeper and deeper into strife but nothing happened. (Senior leader)
After the introduction of Tomorrow’s Schools, study school leaders described their perceptions of the MOE in the early days as being remote, hands off, silent backroom people, nebulous, quiet vacuous group who say nothing and do nothing and are into critical parent mode rather than adult-to-adult mode.
There were examples of a reluctance, slow response or major time-lag by the MOE in taking action to support or challenge schools having difficulty.
57It is important to note at the outset of this discussion that MOE processes and procedures changed during the study school decline periods, and have further changed since then.
58The periods of decline each spanned approximately 11 or 12 years. In one study school the decline began in the mid 1980s. In the other two it began around the late 1980s, just prior to the introduction of
Under (the new principal) the school has taken some important steps towards rebuilding of the school. After a long wait of over twelve months and after many changes to formats, requests for additional information and the expending of much time and effort in negotiation, the plan was approved by the Treasury and then the Minister of Education. (Research evaluation report)
Clearly their boards are not ready to approach the MOE to begin such a consultation, and the approach should not come from the MOE at this stage ….They (trustees, the principal and the staff) are most anxious to know when the business case thing will start? I assured them that the MOE never sleeps and I would pass this all on to Wellington. (MOE internal email)
At some stage each of the three study schools wanted help and support from the MOE to resolve problems that were caused by other schools, other principals or by parents. There were situations when the study schools were powerless to act and their leaders were frustrated or angry at the apparent lack of supportive action from the MOE.
This situation where (a neighbouring school) is flouting the law has been public for some time, yet there has been no action, visible, taken against the offenders. (Chairperson’s letter to MOE)
MOE reluctance to become involved, for example in the instance referred to in the cited letter, made it clear to study school personnel that, in the era of school self-management, the MOE did not see its role as interfering in what was intended to be a self-regulating market.
Financial support was difficult to obtain
At the stage that the decline process began in each study school, all three were experiencing financial difficulties. They did not have the financial resources to diagnose their needs, recruit development support, or implement review or ERO recommendations.
(The study school) used to track student lateness and attendance but stopped doing it because of a lack of money to pay for staff to input the data and process it. (Evaluation report to MOE)
I have not been able to find any evidence of special support prior to Tomorrow’s Schools, other than advice and one review, from school inspectors. Since Tomorrow’s Schools, and after a period of non-intervention, financial support was provided through funding the
services of consultants, financed action plans, property development, funding provision agreements and funded statutory interventions. A key aspect of MOE intervention was to finance support in ways that the MOE and Treasury could be assured of acceptable outcomes. Sometimes the schools found it difficult to provide sufficient assurance of outcomes that were required.
The message from the planning team is that it (a proposal) should be strengthened to anticipate the searching questions that both Treasury and the Minister are likely to ask before committing a large amount of money … (MOE email to school)
Problems accessing enough funding and equitable funding in a reliable and timely way were strongly evident in the memories of the participants and in MOE documents. At times, requests for financial support were refused.
There is not much direct help we can give. However we make the following recommendations as support:
1. Your school could enter into a contract with another principal to work with you …
2. You could hire another consultant …
3. You could approach STA for advice and guidance
…. However don’t allow yourself to sink. If you need further suggestions re suitable principals or any other advice be sure to ask … (MOE fax to principal)
At other times, school leaders felt that MOE personnel did not understand that the expected improvements required financial backing to achieve.
There really seems to be a need to change community perceptions. Why do so many pupils bypass the school? I suggest that there is a community perception that the school is failing academically. We both know that a major driver that affects the schools potential performance is the socio- economic factor. (MOE letter to study school principal)
(Reply from principal to MOE) We know we need to increase our roll numbers. We know that the academic performances of our students compare unfavourable with the performances of students
in other schools. What we also know, and what is not revealed in your statistics, is that we lack the resources to break the cycle of failure which we are locked into and which constantly saps the morale of staff and students.
When money was offered, it was sometimes not enough to do what the schools, and external consultants, felt was required. On occasions the finance was offered as a loan. The study schools’ BOTs were anxious about agreeing to a loan that they were not sure they would be able to repay.
It is proposed to joint Ministers that the financial provision … in the form of a loan, conditional upon the schools completion of performance milestones …. (the school) will be required to input quantitative data into the system at each of the milestones identified in the performance plan. This will be checked by the Ministry of Education for quality. (MOE proposal to the Ministers of Education and Finance)
We thought that the schools that beat a regular path to the Ministry’s door and didn’t just knock on the door but opened it, slammed it open and thumped on the table, were the ones that got the money. We tried that but it didn’t work. (Senior leader)
As a consequence of a bad ERO report, it seems that these schools expect to be given financial support to get them “back on line” …. An urgent need to re-assess curriculum or professional development could perhaps be considered as a grant but only if the school does not have the resources to pay. (Internal MOE email)
Other times, MOE personnel agreed to funding but the schools had to wait long periods of time, sometimes more than a year, to receive the funds. The cause of the time lag appeared to be the need for all decisions to be approved by the head office in Wellington, Cabinet and/or Treasury. The long and unpredictable delays were a particular problem if the school, on being promised the funds and pressured to produce outcomes within agreed timeframes, had gone ahead in good faith and employed or contracted people to do the required work.
When I asked “ when is the money coming?” first I was told it has to go to Cabinet for approval, then I was told it had to go to Treasury again, and then I was told that Treasury had some doubts
about whether it was worth doing, by which time I had spent a hundred thousand of it. (Senior leader)
… (the promised funding) is still not signed off in Wellington. Our ability to plan for the future and in particular to attract a wider selection of the local community to our school is being hampered …. We originally had every reason to believe that the business case would have been in full swing by this time last year; we are becoming nervous that June/July (next year) may also pass us by. (BOT letter to MOE)
There were examples of changes by the MOE to the rules, the process and/or the amount of money, after it had been agreed to or promised.
I regret to inform you that since the initial indication of possible financial support was made, that the system for application has changed …. My other colleagues, with whom the board has been dealing, also join with me in regretting that the process has changed over the time. (MOE letter to BOT chair)
The difficulties of accessing funds and the unreliability of the process, sometimes left school personnel and trustees angry and exhausted and, in their opinion, slowed the process of reform.
Reporting and bureaucratic requirements
Associated with the need for the schools to be accountable for support funding, were reporting processes that included verbal reports, meetings, written reports and evaluations, milestone reports and an electronic reporting tool called FPAM. School personnel were accepting of the MOE’s need for regular progress reports and for clear expectations regarding outcomes but they were often frustrated by the time required, confusion around the style or format required and being required to trial new systems before they were functioning efficiently.
We were the cart before the horse and they kept changing the rules ….When I did the first milestone report I decided to play their game and said “okay if that’s what they want, that’s what they’ll get” and I produced it, but what a waste of time. (Senior leader)
I do think that there are some lessons to be learnt here over the frustrations we all experienced over this. A system for both the school accountability and the MOE processes would be extremely useful as a guide for future users. (Internal MOE email)
Another source of frustration occurred when the MOE set a very short timeframe for the school to fulfill its requirements, but the MOE did not deliver on their side for a long time.
S/he would ring us on a Friday and say “can you get that to me by Monday?” And so we would work all weekend and get back to him/her on Monday and then we’d never hear anything. (Senior leader)
We had to spend even more money and engage an accountant to prepare the information required by the Ministry of Education, but more than a month after making the application, we are still waiting on a reply. (BOT chair letter to Auditor General)
The significant changes and improvements that finally moved the study schools out of the decline cycle were interventions paid for by MOE funds.
I am really grateful to you and all the Ministry staff involved for your support for (the school). There is no doubt that without your intervention, the school would have died. (School letter to MOE)
Research participants felt frustrated by what they perceived to be an inadequate and slow response from the MOE to help them halt the decline. It is beyond the scope of this research to determine the extent to which the reform of the study schools may have been faster and more effective if MOE support had been more timely and adequate.
Potential Predictors:
• MOE systems for responding to school decline are inadequate.
• External intervention happens too late.
• Setting up appropriate support processes takes too long or requires more effort than the school can sustain.