Tomorrow’s primary schools: time to evaluate governance alternatives?

Abstract

It is almost two decades since the reforms known as ‘Tomorrow’s Schools’ radically decentralised the administration of New Zealand primary schools. Designed to improve the responsiveness, accountability and community control of schools, the success or otherwise of these administrative reforms has not been formally evaluated. Meanwhile, expectations of what schools should deliver have changed markedly, with policy makers increasingly concerned with reducing educational disparity. This concern has led to Parliament’s education and science select committee announcing in May 2006 that it will hold an inquiry into ‘making the schooling system work for every child’.