Exploring educational efficiency in New Zealand primary and post-primary schooling, 1900-1945

Abstract

This study examines the idea that between the years 1900-1945 equality of educational opportunity was an ideal used to justify the expansion of the New Zealand education system along efficiency-oriented lines. Utilising Taylor's efficiency treatise (applied to education) and Beeby's theoretical conceptualisation of an educational 'myth', this study demonstrates that equality of educational opportunity not only validated the efficient expansion of New Zealand's national system of education but also, against a changing social backdrop, moulded it to 'fit' with the changing egalitarian ethos of the day, thereby satisfying the growing public demand for greater social justice and fairness through its sincere attempts to eliminate student 'wastage'. Embedded in common social aspirations, the myth of equality of educational opportunity served to cushion if not actually guise the quest for greater educational efficiency. From the introduction of the Secondary Schools Act in 1903 which liberated post-primary education - 'throwing the doors of the schools open' by way of the academic Proficiency test, through to the implementation of a common core curriculum in 1945, wherein the needs of all students were to be equally catered for, nurtured and developed by the school system - this study will reveal that although it was the efficiency doctrine that underpinned the reforms, it remained hidden behind the name of 'equality'. Applying this thesis to specific time periods - that is 1900-1914, 1915-1929 and 1930-1945- and surveying the expansion of schooling in New Zealand, with particular reference to the development of post-primary education, it will be shown that whilst attempts to eliminate educational 'waste' were justified on the basis of meritocracy and the extension of the 'equality' ideal, it failed to capture the imagination of ambitious 'talented' students. Because educational efficiency clearly aimed to keep the 'ordinary' student in his/her rightful place, when framed within an 'equality' context this ideal became not only persuasive and popular but also a powerful way to legitimate the unfair treatment (and educational confinement) of pupils in a democracy. Indeed, with hindsight, it is clear that:

“The school apart from life, apart from politics, is a lie, a hypocrisy. Bourgeois society indulged in this lie, covering up the fact that it was using the schools as a means of domination by declaring that the school was politically neutral, and in the service of all.”