This note was prepared on request of a educationalist who is writing a history of some aspects of the school for its 125th anniversary in 2006

Keywords: Education;

The mid 1950s must have been a pivotal time for Christchurch Boys’ High School. A number of new high schools opened up in Christchurch – Aranui, Cashmere, Linwood, Riccarton, Shirley Boys’. The challenge was not the drawing off of students, for this was a time of the ‘bulge’, and the reputation of the school was such that it still attracted a high proportion of the best students. But new schools need teachers. CBHS lost a number of its better younger ones to senior positions in the new schools. Their promotion at CBHS had been blocked by the older generation, many of whom had been there for decades, perhaps after returning from the Second (or even First) World War. Those teachers, near retirement, were too often tired and bored, at best teaching solidly rather than inspiringly.

Edited by Richard G. Bagnall, (The Asia-South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education, 2003).

Keywords: Education;

One of the hardest questions that advanced education is facing is its role in vocational training.
As it gargantuan appetite for funds began absorbing an increasing proportion of national output, some educationalists seized upon the thesis that education contributes to economic growth so an
the investment in it would pay for itself. This is so well accepted, that to say that the thesis is a
hypothesis with little empirical underpinning would leave many educationalists puzzled (although one might add that this is true for most statement about economic growth – it is surprising how little we know about the causes of economic growth: most expressed certainties are hypotheses). The most extremist version of this view is that public education is only about contributing to economic growth, a position which largely drove New Zealand’s tertiary education reforms of the early nineties, and from which the system is still recovering. But the view that commerce and growth is central to education is now so widespread that it is rarely challenged.

Presentation for Annual Conference of Federation of University Women, Christchurch, 27 September 2003.

Keywords: Education;

I do not actually object to student loans. It is perfectly sensible way for a student short of cash to borrow on the security of future earnings. I will have something, in the short time available to me, to say about the inefficiency of the current student loan system, but what I am really concerned about today is the way we force students into debt through our university fees and allowances system.

Listener 29 June, 2002

Keywords Education

The chapter on the core education system in my book The Whimpering of the State evaluates the underlying economic model which influenced the education reforms of a decade or so ago. In essence schools were to be treated like businesses. …

Paper for the ‘Student Loans Summit’, 25 August, 2000

Keywords Education

It is important when thinking about Student Loans, or indeed about any other facit of government policy, that the policy which drives it is seen as a part of a total policy framework evolved out of a taskforce which was established in 1984 to completely review government policy. I imagine at the time that some of the outcomes of the taskforce thinking were expected like privatisation and corporatisation. But the comprehensive framework of commercialisation may well not have been, nor may they have expected the proposals to, say, reform student access to tertiary education. That was to come later. By that time the rule of making government activities run as though they were business ones, was no totally accepted in the policy community, and it was natural to do that as much as the public would allow. What that means is that the policy of student loans have to be seen in this wider context, and to challenge them involves a different policy framework.