Act's free market take on the school curriculum

Among a predictable assortment of education policy, the Act Party has released some reckless policy in relation to the curriculum. It plans to make the curriculum open ‘to tender’ and for curriculum writers to gain royalties from the popularity of their work – something David Seymour describes as “comparable to an app store for teachers”. Yikes.

Seymour’s curriculum announcement seems to focus on three premises: the role of the Ministry of Education in relation to the curriculum, the opening up of a curriculum market, and the need for a curriculum that is ideologically neutral. All three premises are connected, and are worth examining in the context of the curriculum's role in a public education system.

Act wants to alter the role of the ministry from ‘curriculum writer’ to ‘curriculum approver’, but is the ministry really the current writer of the curriculum?

Teachers are curriculum writers and operate from a curriculum document that has been argued, already sketchy in detail, resulting in variability in how the curriculum is interpreted and implemented by teachers across the country.

But Seymour claims teachers should have a range of curriculum content that they can pick and choose by giving the market a “greater hand at setting the curriculum”. In the interests of competition, royalties would be paid based on how popular the materials are.

What would constitute popular curriculum content? Teachers’ own interests and subject preferences? Or will it be contingent on students’ interests and their level of engagement? Or would the school’s philosophy or ideological commitments inform what content is taught? Who knows. It is not clear exactly which market Seymour is talking about, in terms of supply or demand.

His guiding principle seems to be that any market is a good market because it will “depoliticise curriculum writing” by providing a range of choices. I’d argue that leaving the curriculum to the market has the potential to re-politicise what is learnt, by allowing schools to omit important content and enabling a market of (for-profit) curriculum writers who may have their own vested interests.

Seymour also plans to release the curriculum from what he calls “the curriculum wars” and the “quite left-wing philosophical concepts” that have informed recent curriculum reform. The left is an easy target for accusations of ideology, but Act’s free-market curriculum should also be seen and scrutinised as a product of ideology.

This ideology is captured by ‘quite right-wing philosophical concepts’ such as thinking about students and whānau as consumers of education, and fostering choice and competition through the creation of an education marketplace. Whether the aims and ideals of the market are consistent with the aims and ideals of education persists as an unanswered question in Act’s modus operandi.

Still, Act's proposed policy sparks important questions about the curriculum in general and the proposed Curriculum Refresh. To be precise, the proposed change is not actually a ‘refresh’ but a substantial reimagining of our national curriculum. The scale and speed of change should prompt searching questions about its role in education. The speed of change has prevented a slower conversation about how the curriculum’s aims to address longstanding disparities in educational outcomes are best achieved.

Despite its idiosyncratic ideological bent, the problem with Act’s policy is similar to the problem successive governments and curriculum iterations have had – no clear sense of what content students should encounter in school.

Recent comments by Bali Haque (the former chair of the 2018/19 Tomorrow's Schools Independent Taskforce and President of the Secondary Principals Association) provided a concerning insight into the ministry’s apparent disconnect with the curriculum: “The original recommendation [from the Tomorrow’s Schools Review] was to start by establishing a curriculum centre within the ministry, given it did not previously consider curriculum its business.” Yikes again.

It remains unclear whether the Curriculum Refresh will go ahead in its current form. It is possible the new government may wish to ‘Refresh the Refresh’ with its own ideological colours and versions.

If this is the case, there should be pressure on the government to take the curriculum seriously, not to infuse it with any ideology or predictions about the competencies needed for 21st Century life, but because knowledge itself matters to culture and society.

In stripping the curriculum from broader societal aims and reducing its purpose to a function of choice, competition, and financial gain, Act’s policy bypasses questions about what the curriculum is for and the fundamental role it plays in a public education system.

Newsroom reports that Seymour made these policy announcements from the gates of Auckland Grammar while he was on the campaign trail.

Would he advocate the removal of zoning and let the market decide who goes where to school?

Of course not. His constituents would lose substantial capital on the basis of owning a house in the Grammar Zone.

Even David Seymour knows the invisible hand of the market has limits.