New Zealand has maintained a comprehensive school choice system for more than a decade. The results of their efforts are instructive for the school choice debate in other countries.
Before reforms were implemented, the centralised bureaucracy of the Ministry of Education made all the rules and controlled all the expenditures related to education policy in New Zealand. Parents had little influence and there was little accountability.
Today, education in New Zealand is still fully funded by the central government from general income and consumption tax revenues, and every child is still entitled by law to a tax-supported education until completion of secondary school.
Private schools can get state funding equivalent to that for public schools, but they must agree to teach the core curriculum. They must also agree to teach students for the required number of days each school year. In exchange, private schools maintain the right to keep their special character, typically religious education or ethics.
Since the implementation of education reform in New Zealand, parents have played a dominant role in the educational choices of their children, learning has improved and classroom size is down.
Source: Matthew Ladner and Rt. Hon. Maurice McTigue, School Choice in New Zealand: Sixteen Years of Unprecedented Success, May 2001, Children First America, P.O. Box 330, Bentonville, Arkansas. 72712, (501) 273-6957.
For report text http://www.childrenfirstamerica.org/DailyNews/01Jun/nz.html
For more on School Choice & Tax-Funded Vouchers
http://www.ncpa.org/pi/edu/edu3.html#a
FMF\17 July 2001
