Shifting terrains of class struggle: New Zealand schooling: 1877 to 1988

Abstract

This thesis questions standard accounts of the development of State schooling and education administration in New Zealand. Its alternative analysis centres on establishing the locus of power and accounts for the changing locus by examining shifting terrains of class struggle between 1877 and 1988. Thus the thesis reviews underlying key political, social and economic forces to place each change to education administration and schooling policies against an explicit public policy background. The historical examination covers the period from the Education Act 1877 when local control was dominant and the Education Department little more than a conduit for money to the education boards, through periods of ever increasing centralisation, till the Tomorrow's Schools reforms that appear to have reintroduced a large measure of decentralisation. The purposes to which centralisation and decentralisation were put are examined, along with the politics and the social and economic forces and interests that were at work driving the moves to greater or lesser centralisation. Changes in education administration and schooling policies are measured against their effects on the interests of the dominant groups in society and of the working class. In this way the thesis explains, for instance, why the conservative governments from 1912 gradually increased centralisation to the detriment of most New Zealanders, yet their successor, the first Labour Government, could continue to increase centralisation with the explicit intention of overturning the disadvantage handed out by the previous governments. By providing a unifying theme in its examination of the changing locus of power, Shifting Terrains of Class Struggle attempts to provide a more complete and satisfying account of the development of education administration and changes to State schooling.