Government to introduce online schools

This week Education Minister Hekia Parata announced the Education (Update) Amendment Bill, a broad impact bill that makes a number of changes to how education is delivered in New Zealand.

Part of this bill provides for online schools (called "communities of online learning" or COOLs). IITP CEO Paul Matthews takes a look at the changes and what they might – or might not – mean for the shape of New Zealand schools in future.

The Education (Update) Amendment Bill came out this week and is fairly broad – from merging Careers NZ into the Tertiary Education Commission to updates in teacher competency, registration of state-integrated schools, allowing cohort new entry and much more. But one area of particular interest to us is the provision for online learning.

Modernisation of the correspondence school model
The bill essentially converts the Correspondence School / Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu into an online school, otherwise known as a "community of online learning" or COOL, and updates some of the language in the act to make it more current.

It also opens the Correspondence School up to competition. On the face of it, neither of these things are bad (to look at a practical example, essentially "good" schools around the country could enrol and offer online tuition for kids in remote areas for example).

Online schools can be schools, tertiary providers, or private
One thing that's raised eyebrows is that these new COOLs can be schools, tertiary providers, or private providers. So a company could become accredited as a COOL and provide schooling; either in one area such as tech, in a blended environment (so some online and some face-to-face), or across-the-board education as a fully online school.  

The fact that tertiary providers can essentially become schools is probably a reflection of the blurring of the lines of traditional primary/secondary/tertiary education that has been occurring anyway. As it now stands, many tertiary providers are already providing advanced courses into schools including in computer science. We don't see that as a bad thing in principle.

Whether allowing private providers to become online schools is good or bad probably depends on your political ideology. But in reality, we do already have "bricks and mortar" private schools now (both in the unfunded private school context and the funded charter school context), so we don't really see this as a big change either way.

What they will look like
The new COOLs basically offer greater flexibility in how learning could be delivered. For example, a COOL might provide a blended learning option, such as what many tertiaries do now in their courses (where some courses are taught in multiple locations via video link).

We see this as a positive thing for our sector – there will always be a struggle to get enough expert teachers to teach digital tech at secondary level and this allows a provider to teach DT to lots of (traditional or online) schools at once in a blended model.

The flip side, of course, is that technically this could (and does) happen now anyway.

Others might offer a range of options and approaches along the lines of what Te Kura (the Correspondence School) offers now, on a fulltime student basis. Others could provide blocks of subject-dependent learning into traditional (or other online) schools. The key is the flexibility of options to meet developments in both technology and pedagogy.

So basically the changes are a modernisation of how learning could be delivered. We don't believe that, in practice, it will necessarily result in thousands of more students giving up traditional school and learning online instead. Those who want that option can do it now anyway under Te Kura / The Correspondence School.

But it will provide more options for kids who don't thrive in a traditional environment.

What could go wrong?

Plenty. Anyone in the Ministry of Elsewhere who thinks this change will mean doing away with teachers is plain wrong. What will make or break online or blended schools will be the pedagogy and that's absolutely reliant on good professional teachers.

Same with the learning style itself – expecting kids to sit at home in front of a computer to do their schoolwork on their own isn't going to work. There will need to be both one-on-one and group interaction still, even if that is delivered online, and significant engagement and commitment from parents as per the correspondence school options today.

There have also been concerns expressed around the social aspect of this (if kids no longer went to a traditional school, how would they develop socially?). That's a valid concern  but it doesn't change the fact that not everyone thrives in a traditional environment. Many kids already end up outside the school system due to "behavioural" problems and that, of course, can lead to lifelong impacts. Perhaps this path can provide positive alternatives to those kids who struggle with the social environments of schools.

So there are some valid concerns about how this will work in practice but, if implemented well and with good rules around how they will operate, it certainly has the potential to provide good innovative options for those who don't fit within a traditional schooling model in New Zealand.

MORE INFO

Ministry of Education: About the Education (Update) Amendment Bill

Ministry of Education: Establishing a Regulatory framework for online learning

Legislation.govt.nz: Education (Update) Amendment Bill

Paul Matthews is chief executive of the Institute of IT Professionals NZ.

Tune into NBR Radio’s Sunday Business with Andrew Patterson on Sunday morning, for analysis and feature-length interviews.

Click the hamburger symbol top right of our homepage to access the Rich List 2016 and other sections.