The development of adult and community education policy in New Zealand: insights from Popper

Abstract

This paper examines the process by which all post‐compulsory education in New Zealand has become integrated under one administrative structure, the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC), with the intention of developing a single coordinated system of tertiary education. In particular, adult and community education (ACE), the least formal and organised sector, is required to develop programmes that align with an externally conceived set of priorities, which themselves arise from the Tertiary Education Strategies. Using Popper’s concepts of ‘holistic’ versus ‘piecemeal’ change, it is argued that such large‐scale change is potentially dangerous as there are likely to be unintended, damaging consequences of such policies; consequences which are difficult to fix in modern, complex societies. In particular, ACE which is built on an insider, community‐focus ethos, able itself to identify and respond to community‐learning opportunities, is likely to be changed fundamentally so that the very characteristics that have made ACE effective in the past will be lost in the process.

Keywords:

• New Zealand education system
• community education
• Popper

Notes

1. Although there were no specific New Right‐based policies governing ACE as a whole prior to 2003, the sector did, of course, find itself subject to the pressures of earlier reforms in other parts of tertiary education.

2. The ACE priorities are (TEC 2005a, 21):

1. Targeting learners whose initial learning was not successful.

2. Raising foundation skills.

3. Encouraging lifelong learning.

4. Strengthening communities by meeting identified community‐learning needs.

5. Strengthening social cohesion.

3. ‘Holistic’ as used here has a different meaning from that employed by Popper.

4. Different writers use some terms interchangeably with ‘ACE’ such as ‘adult basic education’.

5. Although, because we can never know for certain whether our tentative theories about these are right, the ideas will always be problematic, involving issues of power and its attendant ideology, in any particular society.

6. The recent difficulties of NCEA implementation in the New Zealand school sector may provide another example of this.

7. It is interesting and encouraging to note that since the completion of this paper, a summary of, and response from TEC to, the submissions received on the ACE funding framework consultation document (TEC 2005a) was released. One of the main concerns raised in the submissions was the ‘Definition of ACE priorities’:

 Many submissions raised concerns that government, rather than local communities, had determined the priorities that will be eligible for funding. It was also suggested that learning needs as determined by communities might not align with the government‐determined priorities. (TEC 2005b, 8)

In the covering letter to the TEC responses, TEC’s Chief Executive, in introducing changes as a result of the submissions, wrote:

 These changes underpin the intention that the funding framework should support incremental change, based on the recommendations of local ACE Networks regarding the alignment of provision with the ACE priorities.