On the news this morning – TV3’s item about the government announcement that the first schools in NZ to be designed, financed, built and maintained under a public-private partnership are due to open at the start of 2013. NZEI president Ian Leckie spoke to Firstline’s Rachel Smalley this morning – watch the full interview here.
It was inevitable that such an initiative would find its way to NZ – I’m just surprised it has taken so long. Although Ian Leckie suggests there’s been no warning of this coming, talk of PPPs has been around for some time. In 2006 the education forum published a typology of international examples, that included many examples of privately funded schools (see p.65), and in the same year they published an article in their newsletter on lessons for NZ from the NSW experience in Australia.
Inevitably there are pros and cons to the argument – and that’s exactly the point, there are two sides to the proposal. There’s little point dismissing the idea outright when we are so patently struggling to support our existing system at a range of levels. But we need also to be considering carefully the lessons learned in other jurisdictions – both positive and negative, to ensure we make the right and appropriate choices and decisions in the NZ context.
Derek
Mmm I heard this on the radio this morning. They said in another country, can’t remember which, after school the teachers ‘were thrown out’ as the school was to be used for other purposes. So one thing would be contracts would have to be carefully thought out. Surely too now with the advent on being able to delivered in a variety of ways using internet etc, other avenues would be explored as well.
Oops that did not make sense. Sorry. meant to say with the advent of education now able to be delivered…..
Derek,
If business leaders have money to spend on providing schools I think we have to trust that this is a carefully considered proposal. It would seem that trust is something many people are cynical about, yet a truly humane society requires this very virtue. I image that any PPP school project that went belly-up would be plastered all over the media as “round table” interference that went wrong.