3. Ghosts of Reforms Past
Lessons from the UK, US & Australia (NZ)
Cold open — Staffroom, 2009.
A notice goes up: “From next term we’ll focus on the EBacc subjects. Arts will be protected… where possible.” Ms Khan folds the choir timetable and files it under “Later.” In Year 10, Levi stops taking music because “it won’t count.” The head quotes a minister: “Knowledge-rich, academic core.” The corridor goes quiet in a way only schools can hear.
The policy move — Big bets on tidy metrics.
Every country in this tour wanted the same headline: lift achievement, close gaps, prove it. The tools rhymed—national standards, league tables, threshold grades, test-based accountability, simplified curricula, fidelity to programmes. Tidy measures promised tidy stories. The problem: classrooms are not spreadsheets; they bite back.
Human impact — three postcards from the era.
UK, the narrowing years. A deputy tells Year 9, “Choose subjects that keep doors open.” Translation: EBacc or else. Options shrink, arts tumble, practical sciences thin. The school orchestra loses its brass. A decade later, the same leaders lament a creativity drought and call for “broad and balanced.” The door wasn’t open; it was revolving.
US, the threshold effect. Under No Child Left Behind, schools chase “proficient.” Teachers triage time towards students on the cusp; those far below get remediation worksheets; those far above get patience. Social studies in primary becomes reading practice with a patriotic clip art. ESSA loosens the screws, but the muscle memory is stubborn: when a single score is king, the timetable becomes a courtier.
Australia, the dashboard illusion. NAPLAN data goes public on the My School website. Comparability is framed as fairness; it behaves like pressure. Prep for the test sneaks into Year 3. Principals count minutes. Teachers collect evidence like seashells—pretty, heavy and mostly decorative.
Systems lens — the patterns that keep repeating.
Across reforms, three motifs recur:
Narrowing by design. When accountability locks on to a small set of measures, curriculum and pedagogy orbit those measures. Arts, languages, inquiry and vocational pathways become “nice to have.”
Gaming without villains. Most gaming is not cheating; it’s adaptation. Double periods before tests, “strategic” timetable moves, teaching to the question format. Good people, perverse incentives.
Regret, then partial reversal. After a few cycles—scores up, engagement down—systems rediscover breadth, teacher judgement and richer assessment. The reversals rarely admit error; they talk about “refresh.” The ghosts stay.
The receipts (lightly annotated).
England: EBacc + Progress 8. The push for a knowledge-rich core lifted attention on academic subjects and comparability. It also coincided with a long decline in arts uptake at KS4, especially in disadvantaged areas and a noticeable squeeze on design & technology. Ofsted later urged breadth; the Department reaffirmed EBacc. The message: broaden the narrowness.
United States: NCLB → Race to the Top → ESSA. High-stakes proficiency targets delivered short-term gains in tested subjects, alongside widespread curriculum narrowing, triage and test rehearsal. ESSA’s move to multiple measures and state discretion was a tacit admission: one proxy cannot carry a school system. Many districts now experiment with growth models, portfolios and career credentials—while tutoring industries hum along.
Australia: Australian Curriculum + NAPLAN resets. Efforts to streamline the curriculum (and later “refocus” on fundamentals) did not lighten teacher workload; reporting and planning cultures expanded to fill the space. NAPLAN’s recent scale changes and timing tweaks signal a desire to reduce heat without losing light. The risk remains: if one number dominates, teaching learns its shape.
Canada: two diverging tales. Ontario’s EQAO testing generated cycles of prep and backlash; policy adjusted the weight of scores. British Columbia took another path—competency-based curriculum, broader reporting with proficiency scales and less fixation on a single mark. Engagement indicators improved; universities coped just fine.
Singapore & South Korea: partial U‑turns from pressure. Both high performers deliberately shaved down testing intensity (e.g., Singapore scrapping lower-primary exams; Korea piloting exam-free semesters and trimming “killer questions”). Neither abandoned standards; they de-fanged standardisation. Stress fell without achievement collapse. Imagine that.
What the ghosts actually say.
If you listen past the slogans, the ghosts are practical:
Measure, don’t mesmerise. Use numbers to see patterns, not to define the purpose of school.
Breadth is the on‑ramp to depth. You don’t get strong literacy by doing only literacy; you get it by reading about something.
Trust is capacity. Teacher judgement, well supported, outperforms scripts over time.
Equity hates uniformity. One ladder, many blisters. Design for variability or you will label it failure.
Meanwhile, back in Room 12 — the counterfactual.
Ms Khan pins the choir timetable back up, but with a twist. She links the music unit to poetry analysis (rhythm, metre), to fractions (note values), to local history (waiata about the awa). The EBacc box stays ticked; the curriculum stops apologising for joy. Levi comes back to lunchtime rehearsals because the concert will count as part of his speaking & listening assessment. He brings a friend who hates English and loves the drum kit. Everybody wins, including the spreadsheet.
NZ now — use the mirror, not the megaphone.
Aotearoa has already lived through a version of this—National Standards in, then out; a curriculum refresh that seeks clarity without handcuffs; renewed worry about basics; a fresh appetite for tighter checks. The mirror says: when we centred a narrow proxy, breadth suffered and teachers spent more time proving they taught than teaching. The lesson isn’t “never measure.” It’s “measure plural, stake lightly, invest in judgement.”
So let’s keep the receipts handy, not to shame other systems but to shorten our own learning loop. If we must simplify, simplify bureaucracy. Keep learning gloriously complicated: te ao Māori, arts and design, serious science, languages, civics, local history, inquiry that actually inquires. And if someone proposes a single number to sort the nation’s children, ask them—politely, with a smile—how they’d like their curriculum: mile wide and inch deep, or alive.
Closing beat — The staffroom, now.
The noticeboard carries two sheets: one with next term’s “priority standards,” one with a poster for the community arts/waiata night. Someone has drawn an arrow between them and written, “Both. Because we live here.” The kettle clicks. The ghosts get quieter when the living do the work.
If you’d like to share your thoughts or discuss further, feel free to reach out. I’d love to hear from you. +64 275 665 682 john.luxton@regenerationhq.co.nz