Reindustrialising education, taking it back to the 19th century

Education policy does not exist in a vacuum. It reflects the values a society holds about work, intelligence, equity, and the future. As the current government pushes for “back to basics” reforms, it is worth asking a harder question: are these policies about improving education — or about returning it to an outdated industrial model that no longer serves our children, our economy, or our democracy?

In my previous article I wrote about the desire of the current government to take education policy back to last century, to the 1930s, and, as you will read further down, arguably further back than that. 

A Brief History of Standardisation in New Zealand Schools

Older readers will remember that the first couple of years of primary school years were once graded Primer 1, 2, 3, & 4 where primer was possibly a derivation of primary or preparatory learning. That’s a conjecture on my part.

From then on, children were ranked in standards, that is, Standard 1, Standard 2, Standard 3, Standard 4, Standard 5 and Standard 6 – the last two later becoming Form 1 and Form 2, the first step on the Form classification used in secondary schooling. I don’t know why the nomenclature ‘Form’ was used, one could speculate that it too was a version of ranking based on where students were seated in classrooms (pupils as they were known in those days – the late and sadly missed Kelvin Smythe always objected to the renaming of pupils as students – how we miss what he would have made of the current education agenda).

However, going back to primary schools, the derivation of the word ‘Standard’ is obvious – these were based on standards of learning pupils had to achieve before progressing through their schooling. Failure to reach set standards, based as always on the 3Rs, meant that pupils had to repeat a year at that level. 

I’m not exaggerating, I clearly remember this happening to a classmate of mine in the 1960s, who had to repeat Standard 6 rather than go on to high school. While current government policies do not allow for this, and thankfully due to parental power which has increased so much since then, this will never happen again.

Then, up until mid 1930s, about the Standard 6 level pupils, had to sit an achievement test (I well recall my mother talking about this) to be allowed to process to high school. Those who missed left school at 12 years old, as my father did. Not that he was upset by that, he and schooling and the very domineering and controlling teachers of that era did not get on! This test was abandoned at some stage before the war, possibly when the first Labour government was elected in 1935, but I don’t know for sure.

Education as Sorting Mechanism, Not Opportunity

Another hurdle was placed in front of students at the end of the 5th form, in the version of the not lamented School Certificate. The 50% of pupils who did not pass that had two choices, repeat the 5th form or leave school. Given that a) pupils had to achieve a pass mark of 30% in English (very tough on pupils from communities where English was not the primary language e.g., the local Maori community adjacent to where I lived (my siblings and I were the only Pākehā on the high school bus) and b) the results were scaled up or down to ensure that the pass rate was approximately 50%.

The intent of this this was to sift the pupils into two piles, those who had to leave school to do menial/labouring jobs, and those who could go on to office jobs and tertiary education. This survived until the early 2000s.

Reindustrialising Education — A Step Backwards

The government’s plans to revise or replace secondary school assessment is a nod in this direction, taking us back to that era.

Claire Amos, Principal at Albany Senior High School, discusses the government’s plan to ‘reindustrialise’ education in this article:

On Standardisation and Sticks

‘The danger of reindustrialising education in Aotearoa”

Claire writes:

‘There is a particular kind of unease that settles in when you realise that the reforms being framed as improvements and simply teaching basics brilliantly are, in fact, a quiet return to something much older – something that education systems around the world have spent decades trying to move away from.’

And then:

‘I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the language that has crept back into our national conversations about schooling. About standards, and consistency, compliance and consequences (such as statutory intervention). About “getting back to basics”, about tighter controls, clearer hierarchies, fewer deviations. About schools needing to be more efficient, more measurable, more accountable, more aligned.’

As I wrote above, we’re being taken back a century or so. The problem is that our children don’t live in the first half of the 20th century. 

In fact, as Claire argues in the following section, the proposed policies are taking us back even further than that.

‘And what worries me is not the desire for quality – that matters deeply – but the creeping sense that we are reindustrialising education in Aotearoa. Rebuilding a system that treats learning as a production line rather than a human endeavour. Education system leaders that seem hell-bent on achieving KPIs for the CEO rather than realising a vision for rangatahi, created by rangatahi.

The industrial model of schooling was never designed for the world our young people are stepping into. It was built in the early 1800s for a workforce that needed to arrive on time, follow instructions, repeat tasks accurately, and not ask too many questions. It made sense in factories. It made sense in an economy built on uniformity and scale.

It makes far less sense now.’

Why the Factory Model No Longer Works

I’ve maintained for years that education as we know it was designed on the assembly line model (visualise a car factory), less so in primary schools in the last 50 years, but still very dominant in traditional secondary schools (some well known boys and girls high schools, Auckland Grammar, Kings College etc). Student move along the assembly line when they arrive at school each day, going from classroom to classroom having bits added to them, English here, Mathematics here, Science here, and so on. Learning is fragmented rather than a seamless progression of learning.

You will note that there are a number of charter school proposals that highlight setting up the assembly line model of learning. 

What Gets Lost When Learning Is Standardised

‘The risk of returning to a factory-model approach is not abstract or ideological – it is practical and immediate. When education is shaped around standardisation and compliance, the skills that matter most in an AI-accelerated, rapidly shifting world are pushed to the margins. Critical thinking, creativity, adaptability, collaboration, problem-finding rather than problem-solving – these are not easily standardised, and so they are often the first to be squeezed out.

Instead, we double down on what is easiest to measure.’

Claire’s next section is similar to the points I made in my previous article about the narrowing down (and dumbing down) of education outcomes.

‘At the same time, there is a real danger that we narrow our understanding of what valuable pathways look like. When reform conversations privilege rigidity, traditional “knowledge-rich” curriculum, and a return to binary externally resourced vocational education – we risk reinforcing outmoded definitions of academic and vocational pathways and careers and sidelining entire sectors of the economy that are growing faster, creating more value, and offering more flexible futures. 

Creative industries, digital technologies, design, entrepreneurship – these don’t fit neatly into industrial frameworks, and so they can be treated as optional extras rather than central components of a future-focused system.’

Equity Cannot Be Achieved Through Sameness

Picking up the theme of the inequity that I wrote about above, the way students’ life opportunities were once severely restricted by their experiences in the schooling system, Claire writes:

‘Standardisation assumes sameness – of pace, of interest, of readiness, of life context – and when students don’t fit the mould, the system tends to interpret that as deficit. We end up designing schools around an imagined “average learner”, and then building layers of intervention to fix the students who don’t behave like one.

Time and time again I am struck by the current leadership in education seemingly unable to grasp that equity is not achieved by simply emulating what “the winners” are doing in their leafy suburbs, it is achieved through pretty much the opposite approach, understanding where young people are at and supporting and resourcing them specifically. Ensuring at risk students have MORE and that curriculum and assessment are relevant and localised to meet them where they are at.’

While Claire is writing from her background as a principal of a senior secondary school, her next section is applicable across all schooling levels.

‘Highly standardised, grade-obsessed systems are correlated with lower engagement and poorer mental health, particularly for young people who already feel marginalised or disconnected from school. When learning becomes about compliance rather than meaning, about avoiding failure rather than pursuing curiosity, students don’t just disengage, they internalise the message that learning is something done to them, not with them.’

Schooling Is Not the Same as Education

At this point I need to reiterate something I wrote many articles ago – education and schooling are not the same. Schooling is but one way people can be educated and we shouldn’t make the mistake of confusing schooling with education. Even Erica can demonstrate that, given her ability to base her entire educational agenda on one book, although you’d think that during her university studies she would have learnt about the dangers of basing everything on one source, rather than researching a wider range to gain a richer and therefore more valid perspective. Obviously not.

‘Perhaps the greatest irony of reindustrialising education, though, is the risk of obsolescence. In the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, teaching narrowly defined, rigid skill sets is a form of planned redundancy. The knowledge and competencies that are easiest to standardise are often the ones most vulnerable to automation. By the time students enter the workforce, much of what they were trained to do has already shifted, or disappeared entirely.

Instead of preparing young people to navigate uncertainty, we anchor them to certainty that no longer exists.’

Exactly. Where does the undoubted influence of AI (as dubious as much of AI is) fit into their narrow agenda, Surely in the current and future world, increasingly influenced by AI, critical thinking is of ever increasing importance, to enable students to sort out AI value from AI crap?

The Political Risk of Bulldozing Education

‘The question is whether we will design an education system that recognises this, or retreat to one that feels safer because it is familiar. That we will reindustrialise an entire education system simply because it reassures parents that education isn’t really that complex, that a (manufactured) crisis simply needs to be fixed, that it simply needs management to intervene and fix it. That we are willing to stand and watch an education system being bulldozed for the sake of political wins, a few extra votes.’

Which is what I wrote in my previous article – all this is being done to win votes. How shallow is that?

‘Let’s be clear. Factories produce sameness. Learning does not.

And the danger, if we’re not careful, is that in our rush to standardise, we forget what education is actually for.’

Exactly.