A General Malaise: Education in Post-Covid Times

Abstract

An event replete with symbols of culture and empire occurred in early October 2022, when India’s external affairs minister, Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, began his brief visit to New Zealand with a mihi whakatau (Māori welcome) ceremony, held at the Auckland War Memorial Museum (Indian Express Online, 2022). While the New Zealand side stressed the trade relationship between the two countries, Jaishankar was openly critical of New Zealand’s treatment of Indian tertiary students, excluded during the pandemic, and still unable to return. Some analysts are suggesting New Zealand will lose out to Australia in these economically valuable education markets (Miller, 2022). Such processes contribute to the financial losses New Zealand universities are currently experiencing, with slumping international and domestic student numbers compared with pre-pandemic levels, and the consequent moves to lay off staff (Gerritsen, 2022d). These are signs of a malaise in the university sector, caused by the post-Covid economic upsets, and exacerbated by high inflation (this high inflation itself owing something to Covid bailouts). Dissatisfaction with the salary negotiations led to 7,500 university staff walking out around the country—the first coordinated university strike action in 20 years, coincidentally taking place on the same day as the mihi whakatau for Jaishankar (Cook, 2022). Many tertiary students report that their studies have been negatively affected by the pandemic (Cameron et al., 2022). Those who were already vulnerable before the pandemic have been most severely affected, the pandemic worsening existing inequities. Yet the challenges facing the universities are less severe compared with the ITP sector (institutes of technology and polytechnics). ITPs lack both the economic power of the universities and the autonomy of the private tertiary entities, while being expected to overcome the effects of inequitable school achievement for second-chance learners. The ITP sector has struggled for years to meet the government’s financial expectations, and many of the 16 institutes were in deficit when they merged on the 1st of April, 2020, into one new, national super-organisation named Te Pūkenga. The unfortunate timing, coming at the start of the pandemic, was followed by further problems, with the inaugural CEO being placed on paid ‘special leave’ for about two months in 2022, before resigning, effective mid-August. The CEO’s departure was followed just weeks later by the resignation of the CFO. As of mid-October, 2022, Te Pūkenga is under interim leadership, and its future remains in doubt (Gerritsen, 2022a). The ECE (early childhood education) sector is also facing difficulties (Radio NZ, 2021). The number of new services opening has been dropping, while the number of services closing down has increased significantly in the last few years. Commentators noted that many centres had been struggling anyway, and the pandemic had made things worse. Opposition to the vaccine mandate contributed to a shortage of ECE teachers, and changing rules for staff qualifications add further challenges. In schools, attendance has sunk to worrying lows. Figures for Term 1, 2022 show only 46.1% of students attended regularly (defined as 90% plus) with lower attendance recorded for all regions, all deciles and all ethncities. In releasing these figures, the Ministry of Education noted possible long-term effects of the periods of lockdown as “impacts on parents of Covid fatigue and of attendance seeming less important” (Williams, 2022). As the numbers of Covid cases began to drop in August 2022, however, school principals reported that attendance was improving, though schools were still struggling with staff absences due to illness, and lack of relief teachers (Gerritsen, 2022c). The introduction of the new equity funding system, replacing the decile system, means most schools will receive more funding for equity in 2023, but the announcement was met with some adverse reactions, given that about 10% of schools will receive less money under the new scheme (Heikell, 2022). Demographic changes mean that in 2023, the government will fund 355 fewer teachers in primary and intermediate schools than in 2022 (Gerritsen, 2022b). The Minister of Education announced $20 million for extra teaching and tutoring to help students disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, and $24 million on recruitment initiatives to train 300 more teachers in New Zealand, and bring in 700 more from overseas. Well-known economist Cameron Bagrie recently criticised both major political parties for failing to prioritise long-term economic investment in education, saying “We know we are going to have some very significant economic consequences from underinvestment in education” (Hendry-Tennent, 2022). This critique is supremely ironic, given the concerted efforts made by economists, starting in about 1984, to limit the cost of state education through failed neoliberal policies and attempts to introduce markets in education (Devine, 2004). It seems fairly evident that Covid-19 has had an impact on mental health across the board, and on adolescents in particular. Interestingly, suicides decreased during lockdowns, but anxiety and depression seem to be more widespread. The mental health after-effects of the pandemic appear to be global and widespread across age groups (World Health Organization, 2022), but anxiety and depression seem to be characteristic of adolescents (Meade, 2021). Responses were of course varied, and some people in Aotearoa New Zealand reported positive feelings, largely as a result of exemplary community responses, but the severity of negative responses seems to have been closely linked to financial distress (Nicolson & Flett, 2020). Given that the loss of jobs was not unrelated to ethnicity, and social class (and hence internet access), there can be little doubt as to whose children have been most affected. While teachers performed heroic efforts to keep children connected and engaged, the lack of internet access (sometimes because the government-provided device was the only one in a large household!) and subsequent rates of truancy and ‘early leaving’ undercut the efforts schools and teachers could make. The Covid-19 pandemic has caused disruptions to education at all levels, here and around the globe, as evidenced by ongoing outpourings of research and commentary. This moment is aptly described as precarious: “the old normal is no more, and [the] new normal is not yet” (Jandrić, 2021, p. 650). This new normal is one in which education is increasingly justified in financial terms to the exclusion of all else, and understood through economic instrumentalist discourses in public, perpetuated by institutional leaders. Financial considerations are certainly important. So, too, is an explicit discourse on the breadth of what education is, enables, offers, and can be. Our collective task is to better understand our present, in order to build a better future, which must start with getting through the current malaise.