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This article sets out to demonstrate the considerable extent to which the New Zealand school system has become saturated by private interests, and to explain this development over time. It is the first such overview of the privatisation of schooling in the New Zealand context. The analysis illustrates that the rise of private actors has involved some long-term factors such as demographic and cultural features of New Zealand society as well as market and managerialist politics that have reduced state resources to schools and to the agencies that support them. More immediate enablers have been created by moments of crisis and the needs of particular policies. The article concludes by arguing that further attention needs to be paid to the complex histories of private sector involvement in education, especially when the conditions supporting private actors have often been piecemeal, uncertain, and serendipitous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School-based research has historically played an important role within the education system contributing to our understanding of the organisation and practice of formal education. Supported by relevant literature, this article reports on current challenges in conducting school-based research in Aotearoa New Zealand as experienced by one researcher. It suggests that conducting school-based research is becoming increasingly difficult, with possible explanations for this being the divergent workflows of researcher and school-based participant(s), the volume of demands on teachers and schools, and restricted roles for teachers and parents, which increase the risk of research fatigue. The article argues that although school-based research is rarely an immediate priority for school leaders, it is imperative that they support it if they want to be informed by its insights for policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research demonstrates the impact of context on school organisation and management, curriculum and pedagogy and on student peer relations. New developments in English education policy will devolve more responsibility for dealing with these issues to headteachers. Headteachers' readings of their contexts and the responses that they make are thus of increasing interest. This paper draws on interviews with eight headteachers of less advantaged English primary schools to explore how they understand and articulate the contexts in which their schools operate and how this knowledge is translated into strategies for organising curriculum, pedagogy and other school processes. These headteachers observed context through the lens of the behaviour of parents and children in relation to school, contrasting it with an assumed middle-class normality. More critical perspectives on families' social and economic position or on the contribution of school practice to educational exclusion were largely absent. School responses were many and varied but, given the constraints of budgets, market and performative pressures, were unlikely to substantially transform the educational experiences and outcomes of disadvantaged students. We point to the continuing need for more contextualised funding mechanisms and policies to improve schools in disadvantaged areas and also, in the light of devolution to schools, to the need to develop mechanisms of support to headteachers to help them to develop critical understandings of context and to reflect on school process and practices in the light of these understandings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While policy makers and school effectiveness researchers often insist that schools can make a substantial difference to student achievement, it is less clear whether school staff themselves really believe this. This paper draws on qualitative research in New Zealand schools where teachers, principals (heads) and trustees (governors) were asked how accountable they felt school staff could actually be for student outcomes. In contrast to official discourses about the responsibilities of teachers, the often complex responses of those interviewed illustrated relatively modest expectations of the ability of schools to affect student outcomes. The findings suggest that school staff have yet to take to heart the school effectiveness research catchcry that 'schools can make a difference' but that they also struggle to avoid a deficit approach without a stronger sociological understanding of the reasons for student failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]