|
NEW ZEALAND EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION AND LEADERSHIP SOCIETY INC - A BRIEF HISTORY (1975-2004)Ken Rae, FCCEAM, FNZEALS, National Secretary NZEAS, 1984-96 Laying the foundations:NZEAS (now NZEALS) was founded after an inaugural meeting at Wellington College of Education, convened on 1 October 1975 by Bill Renwick, then Director-General of Education and from 1970 a foundation member of the Board of our parent organisation, CCEA (now CCEAM - Commonwealth Council of Educational Administration and Management). The meeting, of 60 persons from across New Zealand and from across the sectors tertiary to primary, was also attended from Armidale by John Ewing, the foundation Executive Director of CCEA and formerly New Zealand Director of Primary Education. NZEAS membership, by decision of the meeting, was to be open to ‘any person with an interest in the practice and/or study of educational administration’. The other significant development in 1975 was an offer from ACEA (Australian Council of Educational Administration), our sister organisation across the Tasman, to participate in the planning and programme of a joint conference. This ran in those more spacious times for five days in Christchurch from January 18-23 1976. In days of greater emphasis on protocol, the conference committee met in Wellington under the chairmanship of the Director-General, and an Executive Committee worked in Christchurch under the chairmanship of CC Hamilton, recently retired Regional Superintendent. The conference was attended by over 100 New Zealand educational administrators, both professional and lay, and by 50 members of ACEA. They included high flyers - Professor Bill Walker, foundation President of CCEA, and Hedley Beare, foundation Director General of the Northern Territory and ACT education systems, and later President of ACEA and Emeritus Professor of Education at Melbourne. The chosen theme was Planning for Participation, the title also of the NZEAS post-conference publication, edited by John Watson, Director of NZCER. By 1975 educational leaders in New Zealand had been for nearly a decade developing links to a new professional fellowship among educational administrators in other parts of the English-speaking world. Dr George Parkyn, then Director of NZCER who was on secondment to UNESCO in Paris in the mid-sixties, together with John Ewing who was returning from a Senior Fellowship at the London Institute of Education, attended the first IIP (International Intervisitation Programme) in 1966. That gathering was sponsored by the North American UCEA (University Council of Education Administration) and travelled for three weeks, observing and then commenting on education administrations in USA and Canada. Professor Bill Walker of the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, also attended and returned enthused and wishing to set up a Commonwealth organisation that would parallel UCEA. In the next few years New Zealand was visited by Bill Walker, George Baron of the London Institute and Jack Culbertson, Executive Director of UCEA. Victoria University of Wellington made the initial university appointment in Educational Administration, of George Marshall, former principal of Cambridge High School. A larger group of New Zealanders attended the second IIP, which journeyed in those seemingly more leisurely days through three states of Australia, in 1970. The conference concluded with a meeting at Armidale that resolved to set up CCEA and seek financial support from the Commonwealth Foundation. Seven New Zealanders attended this meeting, including Professor Ray Adams of Massey University, John Watson of NZCER, John Ewing and Bill Renwick. A sizeable group of IIP delegates passed through Wellington on their way back to the Northern Hemisphere and attended a seminar organised by NZCER. NZEAS did not officially join CCEA until 1981, by which time Dame Jean Herbison had replaced Bill Renwick on the Board. In 1982 at a CCEA Council meeting during the fifth IIP in Nigeria she was elected a Vice-President of CCEA. Other New Zealand educational administrators to since hold the position are Reynold Macpherson - and most recently Jo Howse, who has been since 2000 the first New Zealand President of the Commonwealth organisation. New Zealand's evolving world of Educational Admin: The formation of NZEAS was one outcome of those contacts with CCEA. Another was Education Department support for an annual Fellowship at Armidale and for an extra-mural post-graduate diploma course in Educational Administration at Massey University. This was later upgraded to the first masterate available extra-murally, thanks to pioneering work by Tom Prebble and David Stewart - both honoured later as Fellows of NZEAS - who were joined by Wayne Edwards, in his turn a Fellow and President of NZEAS. Another outcome was the promotion by the Department of Education of in-service courses at district and national level which were attended by educational leaders and administrators, both senior and middle managers, and by those aspiring to such roles. Arising from a distinctive New Zealand ethos, there was increasing input in planning and leadership of these courses from within the teaching profession as well as from the inspectorate. At the core of this burgeoning network, the Council of NZEAS met through the late seventies in Wellington, usually in the office of the Director-General, initially under the Interim Chair, Jim Bateman, Principal of Central Institute of Technology, and then under the leadership of Dame Jean Herbison, successively of Christchurch College of Education, then Christchurch Polytechnic, and from 1979, Pro-Chancellor of Canterbury University. The Council acted as a sounding board and advisory group on national policy development. Branches of the Society, initially in Canterbury and Wellington, developed branch-level in-service programmes. The foundation secretary was Don Griffin of CIT, succeeded by Roger McElroy who was later General Manager of Otago Education Board until the restructurings of 1989. In mid-January 1981 NZEAS held a second joint conference, again with ACEA participants, over five days at Upper Hutt. Attending this conference was my first contact with the Society. That conference experience significantly modified my educational perspectives, until then firmly bounded within the secondary school sector. I found that I relished the opportunity to discuss common concerns with professional colleagues, and with lay administrators, from all sectors early childhood to tertiary. John Watson, Director of NZCER, chaired a broad-based committee drawn from universities, department, teachers college, schools and the professional associations. The theme was Promoting Educational Effectiveness. Appointed chair of the conference committee by the Council in 1979, John saw the conference as a make or break effort to set up a professional association that could in time stand on its own feet, outside of official patronage. He succeeded in this ambition and the conference well and truly launched NZEAS on the national scene. By 1982 NZEAS had established a third branch in Auckland which felt sufficiently confident to volunteer to run the third NZEAS conference, to be convened this time after a break of only two years, in January 1983. Trevor Loomb, Regional Executive Officer in the Department's Northern Regional Office and later General Manager of South Auckland Education Board, provided the initial leadership of the branch. Nigel Langston, principal of an innovative community-focussed primary school in West Auckland, convened the Conference committee with Noeline Alcorn of Auckland College of Education (now Dean of the School of Education, University of Waikato) as convenor of the programme. Both were later honoured as Fellows of NZEAS. The chosen theme was Accountability in a Multi-Cultural Society, and drew an enrolment of 180 participants. It can be noted in passing that the chosen theme sent a frisson of anxiety through the Council members in Wellington. Bill Renwick's paper on 'professional accountability' is printed in his collected papers, published as Moving Targets by NZCER in 1986. Further branches were later founded in Otago, Waikato and Nelson, still operational in 2004 - and in Manawatu, Northland and Hawkes Bay, unfortunately since closed. The Auckland conference committee determined that the profits from a national activity should be passed to the national organisation - and through the high interest regimes of the late 80’s those profits plus the interest, accruing at times at over 20%, allowed NZEAS to run on the basis of annual subscriptions that were kept unreasonably low. They were raised in 1986 from $3 to $4 - some branches held rather more in the way of funds than the central council. A maturing organisation: By 1984, after a move to Wellington, as former secretary of the Auckland branch and secretary of the 1983 conference, I was volunteered as a Department representative on NZEAS Council. At my first meeting we received news of the ill health of President Dame Jean Herbison, and the need to find a new president. Wayne Edwards, our third national secretary, was asked to step up - and so began my 12 years as National Secretary of NZEAS, under the leadership successively of Wayne, then of Roger Murdoch of Canterbury branch from 1990, and of Jo Howse of Auckland branch from 1994. I valued my professional association with all of them. NZEALS has since been equally well served by Lester Davison from Canterbury branch who was President from 1998 and oversaw the development of the NZEALS concept. This significant change in focus for our organisation was introduced at the 2002 Rotorua conference by the current President, Neil Cooper, now of Waikato branch, who succeeded to the office of President later that year. It reflects the increased diversity of providers in the field of educational leadership, and the increased variety of challenges today facing such leaders. Some major achievements for the society from 1984 have been:
And the future for NZEALS?
4a Paua Place 4 February 2004 Join NZEALS now or contact us for more information. |
EVENTS
|
home : about us : join NZEALS : news : awards + scholarships : conferences : partnerships : related organisations : what's happening : publications : contact us |
 |