"Tomorrow's Schools" is a term based on the white paper Tomorrow's Schools: The Reform of Education Administration in New Zealand, used in reference to changes in New Zealand education in the 1980s. The changes suggested in the white paper, which resulted in a radical restructuring of the country's education system, drew largely on a report by the Picot task force, appointed by the fourth Labour Government of New Zealand. Although the changes became law following the passing of the Education Act 1989, there has been ongoing debate about the role of the state in creating a self-managing model of schools and sustaining it to be equitable in what some said was a quasi-market environment, in the interests of all stakeholders in the education sector. While a formal Government-commissioned review of Tomorrow's Schools in 2018 resulted in policy commitments to address some of the concerns, as of 2026, the model is still in place for state-funded schools in New Zealand.
Background Against the backdrop of issues raised in the 1970s, New Zealand education underwent major reforms in the 1980s. There was said to be challenges to the consensus of the time that the state was beneficent and efficient by both a "radical left-wing critique that highlighted the continuing inequalities of education" and the emergence of a 'New Right' perspective that questioned "the character and effects of state involvement ". The disputing of whether state mechanisms were "disinterested upholders of the public good" was said to have allowed a "common policy discourse centering on the need for radical structural reforms in education...by an ideologically disparate coalition of interests".
The 1984–1990 Labour government led by David Lange introduced a range of free market, neoliberal economic reforms and some of the briefings and documents at the time indicated this approach was likely to be reflected in the education reforms. In 1987 New Zealand Treasury produced a brief to the Labour government, the second part of which dealt exclusively with education. The paper acknowledged that much of the state system was functioning, but raised concerns that some government interventions into education had resulted in inequitable institutional and financing structures that disadvantaged large numbers of students. For primary school education, government intervention was seen as necessary in the interests of equity of outcomes, equality of opportunity and "values clarification", with attention being drawn to the importance of a strong partnership between families and schools. The document also noted significantly that..."in the technical sense used by economists, education [was] not in fact a 'public good... [is]...never free...[and]...educational services are like other goods traded in the market place".
In April 1987 the Labour government released The Curriculum Review after two years of community consultation and debate. It proposed guidelines for a national curriculum to be "accessible to every student; non-racist and non-sexist; able to ensure significant success for all students; whole; balanced; of the highest quality for every student; planned; co-operatively designed; responsive, inclusive, enabling, enjoyable". While the document was viewed favourably within the education sector, the Treasury said that it did not deal with the relationship between education and the economy or have an approach to manage the issues of consumer choice. Two significant events followed the release of the Review: the establishment of the Government-appointed Taskforce to Review Education Administration (June 1987), and the general election in August 1987, which returned Labour to government, with Prime Minister David Lange taking over the portfolio of Minister for Education. John Codd from Massey University noted: "This ushered in the moment of educational administration reform and the consigning of curriculum reform to the 'backburner'".
Development and implementation
Administering for Excellence
The chair of the Taskforce established by the Lange-led Government was businessman Brian Picot. Other members were: Associate Professor Peter Ramsay, an educational researcher and critic of "bureaucratic conservatism"; Margaret Rosemergy, a Wellington Teachers' College lecturer and chair of the Onslow College Board of Governors; Whetumarama Wereta from the Department of Māori Affairs, a "social researcher of Ngāi Te Rangi – Ngāti Ranginui descent who had served on the Royal Commission on the Electoral System"; and Colin Wise, a Dunedin businessman with "educational experience as a University of Otago Council member and a past member of a secondary school board of governors".
The Taskforce's final report, Administering for excellence, was released in April 1988. The report identified five main issues of concern in New Zealand's education system: "over-centralisation of decision-making; complexity; lack of information and choice; lack of effective management practices; and feeling of powerlessness among parents, communities and practitioners". The Taskforce recommended the replacement of the Department of Education by a Ministry of Education and the abolition of regional regional education boards. It further suggested that "all schools to become autonomous, self-managing learning institutions, controlled by locally elected boards of trustees, responsible for learning outcomes, budgeting, and the employment of teachers". The report acknowledged the role of biculturalism in education and claimed "that the new structure it recommended would help achieve Māori aspirations".
The Picot report of 1988 was seen by one commentator as a "high-level initiative" that acknowledged and responded to increasingly complex social political issues that had led to criticisms of the education system from a variety of interests. The author concluded that the work of the Picot-led Taskforce to Review Education Administration [was] "an important attempt to restore public confidence in the ability of the state education system to create social equality" in spite of some divergence from the "liberal-progressive assumptions" reflected in the Currie Report of 1962. Another commentator noted that The Curriculum Review was not acknowledged in any way in the Picot report.
Tomorrow's Schools In August 1988 the newly re-elected Fourth Labour Government, with Lange as Minister of Education, published Tomorrow's Schools, which accepted most of the recommendations of the Picot report.
The government replaced the Department of Education with new bodies. The Ministry of Education (MoE) was to provide policy advice to the Minister of Education without becoming a direct provider of educational services. Other functions of the MoE included reviewing the curriculum, establishing national guidelines for education, approving charters and managing capital works in schools. The Education Review Office (ERO) was to be an independent review agency that ensured charter goals were achieved, and the boards of trustees were to be responsible for establishing charters as a "contract between the community, the school and the state" with the goal of establishing more autonomy for schools. Other bodies that later came to be recognised included the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) and the Tertiary Education Commission. The changes reflected concerns expressed in the Picot report about too much middle management in education, and the new system was said to "enable greater community involvement" because boards of trustees, drawn from the community, would directly administer schools.
Legislation giving effect to the changes came with the passing of the Education Act 1989. Under this Act, regional boards, which had been set up by provincial governments and split into 12 education boards in 1877 (reduced to 10 by 1966), were abolished. Schools became autonomous entities, managed by boards of trustees and as of 2024, this model continues.
Reception and commentary 1990 Implementation Review (The Lough Report) In early 1990, the Government appointed a committee chaired by former Secretary to the Treasury Noel Lough to review the administrative rollout of Tomorrow's Schools. The committee's report, Today's Schools: A review of the education reform implementation process (commonly known as the Lough Report), evaluated how school boards of trustees had handled devolved administrative and financial powers.The review found that the rapid pace of reform had created administrative delays and that many newly elected boards lacked the financial and management experience required for self-governance. To address these issues, the report recommended structured financial devolution, increased training and support for trustees, and clearer distinctions between local board governance and central agency oversight.
Government commissioned review, 1996 The New Zealand Government commissioned Reforming Education: The New Zealand Experience, 1984–1996, an independent history of the reforms, in 1996. The authors, Graham and Susan Butterworth, acknowledged that while the changes were radical, they did reflect a debate about the role of the state in providing education. Harvey McQueen, who had been a personal educational advisor to David Lange during the period of these reforms, claimed in a 1999 reflection that the Butterworths had been incorrect in concluding the Picot model had left the New Zealand education system in a "steady state", contending there remained a basic tension at the heart of the reforms as society endeavored "to balance two prospects of freedom: entrepreneurial capitalism, the capacity to maximise profit, and democracy based on concepts of equity and social responsibility". Other reviewers noted that the Butterworths understood their history was largely that of insiders, calling into question their value in assisting external groups who needed to "translate [the policy] into practice in classrooms and other educational settings".
Comment from academics A group of New Zealand educationalists wrote a paper in 1999 describing the process that resulted in Tomorrow's Schools as "an interaction between two agendas: one for more equity and the other for more choice...[and]...The Picot Report was released on 10 May 1988 with only 6–7 weeks allowed for public submissions", seen as insufficient time to process over 20,000 submissions that had been received. This paper also contended that there were no clear aims of the reforms and it was difficult to find data – other than that submitted by Treasury in their 1987 brief to the government, which justified the position that the aim of equality had not been met and the system therefore needed reforming. The authors concluded this led to an inference the proposed new system, likely to be market-driven, would improve educational equality, but the debate was clouded by a reluctance of those in favour the reforms to analyse them and those opposed, to criticising perceived underlying ideologies of the government.
In 2000, a senior lecturer in law at Canterbury University claimed that from 1984 the radical restructuring of the New Zealand economy as a result of "following a so-called neoliberal philosophy of economic rationalism...[resulted in a]...market-based model [being] imposed on most public sector activities, including the provision of education, together with a new ethos of managerialism". There was to be little state intervention and education had been positioned as "another commodity in the marketplace".