Local Innovation or Government Initiative? Curriculum Specialisation in New Zealand’s Education Quasi–Market

Abstract

Specialist schools and schools offering specialisation in a particular curriculum area are an increasingly common feature of education systems around the world today. In many countries, such specialisation is largely driven by government policy. In England, for instance, successive governments have, as a matter of policy, offered substantial funding to schools that have been prepared to specialise in the areas of Technology, Foreign Languages, the Arts and Sport. In New Zealand, no such impetus has existed, and yet both diversification and specialisation have occurred in some schools. The authors draw upon research carried out in several New Zealand schools in suggesting reasons why such developments have occurred.