Rory Sweetman. 'A Fair and Just Solution'?: A History of the Integration of Private Schools in New Zealand. Dunmore Press in association with the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and the Association of Proprietors of Integrated Schools, Palmerston North, 2002. 323 pp. $34.95. ISBN 0-86469-414-8.
Reviewed by Catherine Hodder
This book documents how the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act 1975 was developed and implemented. This Act made provision for the conditional and voluntary integration of private schools into the state education system, while allowing them to preserve and safeguard the special character of the education they provided. The author's goal is to 'explain where the idea of integration came from, and how the legislation was made, passed and implemented' (p. 18). He notes that this is not a history of state aid to private schools, nor even of educational developments in New Zealand between 1973 and 1983. He calls the work an 'interpretative essay'.
These self-imposed restrictions of scope need to be kept in mind when reading this book. The short first chapter provides an historical background to the key issues affecting private schools and state funding for them. However, even here it is clear that 'private schools' will mean principally 'Catholic schools'.
The author then goes on to consider what he calls the 'rise of state aid', noting how politicians granted increasing amounts of public money to private schools during the 1960s. This chapter also has little to say about non-Catholic private schools, but it appears that these so-called elite or 'snob' schools were one of the major problems for this exercise, because they were financially much better off than the Catholic schools. More could have been made of the financial differences between Catholic and non-Catholic private schools, and how these differences came about. The Catholic schools had long suffered financial problems, in part because, although they charged a fee, their policy was that no Catholic child should be denied access to a Catholic school for lack of money. In contrast, the non-Catholic schools generally charged inflexible fees. In addition, many of the non-Catholic schools had received endowments from a church or benefactors which provided them with a separate income. While this book is not about the history of private schools in New Zealand, some indication of how these differences arose would have provided useful context.
The author has clearly had access to many valuable archives and has made good use of them. The text is full of details and interesting quotes which demonstrate his thorough examination of great quantities of archival material. The sources are given in more than 1400 endnotes. Since the non-Catholic private schools only had an input early in the period covered by this book (they opted out of the integration talks), there is little information about them, and the focus remains on the problems associated with the integration of the Catholic schools. However, the author does make it clear that the negotiators always tried to keep documents and legislation as open as possible to permit coverage of non-Catholic as well as Catholic schools.
While Dr Sweetman is not an educational historian, he has managed to capture the tense negotiations and what must have seemed like endless meetings that finally produced the 1975 Act. He also does a very creditable job in showing both the characters of the people involved in the negotiations and how – despite their very different personalities – they were able to work together over a considerable period to resolve disputes over policy.
The writing is clear and moves along well through what at times could have become a quite tedious listing of facts and people. The key players are brought to life by short descriptions that add to readers' understanding. For instance, Gunter Warner, the negotiator for the Post-Primary Teachers' Association, is described as a 'German-born Jewish immigrant' who was an 'atheist and ex-Communist, hostile to and deeply suspicious of elitism' (p. 98). The author writes of the Wellington lawyer who spoke for the Catholic delegates: 'Demonised as the clever lawyer who ran rings around the hapless state school negotiators, Des Dalgety stands alongside [Minister of Education] Merv Wellington in the [Committee for the Defence of Secular Education's] rogues' gallery' (p. 206).
The title of the book comes from the Labour Party manifesto of 1972, although it is a little hard to work this out initially. The phrase is repeated at intervals, which could be irritating but does help to refocus the reader on the topic and the issues surrounding it.
The book appears at first glance to be a catalogue of events and circumstances; until the last chapter there is little interpretation of the educational side of the topic. But it does cover a quite recent period in New Zealand's educational history, and in time the effects of this legislation may come to be seen in a different light. This work provides a very useful documentation of how integration came about, and how it was implemented. It would be best read in conjunction with books dealing with the differences between the Catholic and non-Catholic schools in order to understand how these differences affected the attitudes of the two camps to integration and state funding. However, 'A Fair and Just Solution'? achieves well what it sets out to do. The final chapter summarises the main points covered earlier and brings together the attitudes that were of importance. It is a pity, however, that this is the one chapter which does not have subheadings; I found these very useful in the earlier chapters.
After reading this book I have a much clearer understanding of the issues that were worked through before the enactment of the 1975 legislation, and the impact of the ideas on a range of affected parties. The tangled web of negotiations has been unravelled, and those involved have been given their rightful place in history.
Catherine Hodder has a degree in New Zealand educational history and is currently working on a book on District High Schools in New Zealand in the nineteenth century. She is based in Hamilton.
