This research examines the impact of marketisation on Pacific Islands students in Christchurch high schools. Specifically, this study targeted the Tomorrow's Schools policy released in 1990 with particular interest in the changes in zoning laws. These changes theoretically allowed the consumers of education (the parents and students) equal access to all secondary schools by breaking down the zones and creating a free market where 'choice' and competition reigned supreme. However, this study along with others found that in actual fact it was the 'popular' schools with enrolment schemes who had the power to choose what students they preferred. Schools were left to compete for those students deemed' undesirable' by popular schools. This study found that a dis-empowerment of the schools' enrolment schemes needs to occur in Christchurch. Obviously, on the other hand, an empowerment of Pacific Islands parents and students through the increase of information also needs to occur. Although the government has made small steps toward making the problem more visible, more definitive work needs to be done in this area. This study also examined the achievement of Pacific Islands students at a national and at a sample level and discovered that has been very little improvement in this area over the time the Tomorrow's Schools policy has been in operation. Therefore, this study ventures into an analysis of this problem and suggests possible remedies. Again, this study argues that students must be actively empowered by teachers, schools, the government, and by their own people, in order to break down the physical, mental and even spiritual battles that Pacific Islands students face in the New Zealand education system.

This thesis aims to show how the secondary teacher in New Zealand was constituted in discourse through an examination of two major recontextualisations of education, the changes resulting from the Thomas Report (1944), and the Picot Report (1988), and of the collective identity of secondary teachers. Both reports redirected government education policy and regulation and had fundamental implications for teachers' work and the role they were expected to play in education. Secondary teachers resisted both reforms, and in doing so they revealed elements of their conservative, pragmatic and defensive collective identity, which changed in only one significant respect in the time period considered in this study. It took twenty years before the central tenets of the Thomas Report were even close to being universally accepted. Even then, the child-centred philosophy and practice propounded by the Thomas Report, supported by the Currie Report in 1962 and supervised by the gentle discipline of the Department of Education, was likely to have been more honoured in the breach than in the observance by many New Zealand secondary school teachers. In more recent times, the 'neo-liberal', market-driven view of education and teachers, as expressed in the reforms which followed the Picot Report, were stoutly resisted despite the much more rigorous disciplinary techniques employed by the Ministry of Education. This thesis will show that the dominant discourses which constituted the secondary teacher were those of the collective identity of secondary teachers and that these effectively frustrated attempts to impose change on New Zealand secondary teachers and on secondary education.

This thesis aims to show how the secondary teacher in New Zealand was constituted in discourse through an examination of two major recontextualisations of education, the changes resulting from the Thomas Report (1944), and the Picot Report (1988), and of the collective identity of secondary teachers. Both reports redirected government education policy and regulation and had fundamental implications for teachers' work and the role they were expected to play in education. Secondary teachers resisted both reforms, and in doing so they revealed elements of their conservative, pragmatic and defensive collective identity, which changed in only one significant respect in the time period considered in this study. It took twenty years before the central tenets of the Thomas Report were even close to being universally accepted. Even then, the child-centred philosophy and practice propounded by the Thomas Report, supported by the Currie Report in 1962 and supervised by the gentle discipline of the Department of Education, was likely to have been more honoured in the breach than in the observance by many New Zealand secondary school teachers. In more recent times, the 'neo-liberal', market-driven view of education and teachers, as expressed in the reforms which followed the Picot Report, were stoutly resisted despite the much more rigorous disciplinary techniques employed by the Ministry of Education. This thesis will show that the dominant discourses which constituted the secondary teacher were those of the collective identity of secondary teachers and that these effectively frustrated attempts to impose change on New Zealand secondary teachers and on secondary education.