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He aroha whakatō, he aroha ka puta mai.
If kindness is sown, then kindness is what you shall receive.
Kia ora e te whānau
Last week was my final executive meeting as President of NZPF. I want to thank the executive members, former executive members, Ministry staff, sector leaders, NZPF staff and my whanau for their humorous and heartfelt speeches and for organizing this superb send off for me. I was deeply humbled.
In this week’s Principal Matters I want to acknowledge all of you. As President, I have travelled the country to join you at your regional events. You are the ones who have kept me in touch with the realities of your day to day life as principals. You are the ones who have inspired me throughout my tenure and kept me focused on those issues that are most relevant and pressing. You set my agenda for the work I do on reference and advisory groups in Wellington, in parliament and with the media. Ngā mihi kia kotou katoa.
Education Work Programme Overview and Status Update
Many of you ask me about the big picture for the future of education, and how all the different work streams fit together.
The Ministry has developed a diagram which will help you see that bigger picture and how the different work strands fit together. It will be continually updated as the work progresses, but I hope it may provide a useful guide for you. Click here to access the diagram.
ERO Leadership Partners Programme
ERO has launched the Leadership Partners’ Programme for school principals and senior leaders. It is a joint initiative between ERO and the sector.
This unique professional learning opportunity offers principals and senior leaders an opportunity to train and join review teams as partners in ERO’s external school evaluation process for two weeks each term during 2020.
It aims to extend leaders’ understanding of external evaluation practice and better appreciate the links between internal and external evaluation. It will also help develop insights into your own school by contributing to reviewing others.
The process is now underway to select a pilot group who will undergo an induction programme in January 2020 and begin reviewing in Term One.
Further information can be found here.
Recent Announcements
Property
You may have seen Sunday’s announcement by the Prime Minister about the School Investment Package, a one-off capital injection for state schools to help them accelerate and bring forward urgent school property improvements. You can read the Prime Minister’s press release here.
As part of the package, all eligible schools will get $693 per student, determined by their July 2019 school roll. Each school will receive a minimum of $50,000 and a maximum of $400,000 to be spent within the next 24 months. Special schools will receive a flat rate of $200,000, to recognise the complexity and cost of special school property despite having generally smaller rolls.
Schools should select projects from their existing 10YPP that can be initiated soon and be delivered within the two-year timeframe. You do not need to take into account the priority of the project under the 10YPP framework.
The Ministry will be contacting all eligible schools over the coming weeks to let them know about the funding and to answer any questions.
Further information will also be available on the Ministry website later this week.
PISA Results
You will have heard through the media that the latest PISA results show that New Zealand rankings have dropped slightly in reading and writing and a little more so in maths. We also have truancy issues and bullying issues and the gap between our brightest and poorer achievers is big.
The results did not surprise me. What we are seeing are the results of 9 years of national standards and the growth in poverty. We know that it will take some time to reverse the trends as we build up the focus on our curriculum again and start to address the appalling child poverty statistics. We also have some excellent initiatives to enhance cultural responsiveness which will help our young Māori to be more successful and we are working on similar initiatives for our young Pasifika students.
The most disturbing finding was the percentage of our young people reporting that they do not read for pleasure or read as little as possible. 52% of students said that they only read if they have to. 43% do not read for enjoyment. There may be many factors at play here including social media and other internet activities, but we do not have the research to back this up.
Have a great week and keep your energy levels up for all those end of year functions!
Ngā manaakitanga
Whetu Cormick
whetu@nzpf.ac.nz
Banking Staffing Update December 2019
Managing Banking Staffing Overuse to pp 22
All teaching staff whether permanent or fixed term, will use the same number of banking staffing fttes if employed over the same period of time. If a whole year, and employed full time for example, each will use 26 fttes.
It follows that if you are looking to offset overuse now to year end and need a person transferred to bg until pp 22 you can use the cheapest salary available, regardless of tenure providing you wish to keep them in bg until pp 22.
Most will reduce your banking staffing usage by 1 ftte per fortnight as you would expect, but some who will be paid up to year end in pp 19 will reduce your overuse by about 3 or 4 fttes in pp 19, then have no influence in pp 20, 21 and 22.
The only difference is timing, so there is no problem with using people who finish at year end, just that pp 19 usage can look very odd when the temporary effect of their usage dramatically alters the anticipated balance at pp 19. Remember they will be off the radar for the rest of the year and the situation will right itself.
So use pp 18 to decide who to put in bg based on salary rates and do not respond to any wild swings in the pp 19 banking staffing report.
The other side of this discussion is to suggest you avoid putting someone who is leaving at year in bg for pp 19 if you are only wanting to claw back say 1 ftte. Their accumulated entitlement will probably be 3 or 4 fttes which would all be processed in pp19 of course!
Gavin Price
NZPF Life Member 027 607 6220 gavin.price@xtra.co.nz www.bankingstaffing.co.nz
APPA-NZPF Trans-Tasman Conference 2020
Next year's conference will be held in Melbourne from 15 - 18 September 2020.
Registration for the Conference is now open!
Click here for more information.
NZ Principal Magazine also Online
You and/or your team members can easily access the NZ Principal Magazines online, as an e-magazine or as a PDF. Additionally you can search for a previous issue, an article by title or by the author of the article. All magazines back to Term 1 2012 are available in this format. To view or search click here.
Hapori Matatū | Online Community - launch early December
The Teaching Council are launching their new registration policy and online services system, Hapori Matatū, in early December.
The new policy will take effect for those already in the teaching profession, as well as those joining the profession.
The Hapori Matatū on line application processes will be available to teachers and professional leaders who already hold a practising certificate.
Limited Authority to Teach (LAT), New Zealand graduates/new teachers, teachers not employed or associated with a school/kura/centre, and overseas teachers will apply using new smart forms, which support the new registration policy. These teachers will be able to use Hapori Matatū early next year.
For more information on Hapori Matatū, including how to apply for an ESL account, refer to FAQs
International Women's Day 2020 celebration
UN Women Aotearoa and Zonta Club of Wellington invite your school to celebrate International Women's Day by participating in a free live streaming event on Friday 6 March 2020.
The event will be live streamed from Parliament and is an opportunity for schools to share the experience wherever they may be.
Keynote speakers are the Minister for Women, Julie Anne Genter, Tiana Epati, President of the NZ Law Society, and Dr Lupe Taumoepeau, New Zealand’s first female vascular surgeon.
To register expressions of interest or for more information — contact rebecca.e.brown@gmail.com
NZPF assures its business partners that, as members, you will contact them to have a conversation if you are purchasing products, services or solutions for your schools that a business partner supplies. Please support our partners as their assistance to NZPF means better membership services to you.
