Kia ora e te whānau

What a wonderful couple of weeks I’ve just had on the ‘Great NZPF Road Show’!  To all the principals in Whangarei, Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Rotorua and the Hawke’s Bay, who took time out of their demanding schedules to meet and discuss a few really important issues, thank you so much.  You gave me thoughtful and useful feedback on principal wellbeing, the leadership centre, principal appraisal, and Kāhui Ako, all of which I will use back in Wellington.

To all the regional presidents who organised the venues and catering and contacted their local principals, I am so grateful to you all.   

Common to each meeting has been watching the joy of principal colleagues meeting together after such a long hiatus and listening to the depth of thought and feeling expressed in the discussions held about issues that matter.

In each meeting, principals have expressed clear expectations on how to resolve significant and longstanding issues that are impacting on principal workload and wellbeing.

Principals are not adept at placing themselves at the front of the queue. The nature of the job means that we constantly look to nurture and care for others. But principals cannot and should not be stretched to breaking point. Nor should they be placed in the position of dealing with complex young people without sufficient resource to effectively do so. Our responsibility when confronted with such circumstances is to raise issues that improve our capacity to do our jobs so that government can address them.

The excellent leadership of principals through the COVID-19 crisis has once again demonstrated the integrity and commitment of principals – willing to play their part for the nation, as we all grapple with the impact of the global pandemic.

In turn, when principals reach out to the government with serious issues to solve, we expect them to listen and be keen to explore solutions with us.

This is the time to place a magnifying glass on issues that affect principal wellbeing and workload.

Approaching the midway mark on the road trip, significant themes are developing:

• principals have firm ideas about the NZEI, PPTA and Ministry Accord outcomes regarding principal workload and wellbeing
• principals would like these ideas clearly communicated to the NZEI, PPTA and Ministry so that the outcome of the Accord process can reflect principals’ aspirations
• principals continue to be vocal about the impact of damaged and traumatised young people who experience dysfunction and are violent in the school setting. Principals are concerned that there has been no response from the Ministry or government on these concerns. They are urgent priorities.
• principals expect to work in a high trust, collegial way with the Ministry of Education and stand ready to assist the Ministry to establish a revised Ministry of Education including the new Education Service Agencies
• Kāhui Ako is a model that was imposed on the education sector under a government which had different objectives for education. Principals report experiencing Kāhui Ako differently and acknowledge that there are inequities associated with the model. There is momentum for change. Discussion to date has focused on whether Kāhui Ako is making a difference for young people and whether the investment (mostly in staffing) is better spent on other priorities. Alternative collaborative school structures have been discussed.
• There is growing concern about the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ in our schooling system. Some schools are in Kāhui Ako with access to the associated resources, some not; some schools have Learning Support Coordinators, some schools don’t; some schools have access to property funding income and some schools are refused that same income; some schools are in the donations scheme, some aren’t.

NZPF will be surveying all members in the coming weeks to add to the information collated in these face-to-face road trip meetings.

I look forward to summarising the detail of our ‘Road Show’ discussions and sharing that with you all. I will also share our summary directly with the unions, the Secretary of Education, Minister of Education, and education spokespeople from across the political spectrum as we head into the 2020 general election.

NZPF Membership
We have had a significant response in our membership drive with many new members joining the Federation. You may note a paper copy of the membership request sent to you as a reminder. We would appreciate you acting at pace now if your membership subscription is outstanding. There has never been a more important time to be well connected to your principal colleagues through the work of NZPF.

NZPF Conference in Christchurch 2022
Because of the postponement of the 2020 Trans-Tasman conference to July 2021 in Melbourne, the 2021 NZPF conference, scheduled for Christchurch, has been moved to 2022. We are very much looking forward to our national conference in Christchurch at Te Pae, the new convention centre.

Arts Funding
We were delighted to hear the news that $4million of the COVID-19 recovery fund is to be applied to the Arts, including Arts in schools.

NZPF has decried the decimation of Arts teaching in schools and warmly welcomes this long overdue emphasis on the Arts.

Our concern is that teaching Arts and being an artist are not the same thing.  We appreciate that real artists right now are in need of support, but taking these artists into schools without teacher training, is not committing to a long-term strategy to grow Arts teaching and learning in our schools.

We call on government to invest in strategies such as the provision of arts curriculum advisory services and vastly improved pre-service training and ongoing professional learning opportunities for teachers.

Ngā manaakitanga

Perry Rush
perry@nzpf.ac.nz