Kia ora e te whānau

This is the final Principal Matters for the year and what a year it has been! Principals have fulfilled a vital role in supporting staff, students, and communities to keep safe from COVID, whilst continuing to nurture successful learning progress for the students in their schools.

As principals, you were called to leadership in a time of national and international crisis, and you delivered.

Thank you.

Before we conclude the year, I want to raise some important ‘need to knows’.

Congratulations to NEiTA winners

Congratulations to our very own NZPF Executive member, Leanne Otene, who was honoured on Tuesday in a special ceremony for winning the Outstanding Mentor Award and the NEiTA (National Excellence in Teaching Awards) Founders' Principals Award for Leadership.

This award is highly prestigious and the NZPF whānau are rightly proud of Leanne.

In addition, I want to acknowledge the other outstanding winners for their excellence in education: Chandra Littlewood, Darren Kerr, Erika Jenkins, and Derren Coles.

Legal Opinion Directed Enrolments

For the past two years, a major NZPF lobby has been to establish better support for dysregulated and at-risk young people. Principals are concerned about the lack of options to deal with violent behaviour at school and the unfortunate reality that many young people experiencing trauma are ultimately excluded from school. Such situations often require the Secretary for Education to impose a ‘directed’ enrolment to return an excluded student to school.

It is time principals and the Ministry of Education worked in partnership to stop these damaging exclusions.

It is frequently the case that a ‘directed’ enrolment does not arrive with full disclosure of the child’s history to enable a school to assess needs and agree matched resourcing.

NZPF has sought legal advice to unravel the responsibility between the requirement to comply with a directed enrolment in the Education and Training Act and the expectation for a safe and healthy working environment, as outlined in the Health and Safety in the Workplace Act. Recent legal advice commissioned by NZPF and received from Andrew Butler (Queen’s Counsel) finds that the Health and Safety in the Workplace Act cannot be discounted and that the establishment of ‘rules’ to inform a directed enrolment would substantially assist the Ministry of Education and schools to ensure appropriate and tailored support for dysregulated and at-risk young people.

To this end, I congratulate the Secretary for Education who has written to NZPF outlining her intent to task the 3 regional Te Mahau Hautū (Deputy Secretary’s) to discuss the matters raised in Andrew Butler’s opinion and then work with NZPF to focus on how the Ministry of Education and schools can work together differently to improve outcomes for at risk young people.

This critical work will proceed early in 2022.

Thank You

As I conclude my time as NZPF President, I want to thank you for your extraordinary efforts this past year. I am truly inspired by our principal community and count it as the privilege of a lifetime to have had the opportunity to advocate on your behalf in Wellington.

I want to acknowledge the outstanding NZPF Executive who have worked collaboratively and collectively as a team to advocate for you. I particularly want to thank the leadership, Cherie Taylor-Patel, Julie Hepburn, Karen Brisco and Gavin Beere for their steadfast support and friendship through these challenging times.

I don’t have to tell you to turn off over summer, but the mental pressure of leadership over the past year requires a fulsome response to put your own wellbeing at the fore and rest up.  

Finally, I have been offered and accepted a position on the senior leadership team growing principal and school leadership at Tui Tuia | Learning Circle / University of Auckland. I will be making the move to Tāmaki Makaurau in January. I feel privileged to be furthering my work in principal professional development - an area of personal passion and expertise - and I look forward to working more directly with you in the future, in this new role.

Meri Kirihimete! Have a happy Christmas and restful holiday break.

Ko te pae tawhiti, whāia kia tata; ko te pae tata, whakamaua kia tina.

Ngā manaakitanga

Perry Rush
perry@nzpf.ac.nz