Source: Radio New Zealand
The Education Ministry says schools now have to add extra days to the end of the school year to make up for so-called staggered starts. Unsplash/ Taylor Flowe
Schools and the Education Ministry are at odds over whether welcoming new students a day or two before other students return to class counts as an official school day.
The ministry says schools now have to add extra days to the end of the school year to make up for so-called staggered starts – principals say they should not have to.
School websites show multiple secondary schools opted to started with only one or two year levels, such as Year 9 students, present on the first day or two of the school term.
The ministry last year ruled such days could not be counted against the minimum number of half-days they must be open this year – 378 for primary and intermediate schools and 376 half-days for secondaries, assuming they used four government-mandated teacher only half-days.
It said schools were only open for instruction if all year levels were learning, either on or off-site.
The interpretation also meant schools could only require staff to be present by using one of 10 “call-back days” they could use each year for work outside of term time.
Some principals said the ministry’s interpretation was legally incorrect and impossible to comply with during end-of-year exams when senior students were granted exam leave for the duration of the exam period.
Burnside High School principal Scott Haines said his school welcomed 755 new students, most of them Year 9s, on Monday and Tuesday this week with an induction to ensure they got off to a good start.
Burnside High School principal Scott Haines. Supplied / Burnside High School
He said the potential for chaos was too high to risk starting all 2776 students that had enrolled this year on the same day and the days should count as “open for instruction”.
“The well-established, well-trodden path for decades for schools around the country is that yes, we could count those days because students are legitimately at school undertaking legitimate courses of learning, teachers are at work doing the same,” he said.
“But the new guidance from the ministry suggests that in fact no, these can’t be counted as … schools open for instruction and so the ministry’s expectation would be that we would be adding days at the other end of the year.”
Asked if Burnside would count the induction days as days it was open for instruction, Haines said he was still seeking to get to the bottom of the matter.
He said the Secondary Principals Association and Post Primary Teachers Association had legal opinions that the ministry’s interpretation was not enforceable and the ministry was expected to provide further guidance.
Haines said if his school’s first days did not count as being open for instruction, then the same would apply to the senior exam period at the end of the year and that would be totally unmanageable.
“Principals are really worried about this and the potential impacts for students, because we sweat the detail here, we want the very best for our students. No one is going about this trying to, I guess, play the system and not be open for the requisite number of half days,” he said.
Hutt Valley High School principal, Denise Johnson, said the school shortened its usual one-and-a-half-day staggered start for new students to just one day because of the ministry’s ruling.
Hutt Valley High School principal, Denise Johnson. Supplied / Hutt Valley High School
She said the school would not count the day as an official school day and had added an extra day to the end of its year.
But she was not happy about it.
“The teachers that worked that day, which was the majority of the school, were fronting for kids – I would be pretty hard pushed to suggest to them they hadn’t worked their butts off all day. It’s a bit of an anomaly where they suggest it isn’t a day where you’re doing business as usual. You clearly are,” she said.
Johnson said her school was in the midst of a major building project and it would not cope if the ministry’s ruling open for instruction interpretation was applied to the end-of-year exam period.
“I don’t know how we’d do some of those big say Year 12 English exams. We can’t do them if everyone was on-site, we can’t fit. I don’t know where we’d go. We have a hall that only fits probably 350. It’s a physical impossibility,” she said.
Auckland Grammar headmaster Tim O’Connor said the school’s 2800 boys started on the same day, but it took a couple of days before classes started in earnest.
He said students needed to finalise their options and some would be relying on NCEA results to confirm enrolment in limited-entry classes.
O’Connor said the ministry needed to clarify its rules because strictly speaking those days might count as “open for instruction” under the ministry’s interpretation.
“We think it’s pretty reasonable to get on to a full timetable with 2800 students within two days, then full teaching. But is that open for instruction? I guess we need some clarity on what is and what isn’t,” he said.
Auckland Grammar headmaster Tim O’Connor. RNZ Insight/John Gerritsen
Principals said they had been told the Education Review Office would monitor compliance with the rules.
O’Connor said the ministry should actively monitor compliance too.
“What about them actually entering a school and having those conversations and seeing how a school is operating? Those things will actually be meaningful to a school and tell principals across the country including me that this is important and that you’re accountable for student learning,” he said.
The ministry said from this year schools were expected to record the days they were not open for instruction and the reason.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
