Minister should stop playing games - principals

Minister should stop playing games - principals

Secondary schools may well have been confused and their plans for handling rostering students home disrupted by unnecessary political game playing, New Zealand Secondary Principals’ Council chair Julia Davidson says.

Education Minister Anne Tolley’s suggestion that parents should send their sons and daughters to school when principals had made their own arrangements with their own communities was problematic, she said.

“Schools are legally responsible for their own students and have given suitable advice and made suitable arrangements for the rostering action - the minister’s intervention is extremely unhelpful to schools coping with the current industrial situation.”

Davidson also expressed her frustration with the minister appearing to put the problem of large classes back on to individual schools.

“Principals are faced with the unenviable task of trying to run the new curriculum and staff all their courses with quite inadequate staffing. Teachers are coping with workloads that keep on increasing. The only place staffing improvements can come from is the government, and to suggest otherwise is something of an abdication of responsibility.

“The minister has said before that schools cannot solve all of the communities’ problems on their own and this is one of those times that government could step up and help schools by improving teacher student ratios,” she said.

ENDS

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