The Secondary Principals' Council (SPC) of PPTA Te Wehengarua has rejected offers from the Ministry of Education for settlement of the Secondary and Area School Principals' Collective Agreements.

The Secondary Principals’ Council is made up of elected representatives of PPTA member principals from secondary and area schools from every region around Aotearoa.

“We need to attract, and retain, the very best educational leaders into principalships. It is an incredibly important job that comes with a huge amount of responsibility –

for educational outcomes for ākonga, and for the wellbeing of staff and rangatahi,” said SPC chairperson Kate Gainsford.

“We need to support principals’ wellbeing and create manageable workloads for them as theylead schools during a time of ongoing teacher shortages and increasing numbers of students experiencing mental health challenges.

This can only be achieved by increasing specialist pastoral staff in our schools and having more management staff who can help navigate schools through this complex and changing environment.

“We need to ensure that remuneration for responsibilities for services that support our most vulnerable ākonga such assuch as teen parent units, activity centres and alternative education services is funded appropriately.

“The extremely disappointing offers from the Ministry make all of the messages that we received over the course of the COVID pandemic, about how important the work was that we were doing, seem disingenuous.

“Now is the opportunity for the government to invest in the leadership and in the education system that will grow our future workforce.”

SPC has recommended that the negotiating teams seek mediation to attempt to progress negotiations.

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