Boards likely to keep powers
AUCKLAND: School boards look set to keep their powers when the Government finally unveils its decisions tomorrow on the way schools are run.
Education Minister Chris Hipkins is believed to have abandoned proposals by a task force last year to transfer all the legal powers of school boards to about 20 new regional ‘‘hubs’’.
The backdown will be a victory for 44 schools, including Auckland Grammar and Mt Albert Grammar, which formed a Community Schools Alliance to fight the proposals.
However, Waikato University education professor Martin Thrupp said the Government might still seek to achieve the goal of the proposed reforms — reducing competition between schools and achieving more equal outcomes for pupils — by pursuing the ‘‘substance’’ of the proposals without the contentious ‘‘form’’ of the hubs.
‘‘I’d be surprised to see anything very confrontational.
‘‘I think they can achieve a lot of changes through changes in policy and legislative changes and around resources, for example there has been a lot of discussion around special education and disabilities,’’ he said.
‘‘It is possible, without major changes to the framework, to address a lot of those problems.’’
The task force, led by former principal Bali Haque, concluded a year ago that educational inequalities had got worse under the system of selfgoverning schools known as ‘‘Tomorrow’s Schools’’ introduced in 1989.
It recommended creating regional hubs to manage school zoning and funding, employ teachers and principals and take over the process when any pupil is suspended, removing a principal’s power to expel pupils.
A controversial proposal was to appoint principals on fiveyear contracts in each school so they could ‘‘contribute where their expertise is most needed across the community of schools’’.
Even task force members quickly backed off this proposal, saying the hubs would not move principals on after five years unless the principals themselves wanted to move.
Mr Haque’s task force and National Party education spokeswoman Nikki Kaye both held consultation meetings around the country on the proposals and Mr Haque submitted a revised report on June 28, which is expected to be released along with government decisions about it tomorrow.
Ms Kaye has been briefed throughout the process because Mr Hipkins aims to achieve bipartisan support for any major changes, and Ms Kaye gave the task force a summary of what she heard at her meetings.
‘‘While we have not seen the final report, we are hopeful that the task force has listened to a number of the concerns that we raised,’’ she said.
NZ Educational Institute president Lynda Stuart predicted the Government would focus on ‘‘support for professional development and advice and guidance’’.
‘‘What are the hubs?’’ she asked.
‘‘We are getting hooked up in the name of something. Actually, we need more support, we need more resourcing, so the delivery of that, in whatever name we call it, is going to be the important thing,’’ she said.
School Trustees Association president Lorraine Kerr said schools needed more support with professional development and property, but the hubs would have been ‘‘unwieldy’’.
Secondary Principals Council chairman James Morris said the reforms needed to encourage more collaboration between schools at different levels for different things, rather than in fixed hubs of about 100 schools each. — The New Zealand Herald