West Coast tough on bad pupils

A zero tolerance attitude on violence at a West Coast high school has contributed to the region standing more students down than any other part of the country.

The Ministry’s of Education’s latest report into school discipline has highlighted an increase in stand-downs at New Zealand’s state and state-integrated schools.

The West Coast had the highest rate of stand downs, with 33.9 per 1000 students. The overall rate for the country rose from 19.3 per 1000 in 2015 to 20.6 in 2016. A standdown removes a student from school, but can total no more than five days in a term or 10 days in a year. Students return automatically after a stand-down.

Of the three West Coast territories, the Grey district had the highest rate at 41.4 per 1000 students.

Greymouth High School principal Andy England said the school had a ‘‘very strong line around violence’’.

‘‘We’re clear that we don’t tolerate drugs around school either, so most of the stand-downs have been for short periods of time resulting from loss-of-temper type, aggressive responses between students,’’ he said.

‘‘Those kind of organised fights have not been the case here. We have seen an increase in the last couple of years of students, lashing out if you like, and in those cases we’ve still used the stand-down to give us a couple days breather before we follow with restorative conference between the students and get them back on track.’’

England said stand-downs were regularly discussed with the school’s board of trustees, which decided it would not be driven by statistics.

‘‘We’ve all got a responsibility towards the behaviour here,’’ he said.

‘‘Overall, we’re happy with the behaviours that we see. The current shift that we’ve seen, [is] not something we have wanted to see, but the response from the staff and the students themselves has generally been positive and it’s something that we’ll be working through as a school.’’

Buller had the lowest standdown rate of the three West Coast districts at 23.2 per 1000 students.

Buller High School principal Andrew Basher said it would be great if the rate was lower, but the school’s small roll (330 students) meant one incident could have a great affect on the statistics.

Westland‘s stand-down rate was 32.4 per 1000.

South Westland Area School in Harihari had one stand-down in 2016 out of 109 students, principal Ross Brockbank said.

He said he was wary of extrapolating statistics from small schools, but his school had high standards for student behaviour.

The students had high standards, he said, with a recent wellbeing survey finding 95 per cent ‘‘don’t accept bullying’’.

He noted both Westland High School in Hokitika and South Westland were dealing with the fallout of fires on campus.

‘‘. . . There has been a degree of extra tension, never experienced in my previous 10 years as a principal,’’ he said.