Pack your togs, principals told
Education training provider offers heads ‘leadership and wellbeing training’ at resort in Fiji
An education training provider is inviting school principals to bring “your togs, snorkel and passport” for a five-day leadership school at a five-star Pacific Island resort “against the backdrop of a Fijian sunset”.
The course is one of many to hit the market since a $6000 annual salary boost for principals specifically to pay for professional development and wellbeing.
The money was a contract win for the 2500 principals nationwide running schools that are generally multimillion-dollar enterprises.
But it has sparked debate in the education sector over whether some of the courses are a valuable leadership exercise or a convenient opportunity for a short, taxpayer-funded overseas holiday.
One professional development course on offer is a $5700 conference in Fiji dubbed the School of Transformation and offered by Growth Culture, a company with an 11-year history of offering education training.
Its website says: “If you like the sound of being coached under swaying palm trees, brainstorming with colleagues against the backdrop of a Fijian sunset, and leaving with a renewed sense of mental clarity, wellness, and purpose . . . get your togs, snorkel and passport packed [for] . . . this transformative experience.”
The $5700 fee does not include flights to Fiji for the June conference — during term time — but does include four nights’ accommodation at the Hilton Fiji Beach Resort and Spa.
Over the five days, principals would spend seven hours over two days in sessions with speakers and six hours of another day doing volunteer work at two local high schools.
The pitch to principals says: “In most cases, funding can be accessed via the Principal’s Wellbeing and PGC [professional growth cycle] Fund.”
Growth Culture told the Weekend Herald the course, which was comparable in cost to a trip to Queenstown,
was developed before the fund but matched its aims very well.
The Herald has also confirmed that a contingent of 150 teachers is heading for the uLead conference at the Canadian resort town of Banff during the April school holidays.
The $6000 fund was secured for 2023 and
2024 in a contract deal between principals and the Ministry of Education. It comes with guidelines over the spending and principals are obliged to report their spending to their board of trustees before the end of each year.
It came at a time when research was showing burnout among principals and a rate of attrition that threatened institutional knowledge.
‘I’m not going to Fiji’
Principals’ Federation president Leanne Otene said there had been a sudden growth in private-sector offerings after the $6000 fund was negotiated for principals’ contracts.
Otene, a principal of Manaia View School in Whanga¯rei for 16 years, said it was an important win for principals as funding for professional development and wellbeing had previously come out of school funds and required board approval.
While there were guidelines around how the money should be spent, she said having it secured as part of an employment contract meant it was accessible to principals across the education community.
“That $6000 means a great deal to us and especially to those smaller and rural schools who don’t have that money in their budget. It’s an equity issue and this does put us all on the same playing field.”
Otene, and others spoken to, had noted the emergence of a string of courses targeted at principals that cost just shy of the $6000 which appeared targeted at the fund. “I don’t
know of any principals taking up that five days in Fiji. I won’t be going.
“We have a whole lot of private offerings . . . . It’s up to principals to determine whether what’s offered meets their needs.”
Secondary Principals Association president Vaughan Couillault, principal at Papatoetoe High School in Auckland, had noted the boom in private companies “trying to get my $6000 off me” with a string of offers ranging from “useful to humorous”.
When it came to professional development and wellbeing, Couillault said — and Otene agreed — that each principal would likely have different needs and could work out something that suited them.
Couillault said he was confident principals networking would create an understanding in the profession as to what private sector offerings worked best.
Educator and former principal Bali Haque led the 2018/19 Tomorrow’s Schools Independent Taskforce which, among other changes, pushed for a dedicated leadership centre to be developed and leadership advisers in education hubs to work closely with principals.
He said the recommendations had been largely agreed with but collapsed amid turf wars over who would implement the changes and “hardly any of it has happened”. In the case of leadership advisers, he said they were not centrally connected and there were too few.
“Here we have one of the most devolved education systems in the world. You end up with incredibly variable leadership across the country and limited support for leadership development.
“We place principals in these incredibly difficult positions and don’t support them enough.”
Haque said New Zealand was trapped in a “silver-bullet mentality” as if headline-grabbing changes such as banning cellphones or hiring truancy officers could address the fundamental structural issues of having “two-and-a-half thousand Crown entities making their own decisions”.
He said there was an “opportunity for the new Minister [of Education Erica Stanford] here” to improve support at a regional level and to establish a “centre of excellence” for principals to develop skills.
The growing private sector market had moved to fill the gap created by a lack of government action and there was no quality assurance or control, he said. A course might be pitched by a private provider but, he said, “how do you know it’s any good?”
Couillault said he didn’t agree with Haque’s drive for centralisation and was concerned doing so with leadership could create a fresh bureaucracy not responsive to individual principals’ needs. “What we learned from Covid is that the decisions that are the best ones were the ones made locally responding to local needs.”
Multimillion-dollar enterprises
Secondary Principals’ Council chairwoman Kate Gainsford, who heads Aotea College in Porirua, said: “Of course private providers will jump in. That’s been the history of New Zealand education.”
New Zealand had “world-class leadership by default” rather than a planned “system of career development”.
Schools were “multimillion-dollar enterprises” with “complex legal and asset management involved”.
“If you look at comparable enterprises, you would find the budget [for professional development] is more than $6000,” Gainsford said.
Offshore conferences had long been part of professional development for principals but the $6000 fund had allowed principals to target specific opportunities abroad and secure discounts.
Rangiora Borough School head Shane Buckner — also on the board of the principals’ federation — was among those going to Banff, Canada. “All these opportunities have always been there but they’re more overt now because of this pool of dollars.”
He said the group of principals had block-booked attendance at the conference, securing discounts and a string of learning activities targeted at those from New Zealand.
He estimated the cost to be no more than $3000 with the balance of the $6000 for personal coaching and supervision throughout the year.
Money well spent says trip organiser
Growth Culture managing director Marshall Diggs, one of the speakers on the Fiji trip, said the School of Transformation conference was a “judicious utilisation of the fund”.
The company was an accredited
Ministry of Education provider with a track record of training in the education sector, he said.
“The idea of the fund is to promote wellbeing and we see fresh air and sun as the perfect environment to share keynotes on wellbeing rather than auditoriums with artificial lighting and crowds.” Networking and relaxation time would be worked into each day, hence the togs suggestion.
Diggs said the smaller size of the gathering — compared with larger conferences such as uLead — brought a sense of whanaungatanga (kinship).
He said the School of Transformation was “attracting principals, deputy principals, and other school leaders from both Aotearoa and Australia”. Fiji as a venue reflected “our heart for both Ma¯ori and Pasifika partnerships in education” with travel working as a “circuit-breaker” to detach from usual environments.
“The intrinsic value of hosting people, removed from their familiar settings, provides a fresh perspective that might not be easily achievable in a locally based course.”
Diggs said it was scheduled during term-time because principals often took breaks during school holidays. “We do not encourage anyone to work during their holidays and believe it goes against . . . wellbeing.”
Ministry of Education operations and integration leader Sean Teddy said there was a range of funded support and learning opportunities for principals based on their needs. That included study awards, support for new principals and sabbaticals.
It was also in the second year of the Leadership Advisory Service, in which experienced principals were seconded to give peer support, with 16 such positions filled nationwide.
Teddy said work was under way to “expand professional learning and development support” to make it easier for principals to navigate.
Minister Stanford said professional development for teachers and principals was a “priority” for the Government. “We will be considering this. Timelines are yet to be determined.” No details were given.
The Opposition spokeswoman for education, former principal and until recently Minister of Education, Jan Tinetti, said professional development for teachers and principals was a priority for Labour.
“It’s an area, for me, that is critically important and an area we will develop over the next few years in Opposition.”