Concerned Principals Group (Auckland) letter to sector leadership

Dear Colleagues

Please find reprinted below a letter that was sent to NZPF, NZEI and APPA on Thursday, 6 March. The decision to send the attached letter was made following a meeting of the principals listed below, who met last week to discuss their concerns around the recent government "Investing in Educational Success" (IES) policy involving the new positions of Change principal, Executive principal, Expert teacher and Lead Teacher.

In summary we have very serious concerns about:

The IES policy itself
The process around the development of the IES policy
The simultaneous confidential work of the Regulatory Taskforce on School Performance
The workability of the IES policy
Long term effects of the IES policy
Lack of time and opportunity for the profession at large to debate and discuss the implications of this policy.

The purpose of the letter (reprinted below) was to convey to our lead organisations some of our deep concerns. We are circulating the letter to all our colleagues to both communicate those concerns in brief to you and urge you to communicate with your colleagues and directly with your lead organisations if you share these concerns or require more information. We believe this matter is urgent and important and requires much broader discussion by the sector - principals, teachers and Boards of Trustees.

If you wish to respond to us, please email us.

Regards

Owen Alexander, Takapuna Normal School

John Faire, Mt Eden Normal School

Marilyn Gwilliam, Papatoetoe Central School

Liz Horgan, St Josephs School, Otahuhu

Frances Nelson, Fairburn School

Laurie Thew, Manurewa Central School

Malcolm Milner, Balmoral School

This letter was sent to the Presidents and Executives of NZPF, NZEI and APPA

6 March 2014

Dear NZEI, NZPF and APPA

As you will see from the signatures below we are a group of experienced Auckland principals. We met recently along with two education academics to discuss the government’s policy “Investing in Educational Success” and the possible regulatory changes that will very likely accompany this policy.
Our group discussed a range of critical issues and concerns embedded in this policy and our immediate action is to convey our concerns directly to you as our representative organisations.

1. The policy gives no credibility to the assurances from the current Secretary that
there would be a more collaborative way of working with the sector. The timing and way in which this policy was announced was in direct contrast to those assurances.

2. It is quite obvious that there are very strong political drivers at work here and that very significant changes to our public education are being relentlessly progressed.

3. We believe the invitation to the sector to be part of the process to ‘shape the detail’ of the policy is professionally insulting. The profession was completely excluded from any input into the key elements of the policy but then belatedly we are offered the ‘privilege’ of having a say in the ‘details’ and even that is subjected to a timeline that is farcical.

Clause 70 of the Cabinet paper states that there will be a need to “retain flexibility to enable a process of effective, respectful and serious engagement with the sector” but then in the next clause goes onto say that

“…the working group will complete its work by 30 April 2014”…..with final advice as soon as practicable after 30 April 2014. The Minister of Education will report back to Cabinet on the final design and costs as soon thereafter as practicable.”

How could anyone reconcile “effective, respectful and serious engagement with the sector” with the above timeframe and the processes which preceded it?

4. We do not believe this policy is the best use of $360m of taxpayer money and it has no solid evidence or basis of research to convince us that it will help address the disparity of educational outcomes. The causes of disparity are far more complex.

5. The policy is full of unanswered questions and significant issues that remain unclear and unresolved. It may have superficial public appeal but it does not stand up to closer scrutiny. Many colleagues have already expressed serious concerns about the workability of the policy especially the positions of Executive principal and expert teacher.

6. Work related to this policy appears to be being progressed in a number of groups. The vast majority of principals have no knowledge of these groups, either as to their purpose or representation. There is an alarming lack of transparency and openness. The claim that the sector is being ‘involved’ is misleading and disingenuous.

7. The changes that this policy brings to the conditions of service for principals should rightly have been addressed within the normal Collective Agreement bargaining and negotiating processes. This policy completely undermines and cuts across those processes.

8. The Minister’s stated intention to use National Standards as a ‘measure’ of ‘success’ should in itself give serious cause for concern.

While we appreciate the view that there may be risks involved in walking away from the ‘Clayton’s’ consultation process , we equally believe that the risks of being involved in such a process are even greater.

We believe our lead organisations should take a strong and combined stance as they did with the PaCT. In our opinion this policy is more concerning and has the potential to be far more far reaching than the PaCT.

This policy is one of two things
Either it is:
1. An incredibly naïve and badly conceived ‘bright idea’ borrowed from elsewhere and transported into the NZ context to supposedly sort out the issue of disparity of educational outcomes OR

2. It is a carefully constructed and well packaged policy which is part of a much bigger political agenda to gain more control over the sector.

Just suppose it was the former. The fact that the policy was formulated with no input from the sector, and then followed by a very belated invitation to ‘shape the detail’ with time constraints that allow no time to genuinely involve the sector, would be sufficient reason alone to walk away from the process.

If it is number 2, (and an analysis of what has happened within the sector over the last few years strongly indicates that this is the case), then we need to take a much stronger position and ‘stand up’ as a profession instead of being continually forced into ‘accommodating’ polices that we know are not in the best interests of our NZ public education system.

Thank you for your consideration of these matters. We believe that urgent action is required by your organisation and we look forward to your strong response. We are all meeting again shortly to review the situation as these developments are at a critical stage and we are deeply concerned.