Adquisición y procesamiento de datos

October 6, 2008

From MoE to Principals & Board Chairs

Letter from the Ministry: CIEP facilitation contract given to Thompson White Consortium, (Richard Thompson and Tim White) and appointment of Roger Marshall to provide guidance on MoE policy.

October 28, 2008 From MoE to Principals and Board Chairs Meeting at Pahiatua School staffroom

The initial schools meeting with the facilitator. Richard Thompson presents document from the Ministry entitled ‘Key Messages re participation in the Education Bush District process.’ Nowhere do the words closure or merger appear. It says ‘The outcome may include changes that impact on school rolls, bus routes, enrolment schemes, governance structures, professional development opportunities and provision for immersion/bilingual learning.

November 17 2008

The working group had its first meeting on November 17. December 1,

2008

From Richard Thompson

E mail to board chairs named the volunteer members of the Working Group which met a further two times before the end of the year. February 16, 2009 Principals, Board Chairs, BOTs, parents and Richard Thompson

Bush District community consultation meeting 7–9pm, Bush Sports Park lounge, Pahiatua. Each school gave a three minute presentation on current issues followed by an open forum with the Working Group. Discussion begins about what an education vision might look like which could lead to a strategic plan for the district. Agenda and data questionnaire distributed. February 19, 2009 Richard Thompson to principals and boards of trustees

A document Bush District Schools – Current Issues (February 2009) summarising the issues identified by various schools:

* sustainability of rolls

* sustainability of boards of trustees * property hassles

* economy of scale and operations grant issues * attracting and retaining staff

* relief teachers and release teachers hard to get

* the school is the centre of community: concern about impact on community if school closed expressed by Ballance, Kumeroa Hopelands and Mangatainoka.

March 12, 2009 Boards of trustees, the public and Roger Marshall, Schools Development Officer

Public information meeting at Pahiatua Town Hall with Rob Hewitt as guest speaker. As an ex-Navy diver who survived being lost at sea for seventy-five hours in February 2006, he became a national symbol of survival in unexpected adversity.

Facilitated centre meetings in Eketahuna, Pahiatua and Woodville. Additional community meetings available on request.

Consultation meetings with individual sectors of the community (i e iwi, early childhood, farming, business etc.)

March 23, 2009

Meeting Roger Marshall and the Working Group. April 6, 2009 Meeting Roger Marshall and the Working Group. July 27 2009 Plan

published

Bush District Education Plan published. Meeting of Board chairs and principals in Sports Stadium, Pahiatua.

August 2009 Community consultation

Public meetings: August 5, Eketahuna, August 12, Pahiatua, August 13, Woodville.

August 6, 2009.

‘Close Up’ TV 1

Minister of Education Anne Tolley said that schools would not close if the parents did not want them to close.

August 7, 2009

Protesters Woodville protest march organised by Anglican vicar, Rev Rosie McMillan. August 12, 2009 Tararua District Council

Resolution to oppose the Working Group proposal and submission to the Working Group, MP John Hayes and Minister Anne Tolley. August 17,

2009.

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CIEP Diagram

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They wanted to know how and way the decisions were made. Several respondents said they were told that this was not possible because the Working Group did not keep a set of minutes. This caused anger and incredulity. One principal labelled it “unprofessional.”20

The announcements made by the working group came as a shock to some of the principals in particular. In an interview with the Dominion Post on July 30, 2009 Jo Gibbs, Principal of Kumeroa-Hopelands School said:

This is a total bombshell. We are a school whose roll is actually growing (67 students compared to 40 two years ago.) We will…fight this tooth and nail.21

The government has been accused of “duping communities” into reassessing the education needs of their children, only to get a foot in the door to shut schools.22

Makuri School Principal, Keryl Lee-Kelleher, also objected. “They said it was not about school closures. We have been lied to.”23

Although all three principals had been recently appointed and might have missed out on some of the communications in the early stages, their beliefs were symptomatic of another raw nerve, the communication breakdown with the community that was an on-going issue throughout the CIEP. After one Kumeroa Hopelands parent contacted a member of the Working Group in August 2009 to clarify matters for herself, she e mailed her concerns to Ray Cannon, the board chair. As far as she could determine the Ministry of Education had not informed the Working Group who had instigated the review either. She found that they had not undertaken any formal research or looked into any data collected by the Ministry of Education with regard to the community impact of the closure of rural schools. On the basis of these two findings she came to believe that the working group were being used as pawns in some sort of political agenda being outworked by the Ministry of Education and that therefore the CIEP working group should stop meeting.

The answer to the “Who instigated it?” question was difficult to find. Despite frequent requests the Ministry of Education refused to disclose who had instigated the CIEP as the Dominion Post discovered when it tried to find out on July 31:24

Education officials would not say last night who had initially suggested the review. A spokesman for Education Minister Anne Tolley said, “As far as she is concerned and from the advice she has been given, this is a community initiated review.”25

Education Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Allen said that in the previous three years principals and boards of Tararua schools had met the ministry to discuss the process, “with a clear view to developing a shared vision of what education in the area could be for children.”26

The Ministry and the Minister resisted deeper probing. The answer to the ‘Who instigated it?’ question was finally revealed at the end of the process by Tanya Katterns in the Dominion Poston August 19:27

The review was instigated by Michael Pound, a former chairman of Pahiatua School’s board of trustees, who told the ministry of concerns over leadership at the district’s schools and the quality of education children were receiving. “I was not alone in seeking the ministry’s advice in 2007 and when they suggested a community initiated review, I and the other few schools involved said ‘Yes, that is us.’ We knew the review could lead to closures but it should never have been about patch protection but about improving what was a very bad state of education in some areas and making a real difference. Change still needs to happen.”28

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Tanya Katterns report, unacknowledged, was also published the same day on page 5 in Manawatu Standard.29 It appears that the genesis of the Bush District CIEP arose from discussions between several principals, the Board of Trustees of Pahiatua School and the Ministry of Education about educational concerns in the district, such as teacher retention, staffing issues, the high turnover of principals in small schools, falling rolls, ‘white flight’ and the difficulties in forming and retaining boards of trustees in rural areas, which in turn led to governance issues. When I contacted Michael Pound in order to understand his viewpoint in greater depth he declined the opportunity to discuss the matter.

In July 2009 the Bush Education Plan Working Group produced the Bush District Education Plan: Proposals for Consultation,30 a draft report in the form of a strategic plan which it had started to develop in November 2008. In the introduction the way in which members of the public could access the report, be consulted and comment was made clear. To reassure communities about consultation it was emphasised right at the beginning that the proposals might change as a result of the consultation, that what eventually happened would depend on the final report of the Working Group and the ultimate decision of the Minister of Education.

Given that the combined school rolls had fallen by more than thirty-one per cent over a ten year period and, since “the status quo was not an option,” what would a network of sustainable schools serviced by effective and efficient transport systems look like that would produce a good outcome for students in the future? The Summary of the Interim Report of the Bush Education Plan Working Group31 provided Ministry of Education figures to show that in the ten year period between 1999 and 2009 the overall roll drops in the Tararua District went from 1695 pupils to 1,160, a roll drop of 535 pupils or over thirty-one per cent. The Ministry calculated by 2021 the district would have twelve per cent fewer, or 107 less, 0–14 year olds. Faced with this demographic information the Working Group concluded that the status quo of ten primary schools was not an option for the future. It proposed that the best solution was to have three strong state full primary schools located in Eketahuna, Pahiatua and Woodville. As the continuing schools, it was calculated that they would receive approximately $1.88 million of EDI funding. Richard Thompson and Tim White wrote the report. The working group agreed with it.

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