Ashburton College principal Ross Preece.Changes to the school system announced this week by education minister Chris Hipkins have been cautiously welcomed by Ashburton District school principals.

Change had to happen, Ashburton College principal Ross Preece said, and while the devil would always be in the detail, the reform of Tomorrow’s Schools was taking a few steps in the right direction.

A decision to have the Ministry of Education decide school zones was a positive move, Preece said.

“It gives a neutral referee and they have the big picture, what’s best for a region. From a school’s point of view, funding is dictated by roll so naturally you want your roll to increase.”

An area that still needed to be clarified was the degree to which the ministry would be taking over property management for schools.

While that would work with big ticket projects, Preece said it would be a disaster if it went back to the days of a school having to ask the ministry before it could buy a battery or fix a hand dryer in the toilet block.

Preece is raising some red flags over the setting of minimum eligibility standards for school principals, saying it was impossible to quantify what made a good principal. If that standard was set at a high level, there would be a number of very good principals who might not meet that standard, he said.

The requirement for a training programme for board members was one Preece welcomed.

“This is a must and it needs to happen before they set foot around the board table,” he said.

In theory the proposal to get high performing principals to relocate to poorly performing schools had merit, but the fishhooks in that were that the location was often not one they wanted and if the poorly performing school’s roll was low, their salary would drop.

Hampstead School principal Peter Melrose is taking a careful look at the details before throwing his support behind them.

In terms of the change in responsilbities for building management and maintenance and centralised capital works, that was one he’d be watching closely, Melrose said.

“For us, we’ve enjoyed being in charge of our property and the management of buiidng projects and our ongoing maintenance. It’s worked for us,” he said.

The example of Christchurch schools, post Canterbury earthquakes, who lost control of funds for property work and found they were at the beck and call of the Ministry of Education, did set off a few alarm bells, he said.

Most schools would be adopting a “wait and see” reaction to the changes, Melrose said.

The reform is designed to put more frontline support closer to schools to give every child the best chance to succeed. They include more frontline support for schools through a new education agency, more support for principals and school boards, a new independent disputes panels for parents and students, management of school property simplified and/or transferred to the ministry, enrolment zones to be managed locally but not by each school.

In announcing the changes, education minister Hipkins said they were not about more centralised decision-making or smothering schools that already performed well, rather it was about making pragmatic and workable improvements that would gain broad support.

By Sue Newman © The Ashburton Guardian - 14 November 2019