Conference

2008 Safe Internet Use

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Highlights of previous SSBA conferences :-

2007 Developing a Parent Council and Encouraging Parental Involvement

2006 The Way Forward for Parental Involvement

2005 Parents in Partnership

2003 Partnerships and responsibilities

2002 SSBA is fit for the future

2001 Roadshow

2000 International
and published book
available here online

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Workshops
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New Zealand

Extensive Reform of Education Administration

New Zealand's compulsory education system underwent extensive reform in 1989.

Prior to this time a taskforce to review education administration found that the administration of the school system was over centralised, over complex, and in need of extensive reform.

It recommended that any new administration for education should be based on choice, the needs of parents and the community, cultural sensitivity, equity and good management practices.

1989

In 1989, New Zealand saw a major change in control away from central government and intermediate layers of education authorities and departmental regions.

A new devolved structure based around a democratically elected board of trustees for each school was introduced - the self managing school was born.

The entire intermediate layer was disestablished and the Department of Education's role was shifted from a very large 'hands on' approach more to one of policy development and implementation.

Boards of Trustees

Each of the 2,665 schools within the compulsory education sector has a board of trustees:

• elected each three years

• with three to seven parent representatives, the principal, staff representative, and for secondary schools the option of a student representative

• with overall responsibility for the running of the school and direct accountability back to the community for educational outcomes

• responsible for development of the school charter 'mission statement', and the local needs and priorities

• responsible to ensure the effective delivery of the curriculum

• responsible for developing board policies which shape the direction within which the principal, as day to day manager, will run the school

• accountable for meeting certain legal obligations including responsibility for property, personnel, proper management for school finances, reporting to the Ministry of Education and school community, etc

• has full employer powers, including hiring and firing staff, and managing the performance of the principal

• exercises delegation of powers to the principal

Each board has the ability to coopt up to four people for the purposes of:

• remedying gender and balance

• bringing in particular expertise

• reflecting the character of the school and its community

Cooption may occur for either a specific time or purpose.

Each board of trustees has a contractual arrangement with the government through their charter. As part of this contractual relationship, boards are required to ensure that national education goals are met.

This is achieved through National Education Guidelines [NAGs]. The guidelines are specifically for the board and list requirements that will enable them to follow sound governance and management practices to ensure that national education goals are met.

NAG 1 - Deals with curriculum

NAG 2 - Deals with documents and self review

NAG 3 - Deals with personnel

NAG 4 - Deals with finance and property

NAG 5 - Deals with health and safety

NAG 6 - Deals with legislative requirements

Strategic Planning/Self Review

As part of its planning to achieve the requirements of the NAGS, boards of trustees are increasingly placing a reliance on strategic planning the three to five year term, with annual planning and with direct budget linkages.

Inherent with strategic planning is a structured cyclic self review process.

Policy Development

A board may develop policies on:

• core curriculum, in the seven essential areas of language and languages, mathematics, science, technology, social sciences, the arts, and health and physical well being

• local curriculum

• student monitoring and assessment

• equity

• Treaty of Waitangi

• personnel matters

• finance

• partnership

• property

• pupil attendance

• complaints

• performance management

........to name just a few.

Once a policy is in place, it is the role of the principal to ensure that suitable procedures and programmes are implemented to achieve the policy.

The Board's Employer Role

The board has all the rights, duties, and powers, or an ordinary employer. The board is required to be a 'good employer' an exercise its employer role for the requirements current employment legislation, and relevant employment contracts.

The board has the power to hire, reward, discipline and dismiss employees subject to relevant contracts of the employer and the board.

Funding and Finance

Each board of trustees receives an operational grant directly from the Ministry of Education, from which they are expected to run their school.

The board is required to allocate funds in the budgetary process to reflect the school's priorities as stated in the school charter.

Boards have full responsibility for the financial affairs of the school that fall into three broad categories:

• income

• expenditure

• reporting

The operations grant covers the day to day running needs of the school, payment of non teaching staff, minor maintenance, etc but does not currently include capital works or the salaries of teachers employed within the staffing orders established by the government.

Teaching staff above entitlement can be employed and funded from the schools funds.

At the time of preparation of these notes, some 840 schools have opted to become fully funded, which includes teachers' salaries. The new Labour Government has however introduced legislation that would abolish the fully funded option. In doing so, the government is intending to increase the operations grants of all schools, and to attempt to introduce maximum fle)dbility to ensure that boards are not unduly constrained in the freedom to run their schools. The abolition of bulk funding is a contentious issue and the jury is out on whether centralised, but increased, funding and additional flexibility will provide boards with a suitable replacement to the fully funded option.

Tasks

Tasks the board generally undertake in respect of finance include.

• financial overview

• financial planning/budgeting

• financial control/monthly reports, internal controls etc

• annual accounts

• investments

• borrowing

Property

The board is required to develop policies, and plan for the management of all property under its control so that a good learning environment is available for students.

Tasks include:

• developing and maintaining an asset register

• cleaning and maintenance

• long term planning including capital works and [major maintenance needs]

The Ministry of Education acts as owner of the property on behalf of the Crown. The board of trustees is occupier and administrator of the property for school use.

Board Meetings

The board determines the time, date, and location of meetings, and how meetings will be structured. Most boards adopt a regular schedule of monthly meetings, usually 10 per year.

Each board is responsible for deciding how it will make decisions, and boards will have their own rules of order.

There has been steady movement to boards of trustees arranging their agendas along National Administration Guideline order, with the principal preparing a report focusing on each of the six NAG areas.

Meeting Fees

Boards are funded through their operations grant to enable the payment of meeting fees for attendance at board meetings. Trustees are generally paid at the rate of $55.00 per meeting, with the chair receiving $70.00 per meeting.

Boards have the right to decide how much trustees are paid. There is no mandatory differentiation between payments to trustees and principals.

The Role of the Principal

The principal is a trustee and the chief executive officer of the school. She/he has the overall responsibility of the day to day management of the school and the policies and delegations established and approved by the board. The functions of the principal include.

• the management of the school

• the professional leadership of the school

• the educational leadership of the school

• performance appraisal of staff, including the meeting of professional standards

• staff professional development

The management of the principal is subject to annual appraisal conducted by the board.

Ray Newport
General Manager
New Zealand School Trustees Association
New Zealand

By New Zealand School Trustee Association General Manager Ray Newport

New Zealand has just celebrated a momentous anniversary. It is ten years since we first experienced a revolution in the way we run our schools.

For a decade now, New Zealand parents and caregivers have been making decisions for their children, their schools. And the amazing thing is, that despite all the gloom merchants back then, no-one, but no-one wants to go back to the old way of doing things.

But having 2,700 boards running 2,700 schools instead of a nice neat centralised system sounds complicated – it even sounds risky – but it works. And it is this concept of parent power in schools that I am discussing with other delegates at the Parents in Education around the world conference in Glasgow this month.

So what is this concept of self-governed schools?

The important word in this is "self" – they are called self-managing schools because that is exactly what is happening. Those living in the local community govern their own school. They decide on the policy that dictates the direction of the school, they are responsible for hiring and firing staff, they are accountable for educational outcomes to their community – in short they govern the school.

In our system, funding comes direct from the government to schools in the form of an operational grant. Schools, of course, need to follow agreed curriculum and legal provisions but they are otherwise largely free to make their own decisions on what they want for their schools. And that is where the strength is.

The board of trustees sets the budget for the school in line with a strategic direction established with the day to day manager, the principal.

The people who serve on boards come from all walks of life – they are plumbers, builders, judges, office workers, shop assistants and journalists. They are elected by the parents of their school and contribute their time, energy and expertise. In return, many have learned new skills associated with the running of their school and as well have a very real understanding of education issues.

Take a minute to think about it – who knows the needs of their own school better than those who actually live in that school community. Self-managed schools gives schools the flexibility to make decisions which best suit their own students. It accepts that what may work for one school might not be appropriate for another.

Which is why we have neighbouring schools that operate quite differently – the school with a number of kids from lower socio-economic circumstances may choose to run homework centres while its neighbour is looking at specialising in computer-based learning.

Boards are no longer hamstrung by bureaucrats who may never have actually set foot in the schools affected by the rules they are laying down. In the old days, something as simple as ordering a new tap for the school toilets needed to get approval – there are endless examples of this bureaucratic madness.

The bottomline was that school communities 10 years ago had no real decision-making powers – their role was limited to fundraising or doing maintenance work. Parents were largely shut out of the running of their own schools.

There were many who shook their heads and said it just would not be possible to encourage the vast number of parents needed to stand as trustees to come forward. But they were wrong.

Three years later, they were shaking their heads again. They were wrong. And so it has gone on. Next year will be our fifth election – we have already had an estimated 100,000 people serving on boards from our small population base of 3 million people.

And my organisation has helped that. The New Zealand School Trustees Association was set up as self-managed schools came into being to help support boards. We provide training, industrial and human relations advice as well as negotiate with the government over policy and funding.

There are some things we would like to change – most boards would like more funding (isn’t that always the case?) and many would like even more autonomy that they have now. But it is very clear that the people who have the best interests of their children at heart are parents, and they are the ones who should be making the decisions that count.

The parent community has been empowered through their schools being directly accountable to them for educational outcomes. And parents are quick to voice concerns if they believe that their school is not delivering, as well they might.

No longer is it possible to do the "inter-school shuffle" with problem teachers so characteristic of large school authorities and bureaucratic departments. The principal and board must deal with the issue.

We have schools that are striving to make decisions that are best for their community and their kids. Innovation thrives. For example we now have schools that specialise in outdoor education, in rugby, in the arts, in farming.

Even the body that audits education in New Zealand says the system is working. Only one quarter of one percent of all school boards have been replaced by short periods by a ministerial appointed commission because of poor performance. As they say, that is an enviable record.

While we know that it is inevitable that the system will be "tweaked" to ensure all schools thrive, the past decade has showed that self-management is robust. We have dynamic principals, dynamic boards and a dynamic environment for learning. And that can’t be bad.

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