The Kāhui Ako scheme pays schools to work in groups, and redirect the money to support children with disabilities. File photo. Photo: 123rf.com
Axing a $118 million scheme that provides extra pay for thousands of teachers is an "ill-considered decision", says one principal, but another says most school leaders in Auckland will back the move.
An Education Ministry report leaked to RNZ showed the government was planning in February to cut Kāhui Ako, which paid schools to work in groups, and redirect the money to support children with disabilities.
It said there were 220 Kāhui Ako - groups of schools, plus early childhood centres, where some teachers were paid $8000 or $16,000 extra to share good practice, with one principal in each group receiving $25,000-30,0000 to co-ordinate the work.
The report said Education Minister Erica Stanford needed Cabinet approval this month if she wanted to cut the scheme in next month's Budget.
But she was not giving anything away today.
"I'm not going to comment about things that have not been decided through the Budget process yet and will be announced in due course and I am obviously disappointed that there has been a leak of documents, but we're not commenting any further on anything because they're all Budget dependent," Stanford said.
Headmaster of Auckland's Sacred Heart College, Patrick Walsh, said he had been involved with Kāhui Ako since the scheme started in 2014, and he was alarmed the government wanted to get rid of it.
"It's an ill-considered decision and a backward step for education in New Zealand, particularly for children. The underlying principle of Kāhui Ako has undeniable benefit for learners, that is early childhood primary and secondary schools collaborating together to share best practice, including in areas of interest to the minister," he said.
"When you look at high-achieving countries such as Singapore and Sweden, they have very similar models. What we don't want to go back to is the Tomorrow's Schools regime in its purest form, which is schools, isolated islands, competing against each other, not sharing best practice and winner and loser schools."
Walsh said the Education Ministry had not adequately supported Kāhui Ako or evaluated their performance.
"They have been let run themselves and there is variable practice in Kāhui Ako. Some have outstanding success and some have struggled a bit. But again that's where we need leadership from the Ministry of Education," he said.
Walsh said the scheme would not succeed without the extra pay it provided for teachers.
"It would be a disservice to them in terms of not rewarding them for the huge amount of time and effort they put into planning, reporting and visiting schools," he said.
Auckland Primary Principals Association head Kyle Brewerton said it had been asking members about the scheme for years, most recently at a conference last year.
"We asked the room who would be in favour of disbanding Kāhui, and it was a unanimous show of hands, bar a handful," he said.
"Understandably, there are some Kāhui who feel that the benefits have been very valuable and that it has achieved some of those aims that it was originally set out to achieve, but the vast majority see that that money would... be far better spent elsewhere," he said.
Brewerton said the main complaint was the funding was too inflexible, and some Kāhui Ako teachers are as well paid as deputy principals but with less responsibility.
He said moving the money into learner support would be very welcome.
Darfield High School principal Andy England studied Kāhui Ako during a sabbatical in 2018.
He said they had been variable, but he would not like to see them go without a full evaluation.
"They're a big investment and there should have been really serious scrutiny into their effect at a national level. Most Kāhui Ako have done their own evaluation, of course and so there would be some evidence locally. But in my experience it's quite variable," he said.
England said the scheme could be modified to remove the funding for the lead principal, but the extra pay for teachers should stay.
"The across-schools lead role is really effective. They are where teachers get to go into other schools and they learn what's happening in those schools and they're able to spread good practice, teacher to teacher," he said.
"The within-the-school role has become very important in schools. We're not funded in other ways for our own professional learning within a school and so this has offered an opportunity for experienced, motivated teachers to share their findings and their passion with other teachers. So those roles are really critical and and I'd hate to see them just dismissed without some thought about what can go into replace them."
England said one reason the scheme had struggled was that the groups of schools were in an administrative no-mans land, without a shared board of trustees and with voluntary membership.
Secondary Principals Association president Vaughan Couillault said its members main complaint about Kāhui Ako was that its funding was too inflexible.
He said one of the arguments for creating the scheme was to provide new career pathways for the best teachers and principals.
Couillault said axing the scheme would not be straight forward because the Kāhui Ako roles and extra pay were included in teachers' collective agreements.
Stephanie Mills from the Educational Institute said it was too early to say whether its members would oppose such a change to their agreements.
"Principals and teachers are going into term 2 looking at their claims to take into the renegotiation of the collective agreement. So there'll be a whole lot of issues that they'll be needing to talk about and think about before they decide on what, if any, action they take on this or any other issue," she said.
Mills said change worked better if teachers were involved from the start.
"We'd be interested to know, first of all, what consultation with unions and and their members is going to happen. We want to see a full evidence-based review of why the decision's being taken because clearly there's mixed views about the impact of Kāhui Ako and not all schools, and certainly not all ECE centres are in them," she said.
Mills said learning support needed a lot more government spending not cuts taken from other parts of the system.
"We are asking the government to take a deep breath and actually look at the size and scale of the problem and invest accordingly, not just to move deck chairs on the Titanic," she said.
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