Items discussed at the September 2022 SPAC meeting

Senior Positions Advisory Committee meeting 3 September 2022

1- The dates for the AP/DP education course in the North Island were set for the 7th and 8th Sept but this has been cancelled/postponed due to Covid.  24 attendees were set for this one and there are at least 24 more waiting in the wings. There is approval for a third course – which we hope to run later this year.   

  • The Christchurch course had a big attendance and there were others who could not get in. Some feedback from those attendees: 
    • “Very well organised. The chance to network is awesome. Lots of really relevant discussion and the chance to hear what is happening on other schools. Enjoyed different PPTA perspectives.” 
    • “To start with just putting on PLD on for Senior leaders was brilliant. We don’t often get real PLD that helps us in our everyday lives. You addressed many of the issues that are real to senior leaders. Great strategies and good practice.” 

2 - The decision in the part-time case went against PPTA. The court found it was not a breach of the law based on gender discrimination. That means that it is likely that there will be a claim in 2022 again for prorated non-contact time for part-time teachers. We are still awaiting the outcome of the call-back case. 

3 - We had intended to hold media training for SPAC at this coming meeting and for Laurence and Ian to work with our media people on a PPTA News article on SPAC and senior leadership. Circumstances prevented both of those from happening. Our new media person starts on the 30th August and we should be able to organise both of those for the near future. 

4 - SPAC members did not signal any SLT papers for conference.  

5 - NCEA review and curriculum refresh update 

The most relevant information to consider for this meeting is contained in the NCEA Change Package Update Paper and Curriculum Refresh Update report as released for Annual Conference at this link https://www.ppta.org.nz/events/2021-annual-conference/  

NCEA Review  

The NCEA paper outlines what happened when NCEA was first introduced in the early 2000s, provides further detail of what has been happening in 2021, and examines some risks for the Association as we believe that there is not yet adequate support and resourcing for schools to ensure quality implementation.  

The paper also gives details of the TOD dates for 2022 – note there is some flexibility on offer.  

Curriculum Refresh  

The extent of the Curriculum Refresh seems to have caught many principals by surprise. This report outlines some of the background and detail of some of the work that has happened to date.  

A number of concerns as identified by PPTA Te Wehengarua around lack of cohesion and increase in workload are noted at the end of the report.  

What’s next?  

PPTA Te Wehengarua has heard in many meetings and fora with members that the workload associated with the NCEA Change Package and Review of Achievement Standards is already becoming too much. This paper and report hopefully raise the questions needing to be asked by members across the motu.  

It would be good to hear from SPAC members if these concerns are being felt in your regions too.  

Annual PPTA survey to members will include specific questions about these two areas. 

Discussion  

Key influence is in conference paper – most current concerns in there. 

The key concern is the pace of change and volume of change. 

Why did some maths teachers know about the external standards exemplars but others not and if only some maths teachers and maths associations are aware of it what should be done about it?  

Schools looking for direction about what externals will look like – when will that happen? 

All subject expert group (SEG) members signed confidentiality contracts.  

The next group to see the external exemplars across all subjects will be the pilot schools, to prepare for different modes of assessment/questions. The piloting programme is 2022 and there is no obvious plan yet to feed out these exemplars to wider sector. MoE personnel are constantly changing. 

Individual comments from SPAC members: 

  • The last NCEA review was a shambles. The inquiry into that produced some good recommendations, which are forgotten. This is going to be another train wreck. PPTA should kick back. We support the intent in maths, but this is a disaster. They are trying to get stretched teachers on board and pathetic resources have been provided.  
  • There is no timeline adjustment for covid disruption.  
  • Members should send emails to PPTA to provide evidence of the impacts. 
  • Maths teachers who did see external exemplars on their day found them useful because they saw they were more difficult than had been expected, very wordy and overly difficult. Hopefully there will be lot of feedback from teachers. 
  • TODs were a joke. The staff rolling out the material to others are stretched and finding it hard to get messages out effectively. There is not the preparation time to do this effectively with other things going on. The model is not working for small low decile schools, who will be left behind when it goes live. 
  • Days were successful but only because they invested 15-20 PD days equivalent into to making them work. The short timeline provision of resources for those days was stressful. They were left exhausted and with a lot of unanswered questions 
  • Mātauranga Māori aspect has to be effective. We don’t have the resources. Does the MoE expect ad hoc lessons? 
  • There is a small pool of people who can give that authentic context and advice and they will get hammered. Not fair on them. Next TOD if done in clusters could allow working together to share resources rather than school be school. 
  • It took many years to get te reo into the curriculum. While it is now in each document, if you look through it is not authentic or deliberate. We want to hear from the Māturanga Māori committee but have heard from no one.  
  • We don’t want to roll out tokenism. 
  • The roll out of the te ao history varies from school to school. One example given had an expert at a nearby school who was helping them through the CoL. Another had little expertise in their school as their history teacher had been seconded to work with other schools.  
  • They embrace the intent of all the changes but it is so much all at once – we are surfing a tsunami. 
  • We want the changes but need the time or it is just words on a document. 
  • Our teachers are feeling overwhelmed and don’t see how it connects with teacher wellbeing. The refreshment review looks exciting but there is a level of tokenism, from the Pasifika perspective, in a lot of the standards. What the MoE is trying to incorporate as Pasifika and Māori standards into social studies is seen as a joke. Teachers are overwhelmed around how it will be rolled out. They know a bit but don’t feel confident – for example,  what is the MoE looking for in terms of marking? What answers correspond to matrices and progression? 
  • We should be worried about teacher shortages. Many older teachers say they don’t need this anymore. Often it’s the really good teachers with other options who we lose. Note that it is the collective agreement negotiations next year. 

 6 - Covid-19 – Lockdown 2021 

Teachers and schools are comparatively well prepared to transition to distance teaching and learning this year. Some challenges remain the same, in particular the digital divide and helping students to access all the materials they need. Other things have changed due to the differences we see in the delta variant of the virus.  

Key areas that have come to our attention:  

  • Relief teachers  

The emergency payments to relief teachers that we established during the 2020 lockdown have been reinstated and will be based on the teacher’s average hours over the 90 days preceding lockdown. The first payment is due on 8 September and we assume that as lockdown is extended these payments will also continue.  

  • Mask wearing 

This is the most contentious issue so far. The Ministry of Education has not mandated mask wearing in schools for either students or staff, and this feels to some as though it goes against the Ministry of Health directive to wear masks when inside businesses. The reason the Ministry of Education has given is that children are not capable of wearing a mask properly and any protection would therefore be undone.  

Our current stance is: 

  1. Let’s help students to learn about mask wearing so that they can do it safely.  
  2. Teachers may wear masks while teaching, and should not be requested to take them off when at school. We are not yet prepared to take a position that opposes the government guidelines, but if you feel strongly about this matter, we need to know. 
  3. Vaccinations 

We have had two main questions coming through about vaccinations: priority for teachers and collection of vaccination status by schools.  

So far there has been no suggestion that teachers will have priority for vaccinations, but some DHBs have been coming to worksites e.g. supermarkets to do vaccinations, so it is possible that they would also be prepared to do this at schools when alert levels allow.  

Schools may wish to know who is vaccinated and who isn’t in order to make decisions about who is onsite during Level 3. You can ask teachers for their vaccination status, but they do not have to tell you. We advise organising your school procedures under Level 3 as though all your staff are unvaccinated.  

Discussion 

We are having high level discussions about vaccination for teachers as priority. As vaccination is now available to everyone 12 and up there is no longer a priority access - everyone can go and get them at any time. Some DHs are going into large worksites to vaccinate and they might consider that for schools, especially if they have a large staff. The problem is each DHB does its own thing, so it hard to advocate centrally. Schools could approach their DHB directly and FOs will help with that. 

There are good relationships with vaccinators in some areas. 

Making masks compulsory in schools would have been difficult to police. 

Some experts are recommending a level 2.5 with mandatory mask wearing in high schools. Any further indications from the MoE? 

They are not wanting additional levels.  It is hard teaching in masks and students are not great with them. They don’t wear them properly. 

The MoE won’t deviate from Ministry of Health advice. The MoH won’t be advising moving to level 2 until they are sure it is safe. The most dangerous time is when not aware you have a community transmission.

One school had been trying to keep all kids apart as per guidelines, but it was a nightmare and now that everyone can catch the school bus without masks they have stopped trying. 

PPTA has raised with the MoE the issue of late exam dates exceeding open for instruction days and potential implications around attendance of teachers beyond the required 190 days.  Teachers cannot be required on site beyond the 190 for supervision of students attending exams. Schools are advised to use relievers for any supervision work that is created by extending the exam dates passed the 190 days. We have noted that this may mean schools will need more relief funding support. 

The discussion was about a one-week or two-week extension. Two was the most they could push it out. They didn’t want to say one week then have more lockdown and then push it out to two and have schools forced to do all the reorganizing again. There is simply no perfect action in this environment. 

  • Schools will need to consider too that usually once seniors are gone teachers are planning for the following year, so what happens at the end of term will have to be looked at carefully. 
  • Students welcomed the extra two weeks. Learning assessment of internals does not stop for external exam timing. 
  • There is an overwhelming amount of work with the refresh and teachers will have had it in mind to do it after exams. Shifting dates would add to the snowball of pressure at that time. 
  • Students would be doing a longer year. 
  • Logistics would be difficult – you can’t do prize giving, end of school senior dinner, and exams because they are in the same room.  
  • Some seniors signed up for jobs and won’t come back.  
  • It is a massive final week for seniors and many activities can’t be done now.  
  • While some things can be adjusted for year 11-13 the NCEA results are their passport and compete for jobs so that’s the biggest priority.  
  • Exams are important but quite a lot of organizational things will be impacted that effect next year – like timetabling. Those things were delayed last year and that will happen again this year. 

The potential for shifting term dates is being considered by the government but is unlikely to be pursued. PPTA has stated clearly that it was not satisfactory last time and is unlikely to be again. 

The trigger of 20 days for learning recognition credits is worrying students in case they get to 18 and then go to level 2. Could they not apply it now rather than hoping we stay in for just enough days? 

Learning recognition credits are helpful where there are more internal than external. 

Students are often not appearing in google classroom. Few are submitting work. SLT trying to address this but it is not working out well in level 4. Now that we are at level 3 with students of people in essential working areas it will become more of a stress. It is not clear who is stressing more, the teachers or the students. Some are getting really depressed and stressed out. 

The MoE needs to realise that even when at level 3 many students won’t come back to class. 

We are aware that it will be hard getting kids back, e.g. in Northland where many children are living with older whānau. 

Last modified on Wednesday, 17 May 2023 09:09