PPTA Te Wehengarua, the secondary school teachers’ union, has asked the Education Minister Erica Stanford to release any proposal relating to the future of Kāhui Ako.
Kāhui Ako, or Communities of Learning, bring together schools with the aim of helping students to achieve their full potential. They give highly-skilled and experienced teachers the opportunity to lead projects in and across schools, providing support and advice to teachers on agreed priorities such as attendance, transitions and implementation of new government initiatives.
“Kāhui Ako provide an alternative and greatly valued career path for about 4000 teachers around the motu and they need clarity about their future,” Chris Abercrombie PPTA Te Wehengarua president says.
“At the moment the minister seems to be making unilateral decisions about the programme without any consultation.
“There has also not been any consultation on where the funding could be reallocated for learning support especially in the secondary sector where students’ learning needs are quite different from primary school students’.”
Radio NZ received a leak that showed the government was planning to cut the scheme in February.
This came just weeks after Stanford told RNZ the ministry was doing a stellar job, a sharp turnaround from the three-out-of-10 rating she gave the ministry for its annual report last year.
Successive governments have struggled to decide what to do with Kāhui Ako, also known as ‘Communities of Learning’, since they were set up by a National-led government in 2014.
The scheme grouped 1958 schools and 1506 early learning centres together to work on common problems.
One principal in each group was paid $25-30,000 extra to lead the work of their Kāhui Ako, teachers working to spread good practice across each group of schools received $16,000 extra and teachers working within schools $8000 more each.
The February report obtained by RNZ said disestablishing the scheme would cost $39m over two years, but save $118m a year by 2027.
ENDS