Kia tau te rangimārie ki a koutou

I recently had the pleasure of talking to a group of state integrated school principals from Auckland. It was a remote meeting and my technology failed in the office and I found myself running about a kilometre in a Wellington southerly gale and rain to get home to see if I could establish the link from home. Fortuitously, I was able to get the technology to work at home and wiping myself down I did my best to appear collected and coherent.

In answering one of the questions from the floor, I talked about the need to get our political parties to develop a long term cross-party national education plan to avoid the election cycle yo-yo of education policy that often accompanies a change in government. These days under MMP even a party that continues in power may have to make new arrangements with other parties to govern and this can also result in significant changes in policy. Some might suggest it is naïve to think that this is possible in the New Zealand political system and perhaps it is. However, education is such a crucial common good within society. Education research would suggest that changes in curriculum approaches, pedagogy and system changes take at least five years to embed and become normalised into practice. The three-year political cycle often leads to significant changes and any achievements made being abandoned before the benefits can be realised, engendering frustration and resistance as new ideas are promoted.

As I am writing this editorial, an email has just come through with a release of the Literacy & Communication and Maths Strategy and Hei Raukura Mō te Mokopuna. This strategy is a response to the perceived deteriorating performance of New Zealand students with regard to literacy, communication and mathematics and concerns about the equity of educational outcomes. Reading the strategy, I cannot help but applaud much of the detail with its emphasis on a common practice model of teaching, clear sequencing of learning, teacher support at the regional and national level in promoting effective practice, additional support to struggling learners, an emphasis on partnership approaches with the whānau and continuous evaluation of the delivery and effectiveness of these new approaches. The strategy is seen as transformative in looking to improve literacy, communication and mathematical achievement outcomes for all learners.

There is a lot to like about the Literacy & Communication and Maths Strategy but it will only make transformative change if the necessary resources are applied at the right level and there is a continuing commitment over the long term. This has proven to be the Achilles heel of many attempts at education innovation and hence my challenge to our political parties to consider the merits of committing to a national strategy in education. It will take courage and the ability to put the common good of our wonderful young men and women at the forefront while seeking to put aside personal agendas. I do not believe that the educational philosophies of our major political parties in New Zealand are so far apart that an agreement on a ten-year national education strategy could not be reached. However, in stating these views I am expecting some might see these as out of touch with reality and a little ‘green’. I would like to think that living with hope particularly when serving our young men and women who are our future leaders in society requires a coherent and consistent commitment to their needs and is not something that is impossible.

Essential Property Maintenance Package (EPMP)

The EPMP team at APIS continues to process dozens of applications that are flowing into the office. APIS would like to thank proprietors and their property staff for their attention to submitting their pre-approval applications before the 30^th August 2022 deadline. The EPMP team fully appreciate the difficulties in getting quotes in the current environment and want to remind proprietors that formal quotes are not needed at the pre-approval phase. The pre-approval phase of an EPMP application is focused on approving the project as an acceptable use of EPMP funds and all that is needed in terms of costs at this first stage is a verification of its broad costs and scope which could be an estimate from a property or project manager.

 The EPMP team at APIS will continue to make contact with those proprietors who have not submitted a pre-approval application and we will continue to offer support and advice where we can.

Managing Omicron

Congratulations to the school boards, principals, and staff of our state integrated schools in Auckland and other hard-hit areas of the country who have battled hard to support their communities through the current wave of Omicron. Speaking to some of our Auckland principals in recent days, they talk of a two-week period where student and staff absences spike and how the plans they made in advance have helped support their schools through a very difficult period. However, the good news is they also report an equally quick bounce back to near normality, and that will be of some comfort to those school communities in Aotearoa who have yet to experience the full impact of the latest wave of COVID-19.

 Change is once again on the horizon, as the government considers modifying or, in some cases, removing some of its COVID management strategies including vaccine passes. It would be no surprise to see vaccination mandates being removed (and since I wrote this editorial the government has made an announcement to remove vaccine mandates in education) in sectors such as education as our national rates of double vaccination reach 95% and booster rates continue to climb. However, the vaccination statistics for some of our vulnerable communities such as Māori continue to be a concern and that must be considered in making changes to our current protection framework. APIS continues to thank our state integrated schools for encouraging vaccination in their communities while understanding the diverse opinions in society, and for working in their school communities with empathy, compassion and respect for human dignity.

Welcome to Gallagher Security

NZCEO is excited to enter into a new collaborative relationship with Gallagher Security. Gallagher is a renowned global innovator and one of New Zealand’s largest manufacturers of security solutions, and they have been involved in supporting schools for over twenty years. They provide a range of solutions to keep staff, students, and assets safe, create operational efficiencies, better utilise facilities, and streamline the access of students, staff, and visitors. Gallagher Security are an innovative company with a wide scope of solutions to meet the needs of schools of all sizes and we look forward to working with them for the benefit of our state integrated schools.

NZCEO/APIS Office in Wellington

NZCEO staff continue to work from home as we search for a new permanent office space here in Wellington. Our existing office has been closed due to seismic risk and the building will most likely be demolished (no decisions have been made yet). NZCEO wants to assure proprietors that we are continuing to operate as normally as possible given our staff are now distributed over Wellington and the Kapiti Coast. We are missing our facilities and the social contact that comes in the working environment, and it may take up to six months to find a new lease and then fit out a space to meet our needs. NZCEO is currently looking into a temporary arrangement where another organisation has kindly offered to share some office space with us. We are very grateful for this offer and we may be able to set up a temporary arrangement within the next few weeks with the possibility of rostering staff to maximise our use of this space. Hopefully, we will have further news in the next issue of Lighting New Fires

Finally

As this article goes to press, Russia is stepping up its efforts to invade Ukraine. This decision shows a complete disregard for the lives and human dignity of millions of citizens and once more powerful men have failed in their responsibility of care as leaders in the modern world. I am sure you will join APIS in denouncing the actions of the Russian president while sending our prayers and love to the Ukrainian people in the hope that a peaceful solution can be found to avoid the ongoing catastrophic impact that we see every day through media and television.

Ngā manaakitanga

Kevin Shore

Chief Executive Officer

From hiring out your school hall without the stress of having to meet people on site, managing various access points to your school grounds, integrating with other business systems to create efficiency and cost savings, and ensuring visitors are accounted for during emergency situations such as a fire alarm – there are many ways Gallagher security can support you and your school.

There’s no one standard answer to solving the challenges you face. Instead, Gallagher security would like to work with you to understand your specific needs and identify the opportunities for your school. 

Call their team of experts on 07 838 9800 or email sales.nz@security.gallagher.com to organise your free security audit today. Or for more information on how you can simplify life on your school grounds, check out their website.

South Auckland Seventh Day Adventist School – Block upgrade and new deck, progress photo

The team have been busy over the last quarter processing a total of 94 pre-approval applications for EPMP projects since January. With the deadline of August 2022 for all EPMP projects to be approved (not started but approved) the APIS EPMP office is following up with those remaining Proprietors who have not applied for their allocated EPMP funding. This funding expires on 31 August 2022 and applications for pre-approved EPMP project(s) need to be received by mid-August.

We would encourage proprietors who have not made contact with the EPMP office to please make contact with us via email apis.epmp@nzceo.org.nz and provide a name and contact phone number to enable our EPMP team to contact you to help with this process.   Please aslo refer to the APIS website Essential Property Maintenance Package (EPMP) webpage for information on how to apply for your funding, details of the process and guidelines to help with completing application forms.  All forms to use throughout the process can be dowloaded.

 For those proprietors who have applied for a portion of their EPMP funding we would ask them to make contact with the office to discuss the use of the remainder of their eligible funds to ensure applications are submitted by the deadline.

The following is a summary of the latest EPMP data:

Application analysis by school and proprietor

• 312 Schools are eligible for EPMP funds
• 140 schools to date have made at least one project approval application
• This represents 45% of schools with current applications
• 48 of the 88 eligible proprietors have submitted an EPMP application
• 21 proprietors eligible for EPMP funding are yet to make contact with APIS EPMP Office to claim their funds.

The Association of Integrated Schools (AIS) 2022 general Conference has been been moved to 5 - 7 September, and combined with the AIS Business Managers Conference. The venue will be the Brentwood Hotel in Wellington, and full details can be found here.

Audio recordings of Keynote addresses from the 2021 conference are still available at the links below: 

Hon Chris Hipkins

Dr Kevin Shore (APIS)

Mark Larson (AIS NZ)

The Wellington Christian education Project brings together a collective of like-minded Trusts dedicated to providing Christian education, led by the New Zealand Christian Proprietors Trust, aiming to develop a network of non-denominational, state integrated, co-educational, Christian schools providing pathways for students to Year 13 with 4000 students across 6 sites by 2050. This project seeks to provide greater accessibility to Christian education for parents in Wellington with a particular emphasis on secondary education. Mark Larson (Project Manager) is charged with developing a 50 year vision for a network of Christian Schools in the greater Wellington area which will include an educational blueprint for the schools and possible locations and sizes.

"The project has begun a very positive conversation with manawhenua Te Rūnanganui o Te Āti Awa. Our vision is to partner with Te Āti Awa as we look at the history of potential sites, consider school names and develop our local curriculum."

Mark Larson, Project Leader for the Wellington Christian Education Project speaks about the project here: