Parents say the Education Ministry’s clarification of what counts as being open for instruction shows some schools have been getting it wrong for years.
One told RNZ her children’s school was open for nearly a week less than it should be and another said some secondary schools have been denying disabled kids weeks of education during exam time.
Meanwhile, some primary schools have been forced to add another day or two to the school year after learning they’ve been misinterpreting the rules that govern when they are considered to be open.
It follows an Education Ministry clarification of the rules, which the Secondary Principals Association has challenged as being unlawful and unworkable.
RNZ coverage of the issue prompted a woman who RNZ agreed not to name to share her experience of investigating school opening hours after noticing her children’s school opened later in the year than others, but finished the year earlier.
She said she proved to the Education Ministry in 2021 that the school was open for four-and-a-half fewer days than it should be.
“I just counted the weeks and minus-ed the non-open days. I just basically counted it for the year and realised that they weren’t meeting the minimum requirements,” she said.
The woman said the school made up a couple of days after the ministry raised the issue, but it continued its practice in subsequent years.
“The next couple of years there was still a reasonable discrepancy of up to a week, but this year they are very close to meeting minimum requirements,” she said.
The woman said the loss of learning time probably had not affected her children, but the shortfall still bothered her.
“I don’t imagine they set these rules for no reason.”
She said the ministry’s clarification of the rules and move to monitoring schools next year was overdue.
Another parent told RNZ the ministry’s rules clarification made it clear many children with learning needs were being significantly short-changed.
She said her child missed several weeks each year because their secondary school closed its learning support unit for a day for parent interviews, for four days for discussion of children’s individual education plans, and for three days a week for six weeks of exam study leave.
“The seniors from the learning support unit don’t have access to full-time hours even though most of them aren’t sitting exams. They have one or two days available to them to do things with the school. For the rest of the week they just have to be at home,” she said.
The woman said other families with children with learning needs had similar experiences and she hoped the ministry’s clarification would make schools more accountable.
“A lot of parents don’t really know or necessarily understand what their children are entitled to,” she said.
The Principals Federation told RNZ recent Education Ministry clarification of the rules had proved to be “necessary”.
Federation president Leanne Otene said the main area of confusion appeared to be parent-teacher interviews or “conferencing”, which some schools held during the day thinking they counted as being “open for instruction”.
Otene said some schools also had not realised two government-mandated teacher-only days had already been subtracted from the number of half-days they must be open this year.
She said she did not know how many schools had to add another day or two to their school year due to the teacher-only day confusion but a recent discussion with a group of principals proved it was not an isolated matter.
“A number of them were a bit confused about that. Others were not, they had clearly anticipated that or had figured that that was probably the case. So I can’t tell you how many across the country but I can say the group of 10 I was talking to yesterday, there was a mixed understanding of that,” she said.
Otene said nobody was deliberately flouting the rules.
“No-one has deliberately been flouting the system, not been honest and open about meeting the required days that they’re expected to do in the school year. What we’re seeing now is a clarity around that,” she said.
The Education Ministry would next year start monitoring schools to ensure they complied with minimum opening regulations.
Primary schools had to be open for 382 half-days and secondary schools for 376 this year.
School could close for teacher-only days initiated by their boards, but had to make those days up at the start or end of the year.
