$359m schools plan roll-out 'crucial'

The roll-out of a $359 million education scheme is crucial to its success, says Lakeview School principal Ed Hodgkinson, who also is president of the Wellington Regional Primary Principals Association.

Mr Hodgkinson said the association had raised several concerns with the Ministry of Education about the Investing in Educational Success scheme, for which a Working Group report was released on Tuesday.

The scheme would introduce three higher-paying roles for teachers and principals, and encourages collaboration across schools. Bonus payments would be made under the scheme to executive principals who oversee a cluster of 10 schools. Expert teachers would receive extra pay as well to work two days a week as staff mentors at other schools in their cluster. Executive principals also would intervene in failing schools.

Mr Hodgkinson said the roll-out of the scheme was vital to its success or failure and a pilot programme was crucial to fine tune the working details of the programme before it is fully implemented.

"The concerns of the association relate to ensuring transparency with what happens and that we have an opportunity to influence how it happens," he said.

He said the scheme should not be compulsory during its roll-out and should "start with a high degree of evaluation of process".

"No principal would necessarily think it's a bad idea to have different levels for principals and teachers, but it's the details of the initiative and how it will impact schools in the future."

Mr Hodgkinson said policy regarding the scheme was released ahead of the Budget this year and there had been an industry group helping to develop the programme that included principals, unionists and representatives from the New Zealand Principals' Federation.

"The problem is that they have been unable to report back to us. There has been this vacuum and whenever there's a vacuum of information, nobody actually knows what's going on, people start to worry. I think that's been a problem," he said.

"But we've had assurances from the Secretary of Education Peter Hughes that the process of implementation will be orderly and consultative. We haven't seen that yet to any great degree and hopefully we'll see some trickle down of information and we can discuss that and debate that and see how it might look in schools.

"Personally, I think it has the potential to be a great thing but it also has the potential to not work at all.

"It's really going to be down to how it's implemented in schools.

"The roll-out and how much we're a part of it will be the making or breaking of it."