Greens slam job cuts at Correspondence School

Metiria Turei

The loss of at least thirty jobs at the Correspondence School will critically damage the quality of education it provides to 18,000 students, says the Green Party.

The Party says it has learned that the schools' chief executive, Debbie Francis, told 30 affected staff today that they are being let go, with more job losses yet to be confirmed.

The school board met yesterday to approve a review of student services that had been planned for almost six months.

The school is preparing for a new teaching model, in which its 20,000 pupils would be put into categories according to their level of need.

It is proposed that support services should be re-directed to children with high needs, but with low support at home.

The Green Party says the staff who lost their jobs today included nine deans, 19 regional advisers and two legally required careers-advice teachers.

"This decision will destroy a taonga, a valuable resource to the whole country, not just rural communities. It is an outrage," said the Greens' education spokesperson, Metiria Turei.

The Correspondence School was originally established for geographically isolated students, but they now make up only about 1500 of the 18,000 students on its roll.

"This has come about because the Government has allowed the School to be overwhelmed by kids that other schools don't want, which has diverted it from its core mission of serving isolated families," Mrs Turei said.

"This has been exacerbated by dual enrolments, where kids wanting to do subjects their schools can't provide get flicked on to the Correspondence School."

She said an inevitable consequence was that the school's traditional students would not get the high-quality education they needed and deserved.

"Chronic under-funding by the Government is also a factor. The school runs on a budget of about $45 million a year and has a deficit of around $5.5 million."

Mrs Turei accused Ms Francis is trying to de-unionise the school.

"Staff believe that many of the regional positions will be re-appointed with new people in an attempt to de-unionise the School. Ms Francis has described the high number of union members at the school as 'an organisational challenge'.

"Many of those fired are senior staff with years of experience, so the school is about to lose much of its institutional knowledge, expertise that cannot be replaced."

About 150 teachers held a stopwork meeting earlier this week and marched to Parliament in a last ditch attempt to save their jobs.

One dean said yesterday she believed the staff cuts were "just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic".

"I really don't know if this is the right way to deal with fiscal problems."