A five-day leadership course for principals at the five-star Hilton Fiji Beach Resort and Spa has sparked a debate in the education sector.
An education training provider is inviting school principals to bring “your togs, snorkel and passport” for a five-day leadership school at a five-star Pacific Island resort “against the backdrop of a Fijian sunset”.
The course is one of many to hit the market since a $6000 annual salary boost for principals specifically to pay for professional development and wellbeing.
The money was a contract win for the 2500 principals nationwide running schools that are generally multimillion-dollar enterprises.
But it has sparked debate in the education sector over whether some of the courses are a valuable leadership exercise or a convenient opportunity for a short, taxpayer-funded overseas holiday.
One professional development course on offer is a $5700 conference in Fiji dubbed the School of Transformation and offered by Growth Culture, a company with an 11-year history of offering education training.
The company’s website says: “If you like the sound of being coached under swaying palm trees, brainstorming with colleagues against the backdrop of a Fijian sunset, and leaving with a renewed sense of mental clarity, wellness, and purpose … Then get your togs, snorkel and passport packed as I look forward to connecting with you at this transformative experience.”
The $5700 fee does not include flights to Fiji for the June conference — during term time — but does include four nights’ accommodation at the Hilton Fiji Beach Resort and Spa.
The company describes it as “an unparalleled leadership, coaching and wellness experience — five days in five-star accommodation for under $5k”.
During the five days, according to the programme, principals would spend seven hours over two days in sessions with three speakers, and six hours of another day doing volunteer work at two local high schools.
The pitch to principals says: “In most cases, funding can be accessed via the Principal’s Wellbeing and PGC [professional growth cycle] Fund.”
Growth Culture told the Herald the “circuit-breaker” course, which was comparable in cost to a trip to Queenstown, was developed before the fund, but matched its aims well.
The Herald has also confirmed that a contingent of 150 teachers is heading for the uLead conference at the Canadian resort town of Banff, one of the country’s most vaunted tourist locations, during the April school holiday.
The $6000 fund was secured for 2023 and 2024 in contract negotiations between principals and the Ministry of Education. It comes with guidelines governing the spending, and principals are obliged to report their spending to their board of trustees before the end of each year.
It came at a time when research was showing burnout among principals and a rate of attrition that threatened institutional knowledge.
New Zealand Principals’ Federation president Leanne Otene said there had been a sudden growth in private sector offerings after the $6000 fund was negotiated as part of principals’ employment contracts.
Otene — a principal of Manaia View School in Whangārei for 16 years — said it was an important win for principals because funding for professional development and wellbeing had previously come out of school funds and required board approval.
While there were guidelines around how the money should be spent, she said having it secured as part of an employment contract meant it was accessible to principals throughout the education community.
“That $6000 means a great deal to us and especially to those smaller and rural schools who don’t have that money in their budget. It’s an equity issue and this does put us all on the same playing field.”
Otene — and others interviewed — had noted the emergence of a string of programmes targeted at principals that cost just shy of the $6000, and appeared targeted at the fund.
“I don’t know of any principals taking up that five days in Fiji. I won’t be going.”
“We have a whole lot of private offerings. That’s driven by demand. We don’t have any quality assurance of what is being offered by the private sector. It’s up to principals to determine whether what’s offered meets their needs.”
Secondary Principals’ Association of NZ president Vaughan Couillault — principal at Papatoetoe High School in Auckland — had noted the boom in private companies “trying to get my $6000 off me” with a string of offers ranging from “useful to humorous”.
When it came to principals’ professional development and wellbeing, Couillault said — and Otene agreed — that each principal might have particular needs and could sculpt a bespoke response to suit each specific situation.
Couillault said he was confident principals networking would create an understanding in the profession as to what private sector offerings worked best. He said each year posed different challenges — this year was late enrolments, last year the wash-up of weather events — meaning there was a shifting smorgasbord of needs.
Educator and former principal Bali Haque led the 2018-19 Tomorrow’s Schools Independent Taskforce, which, among other changes, pushed for a dedicated leadership centre to be developed and leadership advisers in education hubs to work closely with principals.
He said the recommendations had been largely agreed with, but collapsed amid turf wars over who would implement the changes and “hardly any of it has happened”. In the case of leadership advisers, he said they were not centrally connected and there were too few.
“Here we have one of the most devolved education systems in the world. You end up with incredibly variable leadership across the country and limited support for leadership development.
“We place principals in these incredibly difficult positions and don’t support them enough.”
Haque said New Zealand was trapped in a “silver-bullet mentality” as if headline-grabbing changes such as banning cellphones or hiring truancy officers could address the fundamental structural issues of having “two and a half thousand Crown entities making their own decisions”.
He said there was an “opportunity for the new Minister (of Education Erica Stanford) here” to improve support at a regional level and to establish a “centre of excellence” for principals to develop skills.
The growing private sector market had moved to fill the gap created by a lack of government action and there was no quality assurance or control, he said. A course or conference might be pitched by a private provider, but he said: “How do you know it’s any good?”
Couillault said he didn’t agree with Haque’s drive for centralisation and was concerned doing so with leadership could create a fresh bureaucracy that wasn’t responsive to individual principals’ needs.
“What we learned from Covid is that the decisions that are the best ones were the ones made locally responding to local needs.”
NZ Secondary Principals’ Council chairwoman Kate Gainsford — principal of Aotea College in Porirua — said: “Of course private providers will jump in. That’s been the history of New Zealand education.”
The country had “world class leadership by default” rather than a planned “system of career development”.
She said schools were “multimillion-dollar enterprises” with “complex legal and asset management involved”. “If you look at comparable enterprises you would find the budget [for professional development] is more than $6000.”
Overseas conferences had long been part of professional development for principals, but the $6000 fund had allowed principals to target specific opportunities abroad and secure discounts.
Rangiora Borough School principal Shane Buckner — who is also on the board of the principals’ federation — was among those going to Banff, Canada.
“All these opportunities have always been there, but they’re more overt now because of this pool of dollars.”
The conference ran for three days with four keynote speakers and a pre-conference day at which some among the New Zealand group would speak, he said.
Buckner said the contingent of principals had block-booked attendance at the conference, securing discounts and a string of learning activities targeted at those from New Zealand.
He estimated the cost to be no more than $3000 with the balance of the $6000 going on personal coaching and supervision throughout the year. “Having a specific person who is able to hear out the dilemmas and turn them into opportunities is mind-blowing.”
Growth Culture managing director Marshall Diggs — one of the speakers on the Fiji trip — said the School of Transformation conference was a “judicious utilisation of the fund” with travel cost comparable to a trip to Queenstown. The company was an accredited Ministry of Education provider with a track record of training in the education sector, he said.
He said those attending would learn new things in a “unique environment” with “novel experiences … centred around the overarching goal of improving wellbeing”. He said the idea for the event came before the $6000 fund emerged, but was considered an “excellent use of the fund to actually support and enhance principal wellbeing”.
“The idea of the fund is to promote wellbeing and we see fresh air and sun as the perfect environment to share keynotes on wellbeing rather than auditoriums with artificial lighting and crowds. There will be networking and relaxation time worked into each day, hence the invitation to bring togs.”
Diggs said the smaller size of the gathering — compared with larger conferences such as uLead — brought a sense of whanaungatanga (kinship) through “prioritising meaningful connections over crowds, and constructive kōrero over guru-centric ideology”.
He said the School of Transformation was “attracting principals, deputy principals, and other school leaders from both Aotearoa and Australia”. He said Fiji as a venue reflected “our heart for both Māori and Pasifika partnerships in education”, with travel working as a “circuit-breaker” to detach from usual environments.
“The intrinsic value of hosting people, removed from their familiar settings, provides a fresh perspective that might not be easily achievable in a locally based course.”
Diggs said it was scheduled during term time because principals often took breaks during school holidays. “We do not encourage anyone to work during their holidays and believe it goes against the outcome of better wellbeing.”
Education Workforce leader Anna Welanyk said there was a range of funded support and learning opportunities for principals based on their needs. That included study awards, support programmes for new principals and sabbaticals.
It was also in the second year of the Leadership Advisory Service in which experienced principals were seconded to provide peer support, with 16 such positions filled anationwide, he said.
Teddy said work was under way to “expand professional learning and development support” to make it easier for principals to navigate.
Minister Stanford said professional development for teachers and principals was a “priority” for the Government. “We will be considering this. Timelines are yet to be determined,” she said in a statement. No further details were provided.
Opposition education spokeswoman, former principal and until recently Minister of Education, Jan Tinetti, said professional development for teachers and principals was a priority for Labour. “It’s an area, for me, that is critically important and an area we will develop over the next few years in opposition.”
David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He joined the Herald in 2004.