KEY POINTS:
New Zealand schools are "groaning under the strain of extra responsibilities," says School Trustees Association president Lorraine Kerr in a message for the association's conference in Wellington tomorrow.
"Society's problems are more and more often being left at the school gates and unless schools receive more support, then something's got to give," Ms Kerr said today.
Schools today were expected to deal with issues far beyond their core business of education, she said.
Ms Kerr cited policing truants, basic discipline, counselling and more recently after school care and policing food as examples of where schools and teachers went beyond their call of duty.
"This is not a new issue but the list of responsibilities schools have just seems to get longer," she said. "Schools are coming under more and more pressure and we need more help."
Ms Kerr said schools didn't mind doing their part and were up to many of the challenges. However, their role beyond education needed to be made more explicit and they needed more support to cope with their expanding duties.
"After school care is a good example. Many schools now offer after school and holiday programmes to allow parents to work. But there are legal and liability issues that have yet to be worked through."
Ms Kerr said all the extra responsibilities could leave schools struggling for time to fit in the curriculum.
"Schools are also often asked to add extra programmes into an already crowded curriculum - like hygiene, fire safety, sun sense and dog safety. Many of these things should be taught at home," she said.
"Schools are being taken advantage of in many respects by the Government, by some parents and by society in general."
She said people should remember that schools are for educating children. Anything extra should not be taken for granted.
Another issue for debate by delegates at tomorrow's conference is the "grey area" of searching students and seizing contraband.
Former school trustees adviser Ray McMillan said with the rise in numbers of students taking "drugs, dangerous objects and other contraband" the issue was coming under more scrutiny.
"There's a division in the legal community about whether or not schools can do this at all," Mr McMillan said today.
"We don't have any definitive answer in New Zealand yet."
Schools in other countries, such as the United States and Canada, had rights to search students that were enforced by courts.
Mr McMillan said there was anecdotal evidence that teachers were having to carry out searches and seizures more often because of drugs being taken into schools. He said it also appeared searching was becoming more frequent at year seven and year eight levels.
"Searching students for drugs is not uncommon at intermediate schools now," he said.
"And in some schools the drug problem has become so bad they have gone beyond looking through school bags and now use sniffer dogs."
Mr McMillan will present his seminar "Assessing the Priority of Rights -- Schools vs Students" at the conference tomorrow.
- NZPA
