KEY POINTS:
Teachers at a school for children with serious emotional and behavioural problems have been handing out cigarettes as a reward for good behaviour - and allegedly giving packets of tobacco to some as young as 13.
Felix Donnelly College's latest Education Review Office report slams three of the school's four sites, listing concerns about student and staff safety, the state of buildings and the quality of education provided.
A commissioner was sent in by the Ministry of Education last month.
The October 2006 report highlights the college's new "behaviour management regime", saying: "The new system eliminates the use of cigarettes as a reward for good behaviour. This change caused some upset for students and staff. The new system has yet to be fully implemented."
A pupil who left late last year said one staff member at the girls' Kawakawa Bay, Manukau, site handed out tobacco "every couple of days", to students as young as 13. "She wasn't meant to. She just sneaked them to us whenever we asked her. She used to give us whole packets of tobacco. I guess she felt sorry for us - we were all addicted to smoking."
The college, named after Catholic priest Father Felix Donnelly, a counsellor, author and broadcaster, was set up for children in the care of Child, Youth and Family. Since 1999, it has also taught children in the care of Youthlink Family Trust, which is contracted to CYF and manages the residential care of students at the three "unsafe" sites.
In 2005, the college began teaching children from Youth Horizons Trust. At that stage there was only one site, at Tuakau, teaching 26 boys and five girls. But "a number of serious incidents" there made staff feel so unsafe they took prolonged industrial action.
Youthlink shifted the girls to a house in Kawakawa Bay, "based on concern for their well-being and safety". Youth Horizons Trust moved its students to an old intermediate school in Otara, and got the college teachers to deliver and mark work. This site was praised by ERO.
College principal Colin Webster refused to talk about the incidents that triggered these moves, or the cigarettes, saying he would comment only on some students' "total success stories".
The ERO report outlined:
* Inconsistent teaching; poorly planned lessons;
* Teachers' "questionable" understanding of how to assess NCEA;
* The "unexamined value" of tenpin bowling trips and reading sessions;
* Dilapidated, unattractive, unhygienic buildings;
* The "rapid breakdown" of the relationship between Youth Horizons and Felix Donnelly;
* No appraisal or performance management processes for teachers;
* Inaccuracies in the quality assurance document sent to NZQA when the school was accredited to assess NCEA in 2005. Some parts were taken from other schools' documents, others were fabricated.
NZQA said the school's unit standards were externally moderated last year, and all assessment materials and assessor judgments were found to be at the national standard.
Youthlink's CEO Alan Newman said the girl's story about packets of tobacco was "extremely unlikely".
