School to lose eight teachers

Eight Wanganui High School teachers will soon say their last goodbyes to pupils as job losses were announced this week. PHOTO/STUART MUNRO

Eight teaching positions will go at Wanganui's biggest school by the end of the year.

According to its website, Wanganui High School has a roll of about 1600 students and 160 staff, but principal Garry Olver yesterday confirmed some of those jobs will be axed.

"It is most unfortunate that this decline in student numbers coincides with a year of historic achievement of WHS students in academic, sporting and cultural activities.

"We are all deservedly proud of what has been achieved in 2013," he said.

A projected roll for the next academic year, calculated by the Ministry of Education, stated the school was overstaffed by eight teaching positions. The roles to be disestablished were decided on at a meeting on Sunday but were not specified by Mr Olver in a statement.

"This meeting was run with heavy hearts as everyone present fully appreciated the gravity of the situation while knowing that impartial and fair decisions were crucial.

"This situation is highly regrettable and it has caused significant anxiety for all our staff and especially impacted very heavily on those teachers whose positions will not be available next year," he said.

Katrina Casey, the Ministry of Education's head of sector enablement and support, said the number of primary and secondary aged students was declining across the Wanganui area and the trend was expected to continue through to 2016.

"The amount of funding we provide to a state or state-integrated school is primarily based on the size of the school's roll.

"Schools pay teacher salaries out of their operational funding from us. When a school has a falling roll, the school may review its staff levels in relation to its curriculum and pastoral needs to determine where there is excess staffing [which the] Wanganui High School board carried out ... to identify which positions are needed," Ms Casey said.

Ms Casey said teachers whose jobs were "disestablished" had several options as provided by their collective contract, including redeployment at another school, retraining and severance payments.