Scott Mitchell Year 12
Congratulations to Scott Mitchell, Year 12, who has been awarded Creative Industries WISE of the Week.

Scott demonstrates excellence through his conscientious approach to learning and his commitment to producing work of a high standard. He consistently goes above and beyond expectations, approaching tasks independently and with focus, reflecting strong independence. Scott’s willingness to help others and offer support also reflects strong Whanaungatanga, contributing positively to our school culture.

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The Budget has recently been announced for the next several years by our current government. The Budget overall holds a monstrous amount of information and yet there is one particular detail that has stuck with me in the weeks following the announcement. In what has been presented alongside a suite of “education investments” is a 2% increase to school operating budgets. The language surrounding this is varied but includes “to meet rising costs”, “help manage costs and maintain provisions” and “continue to provide services to meet the needs of students nationwide and raise achievement”.

This stands in stark contrast to the reality faced by New Zealand schools.

Like everyday Kiwis, schools have been facing the same price surges that homes have been facing over the past 5 years. While prices have surged for just about everything, our operating budgets have not. In a recent publication from the Post Primary Teachers Association, this lag has been calculated to show a reduction in real funding of 12% over 5 years – a reduction in purchasing power of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The call from the PPTA was made that anything less than a 5% increase in operational funding would fail to support our schools.

Unfortunately, the “education investment” designed to “provide services to meet the needs of students” is not real – we are projected to have inflation exceed our budget increases yet again in 2026; further reducing our funding in real terms. Simply put: funding for New Zealand schools is going backwards.

The reality is that schools have already cut any fat in the system and are reaching the point where now they must consider which essential services need to be cut. I have spoken to one principal who had to make a teacher aide/learning assistant redundant just to break even, and another who has cut their curriculum budgets by 20% for all faculties; in both cases taking precious learning resources out of their classrooms. Thankfully, Waiheke High School has sufficient reserves to protect these vital resources for now but we have been using our rainy day fund in recent years – a challenge that all schools are facing.

Currently, no political party has clearly stated that they will improve the funding of schools above the 5% space where it will begin to remedy this systemic shortfall. While politicians argue over which education policy they support, it seems there isn’t enough attention paid to whether or not schools can keep the lights on. As schools cannot improve their revenue streams through production like a typical business, we are at the whim of such policy decisions and can only remedy such shortfalls with fundraisers and donations – an increasingly common practice among all schools with the current fiscal pinch hurting everyone.

If you are interested in helping out with this ongoing challenge, I would encourage you to contact those across the political spectrum as we head into the election cycle to make as much noise around this as possible. This is an issue facing every primary, area and high school in New Zealand so the more voices raising concern around this shortfall the better. Alternatively, when you see fundraisers out and about in our local community, please support if you are able.

Having spoken at length about these issues with my fellow principals on Waiheke, our local schools are conscious that everyone is feeling the pinch at the moment so we don’t ask for help lightly. We do this because we want to protect our kids from bearing the brunt of this and because of the simple economic fact that the system is currently letting us down.

Ngā mihi mahana,

Cameron Flude

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Our very first WISE of the Week recipients, for the next two weeks, are awarded by Creative Industries; goes to:

Maisie Rainer Year 8
Maisie demonstrates Excellence through her commitment to producing work of a high standard and her thoughtful, creative approach to design. Reflecting Creativity (Ahuatanga), she consistently thinks outside the box, exploring imaginative ideas and applying critical thinking to bring originality to her projects.

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At a principals meeting I attended this week, there was a robust discussion about the ongoing barrage of media surrounding teachers and education more generally. Lately it has felt like there has been a concerted effort from the media to blow up any story of a teacher doing something wrong or for politicians to take any opportunity to suggest that teachers are collectively either complacent or failing our learners.

Conversely, among the principals in the room, the collective feeling was that, day in and day out, we see teachers working incredibly hard and with a great amount of care and passion about the success of their students. Naturally, teachers don’t always get it right – we are humans working under pressure and things won’t always go as planned – but it seems farfetched to so regularly see headlines about teacher misconduct in the news.

I decided to investigate this a bit more to try to figure out how these two things might exist together at the same time. The estimated number of primary and secondary teachers in New Zealand is just under 70,000. Based on that number, if we had a headline grabbing story once a week in the media where a teacher has been reprimanded by the teaching council, that would amount to 0.07% of the teaching workforce. Another way of looking at that is that 99.93% of the teaching workforce is out there doing great things with the youth of Aotearoa. Even if we increase the frequency of these stories to a daily occurrence, which I’m confident is not the case, this would represent 0.5% of the workforce or 99.5% of the teachers of Aotearoa working effectively with our young people.

I’d say the true number is likely somewhere in the middle of those figures, but this is lost in something of a barrage that is designed to remind us regularly that teachers are failing our students. It seems to me that the collective lived experience of principals can be true, and so can the current situation with the media consistently reporting the biggest mistakes of our profession in large print. Sadly, the bias toward the negative stories loses most of what is important to celebrate and can contribute to whānau feeling less confident in our education system and, in particular, our educators. What I feel is getting lost is the missing statistic where 99.8% of the time, parents should be confident that teachers in New Zealand are working very hard and generally achieving great results with their students.

The paradigm in the media seems to trend heavily toward the negative – which is a shame, because there is so much to celebrate, but perhaps it doesn’t generate the revenue when compared to that which shocks and causes consternation.

As for myself, I wanted to take the opportunity to use my small media reach to provide a counter to the narrative and show that, overwhelmingly, teachers in New Zealand are hard working, professional and highly skilled, and that parents should be confident that all across New Zealand – Waiheke included – our teachers are overwhelmingly doing great work, and our students are overwhelmingly achieving great things.

Ngā mihi mahana,

Cameron Flude

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She’s also been nominated for the AMA’s People’s Choice Awards. You can vote for her or any of the talented artists here: peopleschoice.aotearoamusicawards.co.nz >>

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Recently I’ve been speaking with some of our students about rising academic demands inherent to this time of the school year, where many internal assessments come due at once. It has been interesting to hear the different stressors that our students face which vary greatly from person to person. Work, relationships, family, sports – the list of varied commitments is often long and each of those has their own particular stressors too that ebb and flow, just like school. Just as each student has a unique circumstance, so too does each student have their unique response to their circumstances. What works for one student may not work for another; a stressful situation for one student may be a complete breeze for another.

Across many years in education, it’s been clear that some students are consistently building their resilience while other students struggle with their response to hardship. It is important to recognise that while we all have unique challenges and respond to these differently, becoming resilient is a skill that we can get better at – and it is something that we can help students develop by challenging them within safe contexts.

I believe that this is a crucial skill for our young people to learn if they are to have a strong platform for facing the challenges that they will come up against in our lives. As parents, it is natural for us to try to protect our children and to shield them from the tough moments. We need to be ready to fight that urge and let our kids sit with discomfort and challenge in small, safe chunks, so that they have the skills to deal with the larger challenges of tomorrow. The sad fact is, life can be hard and we will all experience bad times that will exhaust us and beat us down. We won’t overcome this by always having rainbows and sunshine or someone who rides in to save the day – this will, in fact, leave us unprepared when the storms come.

Resilience is not about having the perfect response to life’s challenges, it is about learning to take ownership of our response to them. Young people can be placed in challenging situations and thus slowly learn by being put in situations which are uncomfortable and test their limits. Regardless of the method, each of us will be challenged to respond to times where we think we don’t have the capacity to deal with a situation. While we don’t have the opportunity to choose what life throws at us, we have the opportunity to respond and, through learning to harness this, we can build the resilience to tackle tough times in the future.

At times, the different pressures of being a high school student will seem too much and our students will be bending under the pressure of life as a teenager. When they stumble and get stuck in a difficult spot, and then subsequently find their feet again, they will be much better equipped to get back up again next time they find that pothole. Parents and teachers can support them by acknowledging that they are going through a lot while also encouraging them to make a positive choice in how they respond that will help them progress along the path they are walking.

Ngā mihi mahana,

Cameron Flude

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