NZEI network for Primary teachers

AP/DP's workload and release time.

There seems to be a huge range in the workloads of an AP and DP's, and in the amount of time out of the classroom that AP/DP's have to enable them to fulfill their leadership roles / responsibilities. One of the possible proposals coming through in the focus groups meetings on our next PTCA is for release time attached to units - this could affect all unit holders, but AP's and DP's are usually the biggest unit holders in a school. Attendee's at focus groups will give feedback on the idea. Others thoughts??

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Antony Criglington on November 11, 2009 at 22:41

In Christchurch we discussed this today. There was some support for this idea and many present could see the benefit to all unit holders not just AP/DP's. Another idea was to increase the amount of leadership in the staffing component for all schools with special consideration for U1 and U2 schools. Since staffing is often used to release those in leadership the spin off effect can be that class numbers are increased for those staff teaching full time. Giving a greater amount of staffing to schools enables those in leadership to have release to carry out those extra duties, while not having an impact on curriculum staffing and ratios such as the existing 1:15 for Y1/2; 1:23 for Y2/3 and 1:29 for Y4-8 can be adhered to more easily or consistently or in fact even lowered. Hope this is concise enough.

Permalink Reply by Sara Rogers on November 23, 2009 at 20:32

Hi Antony,
Totally understood. A primary teachers focus group meeting of 2 weeks ago 'endorsed' your group's thoughts. The idea of having a staffing component linked to each unit (.1 per unit?) though perhaps not actually tied to each unit was discussed - release time for some specific responsibilites was thought to be needed more than for others e.g. to have a leadership team member available to repond to requests for help with student behaviour problems, to have the ICT person available to 'trouble shoot' asap. Some responsibilities were thought to merit a unit but not need regular release.... If release time is linked to units (as I believe happens in the Area Schools collective) then that is a collective agreement issue. If additional 'leadership' time is wanted through a schools staffing component then that's a different issue and will involve lobbying MoE. Will be interesting to see what others think!!??