News in Brief

News in Brief

Helping principals respond to sexual assaults

In Australia, principals in Victorian government schools are to be provided with a comprehensive manual to strengthen their response to allegations by students of sexual assault.

The procedures outline the step-by-step processes on how school staff must respond to an allegation or disclosure of student sexual assault.

While currently having rigorous and clear guidelines on what to do, new principals and teachers come into the schools on a regular basis, so it is a matter of making sure they have an exact process to follow to ensure the student is immediately supported and protected

NZPF furious with Telecom decision

The NZ Principals’ Federation (NZPF) is calling on Telecom to reconsider its’ decision to drop the School Connection programme.

NZPF president Judy Hanna says the decision is extremely disappointing, given the situation that schools face.

The NZPF is currently completing a nationwide survey to ascertain just how much schools currently spend with Telecom.

“We will publicise those results once we have them,” says Mrs Hanna, “so parents and communities are fully informed.”

University Employment agreements ratified

New collective employment agreements have been ratified for academic and general staff at the eight NZ universities.

Provisional figures show that more than 97 per cent of those participating in ratification ballots voted in favour of settlements at Auckland, Waikato, Massey, Victoria, Canterbury, Lincoln, Otago and AUT Universities. The ratification will see salary increases for academic staff of between 5.2 and 6.2 per cent and between 3.73 and 4.73 per cent for general staff over the course of the year.

Who responded as ‘New Zealander’?

According to a recent report released by Statistics NZ, 429,429 people gave ‘New Zealander’ as the only or as one of their responses to the ethnicity question in the 2006 Census. This represents 11.1 per cent of NZs total population, and compares with 2.4 per cent in 2001. The New Zealander response has been growing with each census