11 minute read
UNteACH rACISm
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Started thinking about the School 2023 budget? Three years into the pandemic, uncertainty is still presenting challenges for most school boards. With the impact of COVID-19-related costs on school finances and the increased level of absent students, school leaders have a lot to consider.
With this in mind, the budget plays a pivotal role in delivering financial confidence during these uncertain times. A well-prepared budget can also identify opportunities, facilitate instant decisionmaking, and provide certainty when making staffing decisions.
With equity funding changes and pay equity for non-teaching support staff coming in 2023, starting the budget process early will be critical for making those important decisions prior to the summer holidays.
Given the funding changes, particularly for schools with lower equity funding indexes, and continuing COVID-related impacts, many schools will need guidance to help them quantify the impact on the budget for 2023 and beyond. The funding implications around student absences and students being home schooled, also need to be considered.
While most schools are fortunate to have experienced leadership teams and boards, most leaders are not accountants and nor are schools’ businesses. A school’s focus needs to be on outcomes; budgets are important to facilitate the ability of the leadership team to deliver those outcomes.
Looking further ahead Budgets should not just be viewed within the context of the next 12 months, but should also factor in the School’s longer-term strategic goals. Boards need to work through what they want to achieve over the next 5 to 10 years, not just the next couple; while assessing what is most important to the school community.
This ensures that not only the students of today benefit from those sound financial decisions but also the future generations that follow. Utilising Xero A reliable budget is only as good as the information it is based upon. By utilising a combination of Xero and the likes of Google Sheets or MS Excel, a budget can easily be adapted to changing environments, identify core issues and provide key insight. Xero provides accurate, understandable, and timely financial information. Budgets can then quickly be utilised for forecasting as well.
Who can help? At Accounting For Schools, we take care to understand a school’s specific circumstances, to allow us to provide maximum assistance around the annual budget. Schools can rest assured that all financial aspects are covered, while also having access to one of our education accounting experts.
At Accounting For Schools, we have developed budget templates and inclusive calculators to ensure risk areas such as staffing usage and teacher aides are accurately budgeted. This allows us to identify key financial issues being faced by a school, and provide reliable recommendations.
At Accounting For Schools, we take great pride in providing exceptional accounting services to many schools throughout New Zealand. We let Xero do the day-to-day work and are therefore able to provide value-add solutions to schools. We can provide solutions to assist with periodic management reports, asset replacement programmes, manage the annual accounts process, payroll, and many more, with the solutions suited to the individual needs of the school.
Although it’s impossible to predict the future, robust budgets provide valuable insight that allows schools to react quickly to opportunities or challenges. If you would like to have a noobligation chat about how Accounting For Schools can help your school, contact Ben Duflou or Allison Henderson today; contact details are listed below.
untEach raciSM – how it can hEl your PracticE P
rose-Anne London SEnior adviSor, tEaching council | Matatū aotEaroa
what is unteach Racism? The first iteration of Unteach Racism was released in May 2021 with an aim to help teachers, identify, confront, and dismantle racism in education. The Teaching Council | Matatū Aotearoa partnered with the Human Rights Commission’s Give Nothing to Racism campaign to create conversations around racism in Aotearoa New Zealand. Teachers have a unique opportunity to shape the hearts and minds of children and young people, so Unteach Racism has been designed specifically for you.
How does it work? Unteach Racism recognises racism is learned and therefore can be unlearned. Unteach Racism aligns to commitments in Our Code, Our Standards | Ngā Tikanga Matatika, Ngā Paerewa and presents a professional learning opportunity through:
■ Unteach App — made up of eight key modules that sit across the concepts of identifying and confronting racism. ■ A website — kaiako can access the app from the website as well as key resources to use during professional learning. ■ Quarterly newsletters — including guest narrative, tips and updates on when new resources become available. ■ Toolkit — including downloadable posters and social media graphics to support you and your colleagues to Join the
Movement.
Modules currently available There are eight modules currently available, covering identifying and confronting racism. One example is Module 2, which is themed around low self-belief. This module guides kaiako through understanding intrapersonal racism and learner experiences of this. It guides kaiako through an activity ranking learner quotes, such as:
‘I’m really good at maths but my teacher just thinks I’m stupid so never gave me any time ‘cept to get me ‘n trouble.
But if you’re Pākehā it’s all good.’ Leading kaiako to then consider a ‘where to next’ with this understanding of interpersonal racism and low self-belief.
Examples of kaiako practice Here are some examples of practice where kaiako attempt to counter the negative perceptions of learners’ race. Consider these examples and the prompting questions below.
Example one As a junior school we are a culturally diverse team and our students come from all over the world. we had recently been thinking about restocking our reading room and purchasing some new readers. As we were looking through the older ones we realised how mono-cultural many of the texts were. we wondered if our students, who had been taught to read using them had even thought of themselves as being part of the story, part of the world of reading and writing. Our focus shifted from purchasing books simply to fill gaps in the levels to filling minds. we all make more conscious decisions about the texts we read, the stories we share and how we ensure our readers feel they too can be the hero or heroine in their own life story. Our school only has a few pacific Island students but we try to ensure that they are provided with the same opportunities for cultural connections as our bigger neighbours. we took a group of senior boys to Auckland to attend polyfest, the boys noted that many of the schools had formal uniforms specifically for the pacific Island boys. On their return to school, we supported our pacific Island students to make a formal application to the board of trustees to change the uniform code at our school to include a formal lavalava (ie faitanga, sulu, tupenu) this means that when our boys have to represent the school at pacific events they not only demonstrate respect for their school, but also respect to the expectations from their community. Our boys wear their uniform with pride.
Example two
Prompts for considering these examples further:
In what ways are these kaiako supporting, or challenging stereotypes?
In what ways might these environments be reminding learners of positive and/or negative perceptions of their race that exist in society?
where to from here? Every institution, organisation, community, and individual is confronted with racism. It is up to us whether we feed it, or we starve it. It might feel scary or uncomfortable at times, but it is more important than ever to forge ahead. Self-reflection and frank, open conversations grounded in Our Code | Ngā Tikanga Matatika is the first step. Unteach Racism has more to come; for now, here are some suggestions on how you can join the movement:
■ Visit unteachracism.nz/foursteps and start your journey. ■ Sign up to the Unteach Racism Newsletter. We would love to hear how you have used the app or resources personally, or with your colleagues. Please tell us by emailing Letstalk@teachingcouncil.nz
Ka rere manu ki uta, ka rere manu ki tai, ka rere tāwhangawhanga, ka tieke tī, ka tieke tā.
‘The bird takes flight inland, then takes flight to the shore.
A flight that measures and plans from, and to different points.’
AbOUt tHe AUtHOr Rose-Anne London started her early childhood education experience as a part time holiday job in Papaioea. This led to a love of teaching and a career including professional leader roles across services throughout Kāpiti and Whanganui-a-Tara. Currently residing in Whanganui-a-Tara, she is a Senior Advisor in the Teacher Capability and Collaboration team at the Teaching Council | Matatū Aotearoa.
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Investing In Psychological Capital
When professionals use well-being as a reason for not producing high quality work, and when leaders feel guilty asking people to do the jobs for which they are being paid, well-being as a concept is misunderstood and likely being abused.
As an employer you are not responsible for others’ well-being – whether it’s their social, spiritual, economic, intellectual, emotional, psychological, physical, environmental, or societal well-being. In the workplace, occupational well-being (or being well at work) we believe is also primarily the responsibility of the individual - but your people can need a bit of help too.
Investing in your peoples’ Psychological Capital is a well-researched and powerful framework supporting & challenging educators to look after their occupational wellbeing. In New Zealand educational settings, educators whose occupational well-being is healthy have not fallen prey to a range of micro-stressors, which when aggregated, diminish their ability to be well at work considerably.
Micro-stressors include parent-teacher meetings; overseeing teacher-aides & learning assistants; enmeshed relationships with parents & whānau (within which teachers can become personal advisors, emergency responders, confidantes, counsellors, coaches, mentors, nannies & social workers); and new & inexperienced teachers needing support with the mental and emotional sides of teaching, not just narrow support around their teaching & learning.
In school settings some of the highest frequency micro-stressors occur at the adult to adult interface and it’s those professionals who skilfully and confidently manage the adult sides of their roles who fortify their occupational well-being. Everyone benefits because they find more joy in their roles and because they possess higher levels of self-efficacy, hope, resilience & optimism (psychologists refer to these 4 elements as psychological capital), they are psychologically, psychosomatically and emotionally more well at work.
We have programmes specifically designed for educators in mainstream schools, specialist schools and for RTLB.
Online Pedagogical Strengthening Tool
SLEUTH
SLEUTH™ is a developmental tool.
It allows teachers to identify their pedagogical strengths and weaknesses and provides solutions to implement and track progress to improve the identified pedagogical areas.
If you would like to know more about SLEUTH™ please contact either Tony / Andrew or any of the team as they will be more than happy to provide further details..
