Scheduled reviews

Concerns and Complaints

• This has been renamed from Complaints and we refer to "concerns" instead of "informal complaints".
• Added the following sentences:
  • "We will be able to manage your concerns and complaints more effectively if you raise them with us promptly."
  • "Complaints about events that occurred more than three months earlier, do not involve you or your children, or which have been made anonymously, will not usually be formally investigated."
  • Added a bullet point about treating people fairly, transparently, and with dignity and respect.
  • Various other changes to wording and formatting.

Guidelines for Raising Concerns

• Renamed from Guidelines for Informal Complaints.
• Added a flowchart overview of the Concerns and Complaints process.
• Streamlined the bullet points to make it clearer who to contact for specific complaints.
• Made some other wording changes for clarity.

Formal Complaints

• Added: Formal complaints may be about an employee at the school, a parent or caregiver, a student, or any matter within the school's responsibility.
• Changed: In the interests of fairness, any formal complaint or serious allegation must be made in writing and resolved as quickly as possible given the details and steps that need to be considered.
• Changed: All parties should respect confidentiality, including avoiding the use of social media to promote a point of view.
• We've removed the Responsibility/Action table and replaced this with two new sections To make a complaint and When your complaint is received. The rest of the topic has been extensively rewritten.

Investigate a Formal Complaint or Serious Allegation

• This topic has been extensively rewritten.
• Added a statement about the Employment Relations Act including a drop down link with an explanation about settlement agreements.
• Added to the green note that board members with a potential conflict of interest will not take part in the investigation.

Student Complaints (composite and secondary)

• Reviewed but no changes made.

Communicating with Parents

• Added a bullet point about contacting parents if the school has concerns about a student's welfare or behaviour.

Learning Support Supervision

• Added "behaviour" to "Students with learning support needs may have particular needs with regards to safety, behaviour, and supervision".
• Added related topics.

Physical Restraint

• Made the information about the Ministry's Guidelines more prominent by shifting it up from the resources section.

Behaviour Management

• Updated to allow schools to provide their own statement about behaviour management at their school.

Behaviour Management – PB4L

• Created an alternative topic for PB4L schools where they can add their own PB4L statement. The topic also links to TKI's PB4L information as a resource.

School Values and Behaviour Expectations

• This is a new version of the School Rules topic. This topic is optional and schools can tailor it to outline their school values, behaviour expectations, school rules, discipline process, and so on. You can rename this topic to reflect your content.

Stand-down, Suspension, and Exclusion

• Added more detail to the procedures, including the categories for stand-down, and expanded the definitions of stand-down, suspension, exclusion, and expulsion.

Bullying

• Added a place for you to include school-specific information about how you manage bullying.

Cyberbullying

• Added Resources for Parents to this topic.

Harassment

• Added that harassment is any behaviour that "would be seen as unacceptable by any reasonable person", and that harassment can affect a person's mental health. We have made it clear that this policy deals with harassment by adults in the workplace, and situations involving students are dealt with in the Bullying policy.

Definitions of Harassment

• Added a note to make it clear that policy users should refer to the Employment Relations Act for the full meaning of certain terms.
• Added examples of harassment and examples of what is not workplace bullying.

Sexual Harassment

• Added "sexual assault or rape" to the examples of sexual harassment, and edited the list slightly.

Racial Harassment

• Broadened the scope of the way racial harassment is described, and added physical assault to the list of examples.

Victimisation

• Added this new topic to raise awareness about the possibility of people being treated less favourably because they've made a complaint about harassment.

Harassment Complaints Procedure

• Added a section about Informal interventions, which offers a softer approach before using the formal complaints process.

Personal Grievance

• Added the Employment Relations Act wording that states the timing of raising a personal grievance (see the dropdown).

Improving Educational Outcomes for Māori Students

• Added a sentence about schools helping "Māori students gain the skills, qualifications, and knowledge they need to achieve and enjoy educational success, as Māori."
• Put Te Tiriti o Waitangi before Treaty of Waitangi and removed the dates for Ka Hikitia – Accelerating Success because it is current until a new strategy is released.
• Added bullet points about the school, where possible, working with local iwi and marae, collaborating with whānau, and including aspects of Māori language and culture into the daily life of the school.

Religious Instruction

• Added "or at any time afterwards" to the sentence about parental approval.
• Added bullet point about police vetting volunteers.
• Made some other wording changes for clarity.

Catholic Schools Religious Education

• Added "sensitive to all cultures" and removed the wording about parent booklet.
• Added the New Zealand Diploma in Christian Studies (Level 6) – Religious Education" and bullet point "Induction and support is provided to new staff".
• Changed bullet points about parent input and religious education reporting.

Internal reviews and new content

Defamation

• This topic was reviewed as part of the Harassment review and no changes were made.

Student Safety and Welfare

• We added Supporting Student Well-being to this topic and made some style improvements.

Implementation Audits and Reports

• Added a sentence to School Planning and Reporting about the requirement to publish the Annual Report online.

Travel Expenditure

• We updated content about Crown funding of overseas travel to match a Ministry update.

Provisionally Certificated Teachers

• Changed Education Council to Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand.
• Reformatted and added a link to information for overseas teachers.

Teacher Registration, Certification, and Police Vetting

• Updated terminology and changed Education Council to Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand.
• Renamed the topic from Teacher Certification and Police Vetting.

Identify Learning Difficulties

• Changed terminology: specific learning disorders became specific learning needs; developmental disorders became developmental needs, and a medical disorder became a medical condition.

Managing Serious Injury

• Added a section about transporting ill or injured students, and a new St John resource.

School Bus Transport

• New topic that reflects the funding models available to schools for their bus transport.

Eligibility for School Bus Transport

• Added more detail on eligibility including the three criteria and that courtesy transport must not disadvantage any eligible student.

Bus Incidents

• New topic that outlines the steps schools take in managing and reporting bus incidents. It also contains a link to the Bus Code of Conduct.

Monitoring and Auditing School Bus – Contractors

• New topic for schools that contract their bus service and includes a link to audit statements.

Monitoring and Auditing School Bus – School Run Service

• New topic for schools that run their own bus service and includes a link to audit statements.

Staff Leave

• We've updated this topic as a result of the Domestic Violence–Victims' Protection Act 2018.
• Added an Employment New Zealand resource about leave and holidays.

Sexual Behaviour in Children

• We updated the name of the secondary version of this topic to "Sexual Behaviour in Students".

Student Teachers

• Added "Pre-Service Teachers" to the title of the topic.