Lorraine Kerr is the President of the NZSTA (New Zealand School Trustees Association). NZSTA is an organisation that supports School Boards of Trustees. Kerr is a woman who supports the National Party. She has used the Association to pen several articles in support of National Standards which are sent to all members of the NZSTA.
On Thursday she attended a ‘consultation meeting’ with board members in Whangarei around the Standards. The meeting had caused a minor furore when initially invites were for board chairpersons only – meaning that principals were excluded from the meeting. This was explained as an administrative error but was widely interpreted to be her way of ensuring that only one view of the standards was put to the meeting.
At the meeting in answer to a question from the floor she advised that NZSTA’s mandate to support the standards was gained from a survey held in December which showed that Boards supported the introduction of National Standards.
The next questioner asked how many replies were received to this survey. At first she was reluctant to say but in the end advised that there were 18 received NATIONWIDE. 14 for and 4 against.
Given the timing of the survey and that around this time most of NZ was unaware of what the standards were about it seems a stretch to think that this provided any level of support from school boards and rather that Kerr was using schools’ subscription money to promote an unpopular and ill conceived policy. If she was in government she would be asked to resign – what about it Lorraine?
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