{"id":12694,"date":"2025-02-17T06:07:32","date_gmt":"2025-02-16T17:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=12694"},"modified":"2025-02-17T06:07:32","modified_gmt":"2025-02-16T17:07:32","slug":"teacher-only-days-continue-after-seymour-oversteps-education-minister-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=12694","title":{"rendered":"Teacher-only days continue after Seymour oversteps, Education Minister says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Education Minister Erica Stanford says David Seymour overstepped the mark when he\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/529079\/crackdown-on-teacher-only-days-parents-face-prosecutions-in-truancy-push\">announced a crack-down on teacher-only days<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In September Seymour, who is the associate education minister, said as part of wider plans to increase attendance rates, teachers should not be able to take teacher-only days willy-nilly.<\/p>\n<p>On\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.1news.co.nz\/2025\/02\/16\/minister-quizzed-on-decision-for-nz-born-teen-facing-deportation\/\">TVNZ&#8217;s Q and A programme on Sunday<\/a>, Stanford said it\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/529198\/teacher-only-days-have-no-impact-on-term-time-teachers\">wasn&#8217;t Seymour&#8217;s place to say<\/a>\u00a0that.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think he knew at the time that he was over-stepping the mark somewhat because it is my decision, I&#8217;m the Minister of Education.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And when we are rolling out a new curriculum, we have to have curriculum days and I am not in a position &#8211; because of the way that the system works with the unions &#8211; to say you must do it in holiday.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Stanford told\u00a0<i>Q+A\u00a0<\/i>there would be four teacher-only days during term time.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There are teacher-only days during term time. In fact, I&#8217;ve given, for this year two that I&#8217;ve said to schools that I am allowing you to have, and then another two that the boards can use to roll that up.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The settings are such that we have to have them during term time. We&#8217;re trying to keep them to an absolute minimum. But my message to parents is that during those times, those teachers are looking at the new curriculum,&#8221; she told the programme.<\/p>\n<div class=\"photo-captioned photo-captioned-half photo-right four_col \"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.rnztools.nz\/rnz\/image\/upload\/s--JoRizKg9--\/ar_16:10,c_fill,f_auto,g_auto,q_auto,w_576\/v1715129905\/4KQI26H_MicrosoftTeams_image_png?_a=BACCd2AD\" alt=\"Associate Education Minister David Seymour speaks to media following a free school lunch announcement on 8 May 2024.\" width=\"576\" height=\"383\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\"><span class=\"caption\">In a statement last year Seymour said it was critical schools set a good example.\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Photo:\u00a0RNZ \/ Samuel Rillstone<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>In a statement last year Seymour said it was critical schools set a good example.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s hard to tell students it&#8217;s important to show up if the school then decides to close itself on days it should be open, that&#8217;s why we&#8217;re enforcing the rules &#8230; it&#8217;s actually always been the rule, we&#8217;re just enforcing it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I have asked the ministry to collect data on when a school is open or closed for instruction for the full day, and for each year group, during term time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He said it was critical lost teaching time was made up.<\/p>\n<p>Standford said Seymour had not talked to her before issuing the statement about cutting back on teacher-only days.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think at the time he did [run it past me], but we had a conversation afterwards and it&#8217;s been sorted.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She said she had since spoken to him about his statement and teacher-only days would continue during term-time.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Education Minister Erica Stanford says David Seymour overstepped the mark when he\u00a0announced a crack-down on teacher-only days. In September Seymour, who is the associate education minister, said as part of wider plans to increase attendance rates, teachers should not be able to take teacher-only days willy-nilly. On\u00a0TVNZ&#8217;s Q and A programme on Sunday, Stanford said [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12694"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12696,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12694\/revisions\/12696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}