There was time for a cheerful meet and greet - and to ask some hard questions.
Principal John McKenzie said Mr Carter was invited to meet the school's senior management team late last year, when they began implementing the recently-released, revised New Zealand curriculum.
School staff had been engaged in a pilot scheme, trialling aspects of the revised curriculum for the past two years.
During discussions yesterday, the staff sought clarification from the minister on how the Government would ‘‘find the mid-point'' between allowing individual schools the opportunity to self-manage and the Crown ensuring the school was delivering the curriculum in a balanced way.
‘‘We wanted to hear which checks and balances will be applied to a process into which schools, the community, and the board of trustees will have more input into curricular design.
‘‘The worst scenario would be if the agendas of the community found their way into the curricula, if the community was racist, or ultra religious . . . we have some very old traditions of secular education which should be upheld and protected. We are looking for guidance, and saying: ‘Who will help the schools get it right?'.''
While the notion of self-managing schools sounded fine, the Government continued to impose rules on the way schools were run at local level and recently, for example, issued guidelines about what sort of foods should be sold in school canteens, he said.
Staff also questioned the emphasis on conceptual values, such as ‘‘entrepreneurship'', promoted in the new curriculum, when others, such as courtesy, and treating others well, were not specified, he said.
Staff were to talk about resourcing schools to better work with families who did not engage with the school. The school instead asked specific questions about practical issues, such as the funding for swimming lessons.
‘‘The school just can't afford lessons for all pupils, and we take our responsibilities to teach kids to swim very seriously,'' he said.
Mr Carter said he had been in discussion with water safety organisations about extending existing programmes and trialling new initiatives to make training more accessible to pupils.
Mr McKenzie said the school would pursue those issues with the minister.
