Matipo Primary School in West Auckland dealing with misconduct issues, busy restructuring financial systems

Matipo Primary School has spent months restructuring its school systems and culture. Photo / Google

Staff at an Auckland primary school dealing with serious misconduct issues have spent months restructuring its systems, including its banking practices.

Matipo Primary School, in Te Atatu, has had to call in the help of the Ministry of Education and now police, as well as other authorities, to help investigate historical serious misconduct issues.

As a result of those issues, a forensic audit, an IT audit and an asset register reconciliation have all been carried out.

Principal Paul Wright, who started last October, has worked closely with the school's board of trustees and staff members to make several changes.

In his report to the BOT last November, he outlined a number of areas that needed to be improved - and as quickly as possible.

Many of the aspects needing to reviewed included:

Setting up a school filing system, re-establishing board minutes books for the past seven years, moving parents to online banking and online ordering of stationery to minimise cash-handling and establishing a robust cash-banking system.

He also wanted to review the school bank "in the light of unsatisfactory performance", he said.

The Ministry of Education this week said it was made aware of the situation after the school board raised a number of serious misconduct issues.

As a result, the matter was referred to the Education Council as well as police.

Those matters now being investigated did not involve any current staff members.

This week, the Matipo BOT released a statement acknowledging that "no children had been directly affected".