Fired principal remains unbowed

ON THE MOVE: Sacked Dalefield School principal Kevin Jephson and his wife Barbara are preparing to sell their "dream family home" after his dismissal.

Carterton teacher Kevin Jephson says he and his wife have to sell their home after he was sacked as Dalefield School principal.

The vocal opponent of National Standards has headed the school since 1993 but was fired on December 22 for incompetency as a principal and as a teacher, he said.

He and wife Barbara, also a teacher, were today preparing to sell their two-storey house and .5ha section, which they bought 18 years ago as a "dream family home".

"I paid off all our mortgages last year and a month later I was fired. We were meant to be staying here much longer and maybe selling in the long-term. Now we have to think of survival and I'm trying to get our house sold, so we don't get into debt."

Mr Jephson was dismissed a week after school broke up, he said, and almost two years after the dissolution of the Dalefield School board of trustees and the appointment of commissioner Tim White "because of the risk of the educational performance of its students and the operation of the school".

An ERO report months earlier recommended ministry intervention after board "incompetence" was discovered and the school was deemed as "not well placed to improve its performance".

"I think the bureaucracy was out to get me. Two years ago they treated our board of trustees like dogs and they sacked me just because I wouldn't quit."

Mr Jephson has had a career in education spanning four decades in Auckland and Wairarapa. When he took the helm at Dalefield School, he was the fourth principal in three years, he said, and had come to the job after working as Castlepoint School principal and deputy principal at Carterton School.

"I'm retirement age but I have no plans to retire. I didn't want to stop being principal, and I don't want to stop teaching."

In 1996 he published Writing English textbooks that were widely used in classrooms throughout New Zealand, he said. He had since penned several other new and expanded volumes.

He intends to renew his registration as a teacher, which lapses in about five months, and was hoping "a brave principal will take me on for some relieving work or I'll go out on the road again and run courses, and keep a few books in motion to help schools and keep me in pocket".

Mrs Jephson had worked as a relieving teacher in the region for the past 20 years. Until last year, she was a relieving teacher at Dalefield School, where two of the couple's grandchildren were still enrolled after an older grandchild started college.

She had a heart attack in 2007 and an aortic aneurism that same year before a stroke in 2012, she said. Her registration as a teacher lapses in March.

"Over the past two years at Dalefield there was constant pressure for me to prove I was a worthwhile teacher. I think that really aggravated my health. I won't renew my registration."

Katrina Casey, Ministry of Education head of sector enablement and support, said Denise Hancox had been appointed acting principal.

She refused to comment on Mr Jephson's dismissal, and said there were "no concerns about the welfare of students". The decile 5 school had a roll of 55 pupils and three full-time teachers, she said.