KEY POINTS:
As i write this, the day before pupils return for the start of the school year, I pause to ponder some of the larger issues facing schools. The trigger is a Herald article about John Key - National's new leader and the debate that has built up around
him, the residents of McGehan Close and the local state school.
The surface-level discussion is prompted by Mr Key's statements about an emerging "underclass" in Aotearoa New Zealand. However, deeper issues are at play here.
As a primary school principal, I am constantly reminded of the role of each school and its staff in promoting healthy and safe "everything", including food choices and consumption.
Schools don't deny that they should and do have an educative role to play, but there is an ever increasing "creep" of responsibility being passed on to schools to solve all the ills of society.
There is clear evidence that food consumption is an issue in our country. Some of us have too much, some too little, some of us are eating the wrong kinds of food. Obesity is now our constant companion and the health of the nation as a result is compromised. None of this is new and nor is it the direct responsibility of your local school.
In its educative role, each school plays its part in developing an understanding of healthy and safe lifestyle choices with its pupils. This is an accepted part of our job.
Over time, schools have been instructed more and more to control food choices, monitor children's food consumption at school and, at one stage, the discussion mooted responsibility for tracking the body weight of pupils over time.
Teachers are now beginning to be accused of becoming the "food police". Are we not tackling this issue from the wrong end?
Surely, it is primarily the responsibility of parents to do the day-to-day monitoring of children's diet with back-up from the school rather than the other way around? Schools have become the default option, but is this the best way to effect the necessary change?
Mr Key, in announcing that Wesley Primary School will have a new breakfast programme, seems to have done so without proper consultation with the school.
On the surface, it seems a great gesture and one that the school may seem foolish in turning down. Brokering a deal to supply food is a start, but what about the practical realities? Providing a daily breakfast programme for a school is no easy task.
You need the infrastructure - a space in which to prepare the food; a commercial kitchen is almost a requirement for this. You need crockery, cutlery and glassware plus someone to organise the ordering and storing of food, its daily preparation and the clean-up. Not all schools have this type of facility on their site.
Schools providing breakfast need a space for the children to sit and eat, plus someone to supervise them while they are eating. Once the children are on site, they need to be supervised until the school day starts.
This is a critical time of the day for teachers who will be engaged in setting up the teaching and learning programmes for their class. These things need to be worked on before a commitment is made to any programme.
Parent volunteers are a wonderful asset in our school system, but you can't just assume their availability all the time. So the job of at least overseeing the programme will potentially need to be allocated to a paid staff member.
Some schools and their school communities already have great breakfast schemes. They usually grow out of the home/school partnership to meet the needs of the school and its community. They have a strong community commitment to making them run effectively.
Without this commitment, they become the work of teachers and principals. This then starts to create difficulties within the school as food programmes are not the core work of either.
Did Mr Key just have a "great idea" and drop it on to the school or did he scope out what they would need to make it successful in financial, human and property resources and how this could be successfully achieved without pulling teachers away from their core work - teaching kids?
Were the school community members asked for their opinion, or was it just assumed that they would want it and it would be good for them?
Mr Key described this initiative as the first in what would become a National Food in Schools Programme. I think there is a much larger debate to be had before this goes any further.
We all agree that children need a good diet to sustain learning but is what is being promoted here a "quick fix"?
Is it something that will promote and create the context for family responsibility in meeting the needs of this generation of children?
Will it merely create an easy "out" for parents who are busy or, worse still, continue a sense of dependency on "the system" to parent their children?
The issues around food are just the tip of the iceberg. They illustrate a much larger problem.
Schools have now become the battleground where society wages war over the rights and responsibilities of individuals, what the "state" should provide and how this will be achieved.
I don't believe we have had any real debate about where the responsibility for this all lies. When did parents pass the responsibility for parenting their children to the education system? Is it appropriate or desirable for schools to take this on?
What of parents and their responsibility to care for the basic needs of their children? What is education and when does the educative process cross over to become intrusive?
Where should the line be drawn between what the school provides and what parents are responsible for? What safety nets need to be in place for those who are neither able nor willing to provide for their families?
As well as looking at the responsibility of schools, we need to look at why some parents seem to be opting out of providing the basic necessities for their family.
Imagine how great it would be if Mr Key brokered a deal with employers of workers with children of school age to allow them to start work after they had dropped their children off at school.
This could be followed by an opportunity for parents to have time out to attend school activities during the day or the ability to stay home with them when they are sick instead of sending them to school.
Are parents really opting out, or are they forced out of participating in their children's lives by inflexible working conditions or low wages?
If the school sector is destined to take over some of these parental responsibilities, we will need to be sure that provision will be made to resource schools so that the "extra" roles do not compromise the teaching and learning.
Mr Key's announcement of a National Food in Schools Programme is part of a much bigger debate but is a good place to start the conversation. It seems to me we should be having this discussion without delay.
* Frances Nelson is principal of Fairburn School in Otahuhu.
