Just a reminder to be vigilant in the face of an increased risk of measles around the motu. Keep registers up to date and remember the best protection against measles is two doses of the MMR vaccine. 

Check your immunisation register:

Measles information – Ministry of Education

Find out if you need a measles vaccination – Te Whatu Ora

Te Whatu Ora has more information on measles on its website:

Measles – Te Whatu Ora

The Education Review Office (ERO) will shortly be seeking your feedback on their review of the attendance supports and interventions for students who are persistently absent. The ERO research aims to understand what attendance practices, supports and interventions are working effectively, and how these can reduce persistent absences at school. Your feedback will help inform a final report which is planned to be released later this year. 

The survey is open until the end of the term (Friday 5 July). Keep an eye on your inbox over the next two weeks for an invitation to complete the survey. 

We are confirming the short-term relief teachers two-hour minimum entitlement remediation payment for current employees will be made on 25 June. 

The brief pause to remediation enabled us to undertake further work on the data, and this is now complete.

No action is needed from current employees who are due a short-term relief teachers two-hour minimum entitlement payment. More information is available on our website: 

Two-hour minimum entitlement for short-term relief teachers – Ministry of Education

For those who may receive queries about the payment or who have queries, the best way to get in touch is to contact us at remediation.query@education.govt.nz or on 0800 439 333 (8am–5pm, Monday to Friday).   

Following feedback from schools, we have amended the new casual use lease agreement. The major change is that public liability insurance for the third party has been changed to ‘recommended’ rather than ‘required’.

From time to time, we will make improvements to the standard casual use lease agreement. We recommend that you download the document from our web page every time you use it, to ensure that you are using the latest version.

Lease agreements and application process – Ministry of Education

Casual Use Lease Agreement and Third-Party Occupancy – School Bulletin 20 February

The Building Warrant of Fitness (BWOF) busy period is May to July. An overdue BWOF indicates that a safety system at the school is not currently working.

We strongly recommend that schools use the free Work Requirement Notice (WRN) Assistance Programme, in which Argest will project manage the school’s WRN remediation projects. You can contact Argest at teamMOE@argest.com to opt in, or read more about this free service here: 

Schools - Argest NZ 

Some issues take a long time to fix so it's important for you to get onto resolving the issue as soon as it comes up. During this busy time, it can also be hard to get availability with installers and IQPs for reinspection at short notice.

A new category of BWOF has been created by MBIE. It is called a BWOF Report and Declaration (B-RaD). This will be issued when all building safety systems are working, but there is a documentation issue that means a BWOF cannot be issued. Your school will not be fined for having a B-RaD however repeat B-RaDs for the same failures will indicate a systemic safety issue at your school. You can read more about B-RaDs here: 

Inspections and maintenance – Building Performance

Read more on our website: 

Building warrants of fitness for school facilities – Ministry of Education

The Teacher Aide PLD Fund opened to applications in April 2023, and there remains limited funding for teacher aides.

If your teacher aides wish to access funded PLD under this initiative, we encourage applications to be made as soon as possible. It is anticipated that the funding will be fully allocated before 28 June.

This is an opportunity for your teacher aides to access up to $1,000 of funding towards the cost of PLD and associated time and travel/accommodation to participate. 

Information about the funding and how teacher aides can apply be found on the PLD website here: 

Teacher aide PLD fund 2023–2024 – Ministry of Education

Teacher Aide PLD funding is available for access until expiry of the current Support Staff in Schools’ Collective Agreement on 19 December or until the funding is fully allocated – whichever happens first. 

Two webinars on recruiting teachers from overseas will be held this month.

We will run these in partnership with Immigration New Zealand and the Teaching Council on the following dates:

• Tuesday 11 June, 10am–11am
• Wednesday 12 June, 2pm–3pm

Content will include: 

• an overview of the overseas recruitment process 
• key areas to get right for quick processing 
• opportunity to ask questions. 

Each session will run for one hour. Questions can be sent in advance or ask them during the session. We can address common themes during the presentation.   

Contact Laura.Honey@education.govt.nz to request an invite to one or both sessions.  

Webinars will be recorded and available for viewing via our new Education Workforce website: 

Home – Education workforce

Our Tāhūrangi resources are being progressively updated to ensure they support structured teaching approaches. 

To see the structured literacy resources available, New Zealand Curriculum users can visit Tāhūrangi and put ‘Ready to Read Phonics Plus’ in the search field. Te Marautanga o Aotearoa users can visit this page and enter ‘Ngā Kete Kōrero’:

New Zealand Curriculum – Tāhurangi

Whata Whātoro – Kauwhata Reo

You can access advanced features, like building and sharing personalised collections, by logging into Tāhūrangi with your Education Sector Logon (ESL). 

More than 5,000 teaching resources and curriculum content items have now been moved to our online curriculum hub Tāhūrangi. This work will continue throughout the year. As quality content is moved from a site, it will no longer be available to the public. 

Find out which websites are closing before 30 June on Tāhūrangi: 

Moving content to Tāhūrangi – Tāhūrangi

Netsafe’s animated Hector’s World series, relaunched on 1 May, helps tamariki understand issues such as cyberbullying, digital footprints, mis/disinformation and privacy. Each episode is supported by resources targeted for year groups 0–3 and 4–6. It aligns with curriculum and learning outcomes across health, physical education and technology.

Episodes can be viewed on Hector’s World website and resources are available on Netsafe’s online kete: 

Home – Hector’s World

Online safety tools and resources for schools and kura – Netsafe

For more details check out the write-up in Education Gazette: 

A new generation of digital citizens dive into Hector’s World – Education Gazette 24 April

South Island schools with biomass boilers now have the option of buying fuel through a contract we have in place with Azwood. The contract offers advantageous pricing, terms and conditions. The opportunity is available to all schools listed in the Education Counts directory. 

Read more on our website:

Buying wood pellet fuel – Ministry of Education