Education boards had to go—Lange

Press, 29 July 1989, Page 4

Education boards had to go —Lange

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

It had been sad but necessary to abolish education boards, the Minister of Education, Mr Lange, told the boad’s association’s final conference in Dunedin yesterday. The Picot recommendation to abolish the boards had been hard but positive,” he said. He thanked the board pesonnel and their predecessors. for all they had done for education. Implementaton of the reforms was “on track,” he said. There had been a few teething troubles, and no doubt there would be more. What the critics had overlooked was that the reform had kept to its time frame, and in’ most cases had proceeded smoothly. Mr Lange said the necessary stage-by-stage process by which decisions had been made had been difficult for many people in the system. “Now we are two months away from full implementation,” he said, “and one of the priorities left is the education boards.” The State Services Commission had now settled the redundancy agreements covering Education Department and most education board staff. These agreements allowed for people to be treated in a similar manner. Discussion was still going on over the administrative pocedures, but agreement was close. Mr Lange said that when all positions had been filled, staff would be notified of their appointment to a new position or whether they were surplus. Agreement had been reached with the P.S.A. that this notification was to occur on August 18. That date could be changed only with the consent of the P.S.A. “Some people have expressed their concern over the validity of the process for appointing staff to the new organisations,” he said. “There is provision for reviews of decisions over disappointed applicants.