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Summarised by Centrist
Christchurch’s Haeata Community Campus was one of 21 schools questioned in the Office of the Auditor-General’s 2024 report on school finances about how principals used a $6,000-a-year professional development allowance.
The school funded an $18,500 trip to Queenstown for principal Dr Peggy Burrows and five senior staff, characterising it as board-approved professional learning and leadership development aligned with national guidelines.
Burrows said no public funds were used for a holiday and that the timing coincided with her attendance at a conference.
The Auditor-General did not question the legality of the spending but noted a wider pattern of schools incorporating personal or non-essential travel into professional trips without clear documentation.
Other schools flagged included Glenview School ($29,458 for trips to Canada, Vietnam and Samoa) and Fairfield College ($17,155 for travel to Alaska, Canada, Hawai‘i and New York). In Napier, the former principal of Maraenui Bilingual School used more than $16,000 on travel to a tangi and a family trip to Rarotonga.
The report also found 27 schools required Ministry guarantees to remain solvent, up from six the previous year, and 64 schools had issues raised in their audit reports.
Haeata remains in the spotlight for a separate incident. New Zealand Food Safety concluded that the mouldy lunches served to Haeata students last week were most likely because school staff “accidentally mixed in” older meals with current meals and distributed them to students.
Associate Education Minister David Seymour said Burrows’ decision to go public before the investigation had concluded contributed to “a week of drama” that could have been avoided.
Haeata’s internal investigation has been completed and is now with the board and the school’s lawyers.
Read more over at The NZ Herald and YouTube
