Review Summary: Employer Responsibility

In term two this topic was reviewed by school boards and staff. Generally, the ratings were very high for both content and implementation, with most review comments very positive. There were two recurring themes, however…

1. EEO. It’s true, schools are no longer required to publish an EEO programme each year. We have changed the topic to say this.
    
2. Many reviewers were unhappy with the wording, ”recognises the needs of ethnic and minority groups, and the requirements of women and persons with disabilities”, objecting to the “lumping in of women with minority groups and the disabled”, and wondering what women’s special employment requirements are. We decided to remove the entire bulletpoint from the topic, and put it in the draft EEO topic with wording that better reflects the spirit of the EEO policy (recognises the value of diversity in staffing (for example, ethnicity, age, gender, disability, hours of work, etc) and the employment requirements of diverse individuals/groups).

In the EEO topic is a link to the Ministry of Education’s EEO Planning Resource which (among other things) talks about the value of diversity in a school’s staff. Just to summarise, very roughly, some of the benefits of diversity are that with a bigger range of people there’s a bigger opportunity to find someone you can relate to; a greater selection of role models, the opportunity to learn new things, and new ways of doing things, and great value in learning to work with, and deal with, people whose needs might be different from our own.
Some reviewers mentioned specific concerns and, as usual, we urge schools to check their implementation feedback and address any issues raised there by members of their school community.