Brother Sir Patrick Lynch, Chief Executive of the New Zealand Catholic Education Office, will step down from his role later in the year, at a time to be determined, announced Geoffrey Ricketts, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the New Zealand Catholic Education Office, last week. “Applications to replace Brother Patrick will now Read more
The Archbishop of Wellington, John Dew, has responded to yet another wave of the media’s perennial fascination with exorcists and exorcism by saying Wellington does not have an appointed exorcist, and as far as he knew, the Wellington Catholic Archdiocese had never needed one. Exorcisms in New Zealand are rare, but they do happen – and Read more
The Catholic Education Office head Pat Lynch says some protocols will be drafted to ensure parishes inform schools if one of its volunteers or members has been convicted of paedophilia. He was responding to concern that pupils from an Upper Hutt Catholic primary school went to a prayer group that included a convicted paedophile St Read more
In Whangarei, New Zealand, a teacher at Pompallier College, Nigel Studdart, has been dismissed. He had been suspended on full pay in August after he had supported a protest by students against the principal, Richard Stanton, who had expressed opposition to gay marriage and expressed concerns about gay parenting in the school newsletter. The Board of Trustees issued Read more
“Maybe they’re putting brain juice in the communion wine. Whatever it is, our results suggest that if New Zealand is going to get serious about the ‘long tail of failure’ in schools, we need to look closely at why Catholic schools are doing so well,” says the editor of Auckland’s Metro Magazine, Simon Wilson. Catholic schools Read more
Media reports about the explicit nature of some school sex education programmes have drawn numerous responses and a diversity of opinions, many of them expressed with considerable intensity. The CEO of the The New Zealand Catholic Education Office, Br Pat Lynch, says they are dismayed that some teachers of the national curriculum sex education have taken an extreme approach Read more
More money and pupils are going to integrated schools. Education Ministry figures show operational funding for integrated schools rose 75 per cent in the past decade and funding for state schools increased by 57 per cent. The rising amount of money for integrated schools has been driven by an increase in pupils going to the schools. Under Read more
After several reports of school bullying hit the media last week, all school boards of trustees are to be told to review their anti-bullying policies. Br Patrick Lynch, the CEO of the New Zealand Catholic Education Office thinks that “bullying behaviours in schools are always unacceptable given the law and more importantly the emphasis modern Read more