A February 18 Education Review Office (Ero) report exposed tensions between senior management - including principal Lyn Cooper - and teachers, citing "communication, consultation and change management ... negatively impacting on aspects of the school's operation".
Written by Ero southern region review services national manager Graham Randell, the report criticises the decile 10 school's principal and her senior management for being ineffective in "implementing recent major initiatives that have come about in the response to the school's revised curriculum".
Mr Randell's report said pupils had benefited from the new curriculum but "implementation of the initiatives has resulted in unnecessary anxiety and stress for teachers".
School board trustee Greg Turner said the board had previously identified the communication breakdown in last year's strategy plan after the implementation of the curriculum at the start of the 2010 academic year.
"With the benefit of hindsight, it probably wasn't a very smooth transition - communication and consultation with staff was clearly inadequate," he said.
Communication between teachers and senior management had become "out of kilter" and the school was working with Ministry of Education to ensure an internal audit into the restructuring would "throw up the right outcomes".
Teachers, pupils and parents should be heartened by aspects of the report which praised the teaching and pastoral care.
"The issues are to do with structures and processes rather than teaching and care. This is fixable."
Much of the tension arose from funding anxiety.
The ministry decile point system "essentially" ranked schools on property values in the surrounding school district, Mr Turner said.
Although median house prices in the Central Otago Lakes rank second only to Auckland, Wakatipu High School families - including seasonal and migrant workers - were not always typical, higher socio-economic decile 10 residents.
"The reality is that a significant proportion of our student base is not from a typical decile 10 standing. Most constituent families are not in a position to pay significant fees and make large donations."
Other similar decile 10 schools could muster private funds of $500,000 to $1 million annually.
"We're lucky if we can raise $100,000," Mr Turner said.
"Senior management have to be quite frugal - inevitably that creates some stresses and tensions. We need to close that funding gap if we're going to reduce these stresses.
"We need to have a conversation with the community," Mr Turner said.
A draft discussion document released by the board identified "clear warnings over the sustainability of our current solid performances".
The document read: "If the school is to continue its rise in educational standards, there is plenty of work to be done.
Put simply, significantly improved performance in the areas of governance and management is required and some structures and protocols must be adjusted to correct historical weaknesses."
Wakatipu High School
• Year 9-13 school
• 786 pupils
• 51% boys, 49% girls
• 38 international pupils
• Pupils New Zealand European/Pakeha (62%), Asian (12%), Maori (9%), European (8%), Latin American (5%), Australian (4.5%), other (0.5%)
-source: Ero
