Photo: engin akyurt
Rural schools say they're disproportionately affected by new water rules which take a huge amount of time and money to comply with.
The new drinking water standards were set by the Minister of Local Government in 2022.
Schools who supply their own water were required to submit Drinking Water Safety Plans to water regulator, Taumata Arowai by November 15th 2022.
However, of the 424 schools with their own water supply, only 142 have completed the plan according to the Ministry of Education.
New Zealand Rural School Association president Andrew King said rural schools did not have a problem with complying with the new standard but he said the amount of paperwork required was overwhelming.
"It's a 30 page document we need to fill out to give assurances that we understand our water services system and it's all up to standard.
"The problem is principals and board of trustees don't have the expertise to fill it out and so we need to look at employing someone to complete it for us which costs a few thousand dollars."
King said with most rural schools having their own water supply the new requirement fuelled inequities around resourcing.
"It's an additional cost both in time and money for rural schools to fill out this document. There' so much going on at the moment with a new curriculum that this is tipping some principals over the edge.
"Many principals in rural schools also work as a teacher so they don't have time to get this done."
King said the Rural School Association has raised concerns with the Ministry of Education.
"There needs to be a centralised response, whether that's someone from the ministry filling these out for schools because then they would have a database or another option is for the ministry to increase the heat, light and water operations grant for rural schools so we can pay an expert to do the form.
"The ministry is caught in the system as well and they don't have enough resources either."
Ministry spokesperson Sam Fowler said it was exploring how funding could be best used to support schools in completing their Drinking Water Safety Plans.