Media enquiries – Information for schools

Learn how the Ministry manages media enquiries and find advice on responding to approaches made to schools.

Level of compliance Main audience Other

Inform

  • Boards
  • Principals and tumuaki
  • Teachers and kaiako
  • Parents, caregivers and whānau

Approaches from the media can be daunting, especially if you do not deal with them very often.

This guidance supports schools to deal with contact from the media.

Advice for dealing with an approach

You can find advice on dealing with media enquiries here, as well as some additional information about social media.

You can always contact your regional education office in the first instance for support and advice. For example, they may be able to provide advice on independent consultants who will work with schools to help manage media queries.

The New Zealand School Trustees Association (NZSTA) also provides governance support resources for boards, such as this Responding to OIA requests resource.

Responding to OIA requests course(external link)

When the Ministry receives a query

If we get a media query about your school, we will make our best efforts, within the time constraints, to let you know about it and how we're responding to it.

Most media request a same day response and some within just a few hours and we work hard to meet those deadlines. You can expect us to make accurate and considered responses to media queries, within those timeframes. That is our expectation of ourselves and we work hard to deliver on it.

We’re sometimes asked for general information about an issue that isn’t about a specific school/s, but later develops into a story about a particular school/s. Alternatively, we might be asked under the Official Information Act for information about large numbers of schools.

In these cases, we will notify you for any reason(s) to believe your school will be specifically or particularly impacted.

We work to support schools, their children and young people and their parents and communities.

As government entities we’re all accountable to the public and the media is a key information channel. The more responsive we all are, the better our chance of increasing public understanding of, and confidence in, the education system – and the work you do.

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