How to provide copies of documents to the Ministry

How to provide copies of documents to the ministry

If you need any help with any part of the planning and reporting process, contact your local ministry office. The FAQs on www.minedu.govt.nz/goto/spr describe aspects of planning and reporting including the ministry's role. The FAQs provide very useful assistance.

The ministry prefers to receive documents electronically, however a hardcopy can be posted to your local ministry office.

When creating your Charter or Annual Report to send to the ministry, it is important that you consider its need to be sent electronically. If the document file is very large, it will be difficult for you to send, especially if you are using a dial-up connection.

Things to consider are:

• Photos and graphics such as logos increase the size of the file. Minimise the size of the file by using "jpegs" or similar compressed file types for graphics, and/or lower the resolution of graphics and photos before inserting them, and/or remove optional graphics from the document.
• If you create the Charter in separate files (for example separate mission, strategic section, and annual plan) you should combine these into one file before sending. This means the document is stored on your computer system, ready to go should you wish to load it on your website, or provide it to a member of your community. Also the ministry would like to read the charter in the order that you intend it to be read, so you should attach just the one document to the email described below. (We acknowledge some schools have reason to send more than one document, e.g. a Word document and an excel file).
• The ministry operates in a Microsoft environment. If you are using appleworks, please save files as MsWord, or rich text format (rtf) using the save as function. (The ministry can easily read other Microsoft formats like publisher or excel).

The Schools Planning and Reporting document portal is the easiest way to send your documents to the ministry. The Document Portal is a website in the e-admin section of www.leadspace.govt.nz. In addition to the planning and reporting document portal, the e-admin section also contains SchoolSMART, and some property information. SchoolSMART will assist you with your planning. It provides some indicators of school performance for your school compared to other schools (for example roll changes, staffing turnover, NCEA results).

To access the e-admin area of Leadspace, you need a Secure Internet Authorisation (or SIA). This is the same login you perform to access SchoolSMART and other e-admin applications. Contact planning.reporting@minedu.govt.nz for login assistance. After logging in to the Document Portal, you simply attach the file(s) you want to send - by logging in the school's details are automatically provided with the file(s) you send.

There is on-line support in the Document Portal should you require assistance with this process. If you need to, contact planning.reporting@minedu.govt.nz for further advice.

An automatic reply will be sent to you to confirm that the ministry has received your document. A formal acknowledgement letter is sent to the board and principal after the charter has been read.