Putting Cabinet secrecy over open consultation with Christchurch schools was an error by the Ministry of Education, Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier says.

Photo: RNZ

The ministry apologised yesterday over its handling of the reorganisation of Christchurch schools following the 2011 earthquake after Mr Boshier published his investigation into the matter.

Mr Boshier recommended the apology in his critical report, tabled in Parliament yesterday afternoon.

Read the Ombudsman's report in full (PDF, 4MB)

Mr Boshier said the ministry had been consulting with schools about their future, but failed to inform them about plans it was developing with the Education Minister and Cabinet.

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He said it made the mistake of believing its work with the government needed to be kept secret from the schools.

The apology would help heal the wounds of people gobsmacked by the ministry's plan to close their schools, he said, but he was not entirely happy.

"I'm disappointed that the ministry hasn't been more forthcoming though in acknowledging that its process was flawed. I think that would have given a little bit more veracity to the apology," Mr Boshier said.

"They confused the need to retain reasonable confidence with Cabinet and the minister with being less than forthcoming to the very communities they should have been engaging with and telling them more than they did. They were just too scarce with the truth."

Mr Boshier said the ministry should have been as transparent and open as possible.

"They felt that there was a degree of secrecy within which they had to operate. I don't subscribe to that. I think the proper democratic principles - consulting those that need to be consulted, being as transparent and open with the community as you can - should have applied. I think they got their priorities wrong."

Mike Allen, former principal of Aranui School, which was one of four that closed and merged into one, said the ministry's apology was not enough.

"I've still got staff who are unemployed as a result of that closure and that's pretty cruel - they are good people. Out of the four principals, only one of us has a job. The rest of us are currently looking at other options.

"So I think an apology is probably not enough, but you can complain about the past forever, you just need to get on and live."

Ministry responds

As well as the apology statement issued yesterday, Secretary for Education Iona Holsted said a formal apology would be published in Christchurch's The Press on Saturday.

Ms Holsted said she was being very careful about which parts of the process were flawed. Local schools knew mergers and closures were possible, she said, but not which schools might be affected.

"All that the ministry did was put up some possible configurations which were then the subject of the consultation. The consultation process actually resulted in a 30 percent change in those proposals. It doesn't feel like this to the people of Christchurch I know, but the system worked," she said.

"The process leading up to the statutory consultation was flawed, in that we did not communicate satisfactorily."

She said the ministry had been observing Budget secrecy, as was normal, while it developed a business case for the reorganisation of Christchurch schools.

"The failure was that we did not make it explicit to the people of Christchurch that we were having to do that as part of an ordinary government process," she said.

"Once the statutory consultation started, the ministry, slowly, but did did pick up its role really to a different level."