Meh.
BLAH BLAH BLAH…
Government Investing In 1000 More Teachers And Student Learning Affected By COVID-19 – NZ Government
…the exact same dynamics destroying Nursing are destroying teaching!
The user pays mantra that sees domestic Kiwis train, rack up enormous debt and then flee overseas to pay that debt up sums up the new social contract between the State and its Citizens, which is, ‘fuck you, pay me’.
We need to return to the egalitarian structures that built this nation, not the free market hate fuck it’s become.
The latest nothing announcement by Labour over the Teacher shortage is the same failed experiments of recruitment in a free market.
This plan will train 300 domestic kiwis as Teachers while importing 700.
This has all the vision of a blind cyclops.
We need to do for Teachers what we need to do for Nurses, bonding!
Do it the way we used to do it!
Education/Training for Nursing and Teachers and Drs and Scientists should be free to NZ citizens in exchange for a period of bonded employment to New Zealand.
Alongside a comprehensive allowance to live on, payment once bonded and accommodation as we send you around the country working where needed.
This alongside better long term conditions and 4 day working weeks is what the State needs to offer to make these professions, (professions that are essential to the function of this country by the way), more attractive.
How do we pay for this you ask?
I’M GLAD YOU DID ASK!
if you support the Firefighters, Nurses, Teachers and Drs you should be demanding a financial transaction tax and legalised cannabis!
For too long the right have managed to keep the tax yoke on the workers rather than the corporations and banks.
We can’t spend more because the neoliberal orthodoxy keeps amputating the State’s ability to raise revenue.
By implementing a financial transaction tax, by implementing a windfall tax on Banks, we take the yoke of taxation off individuals and place it squarely on the success of those who’ve profited most from a stable economic environment.
A financial transaction tax would raise enough revenue for us to reduce GST down to 10%!
A windfall tax on Banks would fund better health and education!
If cannabis were legalised, the New Zealand industry could employ about 5000 people and reap almost $1.1 billion in taxes a year, two in-depth reports by Business and Economic Research Ltd have shown.
If we want to fund our Firefighters, Nurses, Teachers and Drs with better wages and conditions then we need to raise the revenue and that should be off the back of the richest, not the poorest!
Until we on the Left take the economic side seriously, we will be a movement that can only virtue signal our pronouns and chocolate bar wrapper’s in Māori to an increasingly alienated voter.
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And before anything else, do something about the very real stresses current education ideology imposes on teachers. The requirements, for example, for teachers to maintain their professional registration are ridiculous and sap teachers’ time and energy to work on the most important thing – providing quality teaching and learning opportunities to their classes. As a retired primary principal I look with horror on the current primary education system and there’s no way I’d recommend teaching to any one looking for a career. The job is too hard and the cost to teachers’ physical and mental health is far too great. I also am in full agreement that we need to return to the teacher education system that was in place at the start of my career – paid to study and guaranteed employment for the first three years after graduation, with a bond imposed as you suggest. Further take the teacher education courses back from the universities and reinstate teachers colleges, as was the case in the past, to improve the quality of pre service teacher education.
Even with all of those changes, until such time as middle class workers, teachers, nurses etcetera, can actually afford a middle class lifestyle, particularly in terms of housing, then the trajectory for No Zealand society is only going to be downward. Sad. But true.
Apparently some families now spend 28% of their income on transport, so maybe we need to look at increasing wages to 5x house prices and similar to utilities and transport.
They have subsidised the construction industry to death and find it impossible to build houses any cheaper (1000 monkeys unable to write Shakespeare), thus they need to raise wages, and fast to be in line with OZ wages.
This will help skills shortages and brain drain.
We can assess the world’s cheap labour, but we can’t make them build, teach or nurse better. NZ standards of care are dropping with a diet of cheap labour and massive management overheads everywhere.
Already NZ has been voted 2nd worst place in world to work from migrants surveys.
Totally agree Alan. Furthermore the idiots that are employed by the Teachers’ Council- top to bottom – are a huge part of the problem.
Agree with both Alan and you, Cantabrian. (!)
I agree Bomber. Did you see the announcement yesterday that they are now appointing non teachers as teachers to fill the gaps. Entirely predictable.
I really dont understand why we cant have a financial transaction tax, we have ruled out everything else. And even though I loathe the idea, a small inheritance tax on those with significant estates wouldnt be the worse thing with family home exempt up to a decent level.
In the Uk, its 40%!!! on everything above about NZ$650K. unless you are leaving a home to your family to live in, in which case the value has to be no more than a million. With their population, imagine the amount of money that raises each year.
NZ has to cut its cloth to meet its purse but we also need to concede to a large extra tax of some sort. I believe it should come from the top end but it has to come from somewhere and GST must come off food. It being too difficult is BS. There is a bit off work on the front end but then it’s easy enough and it is a huge and necessary boon to the poorest. Other countries manage it.
It surely can’t be beyond the government’s knowledge to calculate how many teachers, nurses, doctors, engineers, and whatever other professions the country is short of, and offer free tertiary education and all that goes with it to the best and brightest secondary school graduates. These people could then be bonded to the state for a minimum period to pay for their education. This could be funded by a capital gains tax, a windfall tax, raising the tax level for the very rich while allowing a $20,000 tax-free allowance for every taxpayer in the country. Getting rid of all the ‘fluff’ degrees being offered (media studies etc) by our universities would also free up space. Surely this is common sense?
It all started with the deregulation of tertiary education.
Polytechs need to become polytechs and unis need to become unis again.
The free market has failed along with those Rogernomes who introduced the concept. Unfortunately those Neoliberals who started all this continue to recruit new blood to carry it on down the generations. But who are these new Neoliberals the younger ones who keep the dogma going and where are they the corporates or just general society ? Also are there enough to keep this system going long-term ie enough to stop change?
The goverment had a chance to chop Tomorrow’s Schools, where all these issues stemmed from, but the rich schools kicked up a huge fuss, and they bottled it.
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