My daughter will lose 5 days of schooling this term AND THE SCHOOL IS CHASING ME FOR A DONATION???
Talking to many parents, there is a growing sense of frustration and resentment towards teachers that I’ve never heard in NZ before.
There is a real sense that our kids are not getting ahead educationally and that school has morphed into a baby sitting for our kids feelings.
Gen Xers and Boomers grew up in an educational philosophy that stated ‘Be the best you can be’. The idea was you were in a constant competition with yourself to perform with personal excellence in the field you did best in.
It unfortunately also used Bell Curve graph ruthlessness that ensured 50% failed regardless of whether they actually passed. That created generations of lost potential. Instead of reform the Belle Curve mentality, we went completely the other way with Tomorrow’s Schools in dumping all the responsibility onto local communities without any of the resourcing.
That manifested a completely different philosophy.
Millennials and under were brought up in an educational philosophy of ‘everyone is special’.
You can quickly see the problem.
Schools seem to have been given carte blanche to define educational achievement as they like with the most important factor being the feelings of the child.
It seems to have produced a brittle generation who require constant nurturing and cuddles rather than stoic self reliance and independence of critical thinking agency.
On top of this are Teacher’s constantly striking and closing down in the middle of the day when the rain starts.
Teacher’s are making parents lives far more difficult than they currently are and it seems like they are fighting over very little of significance.
Let’s be completely honest – currently all we are being offered in education from any of the Political Parties are band-aids to haemorrhaging problems within education.
Teachers deserve 4 day weeks + more pay + extra resources + a teacher’s aid in each class + provide bonded scholarships with accomodation for new teachers!
Teachers work miracles with our kids, and as much as I roll my eyes at what the kids are getting taught these days, I’m still in awe of what NZ Teachers can achieve with the little they have.
There are few silver bullets in social policy, education is one of them.
We need to nurture an education environment that respects Teachers and resources them properly because our Schools are central hubs within our community that can and must be utilised and supported more.
Schools need to be used after hours for adult education classes that we should be funding.
Schools should be used to create gardens and farms for local food security and to use in free breakfasts and lunches.
We need to use our schools as entry points for counsellors and social services for the wider community.
We need to fully fully fully fund our public education rather than inject false competition models or new bureaucratic structures and we need to ensure a central curriculum of math, science, physical education and critical thinking are providing the tools for our kids to learn.
That takes far more money and it takes a Government with the courage to tax the fucking rich more so that excellent public education continues to be the egalitarian pillar of New Zealand!
Striking for band aids that don’t go anywhere towards the required solutions seems so limited and shallow.
Teacher’s will keep parents on their side when Teachers fight for transformative change, not just extending perks for long serving members.
I don’t wish to be critical of the Teacher Union Negotiators, I am certain that they are as talented and as magnificent as the Green Party Strategists, but could I humbly suggest the following?
You have the most political muscle you will ever have, over play your hand and allow National to benefit and you will rue the day you screwed this up.
If you think negotiating while a friendly Labour Party are in power is difficult, imagine negotiating with National while David Seymour starts the chainsaw.
Kick the extra wage increases into a 2 year review, but gain something of magnitude that gives Teachers a win and real relief.
Negotiate 3 extra days annual leave for Teachers, the primary school teachers gained an extra hour each week, secondary Teachers should push for extra free days!
If we can’t pay them more, provide better conditions.
Take the deal.
Kick the extra upgrades into a 2 year review.
Gain 3 extra days of annual paid leave.
Do it, do it now before you start burning Parental support and hand National the election.
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It is New Zealand (and other countries) that have lost teachers. I think some media and political figures, and anyone else who thinks it is easy should become a teacher. Most likely, “we” will just import foreign teachers. Can’t someone else do it? That is the true dumpster fire.
Imported teachers, imported labourers, imported farmers, imported military men, every item on the shelves an import — what could possibly go wrong?
All they have to do is wind back the clock to the policies and curriculum that was in place prior to the plunge in aptitude scores. Of course that would endanger corporate tax cuts, so nobody in Parliament would dare suggest such a thing.
Well you can import foreigners to do the work that needs doing, or you can reproduce the old fashioned way and give birthers their earned respect and due by firstly calling them ‘mothers’ in all medical and official language and then provide them with money so that they could stay at home (if they choose too) or provide decent early childcare and schools with decently paid teachers, hospitals that are staffed and equipped correctly at all times, safe housing to raise families in, and so on, and then you don’t need to import labour as we grow it our self.
What you can’t do is complain about people being imported to do the jobs that need doing for the price that these jobs are paid (private or governmental boss alike) when the country is starting to fall apart at the seems because not enough workers, and certainly not enough workers at the price that is offered.
At some stage something needs to give.
Affordable housing may have something to do with it, too. Maybe quite a lot, in fact. *crickets chirping*
yeah and guess what, migrants need housing too….again, you can have old fashioned baby making and thus provide enough people to continue growing the country and economy, or absence of homegrown workers import them.
Ah, yes. That’ll be why “we” brought in more than 25,000 migrants aged 65+ in the last twelve months.
And all the money they needed to bring and invest you forgot to mention that
Todays Herald, Richard Prebble headline…”Here’s how we close the gap with Australia”
David Seymour
@dbseymour
When National was last elected, the gap between a Kiwi and an Australian earning the median wage was $11,900 a year. John Key campaigned to “close the gap with Australia by 2025.” It commissioned the 2025 Taskforce and then rejected its ideas.
Another National party failure.
The gap opened up because Prebble’s gang of crooks supported the abolition of the Award System, which even the neo-liberal hatchet man Keating didn’t dare to attempt (and when Howard tried, millions of union members revolted — it was roundly defeated by the Your Rights at Work campaign).
Correct Kristoff R.
And no one under 40 has literally any idea how it was before. But it makes sense to blame a past that only few remember, as that absolves the lack of action of the current times and actors.
Labour had 5+ years to come to a conclusion with Teachers, Nurses, Doctors, etc and here we are, another strike that will lead to nothing.
And fwiw, it is at the point now where blaming National for the lack of inaction on Labours side just becomes laughable even for those that never voted or supported National in any way. Because the inaction of the last 3 years of Labour, with a full majority in parliament – thus able to go it alone – is there for anyone and everyone to admire. The chutzpah!
I killed someone yesterday but it doesn’t matter as it was in the past and the consequences of the past have no bearing on the now. But it makes sense to blame the past on me.
Here I was thinking sausage you couldn’t be a bigger moron than you already are.
oh brother……………
Agree RB the lame excuses put forward by Labour’s supporters is laughable if not hysterical.
On the subject of Education didn’t Chippy oversee that,if yes then he’s to blame.
Luxon was right!
Bob continues to be wet and whiny and inward thinking!
The point is that the destruction of the education sector is bi-partisan. The destruction of our health sector is bi-partisan. The destruction of society at large is bi-partisan.
Some may find solace in pretending that one party is better then the other, and some find solace in looking at the data over the years and see that cuts come via one party yet the other party upholds those cuts, does not reverse them, does not increase funding to make up for previous cuts etc etc etc – currently see education, health, mental health, hospitals, infrastructure (water leaks in wellington ongoing for over 30 years now), falling apart roads (northland – an issue during H.Clark, Key, Ardern, Hipkins) etc etc etc
The one suffering is also the one paying for everything, and that would be us the tax payer.
So i simply refuse to believe or make believe that N is better then L or vis versa, they are both equal sides of one coin.
We are to pay for services we are then not delivered, and that should piss us all off as we pay taxes on account of income and not of party affiliation.
Actually RB you do have a point no one under forty has any idea how bad the ACT party really is Douglas and Prebble the biggest labour con men in NZ. They campaigned on a labour ticket and then proceeded to sell the family silver. They conned us into believing that it was good for NZ. The past is what shapes the future and if we don’t learn lessons from the past we are screwed. If we have a NACT government the arrogant little prick will be the tail wagging the dog. So people under 40 be very careful what you wish for.
Martyn – So what is your solution, apart from taking a pay cut due to inflation? Labour is handing National the election…not the Teachers…and why can’t the Government pay the Teachers more…that is false.
They spent all the money already…
Yeti – Correct
Good question Nathan. So now I’ll ask the same question of you, why couldn’t
National and Act pay the teachers more during their 9 years and not close the gap between Australia and us?
Andrew and David are hard Qanon right-wing and so is Bob the First – Simple
2008 – Financial melt down occurred during Teachers employment negotiations. Teachers backed off
2011 – Christchurch Earthquake – occurred during the Teachers employment negotiations. Teachers backed off.
2014 – More progress…but Labour told the Teachers to wait for a better deal under Labour…
Answer your question?
Fabulous reply Nathan not that you had much to parry.
Yes thanks, which using your analogy Labour had to deal with covid?
Even a simpleton like Bob can’t argue not that he has one brain cell to argue with.
Triggered again Bob?
Andrew and David are hard Qanon right-wing and so is Bob the First – Thank you…Covid should not be used to screw over Public Servants, Teachers, Nurses…
I would like to point out that 08/11 2008 was the election which saw Helen Clark/Labour lose and National win.
Reactionary Bratwurst – Correct
So Nathan your logic means that during crises there should be no pay rises ?? so how does a pandemic , massacre, massive flooding due to climate change sound and still most people’s wages are keeping up with inflation. We have had the much maligned minimum wage increases and some increases to benefits. The nurses and primary school teachers have accepted their pay rises ( the nurses got their pay equity) the police have had pay rises. I suggest to you that the National party are lazy people in government, they cut essential services to give tax cuts to the wealthy and they raised GST ( without telling anyone) to pay for said tax cuts. They don’t build houses, they let the farmers pollute our waterways. They try to change the flag with a high cost referendum ( during the financial crisis) they plowed money into roads ( during the financial crisis). So sorry Nathan your comment is laughable in the context of crisises as an excuse for the national government to pay people a decent wage.
Labour’s inability in all areas of government is costing them the election.
Teachers need to stay the course and stick to their claim if they do not we will suffer with a system that is broken and just surviving .
Health and education are only just keeping their head above water and bit like a six cylinder car with one cylinder missing .It will run but not smoothly .
If the teachers do not fix the system now when will they do it .If the profession does not attract new members then the system will just she’d staff and the results will be that children will have no teachers all the time not just occasionally.
Oh Bob and Trevor you never disappoint a couple of positive groupies on the NACT bandwagon ie. Labour very very bad no matter what, Luxon et.al good even though he’s a thick moron.
Oh Trevor you are such a hypocrite
Given how teachers like to remind us how busy they are during school holidays, perhaps they should confine their strike action to the school holidays.
Cricklewood – Then what?
crickle so no prep for next term, lesson plans etc.
Because the protest that no one notices, is the most effective?
And teacher only days yah
So much of what you say is correct Martyn. I volunteer at a primary school and a teacher told me “We think it’s inappropriate to strike given the fragile situation the country is in right now.”
I am acutely aware of the need for an effective education system because it was education that got me out of poverty in the UK. My only way out was to pass exams, so I sweated blood to make that happen. I owe 3 or 4 teachers an awful lot!
Education in this country is a disaster zone and we need significant change to sort it out. I think National is too timid to do anything significant and Labour is actually part of the problem given they’re influenced (controlled?) by the PPTA. What’s wrong:
We simply cannot allow children to pass through the system and emerge illiterate and innumerate. We need remedial reading classes for any child slipping behind. We need volunteers in low decile primary schools who are prepared to sit with kids to ensure they learn to read. (I’ve done this in Africa) The union needs to stop being so defensive and allow this to happen.
We need to scrap NCEA. It’s rubbish and the evidence is that ALL private schools have dumped it! Why on earth did we embark on this in the first place when we could have just piggybacked on to the Cambridge system or International Baccalaureate? The same thought of thinking that dumped the (free) Privy Council in favour of a hopelessly parochial NZ Supreme Court.
We need to break up the rigid teachers’ pay structure so we can properly reward the best and chase the worst out to become real estate agents. LOL
NCEA was designed under National. It was Labour that only implemented it.
In saying that, they should have kept School C, etc for academic subjects, but had NCEA for the vocational subjects. It would have more cleaner.
It doesn’t matter whose it was. It needs to go.
Most probably it was driven by some pointy headed wonks in the Ministry of Education and both parties merely presided over it.
The same applies to the ‘Whole Word’ reading system that replaced Phonics. It was a blight on a generation of primary school kids. I believe phonics is belatedly being reintroduced.
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2021/06/30/inside-the-reading-wars.html
Private schools are elitist.
Hamilton Boys high.have Friday off to attend field days. Newton school does not. Comparing private schools to public school education is ridiculous.
Remuneration byway of a reward based system is why we are at the place we are today. Without unions we’d have only a handful of teachers.
MHK, obviously you didn’t read Andrew’s excellent piece.
Obviously you are a very slow learner.
By “elitist” do you mean that their survival depends entirely on their performance? Parents examine exam results data and chose their kids schools based largely on past performance.
There is no government feather bedding and acceptance of failure for them. They draw their staff out of the same pool of teachers that the state does yet achieve much more. Ask yourself why that is.
Success & achievement are elitist, everyone should fail equally.
Yes Andrew
No, I mean elitism, you seem a slow learner also. Did you and Rambo Comment not have private schooling? And why do private schools need Government funding? Ask yourself that question.
“Schools seem to have been given carte blanche to define educational achievement as they like with the most important factor being the feelings of the child.” Really? What teacher told you this
Of course many of the public service will vote tory. They bemoan no pay increases for 9 years will not do anything about it until we have a Labour government. They had better hurry up and accept otherwise they will get nothing come October and even less after that.
For what it’s worth, simply increasing teacher’s pay is just putting a band aid on the problem. The government tried to dismantle the Tomorrow’s Schools reforms but bottled it after the richer schools pushed back on it.
Perhaps we should hire more administrators and teacher aides to take the pressure off teachers?
Also, the question of how we are going to catch up on the lost days of school need to be asked as well. Perhaps some sort of ‘summer school’ should be considered. Or even just holding everyone back a year and just catching up that way
Labour cost kids education time by refusing to up their pay to something decent. National might win.
so hang on martyn a group of workers should halt a legitimate industrial dispute because it might affect LINOs who will betray them anyway…or are we concerned the child warehouses being closed will inconvenience middle class parents…?
gagarin – Nailed it!
It will mainly inconvenience low income parents and they can’t afford to stay home with their kids that are too young to be left home unsupervised. The middle class parents might be able to afford child care or work from home.
bbbuuuttt bratty I thought all the poor are unemployed workshy bludgers so will be at home anyway
You only think of low income as beneficiaries, and lol, teachers are pretty much ‘low income’ in todays dollars.
When your average rent per annum costs you 25.000 $ + everyone below a 6 figure salary is suddenly low income and in need of an accommodation benefit or the occasional food grant to make end meet.
It seems you are behind in the times.
+1
Suck it up teachers, suck it up to save Labour. Suck it up & suffer, or just move to Australia for better pay, conditions & lifestyle.
No Comment – Satire?
A satirical attempt to paraphrase Martyn. Teachers are the foundation our country’s future is built on.
Why didn’t teachers get pay rises under Nact. Because they were told to suck it up for 9 hard backward years.
Teachers don’t want to hold themselves aloof from students too long, on the basis that they are underpaid and overworked and not really appreciated. It’s true but the Masters of the Universe may decide that they are dispensable and disposable. And that will be sad for all of society not just the teachers and recipients.
Stay with it please and thinkers among you meet and work out new curricula suited for the times, with hands-on teaching; otherwise we will continue down the rabbit hole as of now, with kids that have soaked up stuff without learning how to navigate the new world order and machine minds trying to control confused and ignorant humanity. Bring in philosophy and discussions on what sort of society to aim for. Introduce the idea of thinking about one that seems good for wellbeing and capable, knowledgeable communities that can co-operate for general good standards.
Again, “if a society can not feed it’s children” (Hone Harawira) then what matters? This is absent parentism versus absent state paying teachers sufficiently to teach beautiful children. This is neo liberalism, it is not our teachers, nor our parents who are at fault. The system is broken. Capitalism won and continues to win but it will cost us our sanity, our children and eventually our breath. The world has had enough with us. My generation is passing away in their mid forties. My parents are alive and my grandparents survived into their 80s and 90s (Pakeha) and lates 70s (mildy Ngati Kahungunu denied Maori keep quiet about your no Pakeha). But we have reduced life expectation. Imagine our kids? Why learn when the world is about to end? And if they can read they know that it really is, science knows too much!
They aren’t striking on Friday because that’s a ‘teacher only day’..
“excellent public education continues to be the egalitarian pillar of New Zealand”, and yet we have worse rates of bullying in the OECD. They even bully each other, but we don’t keep such figures and no mandatory reporting. Their response to such figures, blame the parents and wider society. Illegal “kiwi suspensions” could be as high as 28,000, but once again, we don’t even talk but things, there’s 2 reports in the country, and they admit they don’t have enough data. But they do make it very clear it’s done to maintain school reputation, to attract foreign fee paying students. And if you think think this sort stats aren’t reflected in our excessive youth suicide rates think again. And let’s not even start on credit theft, but nobodies ever explained to me how a child can get not a single credit for an entire years work in a system designed to “enable all learning”. They fucking destroy lives, because they can. I doubt we could do worse if we importing them from the taliban. Shameful
I am glad as a parent I don’t have kids in school anymore. Even when the last one was there 3 years ago I felt the school as failing him. I don’t know how how parents deal with society demands and this on top. I hope parents you are winning out there. At the same time I feel for the teachers too. But so often we have these strikes we are told once they succeed they don’t have to do it again as process’ are in place – what happened?