Teachers have lost parents with ongoing strikes and risk National winning
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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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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?