Teachers risk burning their good will with parents and overplaying their hand to give National the election
Secondary teachers’ union says pay offer inadequate, will resume strike action
The secondary teachers’ union has told its members the latest pay offers from the Ministry of Education are inadequate.
The ministry made revised offers to primary, area and secondary school teachers on Tuesday which the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) and the Educational Insitute shared with their membersovernight.
The offers included identical pay deals – a lump sum payment of $4500 and three pay rises totalling between 11 percent and more than 16 percent by the end of next year.
Unlike the previous three-year offers, the new offers had a two-year term and provided the first pay rises in June and July rather than backdating them to December 2022.
The unions told their members the changes had allowed the ministry to “front-load” the offer to provide bigger pay rises and lump-sum payments at the start of the agreement.
The Educational Institute said the lump sum payment was about $2500 more than most teachers would have got from backdating the first pay rise to December last year. Non-union members would get $3000.
The union told its members it would not make any recommendations about how to vote, but the the PPTA told its members they should reject the offers.
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.
If we can’r pay them more, provide better conditions.
Take the deal.
Kick the extra upgrades into a 2v 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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Teachers, or at least some, deserve better pay and conditions. It’s a myth that their days are 8 hours and then massive amounts of leave. 50 hours per week plus bits and pieces after hours and weekends are the norm. Dealing with dysfunctional kids and worse, dysfunctional parents (and the Wellington bureaucracy), par for the course.
As I’m aware the first offer to primary teachers was reasonable, but for whatever reason a mandatory strike had to happen. The next offer was shit, the most recent offer not much better except larger one off sums are now offered, but will be taxed to death.
I agree, the teachers union are not doing a great job but the rot really started to set in with Nationals mindless cost cutting/budget freezes that they justified because of the 2008 financial crisis. Yet that lingered so unnecessarily until the 2017 election. By the time National were booted out, teachers, police, military, health and justice were a decade behind in wages and conditions. It’s clearly proving very difficult to come back from!
Here’s a thought – let’s pay a teacher at the top of the basic scale the same as a first year back bench MP.
Here’s a thought. Let’s pay teachers at the top of the basic scale the same as a first year back bench MP.
ie About 160,000 in year 1 for the MP, as opposed to 90,000 after 10 years for a teacher.
Teachers do not need the support of parents .They and they alone know the pressure of the conditions they work in daily .
Their biggest problem is the parents that do not give a toss about their childrens education and think teachers are just there to baby sit their children while they sit at home getting pissed . There are too many parents if poor skills that should not have had kids in the first place . If these parents could be persuaded to not breed teachers would have more time to teacher the kids that want to learn and better themselves.
I support National but am on record as not agreeing with the way they treated teachers and I am mystified why the teachers did not stand up to National like they are now to Labour. Labour look bad as they fight to not pay teachers and medical people their true worth. Thay are also looking on as polytechnics and universities are stripped of staff due to budget cuts.These staff in the past have been seen as core Labour supporters I wonder if they still are?
Trevor Teachers do need the support of parents, and they themselves should also support parents. In a healthy community we all support each other, or at least we try to.
At a practical level, parents are inconvenienced when schools are closed, or close early for teacher meetings, and parents have to make childcare arrangements. This mightn’t always be easy to do. Not everybody has a sympathetic or reasonable employer. When I was teaching in London, union meetings were held in our own time, after school, after the kids had gone home. This was the least disruptive option for all parties and our lot should be concerning doing the same.
Not ll parents deserve to be treated with the contempt which you show for them either. They turn out at parent/teacher meetings in reasonable numbers, and some are desperately concerned about the sex and gender ideology being implemented in schools and feel powerless to do anything about it without being accused of transphobia or something equally daft.
I did try to stipulate bad parents and certainly did not mean all but as with most thinks the bad parents have a far greater effect on the situation at hand than the many good ones that pull their weight. It was many years ago since I was involved with teachers but parents I know are backing the teachers as they know the problems they face . Politicians get an automatic pay rise based on inflation so why not teachers.
The system has become too complicated. An unwieldy curriculum, too much paperwork, collapsing aptitude scores.
There must be a return to the Committee of Ten model of uniform college preparation for all students, with a liberal arts curriculum. This should be based around the classical education Trivium, the Great Books and fine art Classicism.
The later Cardinal Principles Report model must be abandoned, rejecting the idea of the “weak” being “incapable” of a liberal-arts education and full college preparation. State schools must be of the same standard as the best G.P.S. grammar schools.
Political indoctrination, such as the racialistic nationalism of ‘indigenization’ and C.R.T., must be banned.
Hate to hark back to the anti -smacking legislation. But a small %of kids have no discipline or boundary. These delinquent s make a teacher s lot tough and stressful and are very time consuming.
What about a pay rise for parent volunteers also. Schools would fall over without there input.
Those kids should be kicked out and dealt with as they have specific needs but sadly the current system is against that so the rest of the kids in class suffer and don’t get the education they should
You have recognized that actions have consequences which most of the population seems to ignore. People generally believe that if it feels good then do it for most things since feeling good appears to be the ultimate goal in a society that has abandoned any idea that there is a divine purpose for life. The error in many of those claiming to have a divine message has obviously contributed to it’s rejection.
I would like to know if there is someone in the education sphere that is advocating what I am thinking. Start young people on their working lives at about 14; give much quality job experience, skill-sharpening, future planning, mixed with block courses in knowledge that all adults should have but also some individual to them to sharpen their skills in areas of their interest. Young people would be chosen to design and plan small projects which they would implement. They would ideally be mentored by groups like Lions and Rotary and women’s groups who have involved themselves in doing things for the community, so acting as good role models for a good society in its general meaning.
Our ideas of education are outdated 20th century ones. We keep our youngsters sitting at schools with keyboard learning, preparing them for what? The information they are getting is probably out of date, or it is available in easy steps on the internet when they want detail. No wonder that young ones who want to be ‘doing’ are reluctant to spend time learning stuff that may not be applicable to their lives now or in future.
This is happening while some are coming from education not knowing how to read. Probably not how to write either, and not how to think, explain and discuss the ideas that the brain and mind are being confronted with. The fascination with technology is pushing basic education as a tool to the side; reading and thinking have not always been the basics of education as we have believed! Now important, is creating images on screen, knowing all the functions of the latest release of tech from competing giants with early obsolescence of devices.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law) Why bother to learn how to use the latest apps. Why learn anything – it becomes obsolescent in months; forget the past, learn to use this machine here, or you too will become obsolescent.
Is there an educationist who can marry the wisdom and philosophies drawn from past seers into the education that a sharp person now can use, and combine and coalesce it all to face the future and the obfuscation that presently weakens our intellects? Will we become like ‘button-pushing pigeons’? Try those keywords on google and see how easily we can become distracted. Also look at the Skinner experiments.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/bf-skinner-the-man-who-taught-pigeons-to-play-ping-pong-and-rats-to-pull-levers-5363946/
The teachers get what they deserve. They’ve chosen the defensive, unionist approach to their profession, so now they must wear it.
There are some teachers who are worth 150K – 200K pa because they’re brilliant. They’re the motivating leaders who create an educational foundation for the adults of tomorrow. Then there are the drongos who hide behind the union and get pay rises based solely on duration of service. These people are a blight on the profession. (I bet even now as adults you can all clearly remember the good teachers and the bad ones. Yes?)
Our schools are no longer ‘world class’, as the union used to claim. The syllabus is shit, with all of the top schools abandoning NCEA (Thanks Helen!). Truancy is out of control. You know the schools are shit when Asians stay at home and form study groups because they achieve more that way.
Harsh Andrew. Sounds like you are blaming teachers for sticking to their job in a mechanical way, but your comment sounds mechanical also,. We have all heard these wide spectrum denigrations. Could be that much of our present education is trying to fit square minds into round holes – which lead who knows where – wormholes in space?
Performance pay. Teachers next year’s salary tied to this year’s pass rates. Watch the increased teacher effort, academic results and truancy reduction. Teachers will use their own money to buy training and mentoring for themselves if they need it. Obviously there would need to be independent marking or backs would be scratched.
Yes Andrew
What ever. I have two teen aged boys and I am sick and tired of getting threatening e-mails in regards to truancy, for which my kids are not. I was told, “Oh,” the teachers just send out the same messages to everyone – oh, do they, then? It doesn’t matter if a kid is good and in good attendance (Insert pronoun) still gets painted with a negative brush by these truant, whinging teachers. Nevermind nobody can explain NCEA to me… Or the disturbing levels of illiteracy, but yeah teachers work in excess of fifty hours a week? It sure isn’t after school teaching literacy. So what are they doing?
Have a look at the teacher’s carpark at 3.10pm.
Or wonder why teacher only days are the Friday before a Monday public holiday…
Look how many teachers are in the school during school holidays…
Educators, in our care learn education, has a care call, most care,70 and some more, free care hours. Eh!, pay for our better, say, who.
Claimed in article: NZ teachers are the third highest pay in the OECD.
Latest data puts us in the bottom half https://data.oecd.org/teachers/teachers-salaries.htm?fbclid=IwAR0mjx6OmimNK5E0FM8dDizO0XgWLJxzBzM387nPM__0m1EEK9182IKdTeo
Teachers are being asked to take a cut in purchasing power by having a salary adjustment below inflation. Yet again. With no backpay. Yet again.
Not to mention that basically the same offer has been made three times…in some instances getting slightly worse. It’s very kind of you to tell us to just accept it so that Labour can win an election, but how about Labour actually gives the cost of living increase to teachers and health workers that they were willing to give to beneficiaries, superannuitants and…oh, probably themselves. Or are we the only ones who have to suck it up?
Thank you Clare – a good comment based on sound info.