Whose Fault are the Teacher Strikes Really?
I am well and truly documented as being no fan at all of the teacher unions (PPTA/NZEI). The nature of the collective contract - that assumes all teachers are of the same quality and prevents schools with greater need providing any incentives for staff - is a major handbrake on the quality of our education system.
After a two day education summit I organised in Cambridge in 2022, with some outstanding people (and the, to be Minister Stanford in attendance), I compiled a summary of recommendations and tabled it while presenting at the 2023 Economic Forum at Waikato University. A summary is here.
Of high relevance at present is this one:
8) Deal quickly and effectively with the Union demands after the next election. They offer nothing helpful to the dialogue so throw them a bone and walk on.
The Minister has signalled plenty of changes and made some. Some are positive and could be effective - others - such as the significant alienation of Maori through the bizarre work of Elizabeth Rata, and many process breaches - will only be damaging. The sheer volume of work and pace of change is also highly problematic - as is the major split between schools who are positive about a new qualifications system and more that are not.
To bring about significant change you need the teachers on your side - you need to carry the sector. It is no use telling them to just “suck it up and get on with it” - as they have alternatives - e.g. heading off to Australia, protest action, just ignoring changes in their teaching practice.
It is no use telling them that there is no money available as, if the Minister was serious on that front, there would not still be nearly 4,000 Ministry of Education FTE’s with vastly superior contracts to teachers (including OT, call-out payments, etc).
The teacher unions are a well known and predictabe animal. You don’t stand in a cage with a hungry lion and just give them a bit of beef jerky. If you want to survive you either shoot them (but there is no political will/courage to do away with the collective contract and truly challenge Union power) ... or give them a decent meal so you can get on with cleaning the cage.
With inflation still running near 3%, plus all of the demands being put on teachers, the person/people who kicked off this fiasco by offering seondary teachers a salary rise of 1% per annum over three years (an approximately 6% drop in real wages) ... is/are either really stupid or a massive Labour supporter. The Minister should have seen the very predicatable effects and stepped in immediately. National is reading the room on this like a dyslexic trying to get through War and Peace in a week.
Alwyn Poole
alwyn.poole@gmail.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/
