teaching strike

So as we look down the barrel of another week of potential strikes, I am heartened by the students calling for it to end, and the prospect that it just might with some independent arbitration. Not before time.

As frustrated as we are with the striking teachers, I don’t blame them, it’s the government who’s dragged the chain here in not resolving it and allowing kids to be pawns in all this.

So far teachers have rejected the latest pay offer, lump sum, and three payrises, as suggested by the Ministry. Teachers say it’s not good enough. They have more strikes planned right up until the end of term. But over the weekend the PPTA said they’d now look at an Employment Relations Authority proposal that they suspend strike action and start independent arbitration.

I can only hope they make a decision on this quickly and that it’s the right decision – to suspend the industrial action.

Obviously the Ministry of Education wants it stopped, and parents and many students want it stopped, but it may mean the Ministry has to step up a little bit more to make it happen. Students don’t deserve all this interrupted learning. And they’re saying so.

I was encouraged by the group of Waikato students who wrote an open letter to Minister Jan Tinetti saying enough is enough. They said “the greatest detriment to our future as New Zealand students is education disruption. While you battle over pay and conditions, students across the country are being sent home. Yet again our learning - despite all the rhetoric to the opposite - is happily being used as a pawn for political and union conflict”, they wrote. Good on them. Dozens of student leaders from Waikato schools signed it.

They also pointed out that ‘as strike action continues, the Education Minister and her staff are contradicting the entire purpose of their jobs - to ensure the education of the country’s children and young people.’ They said, “We, as a student body, are in our fourth year of disruptions. We have not had it easy. However, we have compromised and done our very best, as we knew that the past three years were out of anyone’s control. This time, we do have control. You have control and right now this is a change we can make. Why are you putting us, the students, in the middle of a discussion where we are your focus..”

They went on to say that as strike action goes on, ‘the Education Minister and her staff are contradicting the entire purpose of their jobs - to ensure the education of the country’s children and young people.’ So I take my hat off to them for telling it like it is. They have a right to be angry and they have a right to voice it. I only hope the Minister was listening.

Because they’re right. They are contradicting the whole purpose of their jobs. The kids are over it. They’re knee deep in internals, they’re stressed, they’re fed up, they want it over. If the government can’t see the damage this is doing, then they’ve got their head in the sand.

Let’s hope independent arbitration is agreed on and can work towards a good outcome here, that doesn’t involve more time off school for hard working students who are just trying to get their NCEA credits, and get a bit of learning in.

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So today my daughter is off school again with another teachers strike.

One of two this week alone, she will also be off Thursday. She is Year 12 doing internals and headed towards important exams, and it is stressful for her and her friends to again be told to stay home.

Many of her teachers are over it too, they’re aware students are falling behind or having to rejig too much work and scheduling, many of them are getting as stressed as the students are. Some have expressed disappointment that the Unionised teachers are still rejecting the offers made.

They want it settled, the school wants it settled, the students want it settled.

It also comes at a time when we have record absenteeism and we are begging kids to attend school. We’re trying to reiterate the importance of school and a good education, and there is messaging coming from all quarters on how to keep kids in school and focused on achievement. So the timing could not be worse to have teachers stopping work endlessly; and I say endlessly because it sure feels like it.

And that’s before we get to all the days off currently by kids and teachers coming down with winter bugs.

There’s a lot of sickness around in Term 2, always, but particularly this winter off the back of lockdowns and Covid. And given we are in June, we are running out of days left before school holidays start in just 3 weeks. It’s been a very disruptive term already.

For parents this is a quandary. On the one hand, we want our kids in school, we want them learning, we want them going where we’ve paid for them to be and actually getting to know some stuff, and working towards grades that will impact their futures. We also want routine for our families, structure, consistency and kids not thinking that only going to school for 3 days a week is normal or acceptable.

But we support teachers; who doesn’t? Anyone whose put their kids through school knows how hard many of them (not all) work, and how much of an impact they can have on your child’s life. It's a critical role and I feel badly for how much extra teachers have to take on these days in the form of bureaucracy and admin and social work, and dealing with a whole bunch of stuff they shouldn’t have to deal with.

It sucks.

But it’s also part of what you must know you’re signing up for. We’ve got a young doctor in training in our family, and we’ve talked to her endlessly about the 80-90 hour weeks and the burnout and the stress and all the headaches that being a young doctor in this country entails, and she says she knows all that going in. Do the striking teachers go into teaching expecting it will be something different to what it is?

That’s not to say they shouldn’t advocate for change and look to evolve it, god only knows the whole school system needs evolving and upgrading, but at what point do you exhaust community support and erode the respect of your students by just permanently striking?

The Primary teachers just accepted their fourth offer from the Ministry of Education after “a long negotiation campaign which included the largest education strike in this country's history”, it was reported. The teachers in that dispute pointed out how much work demands have skyrocketed for them, and I don’t doubt it. But the line that they’re striking ‘for the children’ is starting to wear a bit thin when it’s the children who are suffering now with so many days off.

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With less than a week to go until a nation-wide teacher mega-strike, unions say the potential to call it off is in the Government's hands.

The primary and secondary school unions have both voted on industrial action after faltering negotiations.  

It means that more than 50-thousand educators will be picketing on Thursday.

PPTA Acting President Chris Abercrombie told Heather du Plessis-Allan that the offered payrise was a lump sum of six-thousand dollars over two years.

Abercrombie says any resolution before Thursday requires the Government meeting their demands.

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