What does Kate Gainsford mean by average?

Kate Gainsford has launched militantly into Tolley’s claim that the average pay of a secondary teacher is around $70,000 in this PPTA press release. According to these salary figures by the Ministry, the figure was reached by taking the total wage bill on 7 April, and extrapolating that out for a year, and then dividing by the full time equivalent number of teachers. It’s a mean value.

So what about the median? Many people would say that it is a better measure of “average” income than the mean. According to the ministry figures around two thirds of teachers are on the top scale. That means the median pay for a teacher has to be at least $68,890. And that’s without any units or allowances factored in.

It would seem the best Gainsford can claim is that Tolley is using a misleading statistic. She goes far beyond that in colourful fashion, claiming that Tolley is spreading “blatant misinformation” and compares Tolley’s use of statistics to saying:

The average NZer is a 5’6” hermaphrodite

which in my opinion makes Gainsford look hysterical. She claims that getting to an average figure of $70,000 is impossible.

“This is blatant misinformation – the starting salary for a secondary teacher with four years training is $45,000 and if those teachers pass an annual appraisal based on professional performance standards, they can progress to the sum of $68,000. You do not have to be a maths teacher to see that no matter how hard you try you cannot get an average of $70,000 from those figures.”

Is Gainsford saying that units and allowances don’t count as income? That is misleading. You could make an argument about reimbursements for any expenses teacher incur, but in general if you have PAYE deducted from something, that something is income. She points to the $45,653 salary of a beginning teacher in part of her arguments that $70,000 is a misleading figure to quote. Well, I don’t think of a teacher at the start of their career as an average teacher – I think of them as a beginner or novice.

So what is Kate Gainsford’s definition of an “average” teacher? I’d love to know.

Anne Tolley Interview Analysis – Part I: Pay

Anne Tolley appeared on Q+A yesterday in this interview.

The interview starts with the most visible issue, that of pay. Tolley argues adjusting for New Zealand’s GDP, the “average” pay for a teacher is about $70,000. This seems a bit of an generous assessment. Espiner responds to that by asking is that nearer the higher end. Tolley in return states her assumption to get to that figure. A lot seems to hinge on what you mean by “average”, often it’s the choice in choosing the arithmetic mean, or the median.

Update: The ministry explains the calculations in a press release. The figure was based on the calculation of a mean salary. I have also made a further post about Kate Gainsford’s response to Tolley’s claim.

Neither Tolley nor Espiner seem to give much detail behind this exchange. Those involved in education will get it, but it would be lost on others, especially the more political ones. I will try to flesh out their exchange in detail.

Espiner means to say to get paid that much, according to the STCA salary scale, one would have to be near the top of the scale (top scale is step 14), have teaching qualifications (usually a subject based degree plus teaching diploma, which gets a teacher to start on step 7) with 6 or 7 year’s experience and have at least one unit.

Units are pay for extra responsibilities, like management units for a HOD or deputy principal duties or for particular projects a school runs. Which means a teacher with these units is probably teaching fewer classes than a teacher who does not, all other things being equal. This is part of what I mean when I have written in the past that the only career progression available to teachers is to teach less. Tolley refers to this when she talks about the “structure” of a teaching career.

Tolley responds that she has based her figure on a teacher in the “middle” of their career. So she’s saying that the average length of a teaching career is at least 12 years, by then a teacher would be near the top of the scale halfway through that. I do not know how she arrived at that figure. [Since this post has been updated, I now know otherwise.]

According to the statistics on this page, in 2008 the median age of a secondary teacher was about 40. I haven’t been able to find figures on the length of teaching service, but if you assume a teacher starts their career at 22 say, they would have 18 years of service to get to the median age of 40. There would be some adjustment for the fact that some teachers are career changers – but some of those years in other careers may count as steps up the payscale, so it may even out in the end.

So Tolley’s claim of the “average” career length seems credible. It seems that Tolley has arrived at her figure as the wage of a teacher with a median length of service. Espiner then compares it to the starting salary, in the mid 30 range. I don’t know how many secondary teachers actually start there. A teacher would start on step 7 with a 3 year degree plus a diploma, which would be $45,653 per annum.

The comment teachers are “disconnected” from the real world is then addressed by Tolley. She argues that teachers are “unrealistic” because they want bigger raises than what police, nurses and others settled for and point to 4% raises they got each year under the previous government. She also points out that many people have done without pay rises and Irish teachers went with a pay decrease. She has set the scene for the PPTA having to show that they deserve special treatment to get the pay increases they are asking for.

Tolley tries to dismiss the PPTA negotiations as if they are a loud minority, but doesn’t get far with it. Espiner catches her out with the PPTA having a huge membership of about 95%, but pulls his punch with this one too, with nearly all the members voting to strike as well. However, she does do well to dodge the performance based bullet. She asserts outright it’s not on the agenda and explicitly acknowledges that it won’t go down well with teachers; Essentially she’s saying she’s not going to go there, because it’s just not worth it. She is skilfully diplomatic in saying teacher expectations are “unrealistic”, denying the use of “greedy” by Espiner.

The Issues Behind the PPTA Strike Headlines

True to their word, the PPTA went on strike today. Various media have reported on the strike. One NZ Herald story is linked here.

So what’s not in the media? A lot. Most reports have been focussed on pay.

Teachers have not only been dissatisfied with pay, but with the government wanting to claw back conditions granted in previous times.

One of those issues is class sizes. There has been plenty of debate about it. Having smaller class sizes is better for the teacher, but obviously it costs more. What about the impact on achievement? Hattie’s Visible Learning, says it depends on what the teacher actually does with opportunity it provides. He found that teachers who already have a large class, when given a smaller class, do not perform much better on average. His conclusion was that smaller class sizes do not automatically increase student achievement. Of course, this is quoted in the media as “class size doesn’t matter” because it makes a nice little soundbite for the news.

Workload is quite an issue for teachers. Despite general support for the NCEA system from teachers, one bone of contention is the increased assessment workload it requires of them. What is not generally known is now that the curriculum has been changed (latest curriculum document published 2007), the NCEA standards have to be altered to reflect those changes.

Starting in 2011, new level 1 standards will kick in, followed by level 2 in 2012 and level 3 in 2013. Each school is charged with how they are going assess these new standards and alter their unit plans, assessment plans and get them sent off to NZQA to be checked. Most schools do this themselves, but some outsource this work to private companies. This amount of work was not needed prior to NCEA, as nearly all assessment was done by NZQA by setting and marking exams.

The PPTA has also called the government to address issues with teacher recruitment and retainment. From this story in the Herald:

Ms Gainsford said the ministry’s method of calculating vacancies – by counting job ads in the Education Gazette – was deeply flawed.

“If you talked to lots of principals and told them there was no teacher recruitment problem, they would laugh.”

The method reported fits in with an OIA request I made last year regarding what the Ministry defined as a teacher shortage. I wrote:

One reason the definition is blunt is that it doesn’t account for the actual number of apparently qualified candidates. Mathematics teachers are deemed in many places to be in short supply. But I asked one principal of an urban Auckland decile 3 school how many candidates would apply for a Mathematics vacancy. The principal told me that about 160 would apply.

That principal told me that most of these applicants were not suitable. And a lot of these were teachers from overseas who are not native English speakers or not familiar with the New Zealand system. A school would often have to toss up between just filling the vacancy or doing without until readvertising again. I think this is what Gainsford is referring to.

Good Luck Anne Tolley

The NZ Herald reports that the PPTA has voted to strike. I suspected that this would be the case.

The teachers aren’t striking over not getting increases in pay and conditions, but to maintain (in inflation terms, et cetera) what they already have.

I think Tolley is gambling on parents saying “look I’m out of work, or my partner is out of work, our family is struggling, what are you teachers complaining about?” to keep the bad PR at bay. I do not think that it will pay off for her. The teacher unions are by far the strongest in the country with around 95 percent membership.

My prediction is that there will be three strikes before Tolley (or her successor?) is forced to come up with maintained conditions and around 2.5 percent pay increases per year. She’s talking tough, and seems very prepared to not be bullied into submission in regards to opposition campaigns, for example Adult Education. Does anyone still remember that one? I barely do! The opposition campaign got traction, but the headlines have gone now.

She can also say, look I’m not Labour so I’d have to multiple backwards somersaults for the unions to begin to warm to me anyway. But she is too vulnerable to accusations “not understanding” the sector, completely unlike Paula Bennett. The naysayers in Bennett’s case have to do something better than calling a former DPB collecting single mother a beneficiary basher.

Tolley is taking on one of the strongest unions in the country. In a non-Labour government, and not a former teacher, she is very much the underdog. You’re burning up more and more political capital, and election year is only next year. Good luck, you’re going to need it.

Update: The Prime Minister has been reported in backing Tolley in saying teachers’ expectations are unrealistic. This makes me more confident in my prediction that more than one strike will occur before the government budges.

Secondary Teachers Contract Bargaining

The NZ Herald recently reported that a strike over pay and conditions is possible course of action. The government clearly has not impressed the PPTA with small offers of 1 and 1.5 percent increases on the bargaining table. I have heard that the government also wishes to claw back benefits like guaranteed non-contact time in a bid to save money. Faced with a strike (which looks likely in the current climate) I think the government will make a more realistic offer. It would seem that the government is quite intent on wearing down the resolve of the union and to drag things out for as long as possible. Why this is so I am unsure.

Nearly all sectors of government spending have been cut due to the recession, and there’s always the mentality “we agree that budget cuts are necessary, but not our sector…” which can easily take hold. Along with the likes of Health, Education is something a government is never allowed to spend less money on. Perhaps National are wary of the fact that PPTA can hold the government to ransom if they have to, with 95% plus of secondary teachers belonging to it. Even though they know they would come out poorly in a head to head confrontation they are dragging things out for as long as possible to attempt to portray themselves, not teachers as setting the agenda on education policy. It is not a good look for a government to have to beg teachers to carry out their policy, particularly election winning ones. Perhaps they are dragging things out for as long as possible so that the government can say “look, we tried to find a solution, but we couldn’t so sacking many teachers (or something else quite extreme) was inevitable” with some credibility. Maybe it’s a distraction that the government is willing to bear to take attention away from the opposition to National Standards in the primary sector.

Pay is always one of the more visible issues when it comes to teacher recruitment and retention. However, as far as pay and career progression goes, once you hit the top of the standard payscale, the only way to get more money is to do less teaching. The current secondary scale has 14 steps and most new teachers with a Bachelor’s degree and a teaching diploma would start on step 7 (current starting salary $45653 pa), and go up one step a year. Once the top is reached ($68980 pa) one can only get paid more by getting management units, as a department/faculty head, deputy principal duties, et cetera which entails more paperwork and less teaching.

One may think that it’s a fairly good salary considering that there are two week school holidays between terms and a fairly long summer break. The reality is though – teaching is a stressful job. It’s the most difficult thing I’ve tried to do in my entire life. Teachers get stressed, and also get ill quite easily from hanging around so many young people every day with all sorts of ailments. The hours are more than just during the 9am-3pm ish teaching day – many hours of preparation, marking, taking the rugby or debating team are a few of the many commitments teachers are expected to make. The skills teachers have often are better renumerated elsewhere, especially say those have skills in Mathematics.

Thursdays in Black

So the PPTA rejected the latest pay offer when negotiating a new collective agreement. I would have too, the rises of 1 percent and 1.5 percent are not very much! So what do the PPTA members do? Do something I associate more with useless tertiary student politics groups (useless because they have no real power or influence at all thus a waste of time) than a group of professionals and decide to wear black on Thursday.

It’s a Game of Chicken – Tolley Versus the Unions

The Hon Anne Tolley has issued a press release to the unions essentially saying “get over it” about National Standards.

Tolley’s greatest PR challenge is that the public only ever sees the more overt political arm of the teachers’ unions. And they tend to be the more vocal left wing activists compared to the rank and file union members who just try to get on with their job. I believe we do not see a true representation of the political views of the members when we see union spokespeople in the media. To be fair, I think the nature of the news media doesn’t help. The bread and butter activities of the union aren’t newsworthy for example, helping out new teachers to the profession, ensuring teachers get their entitlements, submissions and consultation on non-controversial issues.

Tolley also doesn’t have a triple B shield. What does that mean? It’s a new term I’ve coined, too political in origin for my liking, oh well. The BBB shield is the [it's hard to plant the label] Beneficiary Basher [on] Bennett shield. I say it’s difficult because it seems rather ridiculous to call a former DPB and single mother a beneficiary basher. Tolley is an easy target in this regard because she is not a former teacher, with the implication that she doesn’t understand the education sector. Tolley’s pointing to her own upbringing of children in the education system helps but is nowhere as effective as a BBB.

I think Tolley is saying bring it on. She knows she has an electoral mandate and that parents at worst do not have outright hostility to this policy. The escalation will come either in refusal to implement the policy either by boycotting, or by striking, or by cleverly subverting it.

My best evaluation of the situation is that both sides are playing chicken. Tolley could yield by dropping the policy, or delaying it. Presumably delaying is enough for the unions as it would stop the policy long enough for Labour to get back in again in the next election (assuming favourable conditions for those of that political persuasion). The unions could yield by implementing the policy as the government intends, or ending their opposition campaigns.

I don’t think either side will back down, at least not easily. Tolley especially as she has everything to lose from backing down. Firstly, a back down is embarrassing for any minister, in fact it’s a kick to the ego for anybody. Secondly, it’s a key election policy so there is an electoral mandate for this policy and would be sacked as minister if she failed to deliver.

The unions don’t have as much to lose. If all else fails, they will be happier when Labour (eventually?) gets back in. Even if the collision occurs, I think the dismissals will be symbolic rather than holus bolus sackings. Nonetheless a minister ordering sackings will never create great looking headlines no matter how justified the decision.

I think their biggest fear is that the policy will last long enough that it won’t just be an easy Labour decision to abolish them, especially if National get more than one term. The NZEI and PPTA, although they have friendly relations with Labour, are not officially affiliated with the party. Labour wouldn’t suffer terribly in the event that they didn’t repeal this policy once in office. It’s not as if the NZEI and PPTA would start championing for the National Party any time soon.

A Few Notes on National Standards

There are two things that are prominent in the papers – National Standards and the debate about the New Zealand flag. The former matters because it’s about education and more importantly laws have been passed for them to take effect. The public debate about the flag is as always a waste of time because no law or policy change has been actually proposed by the people who do have the power to change it.

The NZEI and the PPTA have started an online campaign on twitter are trying to trend #NationalStandards. There’s hardly anyone interested – the people that would do this aren’t likely to be ones to be interested in some educational policy that doesn’t affect them I suspect. It’s just not the right demographic.

John Hattie has been mentioned a few times. Again there are people who write about him that I strongly suspect haven’t read his books. For example the following quote comes from Andrew Laxon in the NZ Herald.

Not everyone in the educational establishment agrees with Hattie’s views, which include support for teachers’ performance pay and rejecting the popular argument that lower class sizes improve children’s learning.

If one read Hattie’s book Visible Learning, one would know that he argues reducing class size can improve learning, but only if the teacher takes advantage of the reduced class size. That is to say, that reducing class size doesn’t lead to an automatic improvement.

National Standards and the Anne Tolley Interview

The Ministry has released a summary of feedback received from consultation. Anne Tolley also appeared on Q+A and spoke about them last Sunday week.

On the response page, under the Design of Standards heading the following made me laugh at first

The mathematics standards are being reorganised to reflect the strands in the mathematics and statistics learning area of The New Zealand Curriculum.

because it sounds so simple and innocent at first – but will cause great nightmares for all the teachers.

The panel discussion following Tolley’s interview was interesting to watch. Kate Gainsford, president of the PPTA, could have easily launched militantly into Tolley but seemed to be far more diplomatic. It is difficult to rail against something which has just been described as very “reasonable”, and since the finer detail was not probed, she didn’t get a good chance to advocate against the National Standards on behalf of her primary union colleagues. Tolley did well politically by being “consistent” and “on message”. Gainsford was right though, we did need to hear more detail on “growing the pig” rather than just “weighing” it.

Holmes in my opinion was very good in facilitating panel discussion this time. Here he manages to elicit a side of Gainsford I don’t think many people in the public have seen before. Normally the public only ever see her tearing into the government savagely (you could argue the case that any non-Labour minister gets more) and getting media attention for things like teacher strikes. This excerpt is long, illustrates the political versus educational reality but shows the Gainsford the person behind the union line.

PAUL: There are one or two principals I think who’ve told us during the week well we don’t think she’s on top of her portfolio, but she sounded like when she said she’s been surrounded by teachers all her life, that resonated well. That had good credibility. She seems to like teachers. Here’s a clip on what she was saying about teachers:

SOUNDBITE: Well I’ve been a parent of three children and I’m a grandmother of two. So I’ve had three children go through the education system and I’ve also got a family of teachers so I’ve lived with education all my life.

PAUL: Now, that answer had credibility Kate?

KATE: There were some vital bits missing I believe – a passion for education and a deep knowledge of education. I believe the minister, politically…

PAUL: She’s a mother and a grandmother – she’s put three kids through school, what more does she need to know about education?

KATE: Well, it’s a highly technical area isn’t it Mr Creech – you’d be able to agree with that…

PAUL: Do only teachers know about education?

KATE: Not at all, not all and we’ve had that argument way back in the 80s and 90s that provide and capture thing. But I would just like to comment on what you were asking before about the political nature of what we were listening to. I believe this Minister is frequently consistent and on message, we have met those sound bites consistently since her appointment about the fiscal environment, about priorities….

PAUL: We’ve all heard the same things for 20 years from politicians…

KATE: But there is a layer underneath that isn’t there? There’s a layer underneath that is of critical importance and it’s that detailed, technical, educational knowledge that’s important to get right.

PAUL: I don’t necessarily want to be Anne Tolley’s champion but I like what she said about attracting the best people into teaching, retention of teachers.

KATE: If she had trained and qualified as a teacher then she’d be fitting in with our policy perfectly. She could be a member.

The emphasis in the above is my own. Because nobody has been able to get Tolley off message in regards to Adult Community Education cuts, like she said are here to say. I think the cuts will only be reversed if the government can be convinced that it will cost votes.

Anne Tolley was reciprocally diplomatic in my opinion. Consider the following interview excerpt:

PAUL Couple of quick ones – how do you rate New Zealand teachers?

ANNE I think we’ve got some fantastic teachers.

PAUL How do you get on with them?

ANNE Reasonably well.

PAUL How are you getting on with the principals?

ANNE Um, quite a lot of them are being very constructive. Look there’s always some who don’t like what you’re doing for a variety of reasons.

The exchange seemed a bit awkward, particularly the last comment. It would appear that she was trying to dodge the question. But there isn’t a lot she can really do. What would you say if you are a National Minister when 90%+ of teachers and principals belong to unions that are left leaning politically?

PAUL: There are one or two principals I think who’ve told us during the week well we don’t think she’s on top of her portfolio, but she sounded like when she said she’s been surrounded by teachers all her life, that resonated well. That had good credibility. She seems to like teachers. Here’s a clip on what she was saying about teachers:

SOUNDBITE: Well I’ve been a parent of three children and I’m a grandmother of two. So I’ve had three children go through the education system and I’ve also got a family of teachers so I’ve lived with education all my life.

PAUL: Now, that answer had credibility Kate?

KATE: There were some vital bits missing I believe – a passion for education and a deep knowledge of education. I believe the minister, politically…

PAUL: She’s a mother and a grandmother – she’s put three kids through school, what more does she need to know about education?

KATE: Well, it’s a highly technical area isn’t it Mr Creech – you’d be able to agree with that…

PAUL: Do only teachers know about education?

KATE: Not at all, not all and we’ve had that argument way back in the 80s and 90s that

provide and capture thing. But I would just like to comment on what you were asking before about the political nature of what we were listening to. I believe this Minister is frequently consistent and on message, we have met those sound bites consistently since her appointment about the fiscal environment, about priorities….

PAUL: We’ve all heard the same things for 20 years from politicians…

KATE: But there is a layer underneath that isn’t there? There’s a layer underneath that is of critical importance and it’s that detailed, technical, educational knowledge that’s important to get right.

PAUL: I don’t necessarily want to be Anne Tolley’s champion but I like what she said about attracting the best people into teaching, retention of teachers.

KATE: If she had trained and qualified as a teacher then she’d be fitting in with our policy perfectly. She could be a me