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.