Kiwiblog

Kudos to the NZEI for a classy release:

The education sector union NZEI Te Riu Roa is hoping there will be opportunities to forge a strong and constructive working relationship with the new Education Minister. …

“Charter schools, fundamental problems with National Standards, raising Māori student achievement, the government’s failure to commit to 100% qualified early childhood teachers, the future of education in Christchurch, more support for special needs students and recognising the professional work and value of school support staff are all issues which deserve full and open discussion,” says Mr Leckie.

NZEI hopes the new minister will take on these challenges with an inclusive and constructive approach which values the voice of teachers, principals and communities.

It also wishes Anne Tolley well in her newly-appointed roles.

Nice. Now compare that to the PPTA release:

Shakespeare warns John key against duplicity and ambition

“We’ve gifted the prime minister a copy of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, trusting he will reflect on this tale of a popular and respected general’s ambition for power leading to ruin for his country and his own downfall,” says PPTA president Robin Duff. …

“The Bard’s cautionary tale of political morality is the third in our series of literary gifts to Mr Key,” he said.

“The first was a New Zealand Oxford Dictionary as we were concerned that the prime minister was using some words ambiguously. The second book was Niccolo Machiavelli’s influential 16th century treatise on power and politics, The Prince, that serves as a useful resource for discussions about principle and probity in political life.”

Robin Duff said the fourth book will look at what lessons literature provides about the growing gap between rich and poor.

How patronising can you get? The PPTA have obviously decided that constructive engagement is for others.

Stuff reports:

The secondary teachers’ union has rejected National’s $1 billion school improvement plan, saying it is an “irresponsible bribe”.

This reinforces my views that most unions are more focused on helping Labour and fighting National, than actually doing what is best for their members or sector.

It would be quite legitimate if the PPTA had said “We don’t believe that there is any need to tie the funding to the mixed ownership model which we oppose, but we welcome the pledge of an extra one billion dollars for modernising schools”.

But instead the PPTA says:

New Zealand needed politicians who were prepared to follow their own advice and manage the schools in a “rational and fiscally responsible way,” he said.

I suspect if Labour had announced one billion dollars (an effective 50% increase) in capital spending on schools, the PPTA would have all but fellated them.

We saw the same in 2009 with NZUSA. National implemented a policy that students who repay their loans early would get a 10% rebate. NZUSA incredibly came out and opposed it, saying it was unfair to those who could not make early repayments! Again I can guarantee you the same announcement from a Labour Government would have been treated as the best thing since sliced bread.

It really comes down to does an organisation operate in good faith or bad faith? I’ll give some credit to the CTU here – they will sometimes give praise to National, for those (rare) policies they agree with.

But the PPTA leadership confirms its position as far more focused on politics than education.

John Hartevelt at Stuff reports:

The secondary teachers’ union says a new National government would strip away its right to strike.

But Education Minister Anne Tolley, who will speak at the Post Primary Teachers’ Association annual conference today, says the union is “making it up”.

In a paper to be debated at the union conference in Wellington, the PPTA says it believes the Government “is considering introducing legislation in its next term to deny teachers the right to strike in pursuit of a collective agreement”.

Mrs Tolley said the Government had not sought advice about the cost of teacher strikes and it was “nonsense” to suggest it would introduce legislation denying them the right to strike.

I really wonder why Anne is speaking to the PPTA conference, if they are going to just make up lies about what National is planning. It’s an act of considerable bad faith. Good on her for fronting up, but really there has to be a limit to how much bad faith one should tolerate.

Would Helen Clark have spoken to the Exclusive Brethren annual conference?

UPDATE: A representative from the Exclusive Brethren has contacted me, complaining of the comparison to the PPTA. I accept their point that the comparison is unfair, and apologise for comparing them to the PPTA. Whiel I don’t approve of what the EB did in hiring a private detective to follow Clark, they have now knowingly published a false document, as the PPTA is doing.

Imogen Neale in the SST reports:

Teachers and parents are calling on the government to cap class sizes, despite a leading academic saying it’s not the size of the class but what you do with it that matters.

The Post Primary Teachers’ Association contends the Ministry of Education’s staffing formula disadvantages larger schools and puts them under pressure to have classes with more than 30 students.

It’s trying to make it an election issue and is pushing the ministry to reintroduce limits.

The PPTA would not specify an ideal size but the Sunday Star-Times understands it’s around 25. A Star-Times readers poll found that parents’ preferred class size was 15 to 24.

As reported above, the scientific research has found that class size has a minimal impact on learning outcomes, and the quality of the teacher has a major outcome.

Honorary Auckland University education professor John Hattie said this year that size was “irrelevant”.

“I’m not a fan of whether it’s 15, whether it’s 30, or whether it’s 60. We’ve proved that New Zealand has some of the best teachers in the world in classes of 25 to 30, so why are we worrying about class size?”

He was responding to reports of a British school teaching children in classes of up to 70.

We’d probably do better if we sacked the bottom 20% of teachers, and gave their salaries to the top 20% in return for taking on their classes also!

Subject to ratification, the PPTA pay dispute and strike action looks to be over. Congrats to both sides for the settlement.

It will be interesting to see what variation there is between the settlement and earlier offers.

Rachel Grunwell in the HoS reports:

A leading Auckland school is installing state-of-the-art software that will allow it to pinpoint its best-performing teachers – and show up those responsible for poorly performing pupils.

Macleans College, a decile-10 state school in Howick which often scoops top scholarships and has a reputation for high-achieving students, hopes to install a programme called EdReflect.

It will record and analyse student results, allowing the school to learn which teachers have taught students that got the best – and worst – results.

My first reaction to reading this, was that I am sure the teacher unions will hate it, and possibly call on the Government to ban it.

Post Primary Teachers’ Association president Robin Duff said the technology could be a good thing if it was used to improve teaching. But the teacher union head was “fairly alarmed” about the concept and feared it could be used “punitively” among “an armoury of sacking devices”.

God forbid a teacher be sacked merely because their students don’t actualy learn.

The PPTA was angry enough when the NZEI settled their pay claim with the Government, they must be annoyed that the Secondary Principals have also reached a settlement, and worse they have had to ratify it

This leaves the PPTA alone with its election year industrial action in support of their 4% pay claim for secondary school teachers.

What is really interesting is the detail of the Principal’s agreement. There is no increase in base salary at all – yes a 0% pay increase. But what they have got is some incentives for good performance – Board of Trustees will decide if they meet the professional criteria.

Just saw this editorial:

Those who read newspapers and magazines during the Christmas break – most of us, surely – will have seen a series of big Post-Primary Teachers Association advertisements. They said: “Around the world, the countries that believe in investing in education understand the central importance of teachers … Attracting great teachers for our children, and keeping them in New Zealand, costs money. How can the government … not make that investment?”

The PPTA is wasting their money. Well, not entirely. If their aim is to get a better pay deal for their members, the money is wasted. If the aim is to help Labour by painting National as anti-education, then they may feel it is a good investment.

PPTA members do not believe that an administration that has supported the Rugby World Cup, South Canterbury Finance, Warner Bros and hated private schools cannot afford to give them a 4 per cent pay rise. That they have had three successive rises of 4 per cent when many parents got nothing or lost their jobs seems to have happened in a parallel universe.

I wonder if they will keep their strike action going for all of 2011.

An irony of the PPTA’s advertising campaign is that, under Helen Clark’s Electoral Finance Act, the union would have had to think twice about mounting it. Third-party advertising was heavily proscribed throughout an entire election year.

That this highly political union can now advertise its distress about pay rates to the full extent of its members’ willingness to fund it until three months before polling day – without falling foul of an anti-free speech law – is thanks only to its enemy, the Key-led Government.

Very true.

We have our own version of the Iran/Iraq war occurring in New Zealand. The PPTA has launched a jihad against the NZEI for the terrible sin of settling their pay negotiations.

In the Dom Post this morning, secondary school teacher Jo Mells says it is time for the NZEI to stop free-loading and attacks their pay settlement.

But even more extraordinary is this video of the PPTA President, Kate Gainsford. At 6:40 she talks of betrayal by the NZEI Executive and at 7:05 calls on primary teachers to reject the settlement their Executive has recommended.

In the NBR (behind the paywall) Matthew Hooton wrote last week:

“Good faith” remains at the centre of New Zealand’s labour laws and, until now, has delivered relatively benign industrial relations.

The problem is that the Employment Relations Act’s authors couldn’t have anticipated a person such as Australian Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance boss Simon Whipp.

Australian unions are overbearingly powerful and notoriously corrupt, with historic links to organised crime. It was to people with that cultural inheritance that New Zealand’s actor unionists turned – implausibly, they claim, simply because they wanted a chat with the New Zealand Screen Production and Development Association.

In fact, Mr Whipp then conspired with other union bosses in Australia, Canada, the US and the UK to arrange a global boycott of The Hobbit, which would have cost more than 2500 highly-skilled, highly-paid jobs and unravelled an industry worth more than New Zealand’s entire exports of beef, butter or cheese.

But the problem has been solved, or has it?

Good faith is meant to be a mutual obligation, requiring parties to interact constructively. It covers the whole relationship between employer and employee, not just formal bargaining, and includes not only current but intended employers and employees – including those working under commercial contracts who want to become employees. …

Not even in their fevered imaginations could it be considered good faith to conspire with militant union thugs across the English-speaking world to organise a global boycott of a vitally important project which already pays above industry averages – and all without even giving prior warning to the employer of their intention to do so.

Actors aren’t alone in making a mockery of “good faith.” Similar conduct is under way in secondary schools from the PPTA, a union with a history of communist connections. It has no intention of dealing in good faith with the Ministry of Education because its true objective is industrial havoc in election year. The primary teachers’ union will no doubt also find a pretext for havoc in 2011, probably over national standards – a policy which, like few others, has received overwhelming mandates from parents and voters. Other unions plan to sabotage the Rugby World Cup.

So good faith seems to be rather lacking from the unions, Hooton says.

The government may also need to consider whether the law around “good faith” should be reviewed in the light of union antics. The provisions imposing good faith obligations on unions as well as employers could be strengthened. Or perhaps employers could be able to apply to the courts to have organisations like Actors Equity and the teacher unions proscribed and the requirement to deal with them in good faith removed. Or perhaps “good faith” needs to go altogether.

That would be a shame – but it would be Ms Walsh, Ms Ward-Lealand, Ms Malcolm, Ms Kelly and Mr Whipp who would be responsible.

By coincidence (or maybe not) I also had a phone call on Friday, saying that the laws around good faith need to be reviewed as the unions make such a mockery around them. Is it possible Mr Hooton is flying a kite for certain people within National who want to see change in this area? If so, they have certainly been given an opportunity to do so by not just the MEAA, but also PPTA and NZEI.

Like Matthew, I think this would be a shame. I think good faith is important in the employment realm. But it does need to apply both ways, not one way.

The Dom Post editorial pulls no punches:

Editorial: Get back to work, greedy teachers

That headline is so good, it belongs on a blog

Secondary teachers’ union head Kate Gainsford wants today’s strike to be seen as being all about a Government that does not value teachers or education, and that is mucking her members about.

There is a good reason she is doing that.

Clothing its extravagant wage demands in the beguiling rhetoric of selfless dedication to the cause of education is the PPTA’s only chance of making them acceptable to the public.

If the union were to get real it means it would lose the argument.

To win, it would have to demonstrate why, in straitened economic times when the Government is borrowing to cover costs, its members should get a 4 per cent pay rise after receiving 4 per cent in each of the previous three years.

It would need to convince the public why its members should be treated differently from nurses and police – and the bulk of the rest of the New Zealand workforce, which has had minimal or no pay rises.

The difficulty for the PPTA is that most NZers understand that in the aftermath of the recession, almost no-one is getting big pay increases – and also that we are borrowing $240 million a week just to help pay for their current salaries.

It would mean telling them that there is something deeply wrong with a system where, according to Education Ministry figures, the average pay, with allowances, for a secondary teacher – not including principals – is $71,110, and where, of the 12,300 fulltime secondary teachers on the teacher salary payroll, 65 per cent earn between $60,000 and $80,000, and another 19 per cent earn more than $80,000, including 150 who earn more than $100,000.

Goodness, 65% of secondary teachers are officially rich pricks (defined as someone earning more than $60,000 – the level the rich prick envy tax used to come in at).

However, even there the union is on shaky ground. Its stance would have more credibility were it to acknowledge that fixing what is wrong with the education system involves more than just fattening the wallets of all teachers in the system, increasing employer KiwiSaver contributions, providing flu injections and laptops, and delivering slightly smaller class sizes.

It means recognising that the quality of the teacher has more impact on student performance than class sizes, the background of the pupil or the school where the teaching takes place.

If the union was genuine, it would call off the strikes and work with the Government to devise a pay system that provides pay rises for the best, rather than seeking rewards for all, regardless of merit.

What an excellent editorial.

I think the top 15% or so of teachers – around 2,000 of them, should be on $100,000. Bot the bottom 15% should be on under $50,000 so they have an incentive to pursue other careers.

How excellent to see a media outlet investigate a claim made, rather than merely report it. The Herald reports:

The head of the secondary teachers’ union has claimed teachers deserve a bigger pay rise than police because nobody is queuing up to be a teacher – but Herald inquiries have found the claim does not stack up.

Universities have reported significant increases in the numbers applying to become secondary teachers over the past two years, which most attributed to the recession prompting people to retrain in areas such as teaching because of job security.

Most schools of education have had at least double the number of applicants for the spaces available. This year, Auckland University had 905 applications for the 340 places available.

So the claim there are no queues is in fact completely untrue. Not only is there a queue, it has doubled recently and less than 1 in 2 in the queue will even get in.

Post Primary Teachers’ Association president Kate Gainsford made her “no queues” claim after Finance Minister Bill English said the union needed to explain to nurses, civil servants, police and doctors why teachers deserved double the increase they had settled for.

The salaries of nurses, police and teachers are usually comparable.

Ms Gainsford’s response was that there was a queue wanting to become police officers.

“There is no queue for people wanting to become secondary school teachers. That is the problem, and we don’t want that to become a crisis.”

Problem solved. There is a queue and there is no crisis. You can call the strike off now.

E-mail from a reader:

My name in xxxxxxx xxxxxxxx and I was on holiday in Rotorua with my family this week as it rained the entire time I spent most of time in the pool with the kids and had some very surprising conversations with other guest 2 who were teachers that disagreed with the strike of the post primary school teachers.

One Maori lady was a teacher from Hastings who told her principal that she didn’t agree with the strike and her principal told her “well your job isn’t safe then is it”. She replied “yes it is”. She also felt that some teachers are worth much more than they are getting paid but some teacher are “just lazy and not worth anything”. She felt the union should be protecting good teachers but they are protecting bad teachers.

The second teacher we met has been teaching for 20 years (not sure where) and she had never seen such political bias and bullying from Principals and left leaning teachers and it was pointless arguing with anyone as your on a hiding to nothing. She said that at election time you can’t admit you vote National or you are harassed as the only point of the union is to get Labour elected. Even the placards are red and white.

If what these teachers say is correct then a lot of good teachers don’t agree with the strike and they disagree with the union but are too scared to do anything or don’t want to because it’s a hassle then that is the bigger story.

By the way the primary school my kids go to is xxx xxxxx primary school and they support National standards so a lot of schools do. But as a primary school they are great and very inclusive so in fact national standards will make no difference to xxx xxxxx as they are excellent to start with.

You are in the position to canvass a wide audience you should ask for stories from other teachers about political bias and bullying from principals and unions. It’s time the teachers unions stopped bullying other teachers and parents as they only care about 1 thing – to gain power.

Goes without saying, other stories are welcome.

I love this speech by Tony Ryall to the PSA:

The tone of this conference here in Wellington will no doubt stand in stark contrast to that of the Irish public sector union only a few months ago.

In what has been described as a firebrand speech, the union chief demanded his members accept a four year strike ban, a pay freeze following pay cuts, massive redundancies and rationalisations – all of which were agreed with the Irish government earlier in the year.

What is more remarkable is the acceptance by his members and others in the public sector that the global financial crisis and its impact on the Celtic Tiger required such austerity….that is acceptance from the unions other than the secondary teachers union.

After undertaking months of industrial action including marching in the streets, that secondary teachers union there last week decided to finally accept the facts of recession and is joining the wider public sector pay restraint.

Wonderful swipe at the PPTA by implication there. How long is it going to take the PPTA to realise they are not getting free laptop for every teacher?

And then Tony continues:

The United Kingdom is facing the largest peacetime deficit in their history. Public servants earning more than $40,000 are facing a two year wage freeze, and performance-related pay for civil servants will be cut by 2/3rds.

Just last week the Governor of the Bank of England urged unions to accept public sector reforms and job cuts by warning that anything short of tackling the UK’s Budget deficit would “fail the next generation.”

In Italy the Government passed an austerity package of around $50 billion of saving which includes a freeze on public sector wages.

In Ireland the Government has cut public service salaries – including doctors, nurses, and teachers – by up to 15%.

Greece‘s socialist government has frozen public sector wages and pensions for the next three years.

In Hungary they plan to cut the cost of public servants pay by 15% and freeze government spending.

The Portugese government has put a hiring freeze on its civil service, along with a 5% wage cut for top earners in the public sector.

Germany has the strongest economy in Europe.  But the Germans plan  to reduce the number of their federal public servants by 15,000 – or 5% – and cut their salaries by 2.5%.

Canada has frozen wages in the public service for the next two to three years.

Compared to what’s happened internationally, New Zealand’s response has been fair, moderate and pragmatic.

And then Tony goes on to praise the PSA:

I would like to acknowledge the Public Service Association for the constructive and responsible part you have played in employment negotiations to date. You are professional yet determined.

You have sought settlements for your members that recognise the tough financial times we are all in.

While hard fought, those settlements have been responsible, realistic and fair to both parties…often between one and two percent. You’ve also been innovative in your approach to addressing productivity improvement.

Which is another message to the PPTA they are not getting 4%.

I’ve twice blogged on how the OECD teacher pay stats actually show teachers are paid more generously in NZ, than most other countries, when you take GDP/capita into account. Our problem is the overall wealth of the country – not what proportion we spend on education.

Both Kerre Woodham and the HoS editorial pick up on this point.

Kerre writes:

Teachers claim they are poorly paid in comparison to other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). David Farrar of Kiwiblog makes the point that we’re all poorly paid in comparison to other countries. It’s because we don’t earn as much as everyone else. It’s all about gross domestic product (GDP).

When you do the sums, as Farrar did, New Zealand teachers get paid more than almost every other country in the OECD compared to GDP per capita. They certainly get paid far more than the median wage – as well they should.

And you know what – if the unions would agree to performance pay, I’d be the first person to be advocating big pay rises for the good teachers – the top ones should be on $100,000.

The HoS editorial:

The problem is that the Government is not short of priority issues right now: recovering from the biggest economic meltdown in living memory and funding recovery from an earthquake that has upended life for about half the people in the South Island are two that spring to mind.

This is not to say that the teachers’ claims are without merit. And plainly the Ministry of Education recognises that, since many of them have been conceded, in whole or in part.

Others, including an increase in the employer contribution to members’ Kiwisaver funds and a 4 per cent wage claim while other wage settlements (and the inflation rate) are running at less than 2 per cent, look remarkably like the demands of a sector out of touch with reality.

Remember that the Government is running a huge fiscal deficit. Every dollar more of government spending has to be borrowed, and will be a burden on today’s kids who will have to pay it back.

The plain fact is that the average secondary teacher salary is now more than $71,000 or $1365 a week. It has risen since 2000 by more than 45 per cent – almost twice as fast as wages in the public sector as a whole (24 per cent) and the private sector (25.3 per cent).

It is provocative but misleading for teachers to compare pay rates with colleagues internationally: salaries have to be reckoned against GDP per capita for international comparisons to be meaningful – that’s why our teachers earn 82 per cent less than their Luxembourg counterparts. And our spending on non-tertiary education is the same as or higher than the OECD average in terms of GDP.

And the solution, as I have said before, is to increase our national wealth. And the way you do that is not big pay increases for doing the same job. It is by improving our productivity.

To put it bluntly, teachers need to stop disrupting the lives of students so close to end-of-year exams, prioritise their demands and get back to the bargaining table. They got 4 per cent last year and 4 per cent the year before. Parents and everyone else may take the view that teachers aren’t doing too badly.

Who else has had a 45% increase in their salary since 2000? And I don’t mean through promotions – I mean for doing the same job?

The Herald reports:

New Zealand teachers are some of the lowest paid in the OECD, despite working more hours than most of their overseas counterparts, an international report reveals.

The annual Education at a Glance report, which compares the education systems of the 29 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, found that after 15 years’ experience, a New Zealand teacher made $10,000 a year less than OECD counterparts on average.

The entire article is peppered with stats designed to give the impression our teachers are underpaid. It reads like a PPTA and NZEI press release. But they have missed out the most important stat – our GDP. I blogged this in response last week, and need to repeat it again:

I am not surprised teachers in Australia get paid more. Everyone in Australia gets paid more – they are a wealthier country. The solution to this problem is to increase productivity growth.

The better comparison between countries is how much do teachers get paid, compared to the average wage, or how much does a country spend on education as a percentage of GDP.

The OECD report answers the latter.

In Australia 3.5% of GDP is spent on non-tertiary education, and in New Zealand it is 4.0%. So we are already paying more as a percentage of GDP, than Australia. Hence the solution is to increase GDP, not to increase the share spent on education.

Only three OECD countries spend a higher percentage of GDP on non-tertiary education than New Zealand.

So all these stats about how teachers are paid less than the OECD average – it is because we earn less than the OECD average, and it is basic economic that you have to generate the wealth to spend it.

What would be good is if someone did some proper comparisons, such as what do NZ teachers get paid, compared to the average wage for their country and/or what do teachers get paid compared to the average GDP per capita.

The OECD doesn’t seem to have up to date average wage data for NZ, but there is good data on GDP per capita. So let’s compare teacher salaries to GDP per capita. Taking a primary teacher with 15 years experience, the data is:

• Australia $46,096 salary vs $38,911 GDP per capita = 118% ratio
• UK/England $44,630 vs $34,619 = 129%
• France $31,927 vs $33,679 = 95%
• Luxembourg $67,723 vs $78,395 = 86%
• US $44,172 vs $46,381 = 95%
• NZ $38,412 vs $26,708 = 144%
• OECD $39,426 vs $35,138 = 112%

So in fact New Zealand is paying primary teachers with 15 years experience far more, compared to our national wealth, than the OECD average, and than Australia, the US, UK, US, France etc.

Even if ones takes secondary teachers with 15 years experience, NZ at 144% pays far more relative to national wealth than even Luxembourg. So bear this in mind as you read:

They also started on an average of $10,000 less than Australian counterparts and earned up to $82,000 less than those in top-paying Luxembourg.

Again – that is because those countries are far wealthier.

New Zealand teachers get paid more, than almost any other country, compared to GDP per capita, and almost inevitably the average wage.

And if you think that this is not the relevant comparison, then you probably think money grows on trees.

Today’s Dom Post editorial:

Earth to teachers: the cupboard is bare. The stopwork meetings called for today and tomorrow by the secondary teachers’ union suggest its executive inhabits a parallel universe.

In case the Post Primary Teachers Association has not noticed, the economy is flagging, businesses are cutting costs and most workers are making do with minimal or no pay increases. Some are grateful to just have jobs. Now is not the time to be demanding 4 per cent wage rises, increased KiwiSaver contributions, a laptop for every teacher and smaller class sizes. Nor is it the time to be downing chalk to vote on strike action.

The Dom Post has summed it up nicely.

In support of its claims, the PPTA quotes from an OECD report showing that after 15 years a New Zealand secondary teacher’s salary is 17 per cent lower than the OECD average. Strangely it appears to have escaped the union’s notice that the chippies, cleaners, dentists and doctors who will have to fund any pay increase for teachers through their taxes also earn significantly less than their counterparts in countries like Australia, the United States, France and Japan. That is the consequence of living in a country which does not perform as well economically as its peers.

Exactly. What would be interesting is to compare how teachers are paid in NZ compared to the average wage, and what the OECD average is compared to the OECD average wage.

There is a yawning chasm between the best and worst teachers. The Los Angeles Times has just published the results of a major study analysing the performance of individual students in the US’s second largest school district over several years. It shows that the quality of teaching has more to do with student performance than class sizes, socio-economic background or even the thing parents worry most about – the schools they attend. A good teacher can make a huge difference to a pupil’s performance in a single year. A poor teacher, down the hall in the same school, can have an equally big impact in the same period – but in an adverse way.

Hmmn, I think the editorial writer reads my blog

As I have said before, I’d pay the best teachers around $100,000 but the worse teachers under $40,000.

If teacher unions were genuinely focused on improving student performance they would work with the Government to devise a pay system that recognises the abilities of individual teachers.

That will never ever happen – sadly.

The Dom Post reports:

Thousands of secondary school teachers are preparing to strike after rejecting the Government’s pay offer.

Schools will close for half a day next week to allow more than 18,000 teachers to attend special meetings to vote on strike action. …

The PPTA is seeking a 4 per cent pay rise. It also wants an extra 1 per cent KiwiSaver employer contribution, laptops, immunisation against contagious diseases, and wants class sizes capped at 30 pupils, or 24 in classes with hazards such as woodwork, and some science classes.

Why stop there? Why not also demand company cars?

The sad thing is that good teachers are underpaid. Top teachers should be getting paid around $100,000 or more – and they are worth it.

But the PPTA refuses to consider performance pay, so the best teachers can be paid what they are worth. They insist that the worst teachers are paid the same as the best.

Dave Guerin at Education Directions blogs:

The PPTA released a video over the weekend apparently criticising Bill English, Anne Tolley and Steven Joyce but it really does have some dire dialogue. The 50 second video revolves around some PPTA protestors holding up signs like “Education for All” which are finally ignored by the Ministers turning out the lights. I challenge any reader, outside PPTA head office, to watch it and try to convince me that the video isn’t just a waste of money. It costs money to create video, but the dialogue is uninspiring and there is no real point to it. I expect better arguments from the PPTA, even if I’m unlikely to agree with them.

The CTU had some pretty funny attack videos before the last election. I certainly can appreciate a good attack video, if done with humour or impact. But I agree with Dave, this one from the PPTA is really rather sad.

The Dom Post reports:

At least two secondary teachers are seriously assaulted by pupils every school day, a union survey shows.

The Post Primary Teachers Association says teachers are being punched, kicked, struck with objects, or verbally abused.

I share the concern over teacher safety. Some horrendous assaults have occurred on teachers.

However it would have been useful to not include verbal abuse under the definition of assault. Verbal abuse is also quite unacceptable, but I want to know what proportion of these ten assaults a week are physical, and verbal.

She insisted, however, that it was not a problem in every school.

Principals contacted by The Dominion Post said the majority of assaults were verbal but in a disturbing trend, the age of students responsible for serious assaults such as stabbings were getting younger.

I’d hate to see metal detectors in schools, like in the US, but I do despair at what one can do about these stabbings of teachers.

Education Minister Anne Tolley said while there was “no magic wand” to deal with violence in schools, the Government was taking it very seriously. It had given an extra $15m over two years that would help thousands of teachers receive extra training, including in effective classroom management.

This is well intentioned, but maybe the funding needs to go to detect unstable kids and make sure they get treatment.

The Herald calls on NZ to back Obama in Afghanistan:

No compliment was more apt than the one that came from the commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, US General Stanley McChrystal: “The forces that New Zealand provides are extraordinarily professional, as you know, and they are key members of the coalition.”

He had special praise for the work done in Bamiyan, which he said needed to be reproduced around the country.

“That’s really where we are building the foundation of Afghanistan.”

No doubt such compliments are sincere, but they come with a significant fish hook.

General McChrystal made no bones about the fact that he would like the New Zealanders to stay on and not just because they are doing good work. …

Before he left Afghanistan, Mr Key was giving some pretty broad hints himself. The PRT was likely to stay for another year, he said.

He was less forthcoming about the SAS but said that its role would also be looked at, with the possibility of a smaller contingent staying for longer. Indeed, he said this was the preference of the SAS itself.

It would be no bad thing if its wish was granted. Of course no one would want to see us bogged down. But the Obama strategy needs to be given a chance to work and New Zealand should stay with it for the long haul.

It must be noted that the Labour Government supported the Bush strategy in Afghanistan three times, sending the SAS in. However they oppose the Obama strategy.

The Press looks at airline alliances:

The last time Air New Zealand sought to forge a trans-Tasman strategic alliance it was with the biggest Australian carrier, Qantas.

That proposal was knocked back by the regulators, which was not surprising as the alliance between the two would have cornered about 80 per cent of the trans-Tasman aviation market. …

Ultimately the key question must be whether the benefits for consumers, as claimed by the proposal’s backers in terms of cost and convenience, outweigh the reality that the alliance would lead to a reduction in competition. It is this issue which should determine whether this alliance will fly.

I know I’d be pissed off to book Air New Zealand and end up on Pacific Blue.

The Dom Post calls for reality from teachers:

There has long been a suspicion that reality stops at the door to the teachers’ staffroom.

The Post Primary Teachers Association’s ludicrous claim for a 4 per cent pay rise for secondary school teachers lends credence to the theory.

The world is just emerging from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the Government is effectively borrowing $200 million a week to maintain existing levels of services, tens of thousands of New Zealanders have lost their jobs, and hundreds of thousands have received little, if any, pay rise for the past two years.

I think one could do a science experiment on whether there is a connection between the PPTA and reality.

The majority reluctantly accept that is the price they must pay for job security. At a time of crisis, everybody – employers and employees – has to tighten their belts.

For the PPTA to demand a big pay increase at such a time is to show gross insensitivity to those who pay teacher salaries through their taxes. For it to demand the increase after its members received 4 per cent pay increases in each of the past three years is to show secondary teachers, or their union at least, are completely out of touch with the real world.

As the editorial noted, we are borrowing over $200 million a week.

Yet the present pay structure does not allow schools to differentiate between the performance of good, indifferent and bad teachers. They are all paid on the basis of their years of service and the responsibilities they hold.

If teacher unions are as serious as they say they are about wanting to keep good teachers in schools, they should work with the Education Ministry to devise a formula that allows schools to pay great teachers what they are worth and send a message to poor teachers that they should review their career options.

I agree there should be performance pay of course. But not even to a formula. Principals should have the ability to pay teachers as much as they think they are worth, within an overall budget. The top teachers should be on over $100,000 in my opinion. However the lousy teachers should be on $35,000 so they have the incentive to change professions or improve their teaching skills.

The ODT talks about John Key’s visit to Afghanistan:

There really was no choice: Prime Minister John Key’s trip to Afghanistan had to have been a “secret”.

Indeed it is standard operating procedure for all high-profile politicians and personalities who visit the volatile and dangerous region. …

To the many popular faces of Mr Key has been added that of a leader not prepared to send New Zealand troops “to a destination I am not prepared to come [to] myself”.

And further confirmation of a prime minister who likes to “see for himself” – to gather information or insight first-hand to enable better quality decision-making.

He told accompanying reporters that he wanted to make his own assessment of the work of the 70-plus SAS team on active duty in the country, and of the 140 troops in Bamiyan involved in reconstruction activities.

He would also have been wanting to get a feel for how the Nato mission of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is faring. …

But whether the occupation and the work of the ISAF is headed anywhere but towards a stalemate – and thus whether New Zealand should recommit troops towards its mission – is the burning question.

Mr Key is right, at this point, to remain non-committal.

Personally I don’t think the PM’s visit to Afghanistan was anything remarkable. It is inevitable a NZ PM will visit troops serving overseas, as conditions allow.

What has been amusing is the howls of anguish from those media organisations who were not invited along. The reality is of course one can’t travel with a full press corps into war zones.

It could be worth considering some sort of formal roster or random selection system for future trips, so that it doesn’t look like hand picked media. One could have a policy of one rep each from print, radio and television. The trouble is these trips are so infrequent, it might not be worth the bother.

I blogged yesterday on Maria English’s world beating achievement of topping the world two years in a row in the Cambridge International English exams. She was marked higher than 90,000 students from 100 countries.

What was really nice in the comments is that almost everyone put politics aside, and was genuinely pleased and admiring of such a wonderful achievement for a New Zealand student.

Now you would think the PPTA would also be pleased that a New Zealand secondary school student has done so well. But, instead this is what they twittered:

Government ministers show support for private businesses involved in education

with a link to the TV3 story on Maria and another story.

Isn’t that just such an appalling and small minded sneer. They don’t care at all about a student being top of the world. They just hate the fact she is at a private school, or took part in a private exam.

I think it is useful that the PPTA reminds us of what matters to teacher unions, because Colin Espiner has written a blog where he basically calls for the NZEI to have a veto over education policy on NZ.

But you can’t bulldoze your way through a sector as highly unionised as teaching without taking the unions with you. …

I’d be happy for the Government to explore the idea further, but only in conjunction with the actual practitioners in the classrooms. Ramming policy through in spite of their strenuous objections makes me uneasy. After all, this isn’t a fight over wages and conditions. Teachers’ objections are based on educational reasons, and while there may be some vested self-interest involved, I’m prepared to accept the NZEI has some valid concerns.

I don’t even know where to start. How about with an analogy. Would Colin advocate that the Government should not make any changes to economic policy unless Treasury agrees?

Should there be no change to telecommunications policy unless Telecom agrees?

As the PPTA shows, they are not concerned about educational outcomes. They are concerned about their members. Their objections are not based on education reasons. The NZEI President has said that if the Government removed school achievement data from the Official Information Act, their opposition to national standards would disappear. This is a battle about league tables, or in other words freedom of information.

I would have thought if the Government was really serious about improving the quality of primary schools, it might be pumping money into cutting class sizes. Curiously, however, it’s done the opposite, and teacher/pupil ratios are increasing.

Colin must have missed the Hattle report which concluded that class size is not a major factor – it is the quality of the teacher.

Even putting the educational arguments aside, however, buying a fight with the teacher unions is bad politics. Key seems to think he can turn public opinion against the NZEI on this one but I think this is unlikely. Far better to take the union with him than try to bash it into submission.

Colin makes the mistake of thinking there is a choice. Unless the Government amends the OIA to restrict access to school achievement data, then the union will never ever back national standards. The call for trials is a red herring designed to delay.  I would bet several billion dollars that at the end of any trials the NZEI would declare that the standards can not be implemented.

It’s almost as if Key is tired of playing Mr Nice Guy and wants to show the steel behind the “relaxed” Prime Minister.

That’s his call, but I think he’s picked the wrong issue and the wrong target. The NZEI is a formidable foe.

Colin has it the wrong way around. It is not the Government picking a fight. A group of taxpayer funded staff are refusing to implement the legal requirements of the Government. They are the ones picking the fight.

Colin thinks the standards are abotu assessment, but for most schools there will be no change in assessment. They are about plain English reporting. Colin said:

Are national standards a good idea? I admit I’m not sure. As a parent, I would like more information about how my child’s doing. But I don’t need to see primary schools ranked in league tables. I accept that a school in Khandallah or Fendalton or Parnell is going to do better in such rankings than those in Naenae, or Aranui, or Penrose.

That says more about simple demography and socioeconomic status than it does about the quality of its teachers.

But I’ve yet to be convinced that introducing more assessment is going to somehow magically improve the quality of our school system, or make us better at maths.

Colin confuses league tables (that the Government has no intention of publishing – it is Colin’s fellow journalists who produce league tables) with national standards and reporting. And it is not about more assessment, it is about clear data.

There are two major benefits from the national standards – individual data and group data. Let me explain.

Parents will benefit from individual data. They will have a clear report card that informs them if their child is achieving at the minimum level necessary to be on track to leave school able to read and write and do maths. If their child is not performing to that level, it means they and the school can discuss what steps can be taken to try and lift the performance.

The Government’s election policy also made it clear that there will be additional resources dedicated to students not making the standards, so that they chances of improving are enhanced.

From 2012, the Government will also start collecting group data – by that I mean data on each school, and maybe even teacher. Not to publish league tables with, but to analyse. Now you may wonder what is the use of this data.

Well the Dim Post had a link to this article in The Atlantic about research into what makes a great teacher. They have collected masses of data on teachers and achievement to try and isolate the major factors. I highly recommend people read the entire article.

At present, there is no useful comparable data at primary school level. National standards will provide information which will allow comparisons to be done. I don’t mean comparisons between schools, but dozens or hundreds of variables can be analysed.

That is how you then raise educational standards. Not by giving a policy veto to unions that see it as a bad thing that a New Zealand student tops the world!

The Dom Post reports:

Education Minister Anne Tolley unveiled plans at the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) national conference in Wellington yesterday to put 12,000 parents of disruptive kids through parenting courses and give 5000 teachers from low-income areas extra training to deal with violence.

PPTA president Kate Gainsford said the plan was “a step in the right direction” but was not enough to help secondary teachers already dealing with disturbed and violent students.

“It’s a great idea, we won’t see the results for another decade, and that’s just too late,” she said.

Hmmn, who has been in Government for the last decade? Is the PPTA saying Labour should have done this in their first year of office, rather than leave it to National to come up with solutions in their first year of office?

“It needs to be supplemented at the adolescent level now.”

That would be nice, and it is tough for teachers with disruptive adolescents. But in an era of limited funding, the targeting of the scheme at kids when they are much younger will have the most impact in the long term.

Today’s Herald Editorial looks at the recent report on student success:

The number of children in a school classroom is obviously important to the education each can receive but for many years now we have been led to believe it is the single most important element. Class sizes, or teacher-pupil ratios, have been the profession’s explanation for every deficiency discovered in the service it is providing. Reducing class sizes has been its suggested solution to every problem.

If I was cynical, I would look at the loop – NZEI/PPTA advocate for more teachers, more teachers = more NZEI/PPTA members = more money for NZEI/PPTA.

Governments have generally accepted the profession’s advice and the ratios have been reducing, though the teacher associations always want them lower. When the Herald invited the main political parties’ education speakers to summarise their policies in the recent election campaign, Labour’s minister Chris Carter, began: “I would continue to support teachers, as we are doing with lowering class sizes, by dealing with the issue of pay.”

National’s spokeswoman, Ann Tolley, made no such commitment and now that she is Education Minister she must be glad she did not. For the results, just published, of an important research project by an Auckland University professor of education, John Hattie, have challenged the notion that class size is the most important factor in a pupil’s progress.

The 15-year study, drawing on results of 50,000 items of research on pupils’ performance around the world, came to the unsurprising conclusion that the quality of a teacher’s interaction with pupils, particularly the “feedback” they received for their efforts, was most important.

So the answer is better teachers, not just more teachers. And that means better pay for the better teachers.

Pay for performance may always be too hard for national negotiations that would need to find agreed measures of excellence. But it would present little difficulty if left to school principals and their boards. Principals have to know which of their staff make the effort to interact well with pupils, which of them the pupils readily trust to ask for help and receive a useful response. Dr Hattie says the desired level of trust is very rare.

The new Government appears to have no interest in challenging teachers’ national pay negotiating system but it may have to if it wants to encourage and retain the best. At least it now knows that the quantity of teachers is much less important than their quality. Ms Tolley says the Hattie research will have a profound influence on schooling. Let us hope so.

I’d have the national “award” as a guidline for schools, but let each board and principal pay teachers what they determine they are worth. The best teachers should be on over $100,000 – without having to become departmental heads.

The SST reports on a “study of studies” on student achievement done by Professor John Hattie of Auckland University. It has been a 15 year study that merges results from 50,000 indiidual studies of 83 million pupils.

So what does it show:

… that the key to effective teaching is the quality of the feedback students get and their interaction with teachers.

Anne Tolley is welcoming it:

The research has been dubbed “teaching’s Holy Grail” by an influential UK education journal, the Times Educational Supplement. National’s new education minister, Anne Tolley, says it will have a “profound influence” on the future of schooling in New Zealand.

Hattie says:

Auckland University professor John Hattie, who authored the study, says some of the results fly in the face of National’s popular election promise to reduce class sizes. He believes extra money should instead be spent on boosting teacher salaries. “Class size has a pretty small effect… and I wonder why they would spend a penny on it.”

He also believes it is time to revisit the controversial idea of performance-related pay for teachers.

I am all in favour of higher pay for teachers, so long as there is proper performance pay. The top teachers should be earning six figure salaries. But none of this automatic pay scale nonsense.

Hattie used these studies to rank 138 aspects of schooling and found that overwhelmingly, student-teacher interaction at schools came out on top.

Number one is “self-reporting” when the student knows exactly how well they are doing and can explain this, as well as any gaps in their understanding, to their teacher.

Tactics such as letting students take turns to teach the class, and teachers doing post-mortems on their own lessons, are also key.

Heh I used to teach the maths class – even at intermediate school!

And teachers, Hattie says, should ask themselves, “how many of the kids in your classroom are prepared to say, in front of the class, `we need help’, `we don’t know what’s going on’ or `we need to have this retaught’?”

He says that sort of trust is too rare which is why he wants to work out a way of paying teachers extra for excellence, rather than experience.

“It’s a lot easier to throw money at smaller classes, more equipment, more funding, to worry about the curriculum, to worry about the exams. “It’s a hell of a lot harder to differentiate between good and bad teaching… I think we need to spend a lot more policies on worrying about this.”

Tolley says that although rewarding teachers for excellence is a “tricky issue” it needs to be on the table, particularly as Hattie is close to defining what makes an excellent teacher.

I think this research and its implications are terribly exciting.

Of course the PPTA is against:

Kate Gainsford, head of the secondary teachers’ union, defended teachers, saying they deserved praise for being in the classroom despite in many cases poor resources, pay and support.

She says teachers are already using many of the interactive methods. But she points out that to have time to interact with students, classes need to be kept smaller and that some now have more than 30 students, despite what schools’ teacher-student ratios claim.

“This is not rocket science. We know that relationships between students and teachers are very important. And we know how those relationships can be supported, and how they can be eroded.”

She emphasises that teachers need to be backed up by resources, policies and training.

Gainsford says it would be “extraordinarily problematic … on so many fronts” to work out an excellence-based pay formula. She would like to see the focus on supporting “all kids, in all classes, in all schools”, rather than on a sorting mechanism for teachers.

Why does there need to be a formula? Other workplaces do not have formulas. They have employers who agree on a pay rate with you, based on their judgement of your experience, ability and worth. This is not some untested concept, but the norm in most sectors.