Kiwiblog

Stuff reports:

A list of organisations that have expressed interest in running charter schools has been outed, revealing a high proportion of religious groups, including a Manawatu church arguing it has the right to teach creationism using taxpayer money because state schools teach evolution.

The Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) has defended its decision to print the list in this month’s edition of its members’ magazine, which names 21 organisations that registered interest – almost half of them religious groups – with president Angela Roberts arguing that the process had been shrouded in secrecy.

The secrecy is probably to prevent nonsense stories like this one.

That school referred to – has not even applied.

However, the PPTA yesterday named organisations including The Sabbath Rest Adventist Church. The church had been interested in the options presented by partnership schools but had decided not to make an application this year while charter schools legislation remained before Parliament, trustee Jill Friar said.

So this shock horror example is of a church that has decided NOT to apply. Of course many readers won’t get that far.

Asked if she thought taxpayer money should be allocated to schools teaching creationism, Mrs Friar responded it was tantamount to funding secular schools to teach evolution.

“Look at the state school system – they teach evolution as if it’s a fact and it’s not a fact. Even scientists say it’s a theory, so what’s the difference at the end of the day? Why should we teach evolution as if it were a fact when there is a theory that is an alternative?” Mrs Friar said.

“It’s education and caring for children that is important – to me that’s what the argument should be all about.”

PPTA president Angela Roberts said taxpayer cash should not go to schools teaching creationism.

I agree that no charter school should get funding if they wish to teach creationism. But again this church has not even applied to be a charter school, and I’m 99% confident that they would never get approved if they do wish to teach creationism as science.

Labour education spokesman Chris Hipkins said it was an example of why critics feared the charter school model.

“Those are their beliefs – but the state should not be paying for it. Those parents and kids can choose to believe and to receive a religious education. But not to the exclusion of other sciences, and I think in this case that is really inappropriate,” Mr Hipkins said.

It’s an example of nothing. Their big worry is that all the applicants will be so good, they won’t be able to demonise them.

The Makahika Outdoor Pursuits Centre (MOPC) in Levin, which offers alternative education for young male offenders, also registered interest. The organisation’s work is currently sub-contracted by the Ministry of Justice. Co-director Sally Duxfield said she and her husband paid up to $60,000 a year out of their own pockets to finance the programme.

MOPC was considering becoming a charter school because the funding style could allow them to extend to a full-year residential programme, Mrs Duxfield said.

The centre would use the New Zealand curriculum and employ registered teachers.

“The mainstream system doesn’t work for these boys. Some of these boys haven’t sat at a school desk since they were 10 or 12 because they’ve beaten people or stabbed people . . . they come here because they are unable to be educated safely [elsewhere].”

Wow, how awful if they applied, Some of the most at risk youth might get a better education. What terrible stuff.

Catherine Isaac the chairwoman of the Partnership Schools/Kura Hourua working group, responds to the PPTA guest post calling for charter schools to be included in the Official Information Act.

 It was only last year that NZEI argued schools should ignore the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA) requests regarding National Standards.  They publicly advocated for an OIA exemption for National Standards data.  I am pleased the Education Unions suddenly have a profound new respect for the OIA. 

Mr Haig of the PPTA claims the support of Hon Richard Prebble in his assertion that jurisdiction of the Ombudsman should be extended to Partnership Schools | Kura Hourua (PSKH) under the OIA and the Ombudsmen Act 1975 (OA).  

Richard Prebble may be retired but fortunately he’s still very much around, so I thought I would ask him.  Here is his response to Mr Haig.

“I introduced the first Freedom of Information Bill into Parliament so we could see what the Government was up to.  I have never supported the right of the state to spy on private organisations or citizens.”

“While I am at it, I strongly support Partnership Schools.  I’m not surprised Maori are welcoming the initiative since the state school system has failed them.  The PPTA must also take some of the responsibility.  Instead of opposing Partnership Schools, the PPTA should acknowledge that they are most unlikely to be worse than state schools have been for Maori and they are likely to be much better.”

Tom Haig was unwise to cite Richard Prebble to support his case, but the rest of Mr Haig’s arguments are no better.

The decision not to extend the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman to PSKH is right both in principle and in practice. 

The purpose of the OIA and the OA is to restrain the executive branch of government and other crown entities by providing access to “official” information and providing for an investigatory role over government administrative decisions.  Both the OA and OIA were introduced because of the significant power the state can wield over the lives of citizens. 

Partnership Schools | Kura Hourua are not subject to the OIA and OA because they are not part of government – they are non-governmental organisations.   

Sponsors can be either non-profit or for profit organisations, incorporated or non-incorporated, and might be community or iwi organisations or charitable trusts.   They may or may not get all their funding from government, but even if they do, that is not a principled reason for PSKH to be covered by the OIA and OA.

Over 5000 educational organisations receive full or partial funding from government but are not subject to the OIA and OA.   Thousands of other organisations providing services to the government are fully or partially publically funded and are not subject to the OIA or OA.  The reason is that they are non-governmental organisations.

Somewhat inconsistently, the Ombudsman made it clear to the Select Committee that they were not advocating extending their jurisdiction to the other 5000 educational organisations, only to PSKH.  

In an unfortunate analogy, the Ombudsmen said PSKH were like private prisons.  In a similar vein Mr Haig conflates compulsory education with compulsory attendance.  Both are wrong.

PSKH are not similar to a private management contract of a prison.  Prisons, be they public or under a private management contract, are uniquely coercive.  Prisoners don’t get a choice of prison and cannot leave at will.  Prisoners are there because of the coercive power of the state. That is why the OIA and OA apply and rightly so.   But no one will be forced to attend a PSKH, nor teach at one, and all will be free to leave.

The Ombudsmen offered an example of a three year parental dispute with a state school as another argument for the OIA and OA to apply.  On the face of it, three years seems a long time to come to a resolution when the education of a child is at stake.  Mr Haig’s post outlines a state school dispute invoking the Human Rights Act 1993 (which applies to PSKH).   The Ombudsman expressed a further concern over the potential improper use of the statutory power to expel, suspend and stand down a student.   

The PSKH model offers significant powers to parents to protect them and their children.

Not only can parents receive meaningful information about their child, the contract provides for an independent review mechanism that every parent can access.  This will apply to all disputes including disputes over the use of the power to expel, suspend or stand down a child.    

The sponsor will be able to tailor the dispute resolution process to provide for a speedy, efficient and independent way of resolving the dispute that focuses on the particular educational needs of the child.   This should provide for a better, more  timely mechanism for dispute resolution than the general jurisdiction of the Ombudsmen. 

The PSKH model has been designed to be transparent and more accountable.

Detailed reporting against specific, measurable academic , student engagement and other performance goals will be required as part of a PSKH’s contract with the Crown.   They will have to publish annual audited accounts.  Furthermore, any information held by the Ministry of Education, the Minister and the Authorisation Board will be subject to the OIA and OA, as these entities are part of government.  In addition, the Secretary of Education can ask for any additional information over and above that required under the sponsorship contract.  PSKH will be scrutinised by both the Education Review Office and the Authorisation Board who will apply a specific evaluation framework.  And unlike state schools they can be closed quickly for non-performance.

PSKH have a significantly more rigorous and effective accountability model than state schools.  That is why, on balance, the PSKH Working Group considered that subjecting PSKH to compliance obligations and costs under the OIA and OA over and above all their other obligations is unnecessary, would not advance the interests of children, parents or taxpayers and may detract from the vital educational mission of Partnership Schools | Kura Hourua. 

Thanks to Catherine for her reply.

A guest post by Tom Haig of the PPTA on the issue of whether charter schools should be covered by the Official Information Act:

Funny how history turns out eh? Back in 1977 a young Labour MP took on Muldoon, promoting a ‘Freedom of Information Bill’ to challenge the principle of the ‘Official Secrets Act’ which meant that, unless otherwise specified, all state information was kept secret. That Labour MP was Richard Prebble, and in 1982, following his first attempt five years before, the Official Information Act overturned the Official Secrets Act. Fast-forward 36 years, and Prebble’s parliamentary heir is hastily scrabbling for reasons why the OIA should be undermined to promote the politically expedient project of charter schools. 

One of the aspects of the Bill introducing charter schools that attracted a lot of attention at Select Committee was section 158X which would grant them exemption from the Official Information Act and Ombudsman Act. Three justifications are put forward for this, and I don’t believe the Richard Prebble of 1977 would have had a bar of any of them.

The first reason, advanced in the Cabinet papers describing the establishment of charter schools is to ‘avoid vexatious and costly complaints’. This is a terrible argument. Firstly on the practical side – yes, addressing OIA requests can take time and effort, but organisations are allowed to bill for their reasonable costs. Secondly, if this is allowed to stand, shouldn’t every government department mired in scandal be allowed to opt out for just this reason? Finally, charter schools would be within their rights to refuse to answer frivolous or vexatious requests, and if the Ombudsman agreed it was a worthless request then they’d be able to throw it out.

The second justification is that exemption is consistent with the status of the sponsor as a community organisation. This is problematic, as it’s about the type of organisation providing the service, rather than what the service is. By extension, this could mean that if the government was to contract out all variety of services to community or private organisations the extension of OIA coverage would shrink. Locking up core state services in contractual agreements with private providers is risky for numerous reasons; this is certainly one of them.

The third justification is that charter schools are analogous to early childhood or private training providers, which are not subject to these acts. However, there’s a glaring difference between these sort of providers and schools – and that is the aspect of compulsion.  As a ‘classic liberal’ party, Act should be well aware of this distinction – protecting citizens from the power of the state is after all one of their main concerns. Students have to go to school, while going to early childhood education or tertiary is a choice, and as such the role of consumer is quite different from that of a child at school.

So what would it mean for students and families at charter schools if they’re not covered? For one thing, the OIA and Ombudsman Act provide important protection in regards to decisions made about them, by giving them access to the reasons for those decisions, which the Privacy Act does not. Similarly, students and their families, or teachers at the school, or the wider public, will have no automatic right of access to the school’s policies, which could lead to decisions made by school managers seeming arbitrary and unfair.

This issue of making school policies public had some coverage recently following cases of schools not allowing students to take same-sex partners to their balls. In 2011 Blogger Matthew Taylor wrote to secondary schools around the country asking for their policies on this, a request which threw a number of school principals into a fluster.  As they do in such situations, some brought this concern to the PPTA, and we advised them that they should give the information – it’s a perfectly reasonable request and there’s no good reason not to make it public.

I’ll finish with a quote from the Ombudsman’s submission to the Select Committee:

“Clause 158X of the Education Bill runs the risk of creating a state funded schooling regime which is shrouded in secrecy and is unaccountable. This is likely to hamper the ability of partnership schools to achieve their central goal of achieving better outcomes for students. Applying the Official Information Act and Ombudsmen Act to partnership schools will assist partnership schools in exercising their statutory functions, enhance transparency and accountability, bring New Zealand into line with international models and avoid the constitutional anomaly inherent in the current Bill.”

Removing this clause won’t make me support charter schools. But if they’re going to exist there’s no good reason that they should be shrouded in secrecy. And if the more ideologically consistent members of the Act party were to search their scruples carefully, I suspect that they would agree.

Personally I’m not convinced by the arguments for charter schools to be excluded from the Official Information Act and Ombudsmen Act, and think that as they are primarily taxpayer funded they should be included in both Acts. I hope the select committee recommends changes to that effect.

Sent in by a reader. To be fair to the PPTA they are not that anti-national standards – that is more the NZEI and NZPF. But I do wish they would spend more time on areas of agreed priority such as raising teacher quality, than trying to stop parents and students have choice.

The Herald editorial:

The timing of the deadline for submissions on the education amendment bill is probably not as devious as the association suggests. Parliament’s select committees set these deadlines and some bill has to start the year’s work.

The editorial could have mentioned that the submission period was set for three months, almost twice the normal six to eight weeks. Also that the Government doesn’t have a majority on the select committee that sets the date.

The PPTA is attempting to widen concern by presenting charter schools as “the dismantling of New Zealand’s public education system”.

I think their worry is how popular they may prove to be.

They are, in fact, nothing of the sort. Charter schools would be fully funded from the public education budget. They would have to accept pupils on a first-come-first-served basis, they could not select them. In that sense they will be much more like state schools than private schools or the “integrated” schools that receive public grants and can charge fees.

Unlike state schools, they will not have to give preference to pupils in a designated zone. They will be able to accept them from anywhere. If a charter school receives more applicants than it is allowed to enrol, it must hold a ballot.

No hand picking of students. And best of all for students from low income families, it means that you don’t have to buy an expensive house in a school zone to get a choice about which school to attend.

Their right to employ some unregistered staff has been a point of contention for the teachers’ unions. So is their lack of accountability to the Auditor General, the Ombudsman and the Official Information Act. Those elements of the legislation should not survive the select committee’s examination.

So long as the schools are spending public money they ought to be subject to the usual instruments of public scrutiny.

If that is the principle, then can I advocate that every NGO in New Zealand that receives over 50% of its funds from the taxpayer, be subject to the Official Information Act? Also arguably any unions where more than 50% of their members are public sector, and hence they are indirectly publicly funded.

Amelia Wade in the Herald reports:

A teachers’ union is criticising the Government for holding the consultation period for charter schools during New Zealanders’ holidays.

The New Zealand Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) yesterday launched a campaign to raise awareness about the January 24 deadline for submissions on the Education Amendment Bill 2012.

A full-page advertisement in the Herald on Sunday and in today’s Herald said the Government had “its own agenda – the dismantling of New Zealand’s public education system by introducing charter schools”.

It also implied the Government had purposefully chosen a closing date for submissions on the bill when most people were still on holiday.

First of all the Government doesn’t decide when submissions are due, the select committee does. Now if the Government has a majority on a select committee, of course they can effectively set the date.  But they do not have a majority on Education & Science. The breakdown is National 5, Labour 3, Greens 1, NZ First 1. This means that at least one opposition MP (or all of them) agreed to the dates.

Secondly most bills have around a six week period for submissions to be made. This bill has in fact had a three month submission window which is one of the longest I know of for a bill. Even taking into account the Xmas slowdown, it is a lengthy period of time. The bill was referred to select committee on Thu 18 October and submissions opened on Wed 24 October.

Also the consultation does not close on 24 January. That is merely the deadline for written submissions, and then you have the oral submissions. There is a full six month window for the select committee consultation and deliberations.

It is a pity the Herald has just repeated the spin from the PPTA and not bothered to check the facts such as the three month submission period and that the Government doesn’t have a majority on the select committee that set the date. These are both highly relevant facts to the story, and are on the parliamentary website.

The HoS reports:

PPTA official Bronwyn Cross interjected at the meeting, describing the idea of placing the new schools in impoverished areas of south Auckland and Porirua as racism.

Trying to improve educational outcomes in South Auckland and Porirua is now racism. Really?

But the PPTA opposed the idea of sponsorship. Bunker said: “If there are commercial people out there wanting to contribute to the school system, they’d be better to pay additional taxes actually.”

How dare commercial people want to help local school kids. Does the PPTA also advocate no businesses donate items for school auctions?

The PPTA have praised Hekia Parata:

PPTA president Robin Duff congratulates education minister Hekia Parata for taking a firm stand against the board of Northland’s Moerewa School .

The board was sacked yesterday after extending classes to years 11 and 13 without the Ministry of Education’s (MoE) permission, with seriously questionable results.

“Primary schools may have the best of intentions, but it is wrong for them to believe they can adequately provide specialist subject delivery to students over year 9,” Duff said.

However the Principals Federation thinks the school should be above the law:

“The decision to sack the Board of Trustees at Moerewa School is a sad day for self-managing schools and their communities,” said Phil Harding, Vice-President of the New Zealand Principals’ Federation.

“Moerewa is a tiny community, working with its people to do all in its power to provide high standards of education, while achieving success as Maori,” said Harding. “Rather than being celebrated for its efforts and excellent ERO reports, the Moerewa School Board has been punished, and its senior students excluded from their school of choice,” he said. …

“Few schools would come through an NZQA audit of 84% of their students’ work unscathed, and the protracted process has kept these students in limbo,” he said. “The Ministry has funded the unit for three years, and it is tragic to see a positive innovation ended in this way.”

It may be sad it has ended, but the fault is with the school. It is a pity the NZPF defends a school with such a low achievement rate. Radio NZ reported:

The Education Ministry says the school is not offering senior students a quality education and its NCEA results are alarmingly low. An audit by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority found that 11% to 33% were passing NCEA.

“If you look at the nearest school, they are achieving results twice as high for their Maori students than have been achieved at Moerewa. The outcomes are just not good enough, I’m afraid.”

TVNZ reported:

The New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) audited students’ work and said it had concerns about Wikipedia being used word-for-word and work being submitted with two different types of handwriting.

Radio Waatea reports:

The Education Minister says the audit of Moerewa School’s NCEA results was launched after discrepancies picked up in a review of paperwork at Otara’s Kia Aroha College.

 Moerewa held on to its senior pupils by enrolling them in the South Auckland Secondary School run by the mother of Principal Keri Milne-Ihimaera.

 Hekia Parata says rather than scoring better than most other schools, outside assessors found just two out 16 students passed NCEA level one, two in six passed levels two and two in three passed level three.

Only 12% passed NCEA Level one. Incredible.

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.