by Catherine Delahunty
I must admit, I did a double-take this morning when I read John Key’s comment that Secondary teachers’ plans to strike next month shows “how disconnected they are from the real world”.
Who would you say is more connected to the “real world”? The thousands of teachers at the coalface of our secondary schools? Or a former financial trader who works in the Beehive and spends his holidays at his condo in Hawaii?
Our teachers stand up in front of the classroom every day to teach our kids – including not only kids who are enthusiastic and ready to learn, but also kids who are deeply troubled, kids who lack basic literacy and numeracy skills, and kids with behavioural difficulties. John Key only has to put up with politicians!
I hate to break it to the PM, but our teachers and our schools are the real world. His comments this morning show that he is the one who is disconnected from it.
As I blogged yesterday, our teachers deserve our respect, to be valued properly in their work, and to have their pay and employment conditions taken seriously. That’s what they do in the “real world” of other OECD countries, where teachers are paid on average 17 percent more than they are here in New Zealand.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Society & Culture by Catherine Delahunty on Tue, August 31st, 2010
Tags: Education, john key, PPTA, teachers' pay, teachers' strike
More posts by Catherine Delahunty | more about Catherine Delahunty
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Catherine – how long should teachers get pay rises at twice the rate of the private sector and twice the rate of the rest of the public sector?
Because when 50,000 teachers get twice as much, that mean 50,000 other people have to miss out.
teachers deserve to be well paid, and they are.
But going so far to have a strike to get twice the increase everyone else gets looks very greedy.
And rightly or wrongly, Keys comments will ring true with many people.
Like or Dislike:
14 
18 (-4)
at least until they are paid a fair amount for the job they are expected to do (so for a little while yet).
“Because when 50,000 teachers get twice as much, that mean 50,000 other people have to miss out.”
Yeah maybe those tax cuts were a little bit premature? how much more is an MP getting after the tax cuts again?
Like or Dislike:
17 
9 (+8)
Photo. Despite peoples attempts to explain you still persist on believing that education has no future value. In fact investing in our young people is the best one we can make.
We should be putting more resources into education if you are really worried about the future of NZ..
For example the 20% who do not succeed in school (Which happens to be the same 20% who live below the poverty line) could achieve a lot better with more tutoring and one on one help at primary level. Much better use of 30 million than to test and confirm what we already know.
Instead I get 32 year tens in a high school woodwork workshop in a decile one school all of whom need and deserve our time to help them become part of society instead of tomorrows crims and beneficiaries. Effectively I have 4 minutes a week for each student. As well as keeping them safe and dealing with the 6 or 7 with severe behavioral problems.
It is not a failure of teaching it is a failure of society.
Like or Dislike:
16 
4 (+12)
I guess John Key’s ‘real world’ is that of finance, dollars and cents, not people and the investment in our future. It would be cheaper to pay for better education than to build more prisons and keep more prisoners in them.
But these are all abstractions to a money trader whose kids go to a school that doubtless pays their teachers at a much higher rate than the public system. Whereas the billions of dollars he sees as ‘real’ are abstractions to those who deal with young people every day. Two different worlds.
Like or Dislike:
19 
6 (+13)
Kerry – $200 million per year buys a 4% pay rise or 4500 additional new teachers at $45000 per year.
If teachers had a pay rise the same as everyone else instead of double, then the same money would give them the pay rise and pay for 2200 additional teachers.
Yet you say giving them the extra large pay rise PUTS MORE INTO our childrens education.
To me it looks like it TAKES MORE FROM our childrens education.
The $200 million per year has to be taken from somewhere else.
Like or Dislike:
8 
12 (-4)
is this just the first of many
I reckon, the old farm is hocked.
In a Land that still looks good to Mr Hubbard
I’d like to be Government guaranteed
Yummy
A scape goat perhaps?
“One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be
deceived.” – Niccolo Machiavelli – (1469-1527) Italian
Statesman and Political Philosopher
Like or Dislike:
5 
2 (+3)
How about getting rid of trusts and LAQC’s. That would pay for a teachers pay rise (Actually a lessor pay cut) and tuition for kids who are struggling.
Having said that I know many teachers who would forgo a pay rise to get smaller classes for the benefit of their students.
Like or Dislike:
8 
2 (+6)
As with Key you have focussed narrowly on the renumeration aspect of the PPTA claim. The fact is that this is only part of their claim and like the primary teacher’s agreement negotiations the break down has as much to do with the MOE’s unwillingness to move on a number of other issues that will badly affect teachers working conditions. In the primary teacher’s case the ministry refused to make any offers with regard to a number of points brought up by the NZEI and want to impose a structure that would destroy the career paths currently in place. So while Key, the media and other uninformed pundits focus primarily on salary there is more to it than that and that is why the PPTA is calling this industrial action. The same could be happening shortly in the primary service also.
Like or Dislike:
9 
2 (+7)
Kerry – careful using the “pay peanuts, get monkeys” line – it’s normally used to justify unjustifiable salaries.
Besides – we already have 50,000 teachers. Are you telling me if we pay a bit more they automatically all suddenly become better at teaching?
Doesn’t that mean they are doing not such a good job as they could right now?
So it comes down to this – what would improve our children’s education the most?????? – 4500 additional teachers, or a large pay rise for those we have now at twice the increase everyone else will get?
Like or Dislike:
4 
8 (-4)
So take it out of defence, or somewhere else unproductive.
“what would improve our children’s education the most?????? – 4500 additional teachers, or a large pay rise for those we have now”
Actually the government could do both, this is just a false choice.
“we already have 50,000 teachers”
Be quite nice if there was an oversupply of candidates for teaching positions, and we could select the best of the candidates, don’t you think?
Like or Dislike:
8 
4 (+4)
good on you Cath; reckon you’d make a pretty awesome PM
Like or Dislike:
5 
8 (-3)
Yeah, like that $1.6bn thown down a hole so rich people won’t lose any money.
Fuck I’m pissed. No money for education, no money for sex abuse victims, no money for rail, and on and on but when it’s rich folks getting their loans called in suddenly there’s an extra $1.6bn ready and waiting. Oh and $254 mil on fixing a plane.
Like or Dislike:
13 
3 (+10)
Like or Dislike:
9 
4 (+5)
The reason why time serving Teachers do not get sacked is often because the school cannot get a replacement. Especially in subjects like technology.
At current pay rates it would be impossible to get another 4500 Teachers.
Like or Dislike:
6 
2 (+4)
Kerry says “At current pay rates it would be impossible to get another 4500 Teachers”
Very funny. 75% of taxpayers earn less than the starting wage for someone with a teaching degree ($45,000).
kerry says ““pay peanuts, get monkeys” Never a truer word etc!”
That’s the regular excuse for $1m+ CEO salaries.
rimu – if the government GETS PAID MILLIONS to provide a guarantee or insurance, then they have to pay out if there is a claim.
Presumably you would have rather had the alternative – the collapse of the NZ economy in 2008.
Like or Dislike:
2 
5 (-3)
I think that Mr. Keys comment has changed our perception of the universe; so try to imagine two planets at either end of the universe, many billions of light years away.
Planet earth is on one side and planet Key is on the other. We are on planet Earth (teachers, professionals, workers, homo sapiens, animals flora and the entire gaia) On planet Key there exists, Mr. Key, land developers, currency and commodity speculators, stock market punters, business Round Tables, gamblers and photon1.
So in conclusion to this we think our world is real and Mr. Key thinks his world is real. However problems arise when Mr. Key tries to apply his laws of metaphysics to that of planet Earth!!!!!!!
Like or Dislike:
6 
3 (+3)
Mark Says:
“Old Macdonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O”
and gets 5 thumbs up from the greens
“hmmm very incite-full”
Like or Dislike:
2 
5 (-3)
Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
Like or Dislike:
3 
18 (-15)
sprout says “Let’s reinvest the millions wasted on the ill-conceived National Standards on the people who will really make a difference to learning.”
That will pay for 2.5 weeks of pay increases for teachers.
And you think paying a massive $200,000,000 extra to the same teachers will suddenly massively increase their performance?
In the meantime we have no idea if extra funding needs to go to Otatara School or Otara School because neither school has any measurement of how their children are progressing relative to each other.
Like or Dislike:
4 
9 (-5)
Kerry says “Much better use of 30 million than to test and confirm what we already know”
Total rubbish. Can you tell me which children need more help and resources? – Otatara in Southland, Opoho in Otago, or Otara in Auckland.
They use different standards or none at all.
It’s 2010 and no one has any idea of how the children from each school are progressing compared to rest of the countryu. So no one has any idea of which school needs the most help. And in which areas.
Education funding has no common standard. I know of schools that are having a huge amount of money spent on them and they don’t really need it.
Others desperately need more funding and are not getting it.
And Kerry says we already know who needs what – that’s laughable when there is no common standard (or no standards at all at some schools) to measure how well they are doing.
That’s like trying to figure out which Warehouse shops are doing well and which need more help by by nothing more than guessing without any measurement of the actual revenues and profits.
Like or Dislike:
3 
8 (-5)
http://www.otatara.school.nz/ERO_report_files/Ero%20report%20to%20community.pdf
You don’t need to compare schools to identify learning needs, every school I have taught can identify children with special needs for the purpose of gaining further support and as I am currently a member of the MoE IEP review group I have an idea what I’m talking about. National Standards can provide no support for this process because of their aspirational nature and their lack of diagnostic detail.
You still don’t understand what norm referenced assessments are…..
Like or Dislike:
9 
4 (+5)
Photonz,
It strikes me the issue shouldn’t be how much of a percentage pay rise teachers (or anyone else for that matter) get, but the absolute amount of pay they get, taking into account how much money there is to go around and how much each job gets relative to other jobs.
Putting the above point aside, your statistics for teachers pay are misleading. According to reasonably recent data from the Department of Statistics, the median pay rate for people in full time employment is $870 per week ( June 2009 quarter; http://www.stats.govt.nz/~/media/Statistics/Browse%20for%20stats/NZIncomeSurvey/HOTPJun09qtr/NZIncomeSurveyJun09qtrHOTP.ashx ) This is $45 240 per year, or about the entry salary of a secondary school teacher.
Your 75% of tax payers earning less than this (if it is even correct) will include people doing part time work and so on. It is misleading to compare full time pay rates against a statistic which is biased low by part time workers. The correct comparison is that teachers pay rates are pretty much in the middle compared to other jobs.
The question then becomes, is the amount that teachers get paid:
1) Appropriate for the relatively high qualifications required; the amount and difficulty of the work involved and so on;
2) Affordable to the nation as a whole?
Point (2) then raises the issue of priorities. If there is a limited amount of money to go around, what should it be spent on first? This is really where I suspect you disagree with other people posting here; you place higher importance on other things than teacher’s pay rates.
Like or Dislike:
5 
3 (+2)
sprout – it Otatara is a well run school, how does it’s pupils measure up the national average in maths, reading and writing?
You say they measure this so how do they do against the national average?
Do they need more or less help compared to others?
sprout says “You don’t need to compare schools to identify learning needs,”
I’m talking talking about funding distribution – you know – the billions that are spent and misspent on education every year.
I would have thought a system where money goes where it is most needed, would be quite important to you instead of a quees that maybe this school needs it more than that school but we have no comparitive measurement so we don’t really know.
Another question – does Otatara School get it’s fair share of funding, more than it’s fair share, or less than it’s fare share?
Like or Dislike:
4 
4 (0)
samuela – you’re right. The stats I found are based on tax paid so they include low paid workers.
However even using your figures, you can’t say teachers are in the middle when from day one they are at the median rate. So those just starting are on the median wage and everyone else will be above.
Your points about overall pay rather than rises is valid, but should be made compared to a wide range of professions.
However it is extremely galling that when most people are getting zero rises, inflation adjustment at most, even pay cuts and shorter hours, we have one group who are striking for way above what everyone else is getting.
From a political point of view alone, the union is surely not stupid enough to not see that when everyone else is suffereing this makes teachers look greedy.
And addressing your point two. If teachers took an inflation adjustment, that would be $100,000,000 less than their 4% claim – enough for over 2000 new teachers which would surely address issues like class size, and undoubtably have a far greater positive effect on our childrens education than the benefit (if any) of spending the money on wage increases.
Like or Dislike:
4 
5 (-1)
“And you think paying a massive $200,000,000 extra to the same teachers will suddenly massively increase their performance?”
No, but it might attract some very good people who, at this time, aren’t considering teaching as an option.
“when everyone else is suffereing this makes teachers look greedy.”
Ah, the politics of envy strike again. But actually everyone else isn’t suffering – some people are doing quite well thank you very much.
And most of us are quite happy to see others getting a pay rise (unless they’re absolutely soaking in it already) we don’t react by slagging off people as “greedy”.
Like or Dislike:
6 
4 (+2)
Like or Dislike:
8 
4 (+4)
More proof that N-ACT wants to move Aotearoa further right.. user pays & less public services.. “Privatise, privatise & again privatise !!”
Kia-ora
Like or Dislike:
4 
3 (+1)
Sam says “No, but it might attract some very good people who, at this time, aren’t considering teaching as an option.”
So if teachers get a pay rise at the rate of inflation we won’t get the quality we need (says a lot for those woking on current rates).
But if they get an extra 2% we’ll suddenly get lots of top quality people who weren’t considering teaching.
A guess you answered the question at the top of the page.
Like or Dislike:
3 
4 (-1)
Catherine says “Interesting, we bail out the financiers…”
Wrong. The financers went bust and lost all their money.
It was the mum and dad investors (who were paying the govt to be in the guarantee scheme) who are making a claim.
Catherine – you say pay rises in Finland have improved student performance. That’s not very relevant in NZ.
What you need to show is that the massive 50% in teachers pay in the last ten years has resulted in a massive improvement in student performance here.
As for teh class size arguement. $200m per year can provide the 4% increase OR 4500 new teachers.
Smaller class sizes are LESS affordable and LESS likely with a double inflation pay rise.
Like or Dislike:
3 
6 (-3)
Catherine – you never answered my initial question.
For ten years teachers had had twice the rate of pay increase as the rest of the public sector, and twice the rate of the private sector.
How many more years should their increases continue to be double everyone elses?
Like or Dislike:
3 
3 (0)
Wow, a ‘real person’ who uses the phrase “mum and dad investors”.
What a shill
Like or Dislike:
4 
3 (+1)
Rimu says “Wow, a ‘real person’ who uses the phrase “mum and dad investors”.
What a shill”
What’s your point about Russel’s terminology, rimu?
Russel Norman talks about “mum and dad investors” on interest.co.nz
http://www.interest.co.nz/news/greens-argue-soes-better-funding-growth-through-debt-issues-share-floats
Like or Dislike:
3 
3 (0)
What has worked in other countries is not relevant in New Zealand. Quack.
Like or Dislike:
1 
3 (-2)
solkta – if you think that’s false, then show me the evidence that a 50% increase in pay to teachers has a direct corelation to a massive improvement in student performance in NZ.
If you can’t find any decent research, you could always add to the debate by doing something really intelligent like just make repeated animal noises.
Like or Dislike:
3 
4 (-1)
Photo and his friends have obviously missed the point, Catherines’ comment is all about self-worth and moral among teachers and if that is taking a dive then the students progress will also be affected.
If raising the moral of teachers has worked in the Scandanavian countries then I don’t see why it won’t work here.
Like or Dislike:
4 
3 (+1)
“if teachers get a pay rise at the rate of inflation we won’t get the quality we need (says a lot for those woking on current rates)’
Are you seriously suggesting that better pay doesn’t attract more people to apply for jobs, thus giving more opportunity to get highly skilled, motivated and able people into teaching positions? Are you going to tell me that the teachers whenever you were at school, for example, were of such quality that no improvement was possible?
Like or Dislike:
4 
3 (+1)
Drakula says “If raising the moral of teachers has worked in the Scandanavian countries then I don’t see why it won’t work here.”
If moral hasn’t gone up with a 50% pay increase over the last ten years then I think we can safely say your theory doesn’t work.
Like or Dislike:
3 
4 (-1)
Sam – so you think a 2% difference will change lots of peoples career paths?
And to go with the title of this page “Who lives in the real world?” – you don’t think people are suffering right now.
Obviously you haven’t noticed, but there’s a bit of a problem with the economy.
I was talking to a bank manager today and his business clients have never seen it so bad – much worse than in 08 and 09.
Watch the next few months as businesses go bust, people lose their jobs, the govt get less income tax, more people need benefits, workers settle for zero increases, and teachers go on strike because they want increases much higher than anyone else.
Like or Dislike:
2 
5 (-3)
“50% pay increase” What 50% pay increase? What has been the CPI index over the same time?.
Investment advisers and financial consultants average twice a teachers pay
Like or Dislike:
2 
2 (0)
“Sam – so you think a 2% difference will change lots of peoples career paths?”
No – I think a 2% difference will change some people’s career paths.
“you don’t think people are suffering right now.”
No – I said SOME people aren’t suffering now. A response to your comment “when EVERYONE else is suffereing” which was either a silly generalisation or a lack of understanding of the class nature of society.
Like or Dislike:
2 
2 (0)
More proof that N-ACT wants to move Aotearoa further right.. user pays & less public services.. “Privatise, privatise & again privatise !!
Yes!….and not before time.Return the power back to us ordinary Kiwis…the PRIVATE sector.Lets get on with it before NZ sinks too far in the socailst mire….
Like or Dislike:
1 
5 (-4)
Copy sent to All NZ Parliamentarians, PPTA NZEI & NZ Press stanb13@optusnet.com.au
Re : The Government’s refusal to allow NZ Teachers a pay increase.
My only solution to this current stymie is to strenuously urge all NZ teachers to exercise their Democratic right and institute a series of rolling strikes.
NZ teachers are amongst the lowest paid in the developed world.
Politicians are very succeptible to Public opinion and over time this will get the message across to them. It is up to the Press Officers of the PPTA & NZEI & teachers themselves to educate the public for the reasons of these strikes.
Many of my NZ Collegues ,including myself have moved across the Tasman to teach. Teaching rates here are at least 30% greater and almost 100% more for day to day relieving or supply work. On top of this the Queensland Govt deposits 9% of their earnings into a superannuation fund. As a matter of interest Queensland is a very large State. Population is bigger than NZ & Qld teachers are still paid less than teachers in other Australian States. Despite this their Salaries are still far geater than in NZ. Under a current treaty arrangement Kiwi teachers can seamlessly move across the Tasman & teach here. Their qualifications are recognized.
Case Study
Queensland Education was deadlocked in pay increase negotiations with teachers for almost a year.The matter went to an industrial tribunal after numerous rolling strikes by teachers. Earlier this year Queensland teachers were granted a 12% pay increase to be paid out over a 3 year period.
I would urge all NZ teachers to support their Unions & strike.
Stan Blanch JP Dip tching Dip Art (Hons) former NZEI member
NZ & Australian registered teacher
Regards,
Stan Blanch
20 Boongala Tce
Maroochydore
Qld 4558
Phone: 07 5443 4289
Like or Dislike:
1 
0 (+1)