Opinion: Ardern's personal touch needed to resolve teachers' dispute

Primary school teachers gather in Hastings during their strike for better pay and conditions in November. Today, they strike again.

The teachers that I know do not work 40 hours a week.

There is evening paperwork, weekend work (often involving sport or recreation) and no, those holidays aren't always holidays.

It used to be, that a good teacher was an additional role model in a child's life, someone who enriched a student's life and school experience.

These days, a good teacher is sometimes the only positive adult role model that children are exposed to.

It is a big responsibility that they didn't necessarily ask for.

Accompanied by the blare of car horns tooting support, Tararua teachers march up Dannevirke High St in November. Their pay dispute remains unresolved.

The core role hasn't changed. To teach, to educate, to enrich en a child's life through positive experiences.

But they are also counsellors, health advisors, confidantes, mediators, interventionists ... many things that didn't necessarily draw them to the profession in the first place.

Today, most schools in Hawke's Bay are empty of students, teachers are on strike.

Some say it's not about the money - but it's hard to see how isn't, to be honest. The pay scale for teachers is no longer fit for purpose with regard to their roles.

The Labour-NZ First coalition is on the cusp of a "wellbeing budget". For the government, its poor timing as the budget highlights money being spent.

And yet there is no money to settle the teachers' dispute.

Speaking on Radio NZ yesterday, the Prime Minister made much of the fact that for the first time this budget will include a child poverty report - a measuring stick, a tool to help improve life for 170,000 kids struggling.

She also noted that "I absolutely believe that investment in children is the best investment we can make".

If that's truly the case then she needs to step into the mire that is the teachers' dispute and lead the way out.

Ardern's leadership has been exemplary around reactive scenarios such as the Christchurch mosque shootings.

This is a crisis of a different kind but no less deserving of her intervention as a leader.