Mallard gets ticking-off for taking swipe at teachers

By AUDREY YOUNG political editor

Trevor Mallard was ticked off by the headmaster yesterday.

It is the second time in two days that the famously lippy Minister of Education has been admonished.

With resounding acclamation from the conference of the primary teachers' union, the Educational Institute, president Bruce Adin told off the minister for having previously said half of teachers were "below average".

It was a reference Mr Mallard has made at meetings where communities have been discussing closures of small schools - he says in order to make the point that pupils in, say, two-teacher schools can get a poor choice of teachers.

Mr Adin told Mr Mallard that closures were particularly traumatic events for everyone - including teachers - and that the minister's comments casting aspersions on their professional capacity were "not helpful".

"I feel like I've just been to the principal's office," Mr Mallard told the conference and Mr Adin, who also happens to be the principal of Fairburn School in Otahuhu.

Less convincing was the minister's quip: "It's a worse telling-off than the boss gives me."

Outside the conference, he was not taking it too seriously: "Wasn't it the ritual telling-off - that you've always got to tell off a minister about something and that was the thing at the NZEI conference today?"

Mr Mallard was firmly put in his place the previous day for shouting at Owae Marae, Waitara, during heated debate over the Government's proposal on the foreshore and seabed.

Marae chairman Rawiri Doorman told him there was no need to raise his voice in the wharenui.

Yesterday Mr Mallard explained his actions to the Herald: "I was being interjected on in a relatively loud and what I consider rude, offensive manner and I probably did something that was inappropriate: I tried to drown the person out."

Being the first week of the school holidays, it is teacher conference season.

Mr Mallard spoke yesterday at the Reading Association conference then the secondary teachers' union, the Post Primary Teachers' Association, with which he has had torrid industrial relations.

Working his way back into the PPTA's affections, he thanked teachers yesterday for the work they had done on the replacement for School Certificate - the NCEA.

"As a profession you have dug deeper than we ever thought you would have to to make it work," he said.

"Without your time, energy and perseverance, secondary qualifications would be in tatters."

He also cheered up the conference by announcing the development of a national diploma for about 800 secondary teachers without degrees unable to qualify at present for the highest step on the pay scale.

The Government would refund half of the course fees and would provide up to two paid weeks study leave for the course.

Mr Mallard also thanked primary teachers for their work on a qualifications working party.

However, qualifications themselves were a greater source of contention.

One teacher told the conference it was not fair that she, with a bachelor of education degree, could not reach the same pay step as someone in a neighbouring classroom with a degree in landscape design and "a one-year crash course in teaching".

Mr Mallard said that when he was a primary teacher (at South Wellington Intermediate) he had received a higher margin for having a subject degree - in economics and accounting.

"And frankly there is not a good reason for me being paid a substantial margin above the teacher next door because I had a degree in economics and accounting.

"I think there is a very good argument for not having that margin there for someone with a non-relevant degree."

How that position was arrived at was a task for the working party.