11.15am
School trustees from around the country will meet this week to "strategise" options for ending the crippling secondary teachers' strike.
School Trustees Association (STA) president Chris France today expressed "immense disappointment" that the secondary teachers' union yesterday rejected the Government's new pay offer after they called it "too little too late" and said they would go ahead with industrial action next week.
Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) president Jen McCutcheon said it was not enough money for the recruitment and retention crises secondary schools were facing.
While the STA was legally restrained from involvement in the contract negotiations, they wanted to re-examine their options, Mr France said.
"It seems to us that we now have a situation where we can't afford to sit back an awful lot longer.
"It's getting pretty crucial that these children (teachers and the Government) put their toys back in the sandpit and start playing together. They've been tossing them out for months. It's time they sat down to some serious business."
The elements and options for a settlement were already on the table, he added.
"We're going to see what we can do to assist them."
The Government's counter-offer announced by Education Minister Trevor Mallard last week proposed that 19,000 National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) implementation units, each worth $1000, would be allocated to schools to distribute among staff working on the new qualification this year and next.
The union wanted an annual $3000 allowance over two years to compensate teachers for the extra work involved in implementing the NCEA.
"Our members would crucify us if we accepted something like this," Ms McCutcheon said.
The union planned to go ahead with industrial action when the school term resumed on July 15.
It has also said students would be rostered home from July 17 and work on level two and three of the NCEA would be banned unless the pay dispute was settled by next week.
Mr France said the strikes had had a "profound effect" on schools.
"We have fractured relationships with some boards and their teachers, we have children who have learnt whole new ways of behaviour that are totally off the pale. And it's going to get worse."
Ms McCutcheon said the Government had made the NCEA payment more widely available to teachers in its latest offer but it was still not enough, working out to be about $10 per teacher a week.
"We recognise that they have endeavoured to make it better than the last offer ... but this dollar amount is just not acceptable."
The government deal also included a 2 per cent pay rise backdated to July 11 last year and a further 1.5 per cent increase from July 10 this year, guaranteed non-contact time, more teachers and a ministerial taskforce on secondary teacher remuneration.
The latest offer included an extra $13 million, taking the cost of the overall package to $143 million.
- NZPA
School trustees meet this week over latest contract collapse
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