Thousands of secondary school and area school teachers walk off the job. Video / NZ Herald
Frustrated parents are torn over fears strike action has gone too far and children will be unable to “catch up” on learning, and the belief teachers are being undervalued.
Alistair, a lower South Island parent, told the Herald both the Ministry of Education and the union needed to sort their “s*** out” and “act like adults”.
“Stop playing games with children’s education”.
While he understood where teachers were coming from and said they needed a pay rise, he thought it had now gone too far.
“My two kids are at high school and it’s not just one day a week, but two days a week.
“So sometimes we need to pick them up and I’m doing quite a bit of travelling when you live a long way from school.”
Two year-levels will be rostered home each day from next week.
Secondary teachers voted overwhelmingly to reject the latest Ministry of Education collective agreement offer and go on strike again.
At the same time as they voted on the latest offer, the union members also voted on further strike action for the rest of term two, the next three weeks.
This time two year-levels will be rostered home each day.
Alister said he was also concerned about some interschool sports being canned.
“I don’t mean be rude but my kids aren’t gonna be rocket scientists.
“These kids only get one opportunity at this stuff and then, you know, especially with the last couple of years of Covid, some of them are done and you start to feel sorry for them because they don’t get this opportunity again.”
Another parent told the Herald that although she was extremely disappointed and frustrated, she felt great sympathy for the teachers, who she said were undervalued.
“I personally feel that the ministry really needs to come to the party and stump up with meeting the demands.”
The Auckland mother said she believed the teachers had the children’s best interests at heart and were between a “rock and a hard place”.
“But when I look at my kids personally, they have lost so much schooling this year. You know, we’ve had the floods, the hurricanes, it feels like every near opportunity there’s a teacher-only day or a, you know, public holiday or something.”
She said the strike will mean some weeks kids will only have one maths class a week and she feared children will be unable to catch up on learning.
“I think the teachers must be feeling very stressed and nervous for their learning as well because they’ve got all these sort of all the syllabus that has to be covered and they just literally are running out of days and I don’t know how they’re gonna catch it up.”
Secondary Principals’ Association of New Zealand president Vaughan Couillault said principals across the country believed it was “quite unfortunate” the parties haven’t reached the resolution and that industrial action is continuing.
“Obviously, when you’re in a collective bargaining situation there, there’s two sides to that. It’s not just the teachers who rejected the pay offer, there’s two sides to collective bargaining.”
He said his daughter will only be at school three out of five days next week.
“We all know the time-out-of-class issue that we’ve experienced in the past has led to students not performing quite so well. So the more time students are in class, the more chance they have of succeeding.”
He said the strike will also affect the flow of courses and may in some cases require that courses have some content removed.
“There’s still a little bit of flex in the, in the NCEA qualification for those at senior secondary school to accommodate this sort of thing. But teachers and students will find it challenging to complete the course that they signed up for at the beginning of the year.”
He said with 400 principals, opinions vary, but he said they were “all frustrated” the negotiations have not been settled.
“That frustration will be born of different reasons, some will be born of support and some will not be born of support. But essentially the net outcome is we all want teachers doing the full job, no industrial action.”
PPTA Te Wehengarua acting president Chris Abercrombie said improvements to staffing and other conditions need to be made to enable secondary teachers to concentrate on teaching and learning.
“Our members are increasingly frustrated at the fact that the demands on teachers are skyrocketing and many teachers are on the brink of leaving, but this is not being acknowledged by the Government in its offers to us.”
Ministry of Education employment relations general manager Mark Williamson said it was disappointing that the offer to secondary teachers has not been accepted.
“The offer that secondary teachers have rejected balanced the need to attract and retain teachers early in their career, provide a fair increase for experienced teachers, while also addressing the union’s priorities for improvements to other conditions.”
The offer included immediate one-off payments of up to $5210 to support teachers, Williamson said.
