Teacher strikes

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#2247484 29-May-2019 08:12

blackjack17:

tdgeek:

I assume so. Its not easy to get a new job at a better school as most schools are Government run

I can assure you schools are not run by the government. They are run by a board who employs a principal to take care of the day to day stuff. There are good schools to work for and bad schools to work for and it isn't just the students. Working for bad managers makes for a poor work environment regardless of the clients (students).

You know what I mean.

Geektastic

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#2247488 29-May-2019 08:20

I do not approve of strikes. Neither do I approve of public servants demanding more taxes be used to pay them more. If they do not like what they are being paid, they are welcome to resign and go elsewhere or change career.

There is no free money to hand over - we will all have to pay more in tax and that, of course, includes the people who are demanding they be paid more. Even more irritating is the fact that the people with the children who need the education are paying less tax than the people without children in many cases because they get child-related tax breaks.

On a user pays basis, surely those with children should pay an additional percentage of tax to help cover the costs that their choice incurred rather than get a tax discount. If they support paying teachers more, then surely they will be fine about contributing.

blackjack17

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#2247493 29-May-2019 08:24

eracode:

Yeah but what about performance evaluation and pay for performance? I don't know a lot about all this but my understanding is these do not exist and that they cannot be implemented because of the union. Poor teachers get paid as much as great ones and poor teachers can't be got rid of?

You are right pay for performance doesn't exist, it is very difficult to implement and I am not aware of any other country that have implemented them well.

One of the issues is you can't control the quality of student that comes into your classroom.

To use an analogy

A large company has 1000s of servers. A bonus is paid if you can keep the servers under your responsibility up 99.9% of the time. Not all of these servers are equal, some have dodgy power supplies, some are in remote locations, some have physical damage. Within each server are a number of hard drives, once again of varying quality, some have been abused in the past, some have manufacturing errors, some don't quite fit in with the server, some are out right dangerous, shocking and cutting other hardrives and technicians but each harddrive is legally entitled to be used and can not be disposed of nor put into storage. These harddrives are constantly moved around and part way through the year you might get a dodgy harddrive put in your server that was before working brilliantly.

Some technicians specialise in keeping these dodgy hardrives going and their stats are never going to look as good as someone that only has high quality hardrives in a well resourced server.

Poor teachers can be gotten rid of, however like all work places it needs to follow a set procedure. The other issue is when you get rid of these poor teachers, who are you going to replace them with? (Esp in Maths and Science).

Good teachers tend to get rewarded with responsibilities which come with management units, however these management units mean the teachers are in front of students less. Poor teachers don't tend to get MUs which mean they are in front of students more.

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tdgeek

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#2247500 29-May-2019 08:29

Geektastic:

I do not approve of strikes. Neither do I approve of public servants demanding more taxes be used to pay them more. If they do not like what they are being paid, they are welcome to resign and go elsewhere or change career.

There is no free money to hand over - we will all have to pay more in tax and that, of course, includes the people who are demanding they be paid more. Even more irritating is the fact that the people with the children who need the education are paying less tax than the people without children in many cases because they get child-related tax breaks.

On a user pays basis, surely those with children should pay an additional percentage of tax to help cover the costs that their choice incurred rather than get a tax discount. If they support paying teachers more, then surely they will be fine about contributing.

If there was an option for all public school teachers to leave and work for a private school, but that's not possible. Another option is for them to change careers.

That is now happening, there is a shortage of teachers. The same applies to doctors. So, your suggestions are actually in play now. Because you have no kids you cant hide behind that. How would it be if you had to book ahead 3 weeks to see a doctor? That would affect you, what would be your suggestion then? Yes, its relevant as doctors and teachers have the same issues

KiwiSurfer

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#2247501 29-May-2019 08:30

eracode:

Yeah but what about performance evaluation and pay for performance? I don't know a lot about all this but my understanding is these do not exist and that they cannot be implemented because of the union. Poor teachers get paid as much as great ones and poor teachers can't be got rid of?

The concern I (and many others) have with performance pay is that teaching is a job where it's difficult to objectively measure the performance of an individual teacher in a way that separates their individual performance/skill/etc from factors external to the teacher. A great many things affecting an individual teacher's performance can be outside the control of the teacher. So you risk penalising teachers for things that are not under their control. If such a system came in teachers may only want to work at 'good' schools or in 'good' classes etc to ensue they are seen as 'good' performers—making thing worse for underachieving schools/students whose teachers may actually be very good but seen as underperforming because their students are not achieving as well as others.

Rather than penalising underperforming teachers, I prefer the approach of supporting them to become better teachers.

Teachers are required to be evaluated—this absolutely does happen but the focus is not on using the result of the evaluation to determine pay but to determine next steps in improving teaching practice. We are all expected to be improving our practice as part of our ongoing work.

Poor teachers do leave the profession. However who replaces them? This puts schools in a tricky situation as the supply of good teachers is decreasing. The decision then becomes whether it's better for the school to let go a poor performing teacher and distribute/split their class to other teachers while they attempt to recruit a good teacher (which can take quite some time) or keep the teacher and provide stability for the children. This is one of the many issues facing the teaching industry at the moment.

There are many other concerns too which are too numerous to list here but there has been some good news coverage of teachers voices which I encourage people to read.

(Disclaimer: Am a teacher.)

cruxis

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#2247502 29-May-2019 08:30

Partner's 20 years+ secondary teacher, predicts this will not be resolved for 3+ years, Most would settle for NO Pay rise but better conditions, workload. Plus 50% teachers at her school are 45 years old+ its gonna get worse over time as the older teachers retire.

Bluntj

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#2247507 29-May-2019 08:37

They have rejected an offer of an extra billion plus more dollars. They need to stop whining and get back to work. There is no more money this round. This seems like an exceptional offer for a single pay round when there are so many other public groups demanding pay rises of much less.

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Bluntj

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#2247508 29-May-2019 08:39

cruxis:

Partner's 20 years+ secondary teacher, predicts this will not be resolved for 3+ years, Most would settle for NO Pay rise but better conditions, workload. Plus 50% teachers at her school are 45 years old+ its gonna get worse over time as the older teachers retire.

I dont believe its about anything other than money. Most NZers arent stupid. Most professional bodies also have the age issue, especially GP's plus many many more. The baby boomers are retiring.

Varkk

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#2247513 29-May-2019 08:47

cruxis:

Partner's 20 years+ secondary teacher, predicts this will not be resolved for 3+ years, Most would settle for NO Pay rise but better conditions, workload. Plus 50% teachers at her school are 45 years old+ its gonna get worse over time as the older teachers retire.

My wife is a teacher as well. The reason they are asking for a payrise is about recruitment and retention. What teachers really want is workload and condition improvements. Less admin overhead and smaller classes etc. However that can't happen unless they can attract enough quality candidates to the profession. It isn't happening at current pay levels. A high number of fresh grads leave the profession withing five years. Fewer and fewer are entering teacher training. Also there is a large group who will be due to retire in the next 5-10 years leading to even more attrition of numbers. The pay figures they are asking for are based on analysis of what would be required to attract the number of people to the profession that they will need in the coming years to actually keep schools open and functional.

jonathan18

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#2247531 29-May-2019 09:16

Bluntj:

I dont believe its about anything other than money. Most NZers arent stupid.

Based on that fine bit of in-depth analysis you clearly speak from an in-depth understanding - if not direct experience - of the realities of being a teacher in NZ public schools, yeah?

chevrolux

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#2247535 29-May-2019 09:28

On a user pays basis, surely those with children should pay an additional percentage of tax to help cover the costs that their choice incurred rather than get a tax discount. If they support paying teachers more, then surely they will be fine about contributing.

"User pays" should never apply to education. Low levels of education is a direct contributor to the poverty cycle. Families who already can't afford to feed themselves can't afford to pay for education.

And please, PLEASE, don't say "well maybe they shouldn't have had children if they can't afford it". It's just never that black and white.

gehenna

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#2247536 29-May-2019 09:29

My wife works 10x harder than I do, and I get paid more than 2-3x as much. She worked 65 hours last week. The last 3 months have been hovering between 50-60 hours every day since she's been running things like school production, tutor groups, moderation, assessment feedback, and working on reports most evenings when she gets home. Plus at least 10 hours over the weekend. At least.

She's basically on-call 24/7 and a lot of her role is relationship management with parents. She's already reached the top of where her salary can go, there's no way she can get more money without taking on more responsibility (e.g. management units). That means her top end is around the entry salary for an infrastructure engineer.

She takes emails and txts from students from 3:30pm to midnight every day/night and all through weekends. She's a counselor, a tutor, a mentor, and she's got to somehow process the emotions of 100+ teenagers while keeping herself sane, and on top of all her other commitments.....and still be able to have a life with me.

She doesn't get annual leave, the school holidays are about 3 days of non-stop sleep at the beginning, followed by another week of having a cold or flu that she's been fighting off all term and finally got through because she let her guard down. Then a week or two of catching up on work and planning for the next term.

Going away is difficult since school holiday travel is peak prices everywhere. Plus any time we do go away we inevitablly hear "Hello Miss" from a student who is holidaying at the same place as us. Sick leave during term is a difficult to manage because she has to spend time creating relief for someone else to do if she's away, so more often than not it's easier just to keep working.

She's also WAY more qualified than I am. She has a conjoint degree and a teaching degree that took 4 years to complete in total. She has to pay to be registered in order to teach, and she has to prove self-learning and continuous personal development to remain registered. All I ever have to do to get a job is quote some acronyms.

In my opinion, seeing what she does every single day (weekends and "holidays" included), she deserves at least as much as I'm paid in the corporate world, preferably much more. I'm writing this while I work from home in my armchair while watching a YouTube video of someone playing Dead Space in 4K while she's probably done about 50 things already today, and when I'm playing another couple of hours of my latest fun game at 9pm tonight she'll still be working.

Anyone who thinks teachers have it easy and don't deserve our utmost respect and gratitude, and don't deserve ALL THE MONEY, can all get fired into the sun. If that's you, you're a blight on our society.

jonathan18

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#2247543 29-May-2019 09:36

chevrolux:

On a user pays basis, surely those with children should pay an additional percentage of tax to help cover the costs that their choice incurred rather than get a tax discount. If they support paying teachers more, then surely they will be fine about contributing.

"User pays" should never apply to education. Low levels of education is a direct contributor to the poverty cycle. Families who already can't afford to feed themselves can't afford to pay for education.

And please, PLEASE, don't say "well maybe they shouldn't have had children if they can't afford it". It's just never that black and white.

Amen, but TBH this is to be expected from GZ's own resident libertarian mesopedist!

Batman

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#2247548 29-May-2019 09:40

gehenna:

My wife works 10x harder than I do, and I get paid more than 2-3x as much. She worked 65 hours last week. The last 3 months have been hovering between 50-60 hours every day since she's been running the school production, tutor groups, moderation, assessment feedback, and working on reports most evenings when she gets home. Plus at least 10 hours over the weekend. At least.

She's basically on-call 24/7 and a lot of her role is relationship management with parents. She's already reached the top of where her salary can go, there's no way she can get more money without taking on more responsibility (e.g. management units). That means her top end is around the entry salary for an infrastructure engineer.

She takes emails and txts from students from 3:30pm to midnight every day/night and all through weekends. She's a counselor, a tutor, a mentor, and she's got to somehow process the emotions of 100+ teenagers while keeping herself sane, and on top of all her other commitments.....and still be able to have a life with me

She doesn't get annual leave, the school holidays are about 3 days of non-stop sleep at the beginning, followed by another week of having a cold or flu that she's been fighting off all term and finally got through because she let her guard down. Then a week or two of catching up on work and planning for the next term.

Going away is difficult since school holiday travel is peak prices everywhere. Plus any time we do go away we inevitablly hear "Hello Miss" from a student who is holidaying at the same place as us. Sick leave during term is a difficult to manage because she has to spend time creating relief for someone else to do if she's away, so more often than not it's easier just to keep working.

She's also WAY more qualified than I am. She has a conjoint degree and a teaching degree that took 4 years to complete in total. She has to pay to be registered in order to teach, and she has to prove self-learning and continuous personal development to remain registered. All I ever have to do to get a job is quote some acronyms.

In my opinion, seeing what she does every single day (weekends and "holidays" included), she deserves at least as much as I'm paid in the corporate world, preferably much more. I'm writing this while I work from home in my armchair while watching a YouTube video of someone playing Dead Space in 4K while she's probably done about 50 things already today, and when I'm playing another couple of hours of my latest fun game at 9pm tonight she'll still be working.

Anyone who thinks teachers have it easy and don't deserve our utmost respect and gratitude, and don't deserve ALL THE MONEY, can all get fired into the sun. If that's you, you're a blight on our society.

I have kids and I see their teachers completely sacrificing their unpaid time every single day including weekends. That's bordering on slavery. But I'm grateful for them and I don't know why they have to do so much work let alone unpaid work.

Mod Edit MM: Edited quoted section to reflected edited content in original post.

Geektastic

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#2247569 29-May-2019 09:56

tdgeek:

Geektastic:

I do not approve of strikes. Neither do I approve of public servants demanding more taxes be used to pay them more. If they do not like what they are being paid, they are welcome to resign and go elsewhere or change career.

There is no free money to hand over - we will all have to pay more in tax and that, of course, includes the people who are demanding they be paid more. Even more irritating is the fact that the people with the children who need the education are paying less tax than the people without children in many cases because they get child-related tax breaks.

On a user pays basis, surely those with children should pay an additional percentage of tax to help cover the costs that their choice incurred rather than get a tax discount. If they support paying teachers more, then surely they will be fine about contributing.

If there was an option for all public school teachers to leave and work for a private school, but that's not possible. Another option is for them to change careers.

That is now happening, there is a shortage of teachers. The same applies to doctors. So, your suggestions are actually in play now. Because you have no kids you cant hide behind that. How would it be if you had to book ahead 3 weeks to see a doctor? That would affect you, what would be your suggestion then? Yes, its relevant as doctors and teachers have the same issues

I came here from a country were booking 3 weeks ahead to see the doctor was not at all unusual - although in return, it was free of charge.

It's fine that teachers change career. Everyone can do so. Eventually, if there are not enough teachers available, the market will correct that by forcing the government to deal with it. There are a number of ways of dealing with it, in the same manner that two of the doctors from our local practice are not from NZ. Neither was the surgeon who operated on me last.

It's not fine to demand heaps more cash from people who have to work to earn that cash and disrupt the education of the pupils as a form of blackmail to get it.

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