More learning disruption

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

Sometimes there is good reason to strike — however, the timing of the strike this week by secondary school teachers was disappointing.

Students have already lost a lot of time at school with Covid-related shutdowns. Here in Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay there have been further disruptions with flooding, states of emergency and some students being unable to even get to school.

Easter now looms . . . add the phenomenon of teacher-only days and it’s a fair percentage of time away from the school routine.

For those of us with students at both GGHS and GBHS (or different schools), should not the “teacher-only days” be run on the same day?

This would make parental supervision of those too young to be home alone a bit easier on parents/caregivers, and cause less erosion into valuable holiday entitlements, remembering we only get four weeks!

GBHS (and some others) made the decision in the first strike not to close down, which was greatly appreciated by parents and students actually wanting to learn.

I wonder if the fact teachers have so many weeks off (school holidays) is factored into the job satisfaction, hence work conditions currently under protest. Teachers with school-age offspring enjoy a lot more freedom than the rest of us limited to four weeks of paid leave at best.

School holidays are also often the time targeted for school build projects, which a number of parents in the construction industry end up committed to.

Concerned parent