PPTA regional chairman for Whanganui and Manawatū, Graham Conlon, said he and other PPTA members in the region were disappointed negotiations with the Ministry of Education had come to this.
“It’s not something we take lightly, it’s not something we do with any glee because we’ve lost so many teachers and we love our profession and love our kids,” Conlon said.
“But the reality is that we’re looking at our profession being dwindled away, our attrition rate for young teachers is scary and the rate we even lose overseas teachers coming over is approximately 45-50 per cent within the first two or three years.”
Conlon, who’s also a maths teacher at Feilding High School, has been in industrial relations for 20 years but he’d never seen a situation with so many delays and unsatisfactory offers as this one.
“[The ministry] are spending millions of dollars trying to advertise overseas for overseas trained teachers to come to New Zealand to teach and you think, well, why would you not pay your teachers that you have here to stay in the job because we’re losing them.”
Issues facing teachers were present all across the country, but people in Whanganui were especially struggling due to the increasing price of food and significantly higher house prices.
He knew of teachers in Marton who have had to leave the profession because they could no longer afford to pay rent on their salaries.
“All we’re asking [for] is a reasonable pay increase, and at the moment what we’ve been offered is a pay cut and a significant pay cut at that.
“The only way to bring a reasonable employer to the table to negotiate in good faith is to take industrial action, which is what we’re doing,” he said.
The Ministry said their last offer to teachers included a one-off payment of up to $5210 and three pay rises totalling between 11 and 18 per cent by December next year.
Last week 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.”
Whanganui High School Principal Martin McAllen said the situation was incredibly frustrating for students, teachers, parents, and the wider community.
“I want all of our students to be attending school regularly and to be fully engaged in their valuable learning time in all subject areas,” McAllen said.
The opportunity for a good education was too important to waste, and he said teaching children of all ages was one of the most meaningful occupations a person could choose.
“At the same time, however, that career definitely needs to be rewarded appropriately at all levels so that the teaching profession continues to be attractive at all times to the hardest-working and most talented men and women possible.”
He hoped a satisfactory settlement was reached for both sides with urgency.
Whanganui City College principal Peter Kaua said the action was difficult for them as they were a pilot school in an NCEA curriculum refresh where students were undertaking literacy and numeracy exams online.
Year nine and 10 students were also taking part in the pilot as preparation for future assessments and the strikes had affected how the school had planned to run their assessments.
“Digital is hard in itself but when you’ve got the rolling strikes on and you’ve organised a week where you need... selected students be here in order to do that, it just puts another spanner in the works,” he said.
Being a PPTA member he supported the members’ efforts but said the strikes had come at a very bad time after the last three years of hard times for schools due to Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions.
“It’s caused a drop in our attendance at school, and we get it right and then this happens.
“We were just trying to deal with issues and reengage our kids back into the school routines, and then a rolling strike comes along.”
He said the Government needed to quickly come to an understanding of what effect rolling strikes can have.
“They need to address it pretty quickly because if we have another term of this... I can see a big drop in attendance rates at schools,” he said.
However, Conlon didn’t expect the ministry to come to them with an offer and expected action to have to continue into the next term.
“I would be very surprised if the current rostering home didn’t continue till the end of term.”
The PPTA will be having meetings across the country in two weeks, where he said they would vote on an offer if it was presented to them, however, if not they would discuss how to continue the action for next term.
