NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather forecasts

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
    • The Great NZ Road Trip
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
    • Cooking the Books
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • What the Actual
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Politics

John Roughan: This is victory with vengeance

John Roughan
By John Roughan
Opinion Writer·NZ Herald·
8 Jun, 2012 05:30 PM5 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

Teachers took Anne Tolley's success with national standards grudgingly on the chin. Photo / Christine Cornege

Teachers took Anne Tolley's success with national standards grudgingly on the chin. Photo / Christine Cornege

John Roughan
Opinion by John Roughan
Former editorial writer and columnist, NZ Herald
Learn more

An uprising of school teachers is a wondrous thing. They had 81 per cent of us this week thinking two or three more pupils in the average classroom really mattered.

Or did we think the woodwork teachers were still endangered?

That was clearly a Budget error, as the Government immediately conceded. But the teachers' unions, principals' associations, and even parent trustees, played down the concession, went for the jackpot, and won. They're very clever.

Having demonstrated their power on a minor issue they were keen yesterday to talk to the Government about more important ones. They have some ideas for Budget savings. The president of the Principals' Federation mentioned charter schools.

We hadn't really seen an education uprising since the 1990s. The last Labour Government was a teachers' government in policy and personnel and, following it, John Key had been careful to pick his battles.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

The only contentious change in schools during his first term was the national standards regime for primary schools, which faced plenty of outrage from the profession. But it was an issue teachers knew they couldn't win. How could national standards not be a good thing?

Teachers had to grit their teeth and accept the implication that they were not already working to reasonable standards. They had to agree the language they use in reports to parents is unutterably ridiculous and they couldn't say publicly that most parents couldn't handle the plain truth.

Hardest of all, they knew that measuring schools against national standards would allow newspapers to publish "league tables", creating winners and losers, and we couldn't have that. But we'd need a certificate in education to know why.

So the teachers seethed in their staffrooms and at their conferences. Their national unions, ever vigilant against market liberalism, could make little headway against Key and his first education minister, Anne Tolley.

Teachers had no respect for Tolley, she hadn't been one of them. She was just a parent who had taken a turn on a board of trustees. And she was so damned reasonable. Like Key she didn't seem to have an ideological bone in her body. Both just wanted more useful information for parents and for the Government.

Discover more

Opinion

John Armstrong: Total surrender inevitable on botched policy

07 Jun 05:30 PM
New Zealand|politics

Teachers cheer backdown on class sizes

07 Jun 05:30 PM
Opinion

Bryce Edwards: Political round-up: The 'Backdown Budget'

08 Jun 03:47 AM
Opinion

John Armstrong: Education weapon backfires on Nats

08 Jun 05:30 PM

They were so reasonable that Tolley agreed each school could set its own standards and the results would be issued in a form that wouldn't be a basis for league tables.

Still the teachers seethed, not all of them, of course, but the vast majority who vote Labour. They saw National re-elected and then - could you believe it? - Key gave Act a trial of charter schools. Charter schools are a direct challenge to the profession's control of education.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Not even the National Government of the 1990s had dared dabble in charter schools. It had run into enough trouble trying to "bulk fund" existing schools.

Charter schools, an American idea that has been taken up notably by black communities, would be given a slice of the taxpayers' education outlay to try something different.

The experiment has been put in the sensible hands of Act's Catherine Isaac and as yet it doesn't seem to scare anybody except teachers, for whom you would think it presents a rare opportunity.

I keep wondering what would happen if a government put up some public money for alternative newspapers. Journalists would be falling over themselves with ideas. Yet in the six months since the trial of charter schools was announced there has been no sign of an entrepreneurial spark in the profession.

Teachers have seen research from the United States that finds charter schools sometimes do better than public schools and sometimes worse. So there is a risk in innovation. There always is. The Government is willing to take it and the public doesn't seem to mind.

The public equanimity could be changed in much the same way that class sizes became an issue in recent weeks. The teacher union's most likely strategy would be to present charter schools as bulk-funding by the back door.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Teachers would be easily convinced that there is an agenda to set up two charter schools so that all others would have to be bulk-funded to compete with them.

There is nothing unusual about bulk funding. It is the way universities and medical practices and most other community services want to be financed. But it means that staff salaries and conditions are bargained directly with their employer and teachers don't want that.

Before you know it, they'd be facing performance pay and who knows what else.

When the Government saw the polls on class sizes this week it decided the savings were not worth the fight. It might soon regret that decision.

The polled questions were simplistic, the issue was not running deep. It would have dropped out of the news next week.

The Government's weakness will have teachers pumped.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Save

    Share this article

Latest from Education

New Zealand|education

Luxon speaks to the media after announcing plan to restrict social media for under-16s

New Zealand|education

'He was 20, I was 18': Graduating nurse inspired by lost love

09 May 10:35 PM
Premium
Editorial

Editorial: Getting CRL greenlit may be Key's lasting Auckland legacy

08 May 05:00 PM

One tiny baby’s fight to survive

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Education

Luxon speaks to the media after announcing plan to restrict social media for under-16s

Luxon speaks to the media after announcing plan to restrict social media for under-16s

The Government is making work on restrictions to social media for New Zealanders under the age of 16 part of its official programme. Video / NZ Herald

'He was 20, I was 18': Graduating nurse inspired by lost love

'He was 20, I was 18': Graduating nurse inspired by lost love

09 May 10:35 PM
Premium
Editorial: Getting CRL greenlit may be Key's lasting Auckland legacy

Editorial: Getting CRL greenlit may be Key's lasting Auckland legacy

08 May 05:00 PM
'Nobody's winning': Tertiary staff struggle amid funding cuts

'Nobody's winning': Tertiary staff struggle amid funding cuts

08 May 05:00 PM
Connected workers are safer workers 
sponsored

Connected workers are safer workers 

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • What the Actual
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven CarGuide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP