PRESIDENT’S 2006 ANNUAL CONFERENCE SPEECH
Embargoed until delivery at 11am, 26 September
Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.
I’d like to welcome you all here today, and to extend an extra special welcome to you if your waka to this hui was an
aeroplane. The air around Whanganui-a-Tara can be a little moody at this time of year. Descending to earth while
strapped to a machine that lurches wildly up, down and sideways is an act of courage, not to mention blind trust. So, to
those who’ve joined us from the skies … He iti wai kōwhao waka e tahuri te waka (A little storm and then a rainbow
appears - Worry over small difficulties is often found to be needless when a successful outcome follows.)
First up. A big thanks to all of you. Judging by the numbers, this is to be one of the best attended Annual Conferences
in recent PPTA history. Business is booming, you might say.
So, I’d like to extend a special “kia ora and thank you” to all delegates and observers for this turn-out.
I applaud your commitment to our union. I applaud your giving up a chunk of your “tween-term” time to be here, because
with out you the PPTA executive, regional networks and staff wouldn’t be the sturdy waka we know they are.
I applaud your willingness to fight the good fight, which is what belonging to a union has always been about after all.
In 2004 we settled a three-year Secondary Teachers Collective Agreement. This has given us the opportunity, through a
series of work streams, to focus on a range of professional and industrial issues that give support to quality teaching,
and there have been some important gains in the past 12 months.
In this year’s Budget, Cabinet approved just over $25 million dollars’ in funding for four very significant initiatives
for secondary teachers:
- A new medical retirement provision for secondary teachers that will enable teachers to retire with dignity if they are
too ill to continue teaching
- Senior subject advisers to build our capacity to assess accurately, validly and effectively. Twenty four teachers will
take up these positions in a trial scheme next year.
- Workload relief for those middle managers responsible for beginning teachers in their departments. This will see one
hour per week for each first year teacher allocated to the HOD to ensure beginning teachers receive adequate support.
- A second G3 diploma is also being funded and is expected to be ready for 2007. It is good to see that the Minister is
determined that the G3 problem will be resolved once and for all through this diploma and I am confident that the
current difficulties around the number of credits allowable in part C of this diploma will be resolved really soon.
We have also seen the fifth hour of non-teaching time make a considerable difference for many of our teachers – to cite
our membership survey, more than three-quarters
(77%) of members see the non-contact time as valuable or very valuable.
Finally, we’ve successfully introduced two initiatives that were negotiated in the 2004 Collective Agreement: specialist
classroom teachers, and teacher sabbaticals. Feedback from these pilot schemes has been overwhelmingly positive. To
quote one specialist classroom teacher, the SCT role is “the biggest development in teaching since Tomorrow’s Schools.
“It is giving power back to the professional (teacher) to work in a professionally supportive way with their colleagues,
rather than the top down model that doesn’t work.”
These very significant initiatives stem from a long-term approach underpinned by the recommendations of the Ministerial
Taskforce on Secondary Teacher Remuneration in 2003. The Taskforce said there had to be a better way of working to
ensure a supply of high quality and appropriately qualified secondary teachers.
There can be no doubt that up until now the Ministerial Taskforce pathway has been a better way to achieve long-term
gains for secondary education and for teachers, as well as make incremental improvements for secondary teachers outside
the traditional bargaining process.
Our members have signalled that we should continue along the Taskforce path for the moment. In terms of the collective
agreement, this would imply another three-year agreement with a comprehensive package of conditions improvements, annual
salary increases, staged new initiatives, and with many smaller claims sorted.
But this approach requires genuine, open and ongoing commitment from all parties, and our support for the process will
be conditional on progress being made during the course of the agreement. We should not expect to have to always wait
for an industrial round in order to make gains.
Delegates will have the opportunity to reflect on this further during this conference.
As always, pay is likely to be a big discussion point for the next collective agreement. It will probably be no surprise
to you to learn that more than a half of the teachers who responded to our membership survey are dissatisfied with their
pay.
But when the subject of teacher pay comes up, some politicians immediately resort to the catch-cry that you should pay
good teachers more - i.e. performance pay.
Members feel very strongly about this: two-thirds are opposed to it, with only 15 per cent in favour.
What members see is the inherent unfairness of trying to judge teachers on students’ results when the classes they teach
are radically different; the impossibility of rewarding all those who performed well; the subjectivity of any
measurement system and the potential for division and resentment in the staff room.
Teachers commented: “The level of student ability in a class is the luck of the draw, not necessarily a reflection of
teachers’ abilities.”
Another one: “It is impossible to evaluate this with any integrity. I have taught very successfully/profitably in this
system but found it divisive and destructive. Too many variables.”
And another one: “Teaching is a very collegial profession. We work together and help with resources and ideas.
Performance pay would destroy this.”
And finally: “My experience in ERO and MoE is that (performance pay) is a subjective process and in essence not
equitable as in the end there is only so much money so even if everyone performs well, only a few get real recognition.”
So Performance pay is about trying to rank individual teachers on the basis of student performance, and award some more
pay than others. It is a very popular and simplistic catch cry that is made from time to time, but it is inherently
inequitable and unreliable. It is an attempt to apply an inappropriate business model on schools and nowhere in the
world of education has it ever worked satisfactorily when it has been tried.
PPTA firmly believes in the concept of an effective teacher in every classroom and we are only too willing to work with
any government on processes to achieve this in every school in the country.
The way to guarantee that is not by dangling carrots in front of some teachers and not others; it is by ensuring that
all teachers get the remuneration, professional learning and support and resources to be effective.
However, if MP’s voted to have THEIR remuneration assessed on their own performance then we might think about
performance pay.
Yeah right.
Some of you may remember that in my speech to annual conference this time last year I very strongly defended the right
of PPTA, in an election year, to articulate its position on what we thought were good policies for secondary education
in this country. Nothing has changed since then. We must continue to be forthright in saying what is going right and
what needs improvement in our education system, because we still have to tackle some major issues: dealing with
challenging student behaviour, NCEA, teacher workload, class size and the role of the Teachers Council.
The issue of managing challenging student behaviour has been in the news recently, with the matter of just how teachers
should cope with violence in the classroom, hitting the headlines.
On the one hand, this is a definite health and safety issue for teachers. I hear disturbing stories everywhere I go,
with teachers in some schools reluctant to do duty or even walk in the corridors for fear of pushing, shoving and
intimidation from students.
Of those who responded to our membership survey, 47 per cent – nearly half – believe that poor behaviour from students
towards them has increased. Only 10 per cent say it is better. More than half say they are spending more time on
motivation, control and dealing with challenges to authority.
One of the most interesting but unsurprising findings of recent research into people’s view of the teaching profession
is that the way teachers are treated by students is deterring young people from opting for teaching as a career. I think
that we have come to the point where we need to take a really hard look at what many teachers are putting up with in
their daily working lives. Teachers must be able to work in an environment that allows them to feel safe doing the job
they want, and are paid, to do.
How many professionals work daily in an environment where it is not unusual to be told to ‘eff off you dumb cow’, or ‘I
know where you live you *