Educators send a message to future women

Educators send a message to future women
on Support Staff Day

13 June 2017
On Support Staff Day tomorrow (Wednesday 14 June), educators will be recognising and celebrating the true value of support staff, and sending messages to the women of the future.

School support staff – and teacher aides in particular – are finally on track to negotiate pay equity settlements, 45 years after the Equal Pay Act was introduced.

At 11am at Wellington Girls College, NZEI Te Riu Roa President Lynda Stuart and other education leaders will launch Support Staff Day 2017, handing senior girls at the College hand written messages to “women of the future” about the struggle for pay equity.

Around the country, support staff will be writing to women of the future, telling them about the contribution they make to students’ learning and their hopes for a future in which women receive equal pay for work of equal value.

Bundles of messages will be entrusted to students at girls’ secondary schools, to be opened and read in the hopefully-not-too-distant future when pay equity is a reality for support staff and a new generation of women don't have to explain why they're worth as much as men.

“It’s been a long time coming,” said Ms Stuart.

“But with the recent victory of aged care workers and the government’s commitment to progressing pay equity for support staff, it finally feels like genuine progress is being made.”

At schools around the country tomorrow, teachers and principals will be acknowledging and thanking their valued support staff with a range of events.

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