Responding to reports that the teachers’ unions are once again prioritising politics over pupils and opposing the
recommendations made by the government’s Ministerial Advisory Group, Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns Manager, Connor Molloy
said:
“Every year we spend more and more on education yet outcomes consistently continue to decline. But when an expert panel
finally conducts a review of how to improve education, the Unions are up in arms – presumably because it is a threat to
their very existence as cartels that capitalise off politicising education and protecting bad teachers from
accountability.
“NZEI President Mark Potter seems to suggest that everything wrong in education is to do with ‘societal pressures on
children’ and there’s nothing teachers can do to improve education outcomes. That kind of defeatist thinking is what got
us into this mess and is standing in the way of allowing the best teachers and schools to innovate and find ways to
improve that can be replicated elsewhere.
“If Mr Potter thinks continuing with the same failing methods that have seen education outcomes continually decline,
perhaps he would be better off teaching at Hogwarts or whatever make-believe world he appears to be living in.”