Bill English MP
National Party Education Spokesman

24 January 2005

More teachers - less teaching

"More teachers have been required to deal with the Government's growing burden of bureaucracy in schools," according to National Party Education spokesman Bill English.

He is commenting on publicity issued by the Labour Government today, heralding figures that show the number of teachers has increased by more than the rate of role growth in the past five years.

"The hard reality is that students aren't getting much more teaching time," says Mr English.

"Teachers are having less contact with students and school weeks have been shortened because of the bureaucracy which Labour is putting in place.

"Helen Clark's Government has spent more money beefing up the Ministry of Education, than it has beefing up school budgets.

"This means there are simply more bureaucrats creating work for teachers which takes them away from their students," warns Mr English.

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