Teachers will march on Parliament

Press, 25 August 1983, Page 3

Teachers will march on Parliament

PA Wellington Post-primary teachers will march on Parliament today to protest against Government moves to change the State Services Conditions of Employment Act. Teachers decided on this action at the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association conference in Wellington yesterday. They will spend the lunchtime of today’s session marching on Parliament and visiting their local members of Parliament. Delegates were told that proposed amendments to the bill, introduced in Parliament this week, would seriously affect salaries. An executive member, Mr John Grant, said the changes would mean secondary teachers would be placed in a straitjacket, because they had no group outside the State service with which to compare salaries.

Pay claims could not be negotiated unless there were serious recruitment and retention problems. In a period of falling rolls and teacher surplus, this would effectively sever chances of a new salary claim in the forseeable future.

“The changes mean our wages will be Governmentcontrolled. There would be serious consequences for teachers,” Mr Grant said.

Primary teachers also oppose amendments to the bill. They are upset that the changes would remove the “horizontal relativity” negotiating clause, under which they won pay relativity with post-primary teachers last year.

The Minister of Education, Mr Wellington, yesterday criticised suggestions that post-primary teachers might support a political party in the next General Election. In an address to the PostPrimary Teachers’ Association annual conference, he said that in five years of attending annual meetings of every conceivable education group he had never been subjected to such a threat.

The P.P.T.A. president, Mr Desmond Hinch, said in his address to the conference on Tuesday that teachers should consider political action as a means of bringing about the improvements they wanted in education. Such action could involve endorsing a political party and giving.it tangible support in key seats, Mr Hinch said.

Mr Wellington said that “to convert the country’s schools into mini-election platforms would be anathema to our people.” “You may well seek to emulate some teacher groups in Australia, particularly Victoria and New South Wales,” Mr Wellington told the delegates. “Such an approach, should it be followed, would ultimately divide staffrooms and impair the tasks schools are called upon to perform.”

Mr Wellington said the remarks were untimely and unfortunate, especially as a recent Cabinet meeting had made a “detailed and sympathetic” examination of a working-party report on post-primary school staff-

fir Wellington said that as a result of that hearing,

the Cabinet had approved employing an extra 84 teacher equivalents from next year.

He said that because of the constrained economy he was not able to recommend to the Cabinet that the full report be implemented. “My principal interest lay in those elements of the report which had direct relevance to the present staffing difficulties of secondary schools. “That is, to address the task of protecting subject opportunities especially for small schools mainly in rural areas, or metropolitan schools whose rolls had declined,” he said. Mr Wellington said a review group favoured one particular element of the staffing report. “This involves introducing the framework of the ‘classroom teaching time allowance’ in such a way that a new staffing mechanism is put in place without adversely affecting the present staffing entitlements of any school,” he said. To put the recommendation into effect required an additional 84 teacher equivalents, to which the Cabinet agreed, Mr Wellington said.

“What has been achieved then is a commitment by the Government to a central component of the report, indeed the key one.”

He said implementation of other recommendations in the report would depend on “the circumstances prevailing at the time.” Mr Wellington reiterated his opposition to shifting the University Entrance examination from the sixth form to the seventh form, a

move supported by postprimary teachers. “I remain firmly of the point of view that maintenance of the status quo in this area is both proper and justified.” He said many groups, ranging from the Federation of Labour to the Maori people, had said they did not want the University Entrance examination shifted.

As well, colleagues in other countries where similar examinations had been shifted had said most consumers came to regret the change, Mr Wellington said. He also countered claims that secondary education in New Zealand was excessively academic. The number of pupils taking practical courses at the senior level was growing, while expenditure on school-to-work transitional programmes had risen from $200,000 in 1979 to $2.4 million this year, he said. On Tuesday, conference delegates decided to oppose any attempt by Mr Wellington to impose changes to the present arrangements for assessing teachers. Any changes would have to be as the result of negotiations among the parties concerned, they decided when accepting a motion put forward by the Otago region.

Earlier this year, Mr Wellington announced moves . to introduce measures for assessing teachers to ensure the bestpossible teachers were put in front of the class.

Primary and secondary teachers said they would not accept reintroduction of the old numerical grading system, abolished more than 12 years ago.