Teachers fear for quality of education

Press, 18 March 1989, Page 3

Teachers fear for quality of education

By

SUZANNE KEEN

Alarm at the “inflexible approach” to teachers’ award negotiations by the State Services Commission and concerns at the damage to the quality of education has been expressed at the annual meeting of the Canterbury P.P.T.A. The meeting adopted a resolution calling all striking ‘?achers to a stopwork mec ing at the Theatre Roy; ! on Tuesday. A national executive member of the Post Primary Teachers’ Association, Mr Martin Cooney, said that a letter expressing concern would be delivered to the commission after the stopwork meeting. He said the P.P.T.A. had also endorsed a proposal that teacherc themselves aval, talk to parents at schools

between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Tuesday. The theme would be “don’t ask yourself why teachers are on strike, ask them.” “Teachers are keen to explain to the parents that the strike is not about pay increases but about quality of education,” said Mr Cooney. The idea of direct meetings between teachers and parents corpes after a “hotline,” whereby parents could telephone to learn about the teachers’ concerns and‘express their own. Mr Cooney said the hotline had been reasonably well used, although it was expected to get busier nearer Tuesday. “We expected a fair amount of initial opposition, but the calls have generally been supportive.”