It was National Teachers Day last Friday. It may not have got the publicity it deserved, perhaps because of the ongoing industrial action.
Our teachers are on strike again this week. However, the strike, which is a national one, is for two hours on Wednesday 5 November from 1.15pm to 3.15pm. This was already a scheduled teacher only day at our school, when teachers would be looking at new curriculum documents and preparing for 2026. This means that some of this preparatory work will have to occur at another time, either before or after school, or at the end of the year.
The strike is in response to the failure to reach a settlement for the Secondary Teachers’ Collective Agreement (STCA) between the Ministry and the Teacher’s union, the PPTA. It is the fourth strike in relation to the current negotiations. It is such a shame that this will impact on students in schools around the country. The system for negotiation is completely broken and yet there seems no will on any side of the political spectrum to change things.
It is interesting that we have an independent body called the Remuneration Authority that determines the salaries for NZ politicians. The Remuneration Authority considers a number of criteria when setting politicians’ pay:
- “The requirements and complexity of the job
- Fair relativity with comparable public and private sector roles in New Zealand
- The need to attract and retain competent individuals
- Any prevailing adverse economic conditions
- The value of personal benefits MPs receive from entitlements.”
These seem like good criteria for me and I assume it’s a good system. I can’t help noticing that these considerations also apply to teaching, in particular, “the requirements and complexity of the job” and “the need to attract and retain competent individuals”. In addition, there was a pay equity claim in place related to “relativity with comparable public and private sector roles” but this was scrapped by the current government.
My question here is that, if there is a system that is working well, why can’t we apply it across the public sector so that our students, in this case, aren’t held to ransom while our teachers go through a cap-in-hand, humiliating process every 2-3 years? It is worth bearing in mind that the initial offer to support staff in schools, who have also not settled, was for 0% – no pay increase, while teachers were initially offered 1%. This doesn’t sound like good faith bargaining to me. And although further offers to the teachers have improved, those offers are not keeping up with inflation, and there is erosion of conditions.
All of this destroys the morale of the people that are educating and inspiring our youth around the country. Perhaps it is worth looking at some statistics related to teaching. There is a survey done every five years across OECD countries called the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). In the most recent edition (2024), there are some interesting findings which should be considered in the current negotiations. Trend comparisons can only be made in New Zealand for year 7-10 teachers, because of the data that has been collected. The initial findings of the 2024 TALIS report can be found at this link, and I have highlighted some areas below.
- “NZ’s full-time teachers worked an average of 48 hours per week, the same result as in 2018.”
- “NZ teachers estimate they spend about two fifths of their working time on teaching.”
- “6 out of 10 NZ teachers experience stress in their work quite a bit or a lot and only a third reported no physical health impacts from their work.”
- “Internationally, the proportion of NZ year 7-10 teachers who reported experiencing stress in their work a lot (33%) was among the highest across TALIS countries. This had increased from 28% in 2018”.
- “Change was a prominent stressor for NZ teachers, particularly for secondary (year 9-10) teachers, eg 70% of secondary teachers reported that keeping up with changing requirements from local or national authorities was a source of stress quite a bit or a lot compared with 58% of Year 1-8 teachers.”
- “On a set of questions about whether teachers experienced too much change in their school, NZ year 7-10 teachers were above the OECD average on all measures.”
- “Staff shortages were the most pressing concern for NZ principals when asked about issues that could hinder their school’s ability to deliver quality instruction. Of NZ Year 7-10 teachers, 43% were in schools where the principal said this was an issue quite a bit or a lot, compared to the OECD average of 23%.”
- “Most New Zealand teachers felt valued by students and their parents/guardians (over 70%), but only a small minority felt their views were valued by policymakers (14%).”
The first bullet point above is particularly interesting to me. Some simple mathematics will tell you that if a working week is 40 hours, then teachers are working 8 hours beyond that, every week over the school year. Cumulatively, that is an extra 8 (hours) x 10 (weeks per term) x 4 (terms) = 320 hours which is 8 additional weeks per year – you can probably guess that I am a mathematics teacher! Perhaps when debate turns to ‘holidays’ and ‘call back days’, some consideration of the extra 8 weeks being worked during term time could be made? I often tell my staff to consider their term breaks as ‘in lieu’ time that they have earned through the term. They need the time to refresh and recharge, and yet so many work through those breaks as well.
I am always heartened by the number of people that express their support for our teachers during these times but it should never get to this. No one wants to be on strike – for a start, you don’t get paid. Every teacher also knows that it puts them behind a little bit each time a class is missed, like a student away from school.
I believe that negotiations with some facilitation, from the Employment Relations Authority, are now likely. I remain hopeful that settlement can be reached before the end of the year so that disruption doesn’t continue into next year.
In the meantime, in the spirit of the National Teachers’ Day, I’d like to celebrate our fantastic teachers in all of our schools, but particularly our one!
Dominic Killalea
Principal