NZ's Government Schools

Slip, Slidin' Away

In New Zealand government schools are controlled by the teacher unions.  It would be more accurate to call government schools in New Zealand monopolist union schools.

To be sure, union control of the government schools is indirect.  It is not overt.  But the real power in the Ministry of Education and in the schools is held by the unions.  A NZ Herald editorial explains how one reform initiative has come to a sticky end, courtesy of the unions which exist to protect mediocre teachers.

More than two years have passed since the Government announced an impressive plan for improving schools by paying them to work more closely together. They were to form clusters under an executive principal and share their best staff who would be lead teachers in their subject. A pot of $349 million was added to the education budget.

Nothing happens in state schooling without the approval of the teachers' unions but one of them at least, the Post Primary Teachers' Association, did not reject the plan out of hand. The primary school teachers' NZ Educational Institute was much more resistant. Education Minister Hekia Parata did not force the issue. Her ministry started rounds of consultation on the details of the plan, including the terminology, "executive principal" and "lead teacher" which were not to the unions' taste.  Two years on, a watered down version of the plan appears to be getting under way.

Unionist egalitarianism has to be wedded to the bizarre notion that all teachers are equal.  Pay differentiation can apply only to roles, not individual teachers.  If one chooses to stay in a role, pay increases can only come via union award negotiations.   Imagine a blob of gummy gibberish masquerading as a teacher: his or her pay will be equal to the most successful, clever, and best-performing teacher in that particular role because in one vital respect both gummy and the superb teacher have one thing in common--both are subject to egalitarian union pay awards.

In the ordinary course of life, the successful teacher moves on--either to school administration, or to other careers completely outside education.  There is little incentive to stay teaching, when the union sets the salary, and union membership is the primary, if not sole qualification, for assessing pay and performance.  Naturally, when the government's initiative to keep successful teachers in teaching longer, by offering them a career with increasing pay for performance, the unions were uncomfortable.  The fundamental principles of closed shop egalitarianism were implicitly threatened.

The bonuses to be offered principals and teachers who take on wider roles have been negotiated down by the PPTA. Its national head, Angela Roberts, proudly told our reporter last week the plan "now is not just about money, it's about non-contact time and about more teachers in the classroom instead of competition for pay". Titles that implied some teachers are better than others were dropped at the union's insistence.

The Government's original initiative, which it called Investing in Educational Success, is now investing in more of the same. The non-contact hours and additional hands in the classroom are the usual benefits the teacher unions seek for all their members in bargaining rounds. The annual salary incentives for taking leading roles in a community of schools have been reduced by up to $10,000. Instead, the Government is offering bonuses of up to $50,000 a year to recruit principals for "high needs" schools.

It is reported that the teacher unions are still uncomfortable and are working on an "interschool consultation initiative" of their own design.  Doubtless it will boil down to rewarding schools which have higher union membership rates.  The editorial concludes:

It is hard to believe the data sharing meetings that participating principals describe to us will make very much difference to the way the education system works. The original plan was not "just about money", as the PPTA would have it. It was about promoting talent and spreading best practice. That is unlikely to happen without substantial incentives. But the union has prevailed. Mediocrity rules again.

There are four things which damn the government education system: politics and political parties; teacher unions; the prevalence of pedagogical theories in our universities which celebrate non-teaching and pupil self-discovery; and the bureaucratic, hive-like mind which administrates the entire system. The unions are the most powerful force within this junta.

Meanwhile NZ's international school rankings are slip, slidin' away.