Why didn't teachers strike when National was in? I'll tell you what we did!!

Why were teachers so quiet when National was the government?  They didn't kick up a fuss then.

Why didn't teachers go on strike when National was the government?

They've been offered heaps more that National offered.  So why are teachers being so unreasonable?

Teachers get so many holidays and only work from 9 until 3, so why are they complaining about workload?

If teachers don't pull their head in, Labour will be a one term government.  Then where will that leave them?

You know, I've seen these statements and questions a lot.  I've heard them from Labour party members.  I've seen them on the NZ Teachers Facebook page.  I've seen them on various Facebook pages.  I've seen them in the Stuff/Herald comments.  I've even seen and heard it from teachers themselves.

This blog post aims to put that to bed.  Because teachers did not sit quietly during National's tenure.  They, with the NZEI and PPTA, stood strong against #GERM neoliberal policies set up to destroy our free quality public education system.  Because of teachers, Minister of Education Chris Hipkins and the coalition government have the bones and a bit of flesh still left.

Teachers opposed National Standards - this could have evolved into a national testing system like in the UK or Australia or the US, all countries sliding down educational world rankings.  NAPLAN in Australia, Key Stage Testing in the UK and the plethora of testing across the US has dragged those countries down.  National had a national testing regime on their radar back in the 1990s and it was only a Labour led government being formed in 1999 and continued union opposition alongside quality academic information that prevented it from coming to fruition then.

We stood firm against allowing PaCT to take traction within our education system.  This tool would have been used to monitor teachers and as a gateway to introduce performance pay.

Our teachers, with the unions, stood firm against performance pay - this system does not work.  It does not promote a core value of teaching: collaboration.  It is ripe for fraud by teachers and being used by senior leaders unethically, clearly demonstrated in the US and UK.

Teachers opposed privatisation of our state schools - how many more charter schools and public private partnerships would have been established without the teachers standing firm against these measures that have devastated the English education system and the education systems of US cities like New Orleans, Chicago and Detroit?  NZEI and PPTA led the opposition to charter schools.  But really, the evidence from overseas speaks for itself.

Remember that time in 2012 when Hekia Parata had the brilliant idea of increasing class sizes?  Remember the impact that was going to have, particularly on intermediate schools and their specialist teachers?  That was a campaign led by NZEI, PPTA and AIMS (Association of Intermediate and Middle Schools) to raise public awareness and get the parents onside.  And it worked.  Poll numbers showed National losing core support from middle New Zealand, from the "Mums and Dads" John Key always blah blahhed on about.  So he made the call to Hekia from Europe, and nek minute, the back downs of all back downs saw Ms Parata back down.

Teachers, through NZEI and PPTA, vehemently opposed many of the changes to the Teachers' Council.  Hekia Parata, despite 90+% of submissions opposing, changed it to the Education Council and removed the right of teachers to vote on their own representatives to their professional bodies.  Other changes made by the new Education Council have also directly led to the issues we face with a shortage of teachers and relief teachers.  We are incredibly thrilled to see the changes go back through Parliament during September to return the democratic right of teachers to elect their own representatives to our governing body.

Us teachers not only thwarted efforts by previous Education Minister Hekia Parata to increase class sizes, but also her attempt to reintroduce the failed policy of the 1990s, bulk funding (disguised as global funding).  That took a concerted effort.  In fact we can thank Hekia for doing something no Education Minister had previously achieved: uniting NZEI and the PPTA in a common cause.  Add in E Tu, who represent cleaners and caretakers in our schools, and we ran a formidable campaign that forced Ms Parata to back down from global funding including the #betterfunding for #betterlearning bus and campervan tours.  NZEI and PPTA remain close and united while advancing their own kaupapa.

We were not quiet during the National years; we were considerate. 

Considerate that the country was suffering from the Global Financial Collapse.

Considerate of the country needing to put Christchurch first after the September 2010 earthquake and the February 2011 earthquake and all the aftershocks. 

We saw the Rockstar Economy proclaimed and received none of the benefits promised to us. 

We saw the silverware sold off and John Key's promises that the asset sales would benefit health and education.... but nothing.

The decision was made last year, well before the election and endorsed by members at our Annual Conference in early October before the new coalition government was established, that no matter the hue of the government, we would no longer be patient.  We would fight for our profession and our students because we are at crisis point. 

We've warned for several years we were in a state of a shortage of teachers. 

We've warned for many years that teachers were burning out under the workload. 

We've warned for many years that too many students are falling through the systematic cracks and teachers are powerless to prevent it.

We made the decision that now #ItsTimeNZEI #KuaTaeTeWa.  Thats why we decided to strike on Wednesday 15 August for a full day.  It's why we are now planning action geographical rolling strikes for the week beginning Monday 12 November.

Many of us worked to put this government in.  They promised to fix things. 

There's more wrong than they knew (but we knew that and have been saying it for years) and it is harder than they expected - but everyone knows Labour coming into government always has to fix a complete disastrous mess created by National. 

But when you have the country's leading economists saying, " Bugger the Budget Responsibility Rules - borrowing is currently cheap and education and health need fixing"... then don't you think that might be a good idea?

Otherwise we condemn yet another election cycle of children to not receiving the Education they are entitled to and we increase the crisis in our teacher workforce.

Why Primary Teachers and Principals (and the Secondary Teachers too) Rejected the MOE Offers

I was last week quite surprised by Acting Education Minister Tracey Martin being surprised by primary teachers and principals rejecting the MOE offer to us.  

Thanks to the amazing Green Grub's lady for this graphic.  Check out Green Grub's Facebook page.

When Mrs Martin came to the NZEI President's Dinner at the NZEI Annual Conference on Sunday night, she told my friend Dianne (from SOSNZ) that she did not understand why teachers had turned down the offer.  Dianne told her it's because teachers are exhausted from the workload.  The work is never ending, and teachers can be their own worst enemy, but they do it for the kids and because there is this never ending demand to accelerate learning. 

Teachers can not wait three more years for this government to get a bit more money to solve these issues.  We are at crisis point now.  We have limited relievers now and teachers are coming to school sick or classes are being split to allow teachers to take sick leave.  

We have students who are not getting the help they should get because teachers are so overworked that they do not get through the referral system in a timely manner and then there is often little funding or no room for that child on the roll of the RTLB or RTLit or there is no speech language therapist available or whatever.

We now have teachers cutting down to 0.8 or less so they can get through the workload in the working week so they can reclaim their weekends for their families.  Some have quite teaching to do relieving so they can be more present in their families.  What is there to attract them back into full-time teaching when the workload is astronomical?  My friend Dianne was offered a full-time teaching job for next year last week - her son cried because "Mum will always be working now".

There has been a 40% drop in people entering initial teacher training in the last five years (unsurprising after the National led government constantly running teachers down over their time in government).  Coupled with the high rate of attrition of teachers within their first five years of teaching leaving our profession for good or heading overseas to greener pastures, we do not have the younger teachers required to replace the aging population of teachers heading towards retirement in the next ten years.  It is predicted we will be up to 1800 teachers short.

As I lay awake this morning (thank you hacking cough), I read a response by Labour MP Marja Lubeck to a comment on a Facebook post by Education Minister Chris Hipkins (currently on paternity leave) he did after attending the PPTA Conference in Wellington yesterday.  

Ms Lubeck also seemed perplexed about why we had rejected the offer and proceeded to lay out what Labour has done in the Education space in the last year.  While these were all things we wanted, not one of them addresses our primary teacher or principal claims.

I wrote this response to Ms Lubeck:

Marja Lubeck Labour List MP, those are all great things, but getting rid of National Standards was not about workload, that was about pedagogy; about not labeling children as failures and "weighing them like pigs".

Democratising the Education Council was important to us because we should have a say in the body governing us.  However, this does not improve my workload.

Providing new classroom spaces does not improve my workload.  However, can someone organise a heat pump to be installed in my prefab; we sweated through term 1 and huddled around a tiny fan heater in terms 2 and 3.  I'm not looking forward to sweating out term 4.

I'm stoked ECE received more funding after years of freezes, however, this will not improve workloads in ECE, primary or secondary sectors - it will just allow centres financial breathing room.

What will improve my workload as a primary teacher?

* release time: currently CRT (Classroom Release Time) for primary teachers is two days a term or, as written in the Primary Teachers Collective Agreement, ten hours per term.  This does not give me enough time to complete all the reading and maths assessments I need to do for my class.  Consequently I need to complete the remainder during time I should be teaching - therefore my class end up doing "busy work" to try and manage them while I try to assess kids.  This is not ideal for the child being assessed or my stress levels.  This also means I get no time to do planning.  Currently I spend three hours minimum after school each day to do my planning, collate assessment, respond to whānau, make resources.... and I am often back at the weekend for at least three hours.  And then there are the meetings...

* Retention and recruitment: where are the incentives for young people to stay in our profession?  Where are the incentives to join our profession?  Why would a young person choose a job that pays possibly $50,000 but requires you to work 60 hour weeks and subsidise the education system out of their own pocket when they could work at 40 hour week elsewhere and not being using their own money to get the job done?  Where's the incentive for teachers who left our profession or cut back from fulltime to 0.8 so they could have family life to be full time teachers or relief teachers?

* A SENCO in every school: our most vulnerable kids are missing out.  Recently half of one of my CRT days was spent on working on an RTLB referral for one child.  That's 1/4 of my CRT time for the term on ONE CHILD.  Is that efficient use of my time?  It's still incomplete.  I haven't had time to go back to it.  Meanwhile a child goes without help.  A fulltime SENCO would have it sorted well and truly by now because that would be their focus.

Teachers are burning out.

I've already left the profession once due to National Standards.  I came back because of the promise of a Labour led government.  If nothing changes in regards to workload, I will be yet another teacher forced to leave the profession again in order to preserve my own health and wellbeing.

Many people will say we need to go a bit easier or this will be a one term government, that the cupboard is bare and they need time.  We don't have time.  Teaching is at a crisis point of a lack of teachers and the others burning out.  Children have missed out for too long already due to austerity in education.  I worked bloody hard in 2017 to get a change of government, and I will work bloody hard to ensure they are still the government beyond 2020... but our teachers and our children can no longer wait.  

This government needs to deliver to teachers and children to ensure Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's goal to make New Zealand the best place in the world for a child to grow up in.

Thank you Chris Hipkins!! Goodbye National Standards. But....

Minister of Education, Chris Hipkins.
Sourced from stuff.co.nz

Labour campaigned on it.

New Zealand First campaigned on it.

The Green Party campaigned on it.

Last Monday, the Minister of Education, Chris Hipkins, finally announced it.

From 2018, Primary schools will no longer have to report on National Standards to parents or the Ministry of Education from the new year.  Education Minister Chris Hipkins said reporting would shift from the standards to reporting on children's progress. Reports would be written in "plain English", he said.  Read more here:  Government confirms primary schools to scrap National Standards (NZ Herald 11/12/17).

He also said parents and teachers had lost confidence in the "narrow policy" that he called "nothing more than a compliance exercise" and a "major distraction to schools".  (Government scraps National Standards, Newshub, 12/12/17)

I'm stoked that National Standards will not be compulsory, Chris Hipkins.  Thank you very much.

I've been campaigning against them since the legislation was enacted under urgency in December 2008.  I've joined Facebook groups, commented on numerous forums, written blogs opposing National Standards, attended protests, lobbied politicians, informed colleagues, friends, family, parents of students and the general public of the futile and stigmatising nature of National Standards.  I became a co-admin of Save Our Schools New Zealand and upped my involvement in NZEI.

Personally, over the years, while I have met the requirements of my job description as a teacher in regards to National Standards, I've mostly ignored them.  Here's how:

• the original National Standards document I received is still unopened in the plastic it arrived in.
• that document is buried in my storage locker with 99% of what I own - that's how little I value it.
• I actively ignored National Standards as a teacher and minimalised my involvement in doing anything involving them.
• I minimalised my discussion of the National Standards with students and talked to them about where they sat according to age norms and the curriculum and the progress they were making from a certain point to that point. 
• I taught with good practice to encourage the love of learning, not the need to need an 'aspirational' standard that did not meet with how we know children learn.
• I avoided putting anything on display or in the student's books that referred to the Standards.

Then I decided I needed to do more:

• I joined the Labour party and began having the conversations with various politicians from not only Labour, but the Greens and NZ First, to push the need to see National Standards gone.
• I assisted with campaigning in the 2014 election.
• at the end of 2015 I decided I really could not stomach National Standards anymore.  After a whole term of testing instead of teaching and writing labourious reports to the Standards and crying over the 'Well Below' children and consuming far too much chocolate and bourbon, I called it quits.  I decided not to teach again under a National government.
• I began my Masters of Education focusing on Global Education Policy.  Just the dissertation to go.
• I protested Hekia Parata, the former Minister of Education, at the largest education conference in New Zealand, ULearn.  Out of hundreds of messages and personal conversations and likes, only two people called me disrespectful and disagreed with my protest.  Over a year later, I'm still getting people thanking me for taking my lone protest to the middle of ULearn during the Minister's speech, right in her line of sight.
• 2017 was all about my goal to #ChangeTheGovt - this involved becoming even more involved in the Labour party and managing the Taranaki-King Country Labour campaign and assisting in the campaign thoughout the Waikato as well as supporting the campaigns in the Rangitikei, New Plymouth and Te Tai Hauauru electorates.

So imagine my excitement that night that Winston Peters announced that New Zealand First would be going into coalition with Labour and that the Greens also had a supply and agreement document with Labour.  All three parties would not let National Standards continue.  No more National Standards!

So once again, Chris Hipkins, thank you very much for saying that National Standards will not be a requirement in 2018.

However, what I'm not pleased about is that you will still allow schools to "choose" to use them as a tool.  

Schools who still want to use National Standards to report a child’s progress to parents can continue to do so – despite the Government saying they’d scrap them.  Education Minister Chris Hipkins has confirmed National Standards would no longer exist, but any school that wanted to use them as a tool to report progress wouldn’t be forced to stop doing so.  “We’re going to require schools to report child progress against the curriculum.  What tools they use to do that is up to them.”  From National Standards will no long exist but schools can still use them - Chris Hipkins (Stuff, 14/11/17)

That just makes a mockery of your announcement.  When my principal heard this he was dismayed.  He thinks you have stumbled at the final hurdle and given BOTs the opportunity to continue this folly, overriding the teaching staff and principals.  

This is a man who was hanging out for a change of government prior to the election because he knows National Standards has not done his students or staff any favours over the years.

I'm also rather concerned by this line:  "We will take the next few months to work with the sector, students, parents, whanau and iwi to develop a new approach for understanding progress across the curricula that will meet their needs, and contribute to the education system supporting the success of all students."  (NZ Herald, 11/12/17 - as linked above).

During the election campaign, Mr Hipkins repeatedly said that there would be no replacement because we have a world leading curriculum which should inspire learning and be the baseline for assessment.  I am therefore concerned about the need to 'replace' National Standards.  I believe that Mr Hipkins is very sincere when he says he will work with the sector and relevant interest groups.  However, I believe he has forgotten why Finland had a successful education system and how it got it: by copying the world leading child centred education system New Zealand had prior to the formation of Tomorrow's Schools.

I've made the decision to step back into full time teaching in 2018.  I did this on the basis of having a Labour led coalition that was disposing of National Standards and returning our New Zealand Curriculum to the front and centre of our education landscape.

I will be watching this very carefully.   I will be advocating for my students, colleagues and the system.  I am not going to accept any neoliberal programme over the top of our world leading curriculum.  

Thank you Rod Emmerson for saying it how it really is!!

So Mr Hipkins, let's get that National Standards legislation repealed once and for all.  Let's ensure the New Zealand Curriculum is front and centre.  And let's ditch National Standards into the history books (aka rubbish bin).  Completely.  Nothing less will be acceptable.

Dear Hekia Parata, diddums about the chalk in your car park, but $359 million could be spent so much better.

These two pictures came through my Facebook timeline over the last ten hours.  They were posted by Hekia Parata, the Minister of Education, herself, condemning primary teachers and principals for defacing public property with.... CHALK!!!

Gee those teachers were bad arsed!! 

But if you went to her page and checked out the comments you would be shocked.  Apparently teachers should be arrested for doing such a thing!

Naturally I couldn't not post responses to some of the ignorant posts made in regards to the actions and the intent of the teachers who protested up and down the country yesterday morning.  Not only was Hekia's office targeted, but many of her National party MP colleagues as well as opposition MPs such as Chris Hipkins, Phil Goff, Phil Twyford and Tracy Martin.  Some choose to go out to meet and greet the teachers.  Hekia did not.  Here is a smattering of photos I have gleaned off the Stand Up For Kids - Protect our Schools Facebook page where there are so many more - you people are magic:



Trevor Mallard's Hutt South office.



With Tracy Martin of New Zealand First - some did a 1.5 hour round trip to meet with Tracy.



Phil Twyford of Te Atatu.



Mark Mitchell's office in Rodney.



Iain Lees-Galloway's office in Palmerston North



John Key's electorate office.



Nick Smith's office in Nelson.



Phil Goff in Mt Roskill listening to NZEI.



Maggie Barry's North Shore office.



Hone Harawira was also delivered a message for Internet Mana to consider.



Chris Hipkin's electorate office.

Anyway, I was so incensed by Hekia being offended by a little chalk that I wrote this wee posting on one of her photos.  I wonder if she will read it.

Dear Hekia Parata,

If you really want to make a difference in the lives of our children, in their learning outcomes, then I urge you to listen and work with our primary sector to make meaningful progress.

You want me to be a more effective teacher? Then give me the support (teacher aides and specialists) to support the children with special needs in my class - and for more than an hour a day, because anyone one of those three kids can spin out for no apparent reason at any point in time.

The biggest things that stop me from being the best teacher I can be are managing the erratic behaviour of the above kids, paperwork that doesn't benefit my kids and lack of support for kids who should be getting special ed funding.

That is why I support the assertion by NZEI that the $359 million for IES would be better off spent directly on the students themselves.

Currently we have a group of students alienated from our education system due to the fact that their behaviour and/or learning styles are not being catered for at secondary level and they end up being excluded.

I heard a mother speak about her son in Hamilton at your PAI meeting and your response was appalling.

Schools work blimmin' hard to keep these kids in, but they are not financially resourced to put into place personnel to support these kids without MOE funding. GSE is so understaffed now that a school is lucky if they see anyone or get a case worker appointed. The system does not work for these kids no matter how great the quality of the teachers involved are or the decisions the BOT makes. And the reason many of these kids get excluded is because they become a safety risk for the other kids and teachers because they have not been catered for due to the previously mentioned reasons.

I have a friend who has been in the same situation with her son. He lasted 8 weeks in year 9 at College this year. I know how hard the DP and HOD of learning support there worked to keep that boy in school. They were lucky to get support for him, but it was not enough - the wrap around service didn't go all the way round. That boy is intelligent but his conduct issues do not suit main stream schooling. In his rural town what are his schooling options now he is 14 and been out of school for two terms? What does his future hold: a lifetime of being a productive member of society or one of being a drain on society? What would cost less in the long run: giving this boy a true wrap around service or the cost of possibly a life involving benefits and jail?

I'm sick of seeing kids who clearly need help that I'm not skilled in, such as speech language therapy, turned down for help because they don't meet a threshold or there's no funding or a lack of staff to take them on. By denying those kids help you condemn them to a life of struggle in their education journey and limit their options for further study and work when they leave school. You also end up taking away from the rest of the class because I spend more time working with that child who did not get the speech language therapy they needed and now have ongoing learning issues.

Spend the money on the kids who need it and then they have a more effective learning journey and become productive members of society. Don't, and you extend all of societies problems in crime, violence, child abuse, substance abuse, homelessness, reliance on benefits, poor health.....

Meeting the candidates for election 2014

It's election year.  There are election hoardings competing for space on every fence and scrap of green grass facing a busy thoroughfare.  There are politicians up and down the country door knocking, pressing the flesh and kissing babies.  And the television debates have started.

Different groups are also holding meet the candidate breakfasts, lunches and evening meetings.

On Monday 4 August, Matamata NZEI Branch held a meet the candidates night at the Matamata Club.  In attendance were the following candidates and representatives:

• Susan Cullen - Maori Party candidate for Hauraki-Waikato electorate
• Tracy Martin - New Zealand First Deputy Leader and Education Spokesperson and current List MP
• Dr Ron Smith - ACT candidate for Hamilton East
• Lindsay Tisch - National candidate for Waikato and current MP for Waikato
• Catherine Delahunty - Green Party Education Spokesperson and candidate for Coromandel electorate and current List MP
• Christine Greer - Labour Party candidate for Waikato electorate

All the speakers were wonderful participants, and you can read the Storify below to see how the night went.

On Tuesday 19 August, the Waikato NZEI Branch held a meet the candidates night at the Methodist Hall in Hamilton.  In attendance were the following candidates and representatives:

• David Bennett - National candidate for Hamilton East and current MP
• Nanaia Mahuta - Labour candidate for Hauraki-Waikato and current MP
• Sue Moroney - Labour candidate for Hamilton West and current List MP
• Cliff Allen - Labour candidate for Hamilton East
• Mark Servian - Green Party candidate for Hamilton East
• Katrina Day - Conservatives candidate for Hamilton East
• Ray Calver - Internet Mana candidate for Hamilton East
• Carolyn McKenzie - Democrats for Social Credit candidate for Hamilton East

Sadly Tim McIndoe was not present and no representatives attended from New Zealand First, ACT or the Mäori Party.

Below is a Storify of the tweets I sent out and received that night and after reflection the next morning.  There is also some commentary I have put in to round out the night.

Meet the candidate nights are all very well to get a gage of the person who may well be representing you in parliament after the election, but it is also vital that you do the following:

• Read the policies of the parties different parties, including National (who has released stuff all policy so far) and ACT and the Conservatives (who have scary ideas about education!).
• Meet any and all of the candidates in your electorate
• Most NZEI branches are organising meet the candidates nights, so are many other groups.  So find one and go to it.
• Find out where/how you can meet your candidates. Follow them on fb and/or Twitter.  Read their blogs.
• Go to the party websites and read the policies.  Follow their blogs, fb pages and Twitter feeds.  Labour even has an Instagram account now.
• Don't rely on the media to tell you what each party stands for. All you'll get is John Key & co telling you that everyone else is wrong and the personality sideshow of Colin Craig & Dotcom.  So dig a little deeper.

I have published this blog much later than I intended.  This was due to a lot of events happening including a busy time at school and moving house.  Thanks for reading anyway, and I hope it was helpful.

Labour's Education Policy - An antidote to the GERM infection of the last six years.

The first weekend of July saw the Labour Party well and truly launch its 2014 election campaign.  They had a three day Congress in Wellington, and I attended the Sunday when David Cunliffe made his keynote speech and laid out the bones of some very important policy Labour wants to base its campaign on.  And education was at the core of it.

I was very far away from the middle, coughing my germs I had to the empty space on the edge of the auditorium, hence this terrible photograph I took.

As a teacher, any announcements on education are of great interest to me, particularly if they are going to get rid of what I think is detrimental in education (GERM policies, National Standards, Charter Schools, performance pay, IES roles, no teacher representation on EDUCANZ) and will promote and/or improve what teachers know to be valuable in education (teacher education pre-service and for those in practice, special education, class sizes, work load, New Zealand Curriculum, and so on).

I was not disappointed.

But please do not think that I am merely basing who I will vote for on education.  Education will be the first thing I think about though because I work in it, I'm passionate for learning and children, and it pays for the important things I do like eating and shopping and the internet - the priorities in life.

However, I do also consider other things like the following:

• the economy - will they balance the books and be responsible?
• employment - will their policies create jobs or put people out of jobs?  Will they make it fairer to the employee so they have job security?  Will the Living Wage happen so that we don't have the working poor living in poverty?
• housing - will I be able to buy a house before I truly get wrinkles?  Will rental houses be warm and dry and healthy?  Will all those families living in cars and garages get a state house?
• environment - will they improve the health of our waterways so I can swim in the Waikato and Waihou Rivers with confidence?  Will the kauri survive the kauri die back disease?  Will our native birds be protected?  Will 1080 be used in the bush?  Will the Maui dolphin be protected?  Will oil drilling and fracking be placed under much tougher regulations?
• Christchurch - will those poor people get a fair deal from their insurance companies?  Will the rebuild meet what a modern city should/could be?
• manufacturing - will there will be manufacturing in New Zealand?  Will people be encouraged to invest in improving our primary goods (e.g. milk, wood, wool, etc) before exporting rather than sending off the raw product?
• the regions - will the people of the regions be able to stay and have a good standard of living with a job close to home, or will they have to move to Auckland?
• health - will they make the waiting list process more transparent rather than the lie it currently is?  Will more people get their operations sooner so they can become productive members of society again?  Will more get put into addiction services?  Will nurses get paid better and get more nurses in wards to reduce their workload and improve patient care?  Will care in our rest homes be upgraded for the elderly?
• welfare - will we see children of beneficiaries taken care of?  Will solo parents get a fair shake of the stick when it comes to improving their education and work prospects?  Will WINZ go back to having caseworkers who know what's going on with each client so they don't waste time?
• TPPA - will they give away our rights and freedoms to run our lives and our country free from foreign companies dictating what should happen in New Zealand?

So as you can see, I have a few issues to consider.  They may not be the same as yours, or we may have some in common, but it is our responsibility as voters in a democracy to consider who we will vote for and why.

So on Sunday as I listened to David Cunliffe's speech (you can watch his speech here, along with other speeches from other Labour MPs), I did have cause to be happy about a number of things.  Consequently I tweeted and retweeted things, and then I put it all together with Storify (please excuse the places where my fingers and the smartphone disagreed on what letter I pushed).  So here is what I heard and saw:

You can now see why I was a happy teacher.  And now I want to go and look more in depth at the education policy.

Early Childhood Education and Families:

You may remember back in the end of January David Cunliffe did his own State of the Nation speech and he announced some key policy for families and pre-schoolers, the Best Start for Our Kids policy:

• All families earning under $150,000 per year will receive $60 per week for a baby’s first year of life. For parents who are eligible for paid parental leave, the payment will kick in once this comes to an end. Low and modest income families will also receive $60 per week between the child’s first and third birthdays.
• Free early childhood education for three, four and five year old children will be extended from 20 to 25 hours a week
• Paid parental leave will be extended from 14 to 26 weeks as set out in Sue Moroney’s Member’s Bill.
• Free antenatal classes for all parents who want them and extra visits from organisations like Plunket for those who need it most.

This caught people's attention and the paid parental leave bill promoted by Sue Moroney is a particularly popular policy.  This bill has received support across the House - except from National who want to veto it and put up their own half-baked 18 week scheme in Budget 2014.  Hopefully after 20 September, Sue's Bill will be passed and enacted.

Labour will also do the following for pre-schoolers:

• From July 2017 (the tenth anniversary of 20 Hours Free), Labour will extend the Free ECE policy to 25 hours for three and four year old children. The policy will also apply to those five year olds still in early childhood education services. (Extending Free ECE to 25 Hours)
• Labour will restore over time National’s funding for highly qualified ECE centres. We will work with the sector to reinstate the policy of 100 percent qualified staff in all teacher-led services.  The first phase of restoring funding for 100 percent qualified ECEC centres will be provided in Labour’s first Budget in 2015 and come into effect from January 2016.
• We will build more ECE centres in high-need areas so there are enough places for kids who need them.

And Labour has committed to the following by establishing a Ministry for Children:

• We will do away with the Families Commission and focus funding on an independent Children’s Commissioner.
• We will also implement a plan to measure and set targets to reduce child poverty that would be backed up by legislation, and report on progress every budget.

These are important steps in the early years.  For every $1 spent on children in the first five years of their lives, we save $11 later on for each child.  Getting in early saves money and creates a healthier individual in all ways as a citizen, and a healthier community.  I think that it is important that ECE services are teacher led and employ fully trained and registered teachers who understand how young children develop and to ensure their learning needs are meet alongside the growth of their social skills and physical development.

Schools - Years 0-13:

Now this was the part that was especially important to me, being a teacher of primary aged students.

Labour will back quality education and invest in 21st Century Schools by:

• Hire 2,000 more teachers
• Reduce the average size of secondary school classes from 26+ down to 23.
• Reduce the size of senior primary school classes (Years 4-8) from 29+ down to 26.
• Invest $104 million in new classrooms.
• Support professional development for our teachers.
• Put in place a programme that provides an affordable option, available to all schools, for Year 5-13 students to have access to a portable digital device, in the classroom and at home.
• Commit $25 million to provide teachers with professional development during the 2016 and 2017 school years to assist them to make the most effective use of digital devices in the classroom.
• Partner with schools, local government and communities to put in place infrastructure that will allow students, particularly those from low-decile schools, who do not currently have internet connections to use their portable devices to access the internet at home.
• Develop a comprehensive plan for rebuilding out-dated and worn-out school buildings, so that every school has access to modern learning environments by 2030.

So far so good.  Every teacher will tell you that a few less kids in their class means more time for the remaining students, a relief from some paperwork those few more kids create.  It can mean the difference between teaching and crowd control.  And when you consider how big a 12 year old is, a few less bodies in the room creates space.

Teachers have been left in the wilderness since the Advisory Services were dismantled in 2009.  Professional Development for many teachers became a distant memory as the new arrangement has often been too expensive, so only selected people get to attend PD courses.  Also, it means that if you have a weakness in science, there were no advisors to come and advise you anymore.  Consequently teachers and principals are welcoming the long waited proposed return of the Advisory Service so schools can again access quality advice and cost-effective PD.

A digital device for all Year 5-13 students is music to my ears, probably because it would make what I want to do as a teacher who loves teaching digitally more of a reality in more schools.  It is good that Labour are also planning on backing this with PD for teachers (because plenty will need it) and internet access in the home.  The internet access solution will be interesting to put into practise as I can see there may be many pitfalls to overcome and it won't happen overnight.

And just this weekend I was with a friend who teaches in a decile one school in Porirua.  She told me her classroom was straight out of the 70s.  So an upgrade of her and her student's working/learning conditions is desperately in need.

Labour will also:

• Fund schools $100 per student per year if they don’t demand donations from parents.
• Scrap National Standards and return schools’ focus back to teaching the full breadth of New Zealand’s internationally acclaimed curriculum.
• Require schools to report student progress to parents in all areas of their learning.
• Ensure every child develops the basic foundations for further learning by extending Reading Recovery so kids falling behind can catch-up.
• Re-direct resources spent forcing ‘National Standards’ on schools into teacher professional development programmes to assist students who are underachieving.
• We will repeal charter school legislation and no more charter schools will be created under Labour. 

Donations have always been a bone of contention, and I can see many schools will be winning with this piece of policy.  I can see how schools like Auckland Boys' Grammar and the like will not be keen on this policy, but parents will like it.  For many schools the funding created by the donations system is the difference between having sports gear for the kids at lunch time to play with or not having any sports gear at lunch time; the difference between having a digital camera in each syndicate or not having a digital camera at all; the difference between having a school production or not having a school production.  Different schools rely on that money for many things that the Ops Grant does not pay for.

 

You many have noticed that I have bolded and highlighted in red two very important policies: getting rid of National Standards and Charter Schools.  These represent the cornerstone of GERM philosophy, of creating a crisis in education and then privatising our quality public education system.  Prior to National enacting National Standards, New Zealand was ranked in the top five of the questionable PISA rankings.  Since National Standards were introduced we have slid down the ranks.  Infact each country which has introduced policies like National Standards (i.e. Common Core in the US, Naplan in Australia, Key Stage Testing in the UK) and consequently Charter Schools, have slid down the international rankings in more that just PISA. 

 

Labour will require teachers to focus on our world leading and much acclaimed New Zealand Curriculum, on all learning areas, and to report to parents on all the learning areas.  This is great for children, because it means we can celebrate those children who also excel in art, physical education, science, music, drama, dance.... not just reading, writing and maths.

 

And I am really pleased to see that Reading Recovery will get a boost and that the National Standards budget will be redirected to help those kids that don't receive ORS funding but need extra help.  Reading Recovery funding has been tightly squeezed each year, and definitely there was less money for the end of 2012.  The earlier we can get in and help students with their learning, the sooner they will be able to become independent and confident learners.  One way the Professional Development could help is teaching teachers how to recognise dyslexia and help children with dyslexia overcome the obstacles that dyslexia likes to create.

 

"Every week 40,000 kids turn up to school without breakfast or without lunch and are fed by charities. But there a more kids who need help. The last nationwide survey of children’s nutrition undertaken by the Ministry of Health found 83,000 children aged 5 to 14, sometimes or often went to school without breakfast.
"Labour will partner with community and voluntary organisations, incorporating the most cost-effective approaches currently operating, to provide free food in every decile 1-3 primary, intermediate school that needs and wants it."

There are schools that see kids turning up day after day without having had breakfast and a poor lunch if any.  I recently read of a teacher who brings bread, butter and spreads to school to feed the kids without lunch - until her principal told her to stop doing it (so she had to get sneakier at feeding these kids).  I have a friend who teaches at a decile 6 high school.  She has a toaster, bread, butter, spreads, jug, milk and milo ready for any kid who needs it in her class.  And it is well used, and she gets better work out of the kids who ate than the kids who came hungry and did not use the food and facilities she provided.

 

Tertiary Education:

 

"The National Party is removing the right of students, staff and other community groups to be represented on university councils. It follows the Government’s introduction of voluntary student association membership and is a further silencing of students.
"Labour is making a commitment to students that when we are elected to government we will ensure they are represented on university councils and have strong student associations.
"We believe having those who are involved in learning and teaching on the governing bodies of universities is a good thing and adds value to the decisions being made."

This is not a good move for universities as it takes their accountability to students, staff and the community away.

There will be more tertiary education policy announced in the lead up to the election.

 

Adult Education:

Labour has committed to reinstating adult education:

• Restore $13m per year for Adult and Community Education
• Another $9m per year on top of that from 2018
• $1m per year of extra funding for ACE English for speakers of other languages (ESOL)

"It’s a cornerstone of New Zealand communities and offers pathways for New Zealanders looking to retrain and reengage with education, and for new New Zealanders to gain the skills and community connections to grow and establish their new lives in New Zealand.  Labour recognises that a lot has changed since the National Government cut ACE funding, which is why the allocation of this funding will be made in close consultation with the adult education sector. We believe that to get the best results for all New Zealanders who want to access ACE we need to work alongside the sector."

I think that reinstating Adult Community Education is a win:win.  It was a conduit for people to get skills and further their education.  But not just for those people, I have taken my fair share of night classes: te reo Maori (excellent for increasing my te reo use in the classroom) and Spanish (I had two Uruguayan students whose English wasn't flash, and learning Spanish helped build my relationship with them and understand their frustrations).

These are the policies that have been released so far to do with education at the time of publishing this post (14/07/14).

I personally am pleased with the direction Labour is taking with education.  It is clear that it has consulted and actually listened to stakeholders and intends on being collaborative in the true sense once it takes over the government benches (fingers crossed) in late September.

I think Labour is meeting the standard when it comes to education policy.  I will endeavour to update when future education policy is released, and when Labour becomes the lead partner in government I will be reminding them of their policy promises and monitoring their follow through.

What I saw and heard: Sue Moroney and Chris Hipkins host a chat on education in Hamilton

Last night I went to a discussion held at Pukete School in Hamilton, hosted by local Labour list MP Sue Moroney (ECE and Social Development spokeswoman and party whip) and the Labour Education Spokesman Chris Hipkins.

Below is my Storify of my tweets and retweets, and below that was what I consider the highlights and important messages to be of the discussion.

Also at the meeting were most of the Labour candidates for the greater Waikato.

Back:  Hamilton East candidate Cliff Allen and Taupo candidate Jamie Strange.
Front: Waikato candidate (to be confirmed) Christine Greer, List MP and Hamilton West candidate Sue Moroney, and Coromandel candidate Korbinian Poschl. 

These were the big things that stood out for me tonight:

Education is an investment and not everything can be measured:

• Chris Hipkins and Labour believe that any money spent on education is an investment.
• School is not just about what can be measured for literacy and numeracy - it is also just as important for the interpersonal skills, the skills that are very difficult to measure, but are vital.
• Not everything can be measured.
• Visiting education professionals love the New Zealand Curriculum.
• But they can not understand why we are not teaching with the Curriculum, but rather letting National Standards take over.
• Chris said National Standards do not recognise that children develop and learn at different rates.
• National Standards are not a fair way to assess a school's performance.
• Chris accurately explained why National Standards are harder to achieve for students at low decile schools than those at higher decile schools - simply the kids at the lower decile school have more to learn than the kids at the higher decile school to meet the standard, in general.
• Chris is unimpressed with using National Standards to allocate funding to schools; he thinks the schools that will need the money most will end up with the least.
• Chris believes that despite Hekia Parata's back track on using National Standards data to allocate funding, that there are Treasury documents advocating doing this, and plans are well advanced.
• Chris says we don't need National Standards to tell us which kids have problems.
• Not one extra dollar has been put towards the kids that need the most help.
• National Standards tries to do 4 or 5 things but achieves nothing.
• We need parents talking directly to teachers to find out how their children are doing.
• National Standards will be gone-burgers under a Labour-led government.

Teacher training, qualifications and workforce planning:

• Chris believes we should set high expectations and standards for potential trainee teachers to get into teacher training.
• He believes that teacher training should have a post graduate qualification required to be teacher.
• Chris finds it incredible that the government talks about being more rigorous in expectations for teachers and then does the opposite for Charter Schools by allowing them to have unqualified, untrained, unregistered teachers.
• Chris believes that there should be better workforce planning for teaching due to the number of newly qualified teachers unable to secure positions.
• We have too many PE teachers being trained, but not enough maths teachers.
• 50% of our current teaching workforce is over the age of 50.  We have to ensure we train the right number of teachers to have the overlap of experience in schools as teachers retire and new teachers enter into the teaching workforce.

What Labour commits to funding:

• Labour will fully fund Reading Recovery for all schools.
• Labour will fund special needs education.
• Labour will fund quality teacher professional learning development (PLD) to ensure a confident, quality teaching force.

Novopay:

• Novopay is a disaster.
• Steven Joyce is living in a parallel reality with his statistics, because every school which Chris Hipkins has visited has at least one Novopay issue that is not resolved. 
• Labour will get a new payroll system that actually works.

Charter Schools and Public Private Partnerships:

• Labour will repeal the Charter Schools legislation.
• Existing schools will be offered the opportunity to be independent private schools, or to become intergrated schools when the legislation is changed.
• Labour is not happy about schools being built amongst Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) being used to build/rebuild schools in Christchurch and elsewhere.  It has a lot of potential sticking points for schools.

Teachers' Council and changes:

• Chris believes that teachers should have democratic representation on the new body replacing the Teachers' Council.
• Chris believes that the new teachers' council should be setting the standard for enters teacher training.

Early Childhood Education:

• Chris believes that the challenges in ECE are similar to those in the primary and secondary sectors.
• He wants to get the funding in ECE back up to achieve the goals of 100% fully trained, qualified, registered ECE teaching force and more engagement in early childhood education in low income areas by creating more community based centres, due to the fact that commercial ECE centres are not opened in lower socio economic areas because they are not seen as profitable.

Independent/Private Schools:

• Chris said Labour will not be increasing funding to private/independent schools.
• The Aspire Scholarships to private schools are widely known as a rort as the private schools are cherry picking from the public schools.

Feed the Kids:

• Labour considers Feeding the Kids to be very much on the agenda.
• As Hone Harawira's bill was drawn first, they have to wait for that bill to be advanced first before their own bill can be addressed.
• Chris will reintroduce the healthy food guidelines to schools that National dumped.  He believes initiatives such as school gardens that teach students skills for their own families should be supported with government policy and funding.

Support Staff:

• Labour is investigating solutions to the variety of issues for Support Staff funding and career pathways.
• First a funding system has to be sorted.  David Cunnilife has already committed to centrally funded Support Staff funding at the Living Wage and Inequity protest march on Saturday in Auckland.

Community Hubs:

• Chris is very supportive of schools becoming a community hub, but sited the MOE as the biggest barrier to this, as the footprint of school buildings is controlled by the MOE, and the extra space that could be used to create a community hub is often removed by the MOE as it is deemed in excess of what the school needs to deliver to the students they have.
• He wanted to align the government agencies better to help the schools have an easier pathway to help the students and families they are already doing a great job of helping.
• Sue talked about how Melville High School in Hamilton (my old high school) is having perfectly good buildings demolished by the MOE because they are above their footprint, and how these buildings would be great to use as a community hub.  Chris talked about a school in his electorate that to keep a building had to remove the roof and reclad the building inside just to keep it as an 'outdoor facility', costing way more than any other options, just so the school stayed within the MOE deemed footprint.
• Chris does support the Greens' policy of nurses in schools.

Special Needs Education:

• Labour believes in inclusive education for special needs students.
• He supports the rights of parents to choose the education setting for their special needs child.
• Chris likes the idea of special units attached to schools so special needs students can get a mainstream education, but can also access intensive special needs education expertise more readily - the best of both worlds.
• Chris is very concerned that the needs of children with moderate learning needs are not being met with the assistance they need due to funding.

School governance and BOTs and reorganisations and funding:

• Chris said that Labour's stance on governance of schools is still be developed.
• He said that the Tomorrow's Schools model is being unsystematically eroded and chipped at with no clear direction or philosophy.
• He did agree that a review is likely and needs to allow for strong and robust community consultation and good research.
• Chris does agree with Hekia Parata that the decile funding system is a blunt tool to determine funding to schools.
• We have to get rid of the decile tarnish on schools but ensure that funding is targeted to schools that need it.
• In regards to school reorganisations, if anyone has got any bright ideas on how to do school reorganisations with less pain to communities, please talk to Chris.  This is always messy.

The task ahead:

• Sue then talked about how we have a project ahead of us this year to address in inequality and inequity and the best way to do this is to change the government.

I found the meeting to be a great way to clarify the vision Labour has for education in New Zealand under a Labour led government.

The one thing I think that was unclear and needs further discussion is the future of pre-service education for teachers and how that will look, and what the ultimate minimum qualification for new teachers will be.  The current National government policy is piecemeal and all over the place, and I would like to see Labour set a clear course on what they would expect.

Chris Hipkins and Sue Moroney met my standard for what education policy should be in New Zealand.

If you know of any other political parties coming to Hamilton to discuss their education policies please let me know.  In fairness, and for my own education, I would like to engage and feedback with as many parties as possible on their education visions.