I'm calling #Bullshit on Minister Chris Hipkin's claim that teachers will be $10,000 better off!

I'm going to start out by saying I really like Chris Hipkins.  He knows education and he's grown up at the knee of a great education academic.  He's passionate about our education system and I know he wants what is best.  I know he advocates for us.  But I know he is one of many in a Cabinet competing for money.

I also know that my colleagues are over worked, many are struggling financially, many feel their students are getting the raw end of the stick and many are wanting to bail.  And if I do not see any real change by the end of 2020, I may bail too.  I can't sustain my workload forever.  Already my health has suffered in the last year.

I also know this government has a healthy surplus.  Finance Minister Grant Robertson talks about saving the money for a rainy day.  Well Grant, the rainy day for teachers is bloody well here.

Minister Chris Hipkins claims there is no more money for teacher Collective Agreement negotiations.  His MOE negotiation team keep recutting the same pie over and over again, but it will not solve the problems the teacher population currently face.

Last year our NZEI negotiators went into the Collective Agreement negotiations for primary teachers with four issues on top for teachers across New Zealand:

• a pay jolt - we asked for a 16% pay rise over a two year contract
• a plan for recruitment and retention - the numbers entering teacher training have dropped dramatically in recent years and the number of experienced teachers leaving the profession have created a teacher supply crisis as schools struggle to staff themselves and put teachers in front of classrooms full-time, let alone when a staff member is sick.
• a reduction of workload - while National Standards have gone, the assessment are still there.  ERO and the MOE still demands a lot of assessment information.  There are a few principals who need some direction about teacher inquiry too.  But a lot of stuff has been piled onto teachers via the Teacher's Council which became the Education Council and is now known as the Teaching Council and it has blown completely out of control as planning to justify the reading of a story is expected by some principals under the guise of needing it to sign off teacher appraisals and registration requirements.  Then there are the excessive meetings and the paper work for getting extra assistance for students.
• help for students with special learning needs, so we asked for a SENCO in every school - these students often have learning needs over and above what the average classroom teacher can manage without support.  But where does this support come from currently?  How much education are these children missing out on because there is a lack of funding and expertise to access what these children should be getting?

These issues were the claim presented to the MOE.  It was a bit different than previously.  For the last three negotiations figures and statements were presented.  We had to fight to keep existing conditions  and earned increases that equaled or were just below the rate of inflation.  We needed to change how we negotiated.  But the MOE could not get their head around it.

The negotiators for NZEI told the stories of thousands of teachers and why these were the issues they wanted addressed.  I was told by a negotiator that they were rather disinterested in the stories and even disputed the truth of the stories.

These issues were the issues we as a membership voted as our claim in March 2018.  These issues have not changed.  So to hear Minister Hipkins claim a number of times that the claim has changed and that teachers don't agree on the claim is rather annoying.

Like schools across the country have different issues that are on top for them, teachers across NZ also have issues on top for them.  I put this to Minister Hipkins in a tweet thread earlier this week.

Our negotiators put a range of options on the table to address the issues above.  The NZEI team expected that the MOE team would pick out some options they were willing to negotiate on.  But they did not.  They ignored all the suggestions put forward by the MOE team.  Our NZEI team was told teachers could not have their cake and eat it too.

Now they have bunched those options together and claimed that we want all of the options and we won't budge and it will cost $4 billion over four years to implement all of these options.  Remember, we put these as a range of options to be negotiated on as to which could be implemented.  We did not put these on the table as a combined must do package.

And a couple of days later I felt it important to emphasise this again.

Teachers currently feel that Minister Hipkins is no better than Hekia Parata as they do not feel he is listening to them.  I'm sure Chris is listening and feeling like he is caught between a rock and a hard place - I hear the rock is Winston Peters and the hard place is Grant Robertson.

In the mean time I hear the stories of teachers struggling and those who have left the profession:

This is just a snapshot of what I am currently hearing and what I have been hearing for the last four or five years, in person and via social media.

So why have we been refusing the MOE offer?

• the pay offer does not stack up.
• while the government last week announced a $94 million package to attract people into initial teacher education, there is NOTHING offered to retain current teachers.
• there is an offer for an extra 2.5 hours of classroom release time per term - that's 150 minutes divided by 10 weeks of term equally 15 minutes a week.  I guess it gives me time to go to the toilet once a week and maybe make a coffee.
• while they government in November 2018 announced an ambitious plan for 600 inclusive education co-ordinators.... there's still a lot of questions and the feeling this is not enough and will not impact on classroom teachers very much.

In the meantime the Minister of Education has been talking up the MOE offer and telling all and sundry there is no more money.  Mr Hipkins has made much of the idea that teachers will be increasing their wage on average by $10,000 if we accept the MOE offer.  This is disingenuous, or just not accurate.  And so this tweet stream below illustrates that.

For a better look at that extra step, here is the picture Chris Crumble kindly supplied me.

I'm not holding my breath on this new step however.  I feel this may disappear in the final wash.

The ethos of this post is just to say, don't believe everything that you are hearing come from the Minister.  He is a good Minister.  But his hands are tied by Cabinet and he's been given his lines.  As a profession, if we want to uplift the status of our profession, we need to target the big players in Cabinet alongside Mr Hipkins. 

We need to focus on the Deputy Prime Minister, Winston Peters.  Race Courses have done well under Mr Peters, but he needs to listen to Tracey Martin more - and send Tracey letters too, after all, she is the Associate Minister of Education.  Grant Robertson's mum is a teacher, so Grant should know better - let's keep the pressure on him.  Dr David Clark is not only the Minister of Health, he is also an Associate Finance Minister - so let's apply pressure there too.  Phil Twyford may be Minister of Housing and Transport, but he has a lot of sway in that Cabinet - hit him with the letters too.

Finally, the 29th of May with our mega strike with the secondary teachers offers us new leverage.  Let's not let the momentum fail after that and let's keep the pressure on this government because we teachers are worth more.

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.

Where are those wrap around services, Hekia?

I have a very sad story playing out for a friend with her son.  It's been ongoing, but the last three years have been a train wreck. 

 

The education system has washed it's hands of him as the MOE won't cater for him.  He was excluded from his local high school before the end of his first term of Year 9 despite the best efforts of senior staff to support him and get funding. 

 

He's too old for health camp, and no one would put him in a residential school like Halswell, probably due to funding and a lack of placements available since Hekia has cut that funding dramatically.  He is too old for that option now. 

 

Youth mental health services are ineffective.  CYFs won't help, despite the impact of his actions on his younger siblings.  The police and fire service have tried their best, are sympathetic to this lad's mum and would like to do more, but are constrained by law as he is 15. 

 

If the mum tried to get him to go to a drug and alcohol treatment programme, despite the fact he is a minor, he can refuse.  Alternative education has provided him with delinquent associates who are teaching him how to break the law and encouraging to consume alcohol and drugs.   

 

This kid has a label: oppositional conduct disorder.  CDC say that he'll never fit into a traditional education setting. 

 

His mum is convinced she will be putting him in a box or he'll be in jail by the end of the year after he has committed several crimes and been given a 24 hour curfew.  She has resorted to getting a Section 333 on her son - that's a full psychological assessment.

 

Two years ago I sat in a meeting in the St Peter's Cathedral Hall in Hamilton listening to another desperate mother tell Education Minister Hekia Parata about her battle to keep her intelligent child in the education system despite him not fitting into the mould of the education landscape.  He was not attending school as a result and was doing Correspondence School instead.  This mother explained the processes of the schools with her son, of how the Ministry of Education said that he did not fit their definitions for assistance.

 

And Hekia Parata's response to that mother, in front of a room full of principals, BOT members, teachers, politicians, unionists and officials was: the BOT of your son's school has the power to sort this out.

 

There was a collective groan.

 

Since then, Ms Parata has trumpeted the role of the wrap around services for students who struggle in the mainstream, particularly as she has knobbled the ability of Salisbury School to enrol the girls who have traditionally needed the help, support and education they provide.

 

So here's my question:  Where is the wrap around services for my friend's child and his family, Hekia Parata?

Special Education - Let's Change the Name and Solve Everything!!

Somewhere, in the dark depths of the Beehive:
 
"If we change the name of the outfit, Minister, it will look like we've fixed everything thing!" grovelled an MOE official.

"Hmmmmm...." mused the Minister. "I've heard of this strategy before... but where...?"

"Well, Minister, it's a strategy Mrs Tolley is using with her portfolio."
 
On Friday the Special Education Update (aka Review) was released... with a new fangled name, Learning Support Update.  You can view the report here and also the Cabinet Paper here.
 
By releasing it on a Friday, the Ministry of Education was trying to sneak it in under the radar.  But as many people have been awaiting it and also contributed through submissions and speaking at Select Committee meeting, with widespread consensus that many children are missing out and the funding is inadequate, this was never going to slip into obscurity.  Over the weekend, people have become more aware of this report, especially in light of the debate over another large pot of money, covering the Operations Grants of schools, with the looming threat of a form of Bulk Funding called Global Funding.

While Hekia Parata talks up the Update, Chris Hipkins from Labour and Catherine Delahunty from the Greens raised concerns they saw in the final report about the lack of financial resourcing and shifting money from other students with needs.  (See 'Special needs'' term singles out students and will be scrapped, NZ Herald, 22/8/16).
 
Essentially, this is what the Learning Support Update boils down to:

• there is no more money.
• there are more kids who need assistance.
• a younger age band of children will be targeted to tackle issues earlier.
• the money to do this will come from the older age band of children.

Can you see any educator or parent of a child who needs extra support satisfied with this?
 
While I agree that it is sensible and vital to target children as early as possible, it should not be to the detriment of the older children who are struggling to learn and achieve.  To do so it to fail these children yet again.  They already missed out due to a lack of an appropriate professional resources in their early years, such as a speech language therapist or a consultation at the Child Development Centre, and now they are being punished for being too old to fix by this change! 
 
We should be adequately resourcing all children to access appropriate support rather than rationing it and playing God over who should receive the help they need!!
 
Within the Cabinet Paper, the Minister discusses:

• how there has been an increase in the school age population,
• an increase in students requiring learning support,
• approximately 10% of the school population requires learning support,  
• that 95% of those receiving learning support are in mainstream schools,
• and that there will be no extra funding until she has determined if the current funding is adequate or not and it is being used efficiently.

She also discusses redesigning how learning support is delivered and accessed.  Below is a Service Delivery Model for an Individual from page 13 of the Cabinet Paper:
 

And this is the Service Delivery Model through using Communities of Learning, also from page 13 of the Cabinet Paper:
 

Now the fact that there is a Service Delivery Model through the Communities of Learning (CoLs) concerns me.  Is the Minister considering pooling money for learning support with CoLs with a contestable pool for each school to compete for access to from their CoL?  Will individual schools, principals and teachers be over ruled or dictated to as to how to support the learners in their school?

While the above models talks about it as having a role of analysing and reviewing learning support provision and providing professional learning for classroom teachers, I am wary of putting learning support under the CoLs umbrella.
 
This phrase also concerns me:  "Improving investment decisions using social investment analysis".  It concerns me because it is taking indicators like the mother's lack of education, a parent being in prison, or being a long term beneficiary and labelling a child as at risk without actually looking at the child themselves.  The Minister often chastises teachers as having deficit thinking towards certain students - well Minister, this is the pot calling the kettle black, because using these indicators is deficit thinking too.

Another aspect that concerns me about this phrase the way it looks at children as their learning potential as an investment, that it all boils down to money, almost like widgets off the production line.  I baulk at this view.  While I agree we need to be prudent with money and we need to ensure it is used efficiently because there is not an unlimited budget, as a teacher it is off putting to think of children as an investment, that their achievement outcomes are all that matters.  We are not just there to ensure they can read, write and do maths.  We are there to ensure these children become effective communicators, are co-operative, can think critically and problem solve, and are kind people who can contribute and function in our society.

I am also concerned about where the support for students who do slip through the earlier interventions will come from.  Some children do not show their learning needs until after their first year at school.  By the time it is realised there is a deficit in their learning they may have moved out of the age band targeted for early intervention and therefore miss out.

I have grave concerns that money will be taken from the current Special Education Budget for use by the Ministry of Social Development to be used for vulnerable children.  With another Ministry using MOE money that reduces the slice of the pie for schools and MOE specialists.

As Chris Hipkins said about the money in the Operations Grant pool on Q&A on TV1 on Sunday, when more people are eating the pie there is less for all of them and more of them will go away hungry.

While I can see that the Minister has the intention of trying to improve how learning support is delivered to children, I can see many fish hooks and concerns.  Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not an answer.  Not adequately resourcing it so all students can be effectively helped to achieve is a concern.  The role of CoLs and MSD having access to MOE funds is a concern.  Changing the name from Special Education to Learning Support is a minor consideration and just creates confusion.
  
Quite frankly, I do not think the Minister has met the standard with this Learning Support Update.

Hekia Parata and the Public Achievement Information Tour

One Friday afternoon, the 15th of August to be exact, after school, I made my way, at the speed limit only, to Hamilton, an hour's drive from my school.  My destination was the Public Achievement Information meeting by held by Hekia Parata at the St Peter's Cathedral Hall.

 

I only knew about this meeting due to a member of the NZEI National Executive telling a meeting I attended about it the previous Saturday.  He then emailed me the details and my principal agreed that I could attend.

 

I did arrive half an hour late.  I had to complete the IES (Investing in Education Success) voting process for my school as I am the NZEI worksite representative.  A valid reason to be late in my opinion.  I was assured by my NZEI National Executive friend and another friend who is a Board of Trustees chair that I hadn't missed anything other than a lesson on reading the PAI statistics and graphs.

 

PAI - that means Public Achievement Information - and I only found that out by googling "PAI meeting Hekia Parata" after the meeting because no one else knew what those letters stood for.

 

So what is this Public Achievement Information?

 

It is the National Standards data displayed for public consumption broken down by city and district council.

 

Here is a link to the MOE Public Achievement Information starter page.  And here is the blurb for the reason for the meeting:

The purpose of these public meetings is to present the 2013 New Zealand public achievement information. The wider context is not just the results but the "so what", the challenges we face and some insight into the Ministry’s response to those challenges.
This set of results represent the New Zealand wide education system view, covering early childhood education participation and NCEA level two achievement (two of the Ministry’s Better Public Service targets), along with a wider set of indicators including National Standards, Ngā Whanaketanga Rumaki Māori and school leavers.
We can put these in to a local context and enable you to use this data in your communities and schools. It is about supporting you in having the right discussions and making the right decisions in order to raise student achievement.
The Minister of Education, Hon Hekia Parata will speak at the meetings. The Minister will be accompanied by Ministry Deputy Secretaries Lisa Rodgers and Katrina Casey.

 

So I had arrived for question time.



The meeting in the St Peter's Hall in Hamilton.  This photo comes from www.stuff.co.nz

The woman asking the question when I sat down was first giving a comprehensive background to it.

Her intelligent son, who wants to be a doctor, has a conduct disorder.  It was effectively managed and controlled at primary school.  The wheels got wobbly at Intermediate.  The wheels fell off at High School where the child ended up being excluded during his Year 10 year.  By the time of this meeting, he had been out of school for seven months and had only just been accepted for Correspondence School.  In the meantime, this boy's personal worth had taken a dive and he had attempted to take his own life.   

So the question asked was what is Hekia doing for kids who slip through the system due to behaviour issues?

Hekia replied that it's not what she's doing personally, but what schools are doing.   She said that quality teachers and good decision making by BOTs would solve this boy's issues.  The room groaned. 

She then went on to describe PB4L and other work programmes focused on behaviour.  Hekia admitted that special education is under funded and needs work.  She said a range of things were in place to help this boy.  

But cleatly it's not working, because then the parent said that despite ticking every box her kid was denied help. The MOE had admitted to this parent that hundreds of kids like her son missing out. Personally, I know at least three kids who fit this profile.  If the MOE has no confidence in their own systems to support at risk learners with behaviour issues, then how can parents?

The next question was about IES and how a community of schools selected will work.

Hekia replied it's about making transition between ECE to primary to intermediate to college.  Schools and centres will opt in and look at these pathways, what barriers are in place and how to soothe them.  The community of schools will be asking questions like:  

• What are the typical pathways within a community?
• What is the baseline data? 
• What are the needs in that community?  

These must be common challenges to work on together in addition to schools own goals.  Then the executive principal, expert teacher and lead teacher (or whatever the new titles are) will work together to spread excellence and work on the needs identified.

 
Hekia then went on to say that the Prime Minister announced it in January so it could be co-constructed with the profession.  I choked a little on that comment. 

Hekia then said that the MOE had been in negotiations with the PPTA for month and that we would know where NZEI stood the following week.

Since then PPTA have finished their negotiations and their members will vote on it in early term four, well after the general election.  And 93% of the 70% of NZEI teacher members who participated thoroughly rejected the option to vary the Primary Teachers Collective Agrrement, and primary principals also rejected their collective agreement being varied as well.

It is intended that the IES structure will be in place for term one 2015 if National is returned to government.

A question was then asked by Terry Casey, the principal of Kaihere School, in regards to the union's (NZEI) message over the IES consultation that has happened.

Hekia replied by talking about the minister's forum that has been in place during the last two years.  She talked about it being a voluntary involvement.  Then she explained that NZEI took itself out at the end of 2013, but NZEI still welcome and able to participate.  Her tone of voice at this point was condescending despite the polite phrases used.

Hekia then went on to explain about the delegation to Asia in October 2013.  Judith Nowataski (the NZEI president) was invited to be part of the trip and took part in reporting back.  Angela Roberts (PPTA president) and other education group representatives (STA, Spaanz, NZPF) also participated in the trip and reporting back. 

 

After that development of IES started (at this stage the only parties involved with the MOE and STA - not even the MOE's own research unit knew anything about it and were appalled to find out on the day of John Key's State of the Nation speech that this policy had been developed without the appropriate research to back it up). 

 

Then the IES announcement was made on the day of the State of the Nation (and every education group was blind sided).  The work streams began in February and NZEI has been on all work streams as they want.  Hekia explained that as things are resolved in the work streams, it is made public. 

 

During this little explanation of how it all worked, Hekia's distain for NZEI was palpable.  While she made pretty phrases about NZEI, the condescension dripped.

It is time to clear this up for the Minister.  This is why NZEI withdrew two times from consultation with the Minister and the MOE:

• The Minister's Forum was established after the class size debacle.  NZEI participated, but it became apparent during 2013 that it's voice was being drown out due to the process.  All recommendations to the Minister were made by majority consensus.  Often NZEI had a contrary view to the final recommendation due to it not being a good fit in the primary or ECE sector or contrary to the collective agreements of the members.  As a result, after consulting the membership, NZEI made the decision to withdraw from the Minister's Forum in December.  Prior to the withdrawal the IES proposal was never discussed in the Forum.
• NZEI did participate in the work streams and consultation on IES from February 2014.  But again it found that the process for recommendations being forwarded to the Minister was by majority consensus.  Again, NZEI found that its contrary view was drowned out, and that to stay within the process was to condone recommendations that they did not support.  That is why when the MOE finally presented its claim to vary the collective agreements of primary teachers and principals, NZEI went back to the membership to get a mandate before opening negotiations with the MOE.  70% of the primary teaching and principal members responded by the due date, and 93% of those members refused to begin the negotiations and supported an alternative way to spend the $359 million allocated for IES directly on students.

As Hekia spoke, I looked over to my friend from the NZEI executive.  He was exceeding the National Standard on Self Management.  I know it grated him to hear Hekia defame the decisions of the NZEI executive and the membership, and that is why I am writing this part of the blog about the meeting to clarify the position NZEI found itself in.

A grandparent stood to speak and commended the minister for her good work with Maori & Pacifica achievement.  Obviously blue party faithful.
 

A parent stood to speak about student engagement and presence in school. They wanted to know why teachers and management are still sending kids out of class, and even home from school, for uniform issues?

Hekia stated that BOTs are responsible for issues such as the setting of uniform standards and the rules around it.  Parents and communities need to have their own discussion with BOTs about the standards and rules of uniforms.  But if the stand down process isn't being done properly go to the school and talk to the principal, then if you are still not satisfied talk to the BOT.  If you feel a satisfactory resolution is not met, then you contact the MOE for help.  If you are still not satisfied, then you contact the Minister, then ombudsman.  Hekia then went on to say that stand downs and exclusions are at a 20 year low.
 

Finally there was a question about that old chestnut, Novopay. Where are costs at now and where are we up to now?

Hekia said Novopay was clearly a dog.  She then explained that the government was now establishing a crown owned enterprise and Talent2 had been negotiated out.  The education payroll is the most difficult payroll in the country with numerous changes each fortnight. She said to solve this problem it would be ideal to simplify collective agreements without losing conditions or allowances.  Good luck with figuring out how to do that.
 

Shane Ngatai from Rhode Street School then asked a question regarding deciles and changing of the Education Act.

Hekia explained that the current Education Act is 25 years old with amendment after amendment.  The Act needs simplifying, modifying and currently doesn't really mention students.  She explained that deciles divide schools into ten categories according to socio-economic data and was well intended but a blunt instrument.  She believes funding has to be about the need of the children, and not a proxy for quality.  Hekia said that according to PISA data, decile 1 schools are producing quality achievement just like decile 10 schools.

The Minister then went on to say that she loves the job of being Minister of Education (obviously a response to the outgoing Minister of Health, Tony Ryall's, valedictory speech in Parliament a few days before).  She said being the Minister of Education was the best job in world.  She then said her own education was in decile 1 & 4 schools (funny thing is though is that decile funding was not invented until the 1990s by the then National government and all Hekia's formal primary and secondary schooling would have been in the '60s and '70s, so that really doesn't fly Minister).
 

The next question:  Who would IES roles report to?

They will report to their own BOTs. These roles will not be hierarchical, but horizontal according to the Minister (ahem... how?).  Hekia called it a new way of leading and the focus of these leaders will be coming in to lead the delivery of the achievement focuses.  She then went on to claims some elements of the IES model come from Finland (which ones are those Minister, because it looks nothing like the Finland model) as well as Asia.
 

A parent then stood up saying special education system was under funded and asked what the Minister would do about it.

Hekia replied that it is not an either/or situation. She said the quality of tching means special education kids succeed (collective groan in the room because we know that our access to specialised experts and teachers has been restricted and strangled).  But $359 million for IES is not for special education said Hekia. Its about improving quality of teaching for all.  And didn't really answer the question at all....

And then it was the end of the meeting.

This is a link to the news article published on Stuff about the meeting:  Deciles 'proxy for quality': Minister.

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.....

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.