teacher unions

Once again the Herald on Sunday has fallen for the Labour flunkies in education crying a river of tears to help them sell papers.

They have a story about over-crowed schools, they quote Malcolm Milner:

Auckland is growing up, in more ways than one – just ask Malcolm Milner. He is principal of an inner-city primary school about to embark on a project that will horrify many. Milner’s Balmoral School is set to grow from a fairly typical state school into a three- or even four-storey affair.

…

When Milner took the job at Balmoral School six years ago, the school roll was about 730. By the end of this year it is expected to top 855 and is forecast to reach almost 1000 by 2015.

“Huge primary schools are not something we have had in New Zealand before and people have to ask themselves if this is what we really want for our children,” Milner says. “This is something brought in by the Government by stealth and the public needs to be aware of what is going on.”

Milner says his school can’t keep eating into its playing fields for new classrooms.

“We are going to build to three storeys but can go up to four if needed,” he says. “I keep asking myself, how big does the Ministry of Education expect my school to get?

“As a country surely we cannot afford to see education as a monetary rather than a social priority. That would be disastrous. We need to start buying more land to build more schools rather than create high-rise institutions for our children.”  Read more »

Hmmm, the NZEI have gone from bullying and whining about levels of support in their emails to now claiming in a press release for the compliant media to repeat that they had “overwhelming support” for their protests today.

More than ten thousand primary and early childhood teachers, school support staff, parents and other supporters took part in marches and rallies throughout the country today in protest at the Government’s education agenda.

In Auckland , Queen Street was closed to traffic as around four thousand people marched to Aotea Square, in Wellington around 2000 gathered outside Parliament grounds while in Christchurch several hundred people converged on MP Gerry Brownlee’s electorate office.

The national Day of Action wasn’t limited to the main centres. Around the rest of the country, from Whangarei through to Invercargill, many hundreds took to the streets to show their support for retaining New Zealand’s public education system.  Read more »

As teachers show apathy toward the NZEI organised protests the union is getting desperate, they are now seeking “rent a crowd” to assist with numbers in many provincial centres. My tip line has gone wild with people sending me emails like this one.

>>> Karen Jackson 11/04/2013 10:46 a.m. >>>

FYI…has just been sent through..

How are you all going with your march/rally organisation? Do you need anything else?..I’m just about to ring ‘hire a crowd’ !

***********************************************
Karen Jackson
Lead Organiser
NZEI Te Riu Roa
Box 8041
New Plymouth

Read more »

More on the protesting by NZEI teachers.

This is hilarious…the teachers turning up for the protest tomorrow (with their kids) and don’t even know what the protest is about…and have to be schooled themselves.

Oh and don’t miss how they are being implored to bring the kids so they can stretch their “demonstration legs”.

I think a more appropriate protest would be for parents to start singing this song:

I wrote yesterday about the scum NZEI using Novopay to push their own anti-government and pro-left agenda.

Not to mention the disgusting use of kids on anti-government protests, using Novopay as a convenient beard.

Well, it continued last night on TV One.

A normal, upstanding principal was wheeled out (at 1″17) and he dutifully attacked the Government.  Read more »

Outgoing PPTA President Robin Duff has acknowledged that, despite spending thousand of members (i.e. taxpayers) funds on full page advertising only 1000 secondary teachers have responded to their desperate plea for submissions to the Bill that will allow Charter Schools.

With incoming President Angela “out of her depth” Roberts acknowledging that they have 18,000 members the PPTA must be gutted. One in 18 against and/or care enough to say so.

NZEI must also be stunned to be sending in only 700 submissions. For all of Ian Leckie’s vitriol you would have thought every primary school teacher was going to be crawling to the steps of parliament and writing their submissions in the blood from their knees.

Roberts clearly has a superhero complex and she personally hopes “ to save the education system from the dangerous path it was heading down”. And one of the main things she wants to save the system from is the “de-professionalisation of teachers”.

At least she acknowledges that the NZ system is no longer “world class” (glad that mantra has gone – thought Robin Duff had something stuck in his throat) by saying:

“The aim should be to create an education system that worked systemically rather than creating pockets of success.”

Imagine you are an activist principal ..you point the finger and tell everyone else who things should be done…you even describe the government as Nazis and call the minister Hitler or Goebbels…you also abuse the Secretary of Education…and meanwhile your school is performing so badly, with high staff turnover and other numerous problems that statutory managers are called in…do you think you should be sacked?

Most of us would think a principal such as that described above should be sacked. Some would say that such a principal is a figment of my imagination, but they would be wrong.

That principal is Marlene Campbell…and she is keeping her job at Salford School despite statutory managers being called in.  Read more »

The Owl has found out something interesting in the NZEI accounts.

I kid you not $90.00 is all NZEI spent is all they spent on Teachers Professionalism

I watched on TV last night Ian Leckie, with a smirk on his face, talk about how the NZEI gave the Government a blood nose.

I can see both sides of the argument and something had to change.

I thought to myself I would see what the NZEI spends on professional teaching development.

I kid you not! $90.00

Owls Observation

The recently filed 2011 accounts has income of $17.7M. They made a massive loss as well.

Under expenditure, all on its own, the accounts have an expenditure classification line called “Teachers Professionalism” $90.00. Things must have be tough at NZEI because last year the spent $13,641.00

To rub salt into the wound, the next line reads “Teaching and Learning” $1,303.00

But it is all ok because the NZEI Union staff spent $531,598.00 on Pension Funds for themselves. Up from $478,219.00

As always the Owl only uses information freely available in the public domain

What is the NZEI all about – I struggle  if all they can afford is $90.00 on teacher development – this is a very serious concern that $17.7M is spent on union staff, international travel, conferences and a whopping $1.8M on strategy!

I repeat $90.00!

Once again the teacher unions have implored their members to break the law. The really bizarre thing is the teachers were voting to strike before they had even heard any proposals.

Over 1000 teachers and administration staff from throughout the greater Christchurch region attended a meeting in Addington yesterday to consider strike action in protest at the proposed overhaul of the region’s schools.

Members of the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) yesterday voted overwhelming to strike on February 19, the day after Education Minister Hekia Parata delivers her final decisions about closures and mergers of affected schools.

The NZEI called the meeting because of its concerns over the Government’s decision to close or merge 39 schools.

Of the 846 who voted, 520 wanted strike action in February, with only 143 voting against industrial action altogether.

After the vote, NZEI president Ian Leckie told The Press the Government’s plans “aren’t acceptable”.

Ian Leckie hasn;t even heard about the plans, so he is really pre-determining the view of the union and its members. However their vote appears to be illegal.

Personally, I’d can’t think of anything better than watching a union get its beans and cop fines…

A teachers’ strike against the Government’s proposed education shake-up in Christchurch is unlikely to go ahead, says a law specialist.

Geoff Bevan, a lawyer specialising in employment law, told Radio New Zealand this morning it was likely the Education Ministry of Education would go to the Employment Court and seek an injunction to prevent the strike.

He believed it would be granted.

Bevan said if the teachers did strike they could be held liable for any losses.

“When you strike you’re breaking an employment contract. If you’re employer breaks a contract they’re liable to pay for the loss they caused their employer. The union can also be liable for the loss.”

However he did not think the ministry would pursue that path.

“Suing teachers or firing them isn’t going to solve the situation in Christchurch.

“The most likely consequence is that the ministry will go to the Employment Court and seek an injunction stopping the strike,” he said.

The NZEI has a field officer and staff member in the Far North who thinks their job is to cover for pedos. They need to be outed:

Ms Lovatt Davis claimed police did not follow up at the time and told the Heraldthat a meeting took place between her, Parker and a union representative – who she described as a “field officer” from teachers’ union the New Zealand Educational Institute, but who also was on staff at Pamapuria.

That meeting was not about the girlfriend’s allegation because Ms Lovatt Davis said she’d only told the police and a board member about it. The meeting discussed Parker’s registration, specifically that he wasn’t meeting the standards to become a fully registered teacher.

Parker brought up the fact that she had called police, Ms Lovatt Davis said.

“The NZEI field officer received all her news from Jamie and from Jamie supporters,” Ms Lovatt Davis said.

“The report from his girlfriend was not an allegation of sexual abuse. It was a story she told that seemed to need an investigation and a reminder to Jamie to guard his professionalism. I believe he used our discipline meeting [with the NZEI field officer] to accuse me of taking an embittered girlfriend’s vicious story too seriously. Once they had reunited, she saw no need to pursue the story.

“I would suggest that NZEI field officers are not drawn directly from the wider community. The field officer should be an impartial person, free from the town gossip. In Kaitaia the gossip ran against me and pro Jamie. She bought it all and dressed me down in that meeting. Both of them did. It was very unpleasant.”

Yesterday a spokeswoman for the NZEI said an investigation was under way. Asked whether it would look at what the union knew about the allegation surrounding Parker in 1999, she said: “NZEI is conducting an internal investigation into the comments made by Ms Lovatt Davis.”