teacher

The Labour party and teacher unions say that one of the reasons they oppose charter schools is because teachers won’t be registered…they say this puts kids at risk.

Yet every week we see cases where presumably registered teachers are still before classroom despite appalling personal behaviour including sex offences, fraud and embezzlement. Today in the Herald is yet another story about a dodgy registered teacher maintaining their job and registration despite violence towards children.

A teacher who reprimanded pupils by pulling ears and tapping their hands with a ruler, has been allowed to stay in the classroom after completing anger management classes – but two other teachers have been struck off in Teachers’ Council disciplinary decisions released today.

The female teacher who kept her job was the subject of six complaints from parents between 2005 and 2011. All involved allegations of inappropriate discipline.  Read more »

The head of the teachers union in New York is boasting that he will anoint the next mayor and is preparing to go to war in the mayoral election by spending large amounts doing that.

This year’s mayoral race is one of the most chaotic in decades, with more than seven Democratic hopefuls fighting for slivers in a primary that is expected to turn out fewer than 600,000 voters. With the primary still wide open, Mr. Mulgrew believes that his union has the power to crown the new king or queen.

“We’re not about picking a mayor,” Mr. Mulgrew told Politicker last week at George’s, a diner near the union’s lower Manhattan headquarters. “We’re about making a mayor, making the winner. And that’s what we’re gonna to do.”

For the past four years, the UFT has been working to build up an army of volunteers, pollsters and operatives. By the union’s count, its endorsements will deliver more than 230,000 members, when retirees, family members and others who live in members’ homes are included. The union is also planning to spend in the mid to high seven figures on the race, according to a source familiar with the organization’s finances.  Read more »

Another teacher is in court on sex charges.

The Labour party tells us that on order to protect children at Charter Schools all of the teachers should be registered. Apparently the mere act of registration serves to protect.

Since it is mandatory for current teachers to be registered it is highly likely that the teacher arrested and charged in Dunedin is/was registered:

A teacher accused of sexually abusing six students has pleaded not guilty and will face trial in March next year.

The man is facing 13 charges and has been granted name suppression to protect his former students.

The man appeared at the High Court at Auckland today where his lawyer Richard Earwaker entered not guilty pleas on his behalf.

The trial has been set down for eight days.  Read more »

The Teachers’s Council is still deliberating on why they continue to remain out of step with the rest of New Zealand in order to protect pedos, and other assorted criminals by helping them remain anonymous.

They have two choices…change the rules themselves, or face parliament doing it for them.

Secrecy rules protecting the names of errant teachers are headed for a shake-up in Parliament.

The Herald on Sunday has been pushing for changes to the rules which automatically protect the privacy of teachers subject to complaints.  Read more »

Charter Schools are big in the UK and offer all sorts of differing education methodologies, bringing freedom of choice to education, and removing control from under the thumb of the teacher unions.

An unorthodox secondary school offering “cross-subject projects” rather than traditional classroom lessons, is among the latest tranche of free schools to be approved.

XP school in Doncaster is one of the 102 new free schools given the go-ahead to open next year by Michael Gove, the education secretary, a slight decrease on the 109 schools opening this year.

XP’s prospective chair of governors, Gwyn ap Harri – a former computer science teacher who went on to start a company selling educational software – says the school’s teaching method is based on how learning takes places in the “real world”, rather than sitting behind desks.

“We’ll be still be teaching the national curriculum, the kids will still be doing GCSEs and A-levels. But the way we deliver the curriculum will be totally different,” Harri said.  Read more »

Teacher Unions are the same the world over. They all believe that their education sectors are “national treasures” despite results and empirical evidence to the contrary.

Every now and then a politician comes along to challenge them and they become public enemy number one for daring to challenge the status quo.

Michael Gove was ridiculed by the president of the National Association of Head Teachers, who compared him to a hyperactive personal trainer.

“At times it feels as though we are at the whim of some kind of fanatical personal trainer, constantly urging us all to go faster, faster, higher and higher on a constant treadmill,” Bernadette Hunter told delegates attending the organisation’s annual conference in Birmingham.  Read more »

The Labour party opposes Charter Schools because there is no requirement to register teachers…they say the kids will be at risk at those schools.

In todays Herald on Sunday we read about a teacher who preyed on children at school, entered into sexual relations with them…and he was registered.

Shamefully the Teachers Council continues to protect this sexual predator by refusing to name him despite one of his victims calling for his naming.

A woman who, while a teenager, was preyed upon by her physics teacher for sex during extra-curricular sailing classes is pleading with authorities to make details of the case public.

She says publishing the man’s name may encourage any other victims to come forward.  Read more »

Richard McGrath of the Libertarianz party issued a press release late last night about Labour’s insistence on having registered teachers.

It is telling and you really have to wonder at Chris Hipkins continuing to insist that the kids are safer with registered teachers.

Libertarianz leader Richard McGrath today voiced his support for the prospect of charter schools competing with their state counterparts, and said concerns by Labour MP Chris Hipkins about registration of teachers deserve to be explored further in the interests of child safety.

“Registered teacher James Parker admitted at least 74 charges of sexual offending against young boys. He is still on the register of teachers, and as such Chris Hipkins probably believes he is safe to be supervising children.”

“On January 16 this year, registered teacher Douglas Haora Martin pleaded guilty to making upskirt videos of 17 unsuspecting young women and girls. Despite resigning from Lincoln High School on January 24, the Teachers Council kept him on their register until April 13. Chris Hipkins probably believes he was fit to be teaching schoolgirls during that time.”  Read more »

Asssociate Professor of being a Drama Queen at huge taxpayer expense at Auckland University – Peter O’Connor – clearly feels he is running short of attention so it now putting out his own press releases on Voxy.

At least in this one he acknowledges that Maori (at 23% behind non-Maori) have been long-term screwed over by the NZEI/PPTA system.

The teacher unions main plank against Charter Schools is that the teachers won’t need to be registered. Their argument is that the children need to protected and that registration provides this.

Kind of like the protection that kids were afforded because of the registration of this teacher.

A senior teacher who filmed up girls’ skirts with a secret pen camera for his own “sexual pleasure and gratification” has avoided jail today.

Doug Martin, 57, was a trusted and respected teacher at Lincoln High School, outside Christchurch, and a local church elder.

But now his career is in tatters and his life in turmoil after he pleaded guilty to 20 charges of filming up girls’ skirts over a six-month period last year, which a judge today described as a gross breach of trust.

He filmed them at his school and at a shopping mall, as well as other locations which have been suppressed.

At Christchurch District Court today, Judge Emma Smith sentenced Martin to 10 months’ home detention, and ordered him to undergo rehabilitation for his sexual deviancy.

He’s also been banned from having contact with any girls under the age of 16.

I guess that is the end of his teaching career…even though he was registered.