Teaching

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 »

The Labour party is trying to amend the Charter Schools legislation to force them to only hire registered teachers.

A last-ditch bid to modify the rules for charter schools will take place this week, with pressure expected to go on the Maori Party whose votes will decide whether legislation passes.

Labour has effectively conceded defeat in its battle against allowing a trial of the schools, which will be able to determine their own curriculum and can be staffed by teachers who are not registered.

But Labour education spokesman Chris Hipkins said he would be tabling a series of Supplementary Order Papers this week, suggesting amendments to the Education Amendment Bill when it sees its second reading.

These would impose teacher registration and curriculum requirements, as well as making the schools subject to the Official Information Act.

No problems with the OIA, but it should apply to any organisation in receipt of public funds including universities. The insistence on registered teachers though is farcical. Labur and the their paymasters the teacher unions claim it is to protect children.  Read more »

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.

I’ve seen it all now.

Teachers in the UK reckon they are overworked and have voted to work just four hours a day teaching kids.

“The National Union of Teachers (NUT) passed a motion on Tuesday demanding a new working week of 20 hours’ teaching time, up to 10 hours of lesson preparation and marking, and five hours of other duties, including time spent inputting data and at parents’ evenings.”

Universities and tertiary institutions churn out thousands of people qualified for jobs where only dozens exist. I’ll bet there are more people training to be journalists than jobs exist, and the same goes for teachers.

In Australia the cost of this is enormous  but I imagine the costs of proving training and student loans is likewise enormous with little if any prospect of the majority of then working in their chosen field.

TENS of millions of dollars are being wasted training teachers who do not enter a classroom, with federal and state governments spending at least $16,500 on each student teacher every year despite up to 90 per cent in some states failing to find a job.

Universities graduate about 16,000 new teachers every year across the nation, half of whom are primary teachers, but an oversupply in the workforce means the vast majority of new teachers struggle to find work in schools.  Read more »

This is an email that the PPTA is sending out to people to get them to fill out a survey about Novopay.

No matter if you are unaffected…they don’t care, just fill it out anyway. Another thing to note is that the survey is not secure. I was able to access the results and change them if necessary from the link provided. I have removed the link and redacted part of it to protect the identity of my tipster. I have applied the bold to the text in this email.

From: survey-noreply@smo.surveymonkey.com [mailto:survey-noreply@smo.surveymonkey.com] On Behalf Of rwilletts@ppta.org.nz via surveymonkey.com
Sent: Wednesday, 27 February 2013
To: [Redacted]
Subject: ppta novopay survey

Dear [REDACTED]

PPTA is conducting a survey on the impacts of Novopay. We have received a number of requests to email the survey link directly to members.

Even if your own pay has been unaffected it would be helpful if you could complete the survey.

If you have already completed the survey on line over the last few days please ignore this email.

Here is a link to the survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=[REDACTED]

The survey closes at 9 pm on the 5th March.

Please do not forward this message. Members who have not received this email can access the survey through a link on the PPTA website.

Thank you for your participation.

I see the PPTA has decided to sue the government over Novopay:

The Post Primary Teachers’ Association is launching legal action over Novopay.

PPTA president Angela Roberts said the association would seek compensation for members for the hurt, humiliation and financial suffering caused by the “dysfunctional” payroll system.

The union’s national executives met at the weekend and decided to take collective legal action on behalf of members.  Read more »

Post Primary Teachers’ Association protecting pedos?

The PPTA has stated an opposition to Charter Schools, or partnership schools as they are now called.

Their major point of argument seems to be over the exemption of these schools from teacher registration processes currently managed and operated by the Teachers’ Council.

The PPTA says that failure to have teacher registered exposes children to undue risk. Of course this blog has highlighted numerous cases of currently registered teachers molesting and abusing child or even hiring gang members to put a hit on the principal.

So I was a little surprised to see in their submission on partnership schools clause 3.3.2:  Read more »

This report will seriously unhinge teacher unions. In Canada debate has moved to discussing merit pay for teachers:

Education minister Jeff Johnson got the attention of the Alberta Teachers’ Association when he recently mused about introducing merit pay for Alberta teachers. Predictably, the ATA harshly condemned Johnson’s proposal and vowed to fight any attempt to incorporate merit pay in teacher compensation.

Typical response from unions, more interested in patch protection than excellence.

One of the main arguments the ATA gave for opposing merit pay was that it does not boost student academic achievement. However, there is no evidence that the current salary grid promotes student achievement.

Under the current salary grid, only two factors matter in teacher compensation—years of teaching experience and years of university education. John with six years of university and fifteen years of experience gets paid more than Doris with five years of university and six years of experience. End of story.

It doesn’t matter whether Doris happens to grade more papers, teach better lessons, coach more sports teams, or serve on more committees than John. Even though most people would agree Doris is the better teacher, John is higher on the grid and consequently receives a higher salary. In the ATA’s view, that is exactly how it should be.  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.”