This New Zealand Post Primary Teachers' Association / Te Wehengarua (PPTA) 2011 annual conference paper "Class size - the struggle continues" updates members on progress on our class size claims resulting from settlement of the Secondary Teachers' Collective Agreement 2011-2013.
Class Size – The Struggle Continues
Class Size – The Struggle Continues
Summary: Class Size – The Struggle Continues
The paper considers parent concerns about issues related to class size, as well as the current political context.
The paper seeks direction from members on the direction the Executive should follow for our class size campaign.
Recommendations:
1. That the report be received.
2. That this Conference note with dismay the Government’s failure to resource and introduce class size limits in secondary and area schools.
3. That this Conference instruct PPTA Executive to continue to seek class size limits through the following four mechanisms:
a. A continuing campaign to raise awareness among the community of the advantages of limiting class size and to influence future government policy.
b. Engage in political campaigns before general elections to make class size an election issue for each major party to address as part of its manifesto. (This may require campaigning over several elections.)
c. Continue to lobby those opposition and coalition political parties which, when they next form part of a government, are most likely to agree to resourcing schools to restrict large class sizes.
d. Propose to PPTA membership that class size limits be reintroduced as a claim in the next STCA round as an industrial (workload) issue, backed, if necessary, by industrial activity around that claim.
4. That this Conference instruct PPTA Executive to consult with members during the 2012 STCA claims development process on including clauses in the 2013 collective agreements negotiation claim to ensure:
a. That schools endeavour to keep all classes below 30 students.
b. That schools endeavour to keep all classes in classrooms, laboratories and workshops with identified health and safety hazards below 24 students.
c. A link for teachers of those classes to the compensatory mechanisms of the collective agreements in instances where the above genuinely cannot occur.
d. Additional targeted entitlement staffing to resource class size limits.
Annual conference is the supreme decision-making forum in PPTA and it is by membership response to these papers that PPTA policy is established and actioned so it is important members get the chance to consider them.
We hope you will make these papers available to staff in your schools, the vast majority of whom are PPTA members, and please take the time to discuss these in departments.
Please feedback any thoughts, comments and recommendations to your branch or regional representatives, so they can contribute the branch view at the regional pre-conference discussions on your behalf.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/hide comment form
