PPTA

(14 September 2011) The PPTA Earthquake Recovery Taskforce (ERT) has examined the Christchurch City Council (“Council”) August 2011 Draft Central City Plan with interest. In particular, page 75 of the draft plan titled School choice.  While the ERT believes the School choice component of the draft plan is well intentioned, we do not support the substantive project for the following reasons:  1. All students in Christchurch must have access to high quality, publically funded, secondary education. This right should not be restricted to those  students who come from families living in the central city. ...

(August 2010)  PPTA finds it offensive that a group hand-picked by the Minister and accountable to no-one except the Minister could purport to publish something under the title of ‘A vision for the teaching profession’.   This vision represents the views of its authors, but in no way does it reflect a consensus of the teaching profession. PPTA concedes that some of the issues identified by the advisory group are issues that concern our Association also, such as most of the list of ‘Judgements underpinning the group’s discussions and analysis’, and the recognition throughout the report that recruitment, initial teacher education, induction and mentoring, ongoing professional learning and development (PLD), development of career pathways, and support for professional leadership are key areas of focus.

(August 2010)  Providers of initial teacher education are charged with choosing who is deemed to be qualified to apply for teaching positions. This is a heavy responsibility, and one that must be carried out in a trustworthy fashion. Sadly, there is a low level of trust of teacher education among secondary teachers. The union frequently hears complaints about beginning teachers having very poor classroom management skills, knowing very little about the specific pedagogies of their curriculum areas, knowing nothing about how to assess for the NCEA or even how the qualification works, or having little appreciation of what constitute appropriate professional relationships with students.    Given all of the above, PPTA is very disappointed that some quite significant issues that we raised in our first submission have either been ignored or inadequate solutions have been arrived at. At the same time, there are changes that we are very happy to see.

(August 2010) In this submission, the Association will focus on only two aspects of the Bill; the implications of the changes to zoning and the secondary-tertiary aspects. In view of the fact that private schools are recipients of public money the Association can see merit in establishing a great range of tools to monitor their performance but, as our formal position is that they should not receive public money in the first place, we make no comment on these clauses.

(June 2010) PPTA wishes to congratulate the NZ Teachers Council for having the courage to develop draft requirements that show such strong evidence of having listened to practitioners as well as to teacher educators. It has become clear through this exercise that there is a climate of distrust around teacher education, with practitioners harbouring suspicions that some teacher educators are not doing as good a job as they should, and teacher educators harbouring suspicions that some practitioners have unrealistic expectations, do not adequately support their students or their beginning teachers, and so on.

(May 2010) Prior to the introduction of the current legislation on meal and rest breaks, the provision of such breaks for PPTA members was largely dependent upon the good will of employers. Practice was variable. The lack of time available for rest and meal breaks was a frequent concern for many members. In a worst case example, all of the staff in a north island school were required by the employer to be on duty at every break. Six of those teachers were diabetics who were having problems managing their health without adequate meal breaks and other employees were under significant stress from the regime. (Dated December 2009 but submissions not called until April 2010)

(March 2010) PPTA does not believe that the current personal grievance system is too complex or difficult to understand. The Association believes all workers should be able to take a personal grievance irrespective of the size of their workplace or the salary they receive.

(March 2010) PPTA oppose this Bill because it will: allow individuals to freeload by accessing services funded by others; encourage selfish individualism rather than seeking to build responsible communities; devastate important student association services to students – see below; reduce the quality of tertiary education; remove the democratic right of students to determine how best to organise themselves at each university campus around the country...

(March 2010) Critical to school success is a national policy framework that is coherent and equitable. This is not easy to achieve under the atomised structures that are a feature of Tomorrow’s Schools. As a consequence, the system relies more heavily than previously on bureaucratic processes to provide consistency – both in terms of negotiating GSE regions/systems and in relation to application and funding processes.. Clear, nationally consistent systems, logical rules and comprehensive processes are required to ensure that the SE goals are able to be met.  MOE needs to provide clearly mapped, transparent networks and information strands. This includes names and contact details of various managers, sections, regions, offices; lines of authority, relationships between different parts of the SE service, etc. This is currently not the case, as our own consultation process demonstrated, with members from different parts of the country experiencing markedly different systems and responses from GSE and other sections within MOE.  PPTA, in general, supports the current model of SE provision, with suggestions for improvements as described throughout this submission.

(November 2009) While we understand the reasons for the issuing of new strategy when the last one was to run until 2012, the absence of any historical detail or references to past experience that might shed light on the new strategy undermines the credibility of the document. The New Zealand tertiary education policy has tacked across the political spectrum resulting in a system that is haphazard and driven more by funding imperatives than student needs or even social needs. Without analysis of what has been tried, what has succeeded and what has been found wanting, there is a risk the new strategy will continues to prescribe responses that won’t meet the goals.

(September 2009)  PPTA shares the CTU view that removal of stakeholder and union representation and their replacement with Ministerial appointees is undemocratic. It may mean that polytechnics are not able to adequately represent regional and community voices. At the very least the Select Committee ought to give consideration to establishing guaranteed positions for Maori and for staff.

(September 2009)  The viability of Waikohu College has been a concern since 1996, when there were formal discussions with the boards and community of the college and Te Karaka School concerning merger into a Y1 to Y13 area school.  The Association has previously sent letters to the Minister of Education, dated 20 May 2007 and 13 November 2007, concerning the future viability of Waikohu College. These letters should be referred to. The arguments stated there for the continuation of the college still hold.