By Winged Rodent

Consensus n. agreement (of opinion, testimony, etc.) - The Concise Oxford Dictionary

Perhaps deputy secretary for schooling Anne Jackson (or her communications staff) should have looked the word up before announcing that "all" sector groups had worked hard to achieve "consensus" on the Ministry of Education's guidelines to changes to the Employment Relations Act involving breaks.

Yes PPTA did work hard to help produce sensible guidelines for the new legislation but what emerged from the discussions was so impractical and misleading that it felt it had to withdraw support and disassociate itself from the document.

In short - statements in the media the PPTA supports the guidelines are simply untrue.

After trying for two weeks to make sure the guidelines were useful and accurate PPTA withdrew from the group. The major sticking point was teachers' non-contact time and the suggestion that it could be used in place of the mandatory breaks (a 10 minute break followed by a 30 minute meal break followed by another 10 minute break) the act requires employees to take.

Non contact time is most certainly not a break. It is hard-fought-for time away from class when teachers can do duties like marking, lesson-planning, photocopying and meeting with parents - things that previously were done in their own time. If teachers are made to take breaks during their non-contacts those extra activities will still have to be done and more than likely they will be done at home.

The Secondary Teachers' Collective Agreement clearly states that the employer will provide five timetabled non-contact hours a week. If teachers receive any less than that then it is a breach of the agreement, and if they do not receive the prescribed amount of breaks free from duty, it is a breach of the law.

There is however no stand-off here. It is quite possible for teachers to hang on to their non-contact hours and get the chance to have a cup of tea without the sky falling, or the school day having to be stretched out, or any of the other tales of woe being bandied about. In fact, there are a lot of schools who are doing this already. Guidelines and models for sensible solutions are available through PPTA and can be found on our website.

It's not difficult and, thanks to reasonable discussion between teachers and their employers, it is already being done.

Unfortunately an early draft of the guidelines, which appeared to be inciting a breach of the STCA by actually stating that non-contact time could be used for providing breaks, was leaked to a number of schools. PPTA felt the final guidelines needed to state explicitly that the leaked draft had no status and should have been critical of the party that violated the trust of the group. Sadly it seems the ministry has chosen to ignore this violation.

PPTA will take action on behalf of will take action on behalf of affected members where there is a breach of the STCA with respect to the use of non-contacts. The STCA and the Act represent two different sets of entitlements and schools need to ensure teachers receive both of these. A ministry opinion does not cancel out the contractual rights of secondary teachers.