Welcome to the blog of the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers' Association / Te Wehengarua (PPTA), .... A blog that's not afraid to ruffle some feathers
I note with interest one name being suggested to stand for the Maori Party in the upcoming bi-election in Te Tai Tokerau, Peter Tipene, former Bay of Islands geography teacher, and member of Te Huarahi and PPTA National Executive, if successful let’s hope he draws on his left wing values to advance the needs of the working class, unemployed, impoverished Maori majority in the electorate, just what the Maori Party needs if it has any show of turning the vote away from Hone!
The recent OECD education ministers’ meeting held in Paris on November 4th and 5th was unusual for three reasons: for the first time in its ten-year history it had permitted a brief union presence in the form of Education International (EI) and TUAC, the trade union group that advises the OECD ; the morning session on Thursday was chaired by the New Zealand Minister of Education, Hon. Anne Tolley, and PPTA was there!
As an organisation the OECD works actively to push privatization in member countries more for the benefit of multi-national corporates and its own OECD consultancy arm than for students. Its prime tool for influencing education policies in member countries is its international achievement tests such as PISA (Programme for International Assessment). Even though the PISA comparisons ought to be treated with great caution for the reasons discussed in PPTA’s conference paper, Building on excellence: How to make a great schooling system even better, education ministers seem to be in thrall to the data. The OECD creates a market for its testing products by keeping nations in a perpetual state of performance anxiety about the simplistic global rankings it extrapolates from the tests.
It is our understanding that all these changes are subject to the full select committee process but they can at any time invoke urgency as they did in December 2008.
These changes come on top of the original 90 day law in December 2008 rushed through under urgency, the limits being proposed to how unions conduct strike ballots, the requirement to agree on meal and refreshment break times, the axing of the Pay and Employment Equity Unit, the cut in union education funding, and the cuts in ACC entitlements.
Below we briefly summarise the changes announced which, in almost all cases, unions will oppose.
I have a powerful feeling of deja vu right now. Has anyone else noticed the Request for Proposals published by the Ministry of Education in late December? Sneaky time to do things like that, eh? It called for a contractor to “support the development of a range of senior secondary curriculum and assessment resource production projects". In other words, work which in the past would have been done by Ministry staff is now being contracted out to someone who be 'overseen' by a project manager in the MOE. It's the usual right-wing approach - slash the numbers of public servants, then contract work out, often at a higher cost than employing a staff member. What will be contracted out next? Negotiating the STCA? Who will be left in the Ministry of Education by the time a left-wing government takes the reins again? A CEO and a few 'project managers'? Watch this space!
