The Pigeonhole

The NZ School Trustees Association has been celebrating 21 years of its existence by claiming credit for other peoples’ work.  Apparently, it is entirely responsible for progress made in educational achievement in New Zealand schools.

I don’t wish to denigrate individual boards of trustees who give up many hours of their own time to do what department of education officials once received a salary for doing, but it stretches credibility to imagine that student achievement is influenced in any significant way by governance arrangements.   

Maybe they would be more influential if they weren’t so badly served by their national body, STA, which publicly ignores boards’ views in order to suck up to the government.  Its support for national standards reveals that it has no interest in education, schools or students (or democracy for that matter.) See this frustrated comment from a board member

Good evidence of STA’s lack of judgement and educational wisdom (if it were needed) has to be the fulsome praise they have received from the well-known education expert Hon Anne Tolley. During these cash-strapped times, she also managed to find enough to give them a $1 million bribe in the Budget.  She paid too much!  30 pieces of silver would have been enough.

 STA cares only about power.  In bargaining for the collective agreement, it opposes every proposal that would support teacher retention and recruitment and anything that increases the opportunities for professional support for teachers.  If you think this is an exaggeration look at this quote from STA to boards about the bargaining:   “We do think it’s entirely appropriate to place difficult management decisions about the allocation of scarce resources back into boards’ and principals hands…”   In other words reduce the funding as much as you like – we don’t care as long as we’re allowed to wield the razor.