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14 Responses to “Monday poll – Douglas on Education”
Arrrgh, I mean come on, not even five percent of the country like his bleepin party and he didn’t even win a seat and yet here he is doing more damage! !
Again – I wonder about these questions – I am not sure the freedom whether or not to join the student union is going to affect the educational outcomes either way.
Instead the intention is to give students the freedom to join or not to join a union. It is more about accountability of the suudent unions.
Surely this should at least be sent to select committee for investigation and debate. Or is this another law that Labout will repeal when they eventually get back into government in 10.5 years?
Come on. Everyone is making out that this is going to do all this harm… “oh no my club isn’t going to have enough funding to do all the good work we do, and our club isn’t going to have enugh funding either, woe is me.”
The fact is, this Bill does not get rid of the students’ associations but instead allows students the right to decide for themselves whether they want to join or not. Students can still join and pay the fees if they want to and if the students’ assocations are good enough they have nothing to worry about.
Basically by saying… “this Bill is going to decimate students’ associations” they are actually saying…”we are so useless and we provide services that are of such little value that when students have a choice they are not going to pay us.”
Douglas wants the BOT to employ the teachers – directly, and bypass the teacher collective agreement.
At the moment its the Principal who is ‘employed’ by the BOT
There may be a couple of good things in the Douglas bill – allowing schools to pay teachers above scale for difficult to staff areas/subjects or to retain teachers.
Thankfully principals have a collective agreement too. Like the primary and secondary teachers collective, I know the primary principals’ collective is currently up for negotiation.
I know increased remuneration for hard to staff areas is covered in the primary teachers’ collective agreement through a number of allowances, such as the priority teacher supply allowance, isolation allowance, and mobile reserve allowance. There’d be no nationwide consistency if individual BOTs had the choice to pay these sorts of allowances at their whim.
My guess is the tories won’t run with Douglas’ Bill, particularly with Tolley at the education helm. I imagine they weren’t particularly thrilled to have Douglas’ Bill drawn from the ballot at this time. They know what happened when they tried to introduce bulk funding in the nineties. Teachers would fight this again tooth and nail!
Frontrower, the answer is no. There is a pay scale which applies to the state and integrated private schools.
Do you want to triple your school fees so the BOT can pay ‘extra’, because there is no way Tolley will provide more money in the kitty.
It seems that I have had extremely good luck this Parliamentary term. My Education (Board of Trustee Freedom) Amendment Bill was recently pulled from the ballot – this is my fourth Bill to be pulled this term. If passed, this Bill enables Boards of Trustees to manage their own affairs by having full control over the employment and salaries of teachers at their school.
Currently in the education sector teachers’ salaries are set by the Ministry of Education with national pay scales being set predominantly on the basis of length of service – rather than on teachers’ ability or performance. Unfortunately, at present there is little scope for schools to recognise and reward high performing teachers with higher wages. As such, there is no wage-based performance incentive to encourage poorer performing teachers to improve.
It is a real shame that many people who would be excellent teachers are dissuaded from entering the profession because of lack of performance incentives. Teachers should be treated just like every other public servant – performance should be the basis for pay.
The criticisms levelled against the Bill do not stack up to the evidence. Many decry that Boards of Trustees are not able to make these decision and that it should be left to Wellington bureaucrats. This is utter nonsense – we see that schools already are equipped to make these decisions. This is because it is in line with what Boards of Trustees already do. In every other area of the school budget, we leave budget decisions to the school, not to Wellington bureaucrats. It is only because of the power of teachers’ unions and special interests groups that the authority of local schools to decide what is best for their school is removed and given to bureaucrats in Wellington. At the moment schools are given a lump sum with which Boards of Trustees can allocate according to its needs – what this Bill seeks to do is extend the operational grants to include staffing issues.
What we all want are good quality teachers who are well remunerated. It surprises me that the Teachers’ unions and interest groups are opposed to this Bill. Many special interest groups like the New Zealand Educational Institute’s (NZEI), claim that this kind of bulk-funding failed in New Zealand. Again, this just does not stack up to the evidence. In surveys undertaken for the Ministry of Education in the late 1990s, it was revealed that 94 percent of respondent schools felt that they had been mostly advantaged by bulk-funding, and 80 percent confirmed that their school would prefer to continue with bulk funding.
Over 80 percent of bulk-funded schools used the money to hire extra teaching staff. This shows that schools used the increased flexibility in order to increase teacher quantity and quality. Why should schools be prohibited from doing this?
The evidence also showed that the benefits were enjoyed by all decile schools. The previous model of bulk funding was optional, and 36 percent of bulk funded schools came from those in low-decile areas – deciles 1 to 3. These schools enjoyed the benefit of bulk-funding. It surprises me that teachers’ unions and special interest groups think that these schools would opt into a scheme that they believe actively harmed the school.
Far from being a bad chapter in education, it was a world leading initiative. We only need to look around the world to see the school autonomy has increased almost everywhere in the past 20 years. Evidence from successive reports by the OECD (‘Progress in Student Achievement’), suggests that education systems that devolve greater autonomy to schools in areas concerning budget allocations get better results. This is why countries like the Netherlands, Norway and Korea have decentralised most decision making power to local schools. This is in stark contrast to New Zealand – it is New Zealand’s education system that has been moving in the wrong direction. We have favoured empowering bureaucrats and teachers’ unions in Wellington rather than supporting local principals and schools who experience the needs of their local area first hand. It is time that we changed this trend.
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Arrrgh,
I mean come on, not even five percent of the country like his bleepin party and he didn’t even win a seat and yet here he is doing more damage! 
!
Again – I wonder about these questions – I am not sure the freedom whether or not to join the student union is going to affect the educational outcomes either way.
Instead the intention is to give students the freedom to join or not to join a union. It is more about accountability of the suudent unions.
Surely this should at least be sent to select committee for investigation and debate. Or is this another law that Labout will repeal when they eventually get back into government in 10.5 years?
Come on. Everyone is making out that this is going to do all this harm… “oh no my club isn’t going to have enough funding to do all the good work we do, and our club isn’t going to have enugh funding either, woe is me.”
The fact is, this Bill does not get rid of the students’ associations but instead allows students the right to decide for themselves whether they want to join or not. Students can still join and pay the fees if they want to and if the students’ assocations are good enough they have nothing to worry about.
Basically by saying… “this Bill is going to decimate students’ associations” they are actually saying…”we are so useless and we provide services that are of such little value that when students have a choice they are not going to pay us.”
Monty , wake up! its not about whether tertiary students have to join the student union.
The School Trustees bit should be a clue.
ooops – my apology – I hope Trevor does not ban me for accidential trolling.
Still hold wit what I said about student unions.
Monty as you should have noticed by now we don’t ban people for being stupid. Trevor
Looks like Rebecca didnt read the post , just like Monty before launching into their preprepared talking points.
How surprising.
For their information
http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/Legislation/Bills/5/a/d/00DBHOH_BILL10014_1-Education-Board-of-Trustee-Freedom-Amendment-Bill.htm
Douglas wants the BOT to employ the teachers – directly, and bypass the teacher collective agreement.
At the moment its the Principal who is ‘employed’ by the BOT
Spud
I wonder why Helen didnt do anything about his damage in her nine years as PM?
When is the first reading?
Where is my second comment?
It was deleted as will all in a similar style will be. Stop it Spud. Trevor
How quickly they forget.
In the last labour government a
majority required NZFirst, Peter Dunne to aggree along with
the Labour caucus and Jim Anderton.
Remind me again , Labour never had a majority in the 9 years
and thus they couldnt do everything they wanted.
BUt of course they get all the blame!!
There may be a couple of good things in the Douglas bill – allowing schools to pay teachers above scale for difficult to staff areas/subjects or to retain teachers.
Or can BOTs already do this?
Thankfully principals have a collective agreement too. Like the primary and secondary teachers collective, I know the primary principals’ collective is currently up for negotiation.
I know increased remuneration for hard to staff areas is covered in the primary teachers’ collective agreement through a number of allowances, such as the priority teacher supply allowance, isolation allowance, and mobile reserve allowance. There’d be no nationwide consistency if individual BOTs had the choice to pay these sorts of allowances at their whim.
My guess is the tories won’t run with Douglas’ Bill, particularly with Tolley at the education helm. I imagine they weren’t particularly thrilled to have Douglas’ Bill drawn from the ballot at this time. They know what happened when they tried to introduce bulk funding in the nineties. Teachers would fight this again tooth and nail!
Frontrower, the answer is no. There is a pay scale which applies to the state and integrated private schools.
Do you want to triple your school fees so the BOT can pay ‘extra’, because there is no way Tolley will provide more money in the kitty.
It seems that I have had extremely good luck this Parliamentary term. My Education (Board of Trustee Freedom) Amendment Bill was recently pulled from the ballot – this is my fourth Bill to be pulled this term. If passed, this Bill enables Boards of Trustees to manage their own affairs by having full control over the employment and salaries of teachers at their school.
Currently in the education sector teachers’ salaries are set by the Ministry of Education with national pay scales being set predominantly on the basis of length of service – rather than on teachers’ ability or performance. Unfortunately, at present there is little scope for schools to recognise and reward high performing teachers with higher wages. As such, there is no wage-based performance incentive to encourage poorer performing teachers to improve.
It is a real shame that many people who would be excellent teachers are dissuaded from entering the profession because of lack of performance incentives. Teachers should be treated just like every other public servant – performance should be the basis for pay.
The criticisms levelled against the Bill do not stack up to the evidence. Many decry that Boards of Trustees are not able to make these decision and that it should be left to Wellington bureaucrats. This is utter nonsense – we see that schools already are equipped to make these decisions. This is because it is in line with what Boards of Trustees already do. In every other area of the school budget, we leave budget decisions to the school, not to Wellington bureaucrats. It is only because of the power of teachers’ unions and special interests groups that the authority of local schools to decide what is best for their school is removed and given to bureaucrats in Wellington. At the moment schools are given a lump sum with which Boards of Trustees can allocate according to its needs – what this Bill seeks to do is extend the operational grants to include staffing issues.
What we all want are good quality teachers who are well remunerated. It surprises me that the Teachers’ unions and interest groups are opposed to this Bill. Many special interest groups like the New Zealand Educational Institute’s (NZEI), claim that this kind of bulk-funding failed in New Zealand. Again, this just does not stack up to the evidence. In surveys undertaken for the Ministry of Education in the late 1990s, it was revealed that 94 percent of respondent schools felt that they had been mostly advantaged by bulk-funding, and 80 percent confirmed that their school would prefer to continue with bulk funding.
Over 80 percent of bulk-funded schools used the money to hire extra teaching staff. This shows that schools used the increased flexibility in order to increase teacher quantity and quality. Why should schools be prohibited from doing this?
The evidence also showed that the benefits were enjoyed by all decile schools. The previous model of bulk funding was optional, and 36 percent of bulk funded schools came from those in low-decile areas – deciles 1 to 3. These schools enjoyed the benefit of bulk-funding. It surprises me that teachers’ unions and special interest groups think that these schools would opt into a scheme that they believe actively harmed the school.
Far from being a bad chapter in education, it was a world leading initiative. We only need to look around the world to see the school autonomy has increased almost everywhere in the past 20 years. Evidence from successive reports by the OECD (‘Progress in Student Achievement’), suggests that education systems that devolve greater autonomy to schools in areas concerning budget allocations get better results. This is why countries like the Netherlands, Norway and Korea have decentralised most decision making power to local schools. This is in stark contrast to New Zealand – it is New Zealand’s education system that has been moving in the wrong direction. We have favoured empowering bureaucrats and teachers’ unions in Wellington rather than supporting local principals and schools who experience the needs of their local area first hand. It is time that we changed this trend.