It took nearly 10 minutes of back and forth in the House today for the Education Minister, Hekia Parata, to admit that she hadn’t even asked for a list of the schools that would lose or gain more than one teacher as a result of her changes to teacher:pupil ratios before she took her proposal to Cabinet.
Quite frankly, this is just not good enough. Hekia Parata took a policy to Cabinet, and it was approved and announced in the Budget, without any Minister taking the time to look at what the actual impact would be on individual schools. If that’s the level of scrutiny the National government are applying to their cost-cutting proposals, it’s no wonder it’s all turning into such a mess.
It simply defies belief that Hekia Parata would come up with a policy that could spell and end to intermediate school education as we know it without doing the most basic analysis. And this from someone who has spent a lifetime as a senior public servant. She should know better. Too much more of this and she’ll end up making Anne Tolley look positively competent by comparison.
1 teacher at my school is 20% of teachers! At each years end I have around 120 children. If I place 15 children in Year 1, then the balance of 105 children must be fitted within three classrooms. Quite frankly 27.5 children is too many in a Year 2 class – especially a rural, decile 1, 88% Maori school. So if I place say 24 in this room I have two classes of 40 left!
Across large schools the reduction can maybe be managed – for schools like mine it is simply ridiculous to think that quality learning and teaching is possible with numbers like these.
Well done to Nanaia Mahuta and Megan Woods in the house today. It was encouraging to see them asking the difficult questions of the Minister of Education.
The idea that by cutting teacher numbers you can increase student achievement is fatuous and disingenuous.
There doesn’t seem to be a National Party vision for education except to increase funding to private schools, to cut staffing to public schools and demoralise the teaching workforce.
The end result will unfortunately be borne by our nation’s children as their middle school options are gutted. The breadth of opportunities which was available to all New Zealanders may only belong to the wealthy in the future.
Well done Chris – this shows the power of question time when used effectively, being able to get straight answers to straight up questions and I’m glad the speaker (ultimately) supported you in this.
Paul these are the stories that need to be publised.
Would collection of data from many schoo, and then publish in a full page national ad be effective
Just another example of incompetent Government, why don’t they reverse the tax cuts for the wealthy and fund some of these schools.
If Lockwood moves overseas later this year Question Time might be in trouble. His work in getting answers has been admirable but imagine a lesser person allowing Ministers freedom to avoid more than they do now.
Seems incredible that the implications of Roll cuts was not canvassed – unless the Master Plan is to manoeuvre Education into acceptance of Bulk Funding?
I would miss Lockwood
Why should this slap happy approach ‘defy belief’? They have been doing this for 4 years now and covering up by smiling and waving, and dropping CT inspired wedges. Only difference seems to be that the MSM has finally decided to do a wee bit of actual reporting.
i wouldn’t be too positive about the msm starting to do “a wee bit of actual reporting”… they have done this before when it has become obvious to them that the blatant tory spin they bray 90% of the time is turning audiences away…
as soon as audience numbers start to climb, the old spin cycle will start again…tv3 indulged in this tactic a little while ago…
Point of order.
I’d like to table a document showing that the current speaker is a useless, self serving, tory rich prick, and that under standing order no 174b, he can kiss my hairy, English behind.
Warning. Clare
Fair enough. Win the revolution by yourself.
al1ens: you must be ‘fresh off the boat’, then. Lockwood Smith, Tory, etc, stands among the better speakers we’ve had and is actually getting answers from those who love to obfuscate.
He’s also improving the quality of questions asked. (Thanks, Chris Hipkins. Precision queries that are hard to evade. I hope you can start a long-running fashion for quality questioning in the House.)
And, while I’m at it – can lots of people tell Ross Robertson what a joy he is as a Speaker? Particularly on the night shift. He comes across as fair and decent.