Does John Key realise how much he has annoyed both teachers and school support staff with his comments to the CTU conference this week that teachers should trade off their own pay rises to fund pay increases for low paid school support staff?
I’ve been doing the rounds of North Shore schools today and staff – teachers and support staff – are not impressed. They say his comments are divisive and stupid. Teachers and support staff work together to make the school community function well and there’s no way they will buy into this kind of divide and rule tactic.
John Key’s comments were dumb politics. But what’s even dumber is the PM’s ignorance about how teachers and support staff are funded and how their employment agreements are bargained.
Teachers are centrally funded by the Ministry of Education, and their negotiations are separate to those of school support staff. School support staff are funded out of school’s operations budgets.
So even if the teachers were to forgo pay increases (and that couldn’t happen until next year when bargaining is due), there’s no guarantee that would translate into increased ops grants to pay school support staff more.
