Teachers rally against funding proposal
Better funding, not bulk funding, is the message being spread across the country’s schools.
NZEI Te Riu Roa and PPTA has launched a bus tour in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch to raise awareness of the Government’s proposed school funding changes.
The Better Funding Better Learning roadshow visited Greenhithe School on October 18 to get parents and teachers to sign its petition to the Government.
Teacher Natasha Jones was one of a handful of teachers and union representatives greeting parents before school with a clipboard and postcard. Jones is in her first year of teaching and worries about how the proposal will impact on her job.
‘‘I wake up every morning thinking about my kids. I came to this job for the kids,’’ Jones says.
‘‘These are our future generation. If they’re going to tell our kids they’re not that important then they’re not going to still have the great country we have.’’
The Ministry of Education announced a global funding proposal in August which NZEI says will result in less money for public education, fewer teachers, and bigger class sizes. In September, NZEI and the PPTA staged nationwide stopwork meetings to protest the budget proposal.
Jones says the proposal is full of teaching jargon and hard for people to understand, but is hopeful they can get the message across to the school’s parent community.
‘‘They’re so upset because they can’t understand and the Government is taking advantage of that.
‘‘It’s important for them to see how this will affect teachers and know what’s going to happen.’’
Greenhithe School principal Peter Marshall says schools never have enough funding or staff and didn’t want to be named, says the bus tour has been a fantastic way of raising awareness with parents about the issue.
‘‘We want money to be going back into schools. We shouldn’t be saving money in education, not when schools are clear about the struggle they’re having.’’