Tensions complicate strike
New Zealand’s primary teachers depict yesterday’s strike as a legitimate reaction to a crisis. One, they contend, that has developed because more moderate attempts to prevail by sweet reason have for years been treated as nothing more significant, really, than a background, ambient whine.
Their evidence of problems, inadequately addressed, is pretty good. Recruitment difficulties nationwide are undeniable, teacher departure rates are worrying, only a dullard would dispute that the needs of children with learning difficulties often stretch classroom capacities beyond any reasonable tolerances and rolls are trending upwards.
The Government puts the case that significant but gradual improvements are the best that can reasonably be expected. Notably a doubling – yes, doubling! – of the past eight years of pay increases averaging 1.2 – yes 1.2! – per cent. Sorry, but you just can’t fix nine years in nine months, Education Minister Chris Hipkins intones.
Well, teachers may take the view that when you’re already convulsing on the floor you can take only so much comfort from talk of longer-term solutions. There’s certainly a defibrillation subtext to the talk of an income jolt. Yesterday’s striking primary teachers want 16 per cent over two years, while secondary teachers want 15 per cent as a single-year increase.
PM Jacinda Ardern tried, unsuccessfully really, to evoke a sense of unity when she fronted up to protesters and read their mood thus: ‘‘I didn’t have this sense of them and us. I just had this sense of us.’’ Really? At the same time her Government is indicating the teachers’ starting positions are significantly higher than anybody else is getting and that, regrettably, whatever extra they get will be at the expense of others. Are you listening you Inland Revenue and Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment workers, and others foreshadowing greater stroppiness?
Having said that, for Governments to adopt a ‘‘crisis, what crisis?’’ approach carries particular political peril nowadays. Something to do with long-addressed unpleasantness in the housing industry, apparently.
The upshot is that tensions exist between what is truly necessary and what is truly achievable. As things stand, the ‘‘necessary’’ argument is in the ascendancy as far as public support for teachers is concerned. But parental capacity to cope with no-school strike days is far from uniform and for many the problems this creates loom larger and more vividly than the argument teachers are mounting. These parents will feel bullied and, as their kids can tell them, that’s not OK.
Speaking of which, the reported tactic (mercifully not widespread by any means) discouraging after-school providers from helping parents is as repellent as it is reprehensible. Those who would contemplate such tactics shouldn’t be teaching anyone.
It’s not teachers’ fault that they are under pressure and it is showing in many areas of performance, recruitment and retention, with more on the horizon. Or that they risk losing public support if they overplay their hand. But these things are nevertheless true. So much relies on doing better at convincing the public. This they’ve long been trying to do, but ultimately that’s where the battle will be won or lost and strikes won’t change that.