Striking teachers costing the next generation, parent says

An Auckland mother of two secondary students who have separately-rostered strike days says it’s becoming a "logistical nightmare" as she is forced to take days off work to supervise them.

Speaking to 1News anonymously to protect her children’s identity, she said the ultimate cost to the rolling secondary teacher strikes is to her children's education.

The PPTA and Ministry of Education have been bargaining for the renewal of the Secondary Teachers’ Collective Employment Agreement (1 July 2019 to 30 June 2023) since May 2022.

On June 16, the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) recommended exploring independent arbitration to achieve a settlement.

PPTA Te Wehengarua acting president, Chris Abercrombie, told 1News “the union will be making a decision about the possibility of arbitration soon”.

The decision can’t come soon enough for one mother.

The Auckland mother of three has one child in primary school and two in secondary school. The family travel about 25 minutes to the school depending on traffic.

However, the rolling strikes that began on June 12 and are set to run until the end of the term, mean both her older children are attending secondary school on different strike days.

She said it’s affecting before and after school sports practices as well as their education. She is also taking time off work to supervise her younger teen, meaning her own income is affected.

“It’s costing us financially in petrol with the logistics of travel and also compromising my work output and income.”

Abercrombie was largely unsympathetic to this point.

“We appreciate that some parents may have to take leave to look after their children but the vast majority of secondary school students are of an age where they can be at home alone.

“A lot of workplaces are family friendly and children who can’t stay at home can go to school and be supervised there.”

While there is a financial cost to managing the care of her children, she said the greater costs are her kids’ mental health and right to an education.

“It doesn’t change the fact that assessments are still due, so the kids are expected to be consistently up-to-date with their learning in an inconsistent learning environment.”

It’s the first year of NCEA for her older child and the “inconsistent” teaching approach has had tough consequences.

“There have been tears and anxiety,” she said.

On strike days, her daughter gets together with her friends to “try and make sense of their learning without the support of their teacher”.

The family send their children to a state-integrated school so there are fees to pay. But she said she expects there to be "evidence of excellence".

“It’s their legal right to receive an education, which I’m paying more than the average New Zealand family does, yes that is my choice but with that higher school fee comes a higher expectation.

“Their education is being gambled with at the cost of their mental health, family income and lifestyle logistics.

“The bigger cost at the end of the day is my kids’ education. Am I going to get all these days I’ve paid for reimbursed back?”

Abercrombie said PPTA members “do not take this action lightly at all but bitter experience has shown that improvements to teachers’ pay and conditions have come from difficult and hard-fought industrial action".

“Teachers would love to be in a settled environment focusing on teaching and learning. However, there is a serious and worsening shortage of secondary teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand – better salaries and conditions are needed to address this shortage. Already too many students are being short-changed by a lack of subject specialist teachers and it is going to get worse unless pay and conditions are improved.”

The latest offer to be put on the table includes a lump sum payment of $4500 for union members and three pay rises by December 2024, totalling between 11% and 18%.

Abercrombie said it’s not enough.

“If members accepted this offer, it would only make matters worse in two years’ time when we returned to the negotiating table as teachers’ salaries would be that much further behind – the secondary teacher shortage is serious and it’s getting worse. It needs to be addressed now – we simply cannot wait a couple more years.

“The Government could stop this dispute today – the ball is in its court.”

But this Auckland mother disagrees.

“In a roundabout way, they [teachers] are enforcing truancy and they are also enforcing a snowflake society. It’s demeaning their duty of care to our kids.

"There has been such a cost over the past three years, what is it going to cost the kids going forward? The standard of their learning has been so compromised it’s getting to the point they don’t want to try. The level of support the kids are getting is so much less.

“How are we supposed to enforce resilience and consistency in our children’s attitude towards their learning when there is inconsistency from the other side?

"If you look across the job sector, everyone at some point in their career probably feels they are being underpaid. I totally support our teachers but when is enough enough?"

It comes as another parent, Jono Skipwith has launched a petition to halt the strike days.

"If this strike action continues, seven days of schooling will be lost this term. How many days will it be in term three?" he said.

"We need to send a message to the PPTA and the Ministry of Education that we've had enough. Yes we support teachers in their fight for fair pay and better conditions but our kids education is not yours to use as a political play thing."