UNLEASH

ED

Tag: David Seymour

  • No More Sense from Seymour

    And so it begins.

    The non-sensical dribble spews forth from the under-secretary of Education, who gets into a lucrative position on the back of one electorate described on Wikipedia as an “exclusive, affluent suburb of Auckland”.

    That’s right. Mr. Seymour is at it again as he launches the ACT Party campaign.

    We will pay good teachers more. And great ones even more. No doubt David will be the judge as to which teachers make good teachers and which ones make great ones. I would put money on schools not being able to decide that themselves, and even more money on it being based on student results i.e. National Standards ala Performance Pay.

    Of course, one can see his point when he opens with the statement that the average teacher is paid a pittance, and deserve to be paid more.

    To fix that, the party is proposing an extra $1 billion in funding for education. “ACT’s proposed good teacher grants will give your average teacher a pay rise of $20,000 per year,” Mr Seymour claimed.

    But to receive the extra money, schools “need to opt out of the centralised payroll system and collective agreements”.

    This has rubbed a lot of people (in particular teachers) up the wrong way. No surprises there.

    But here’s why his solution makes no sense.

    Hypothetically Synonymous Seymoronous

    Let’s assume that schools go for this, and EVERY school in the country pays their teachers an average of $20,000 per year more than they are already. That is going to cost a lot.

    However, none of that has anything to do with collective agreements, the unions, or any centralised payroll system. They are not synonymous with each other.

    It’s illogical.

    In fact, under Seymour’s scheme, teachers could stay in the union with the collective agreement, and they could still get paid $20,000 more if he really means it; just get a new collective agreement ratified between the government and the union, or have both – give a bit more to schools to ‘top up’ teacher salaries that are paid through the collective agreement. It’s only because ACT are notoriously anti-union that he is dangling the carrot for principals and teachers to consider.

    Pay more Seymour

    The second factor is that given the current climate in education, there are teachers leaving in droves, and not always because they aren’t being paid enough. On many occasions, the workload is too much. Refer to this article in March. As a teacher, like many others, I would probably take less workload over getting paid more to ‘compensate’ for the increased workload that is currently expected of us.

    In Conclusion

    While paying teachers more is a genuinely nice touch, Mr. S, if you really cared and were really in touch with the education sector, and you actually wanted to value teachers, then maybe the first step is to work with the union rather than trying to sabotage it into non-existence.

    Illogical. Blackmail. Numpty.

     

  • David Seymour’s Crying Baby

    Waaaa. Waaaa. Stop picking on my baby.

    David Seymour sure is a whiney wet fish when he comes out to defend his precious little charter schools.

    This came about as a charter school approached a nearby state school (after potentially pinching some of their kids so they could open) and asked to use their science laboratories (Essentially they just want the fume hoods, but lets face it, you’re going to end up using the whole space, not just the fume hood!).

    While the school agreed out of good will, they were quickly advised by the Secondary school union ‘PPTA’, that any such arrangement with charter schools was something that was discussed and would not be entered into by state schools.

    In steps David Seymour to fling dirt on the PPTA and try to undermine the PPTA’s credibility.

    Unfortunately (for him at least) he’s come out like a pathetic parent who has no spine “Oh pretty please stop picking on my little child. Okay, well, maybe instead of punching and kicking it, you could just punch it. Okay, but just one kick.”.

    Wet fish.

    Watch the video.

    “I think the critical thing here is that we’ve said for a long time there’s an orchestrated bullying campaign from the PPTA towards partnership schools – and it’s been particularly strong in Northland. It’s never been documented like this, it’s never been explicit.”

    He said there was a “relentless, and frankly insidious campaign” to make life uncomfortable for charter schools.

    “But what I would say is that all good, hard working teachers up and down the country might want to ask themselves if they want to be a member of an organisation that puts ideology ahead of kids like this. ”

    As both the PPTA and the Labour leader point out, Charter Schools get much more funding than state schools could ever hope for.

    “Labour leader Andrew Little says there is a legitimate question about whether charter schools should be getting help from state schools.
    Especially when charter schools have roughly five times more funding for each student than state schools.
    Mr Little says most people would say that’s pretty rough when state schools’ operational funding is being frozen.” – TVNZ

    “Roberts rejected Seymour’s comments.

    “I think it’s a bit cheeky to expect the state system to prop them up even more than they are already.

    “So our members have been very clear from the outset that charter schools – because of the way they pull resourcing away from state schools, and they make vulnerable schools and communities even more vulnerable – that we don’t support them.

    “We will not prop them up because our commitment is to the students in the state system,” she said.

    Roberts said a fume cupboard cost around a $15,000 – “I’m pretty sure that if they’re really careful about the way they cut their costs, they’ll be able to find the resourcing for it”.

    “My understanding is Mr Seymour thinks we’ve pulled out the big guns and gone up there to try and bully them, but actually I met with my members, which I’m more than entitled to do, and we’ve done this on more than one occasion.

    “I guess the issue is more broadly, charter schools have got the luxury of just thinking about the kids in their school, but we’ve got a commitment to all of the kids in the system.” – Stuff

  • Untrained Teachers Coming to a School Near You.

    There’s been quite a lot on the go this week in educational politics.

    But this one is one that should have every parent, school, and child very concerned.

    Education Minister Hekia Parata defends trainee teachers in new legislation

    At the release of the plans for partnership schools, there was very little surprise that they could hire who ever they liked as teachers, so that specially skilled and experts in different fields could work in these schools. It was advertised for the likes of Willie Apirana or Tana Umaga could be in front of a classroom and motivate and inspire children across a range of contexts and learning. Quite why they would want to be in a classroom instead of what they already do quite well, I don’t know.

    However, at the same time, the Minister tightened the reigns over the Education Council, and the regulations around appraisal and registration were put under the spotlight.

    This week however, the Minister has made a quick amendment to the Education Legislation Bill, that will essentially allow unqualified people to teach in state schools.

    “The proposed amendment to the Education Legislation Bill allows schools to establish a “trainee teaching” position for a school.

    According to NZEI, the primary teachers’ union, a “last-minute” change lets schools cheaply hire an “unqualified person in an unsupervised teaching role” while they did an initial teacher training programme.

    There has already been a lot made of the Teach First programme, where after a ridiculously short training period, teachers are pushed out into the real world with qualification to teach in the classroom, and many criticisms have been made of it.

    But why does the Minister suddenly need more teachers? We’re told that only 15% of graduates land a full time job.

    It’s simple.

    Experienced teachers cost money through salary to keep on staff. By reducing the number of experienced staff with jobs (through whatever method) they can be replaced by beginning staff who are paid less, due to the step that they will be starting on.

    At a recent meeting, when discussing the negotiations between NZEI and the Ministry for the latest collective agreement where the Education Council will be paying for the registration of teachers, Hekia Parata mentioned that she finds it strange that teachers don’t want to pay money into the Education Council; and that instead of paying into the union (NZEI) we should be paying into the Education Council.

    (Side Note: I might actually consider this if I had some kind of say on the Education Council; but if all the members on the council are simply appointed by the minister herself, then it is undemocratic and does not warrant my ‘subscription’.)

    In addition to this, David Seymour has weighed in on a different factor, but also brought into question the place of unions in the Secondary sector. “But what I would say is that all good, hard working teachers up and down the country might want to ask themselves if they want to be a member of an organisation that puts ideology ahead of kids like this.” – David Seymour

    What does this mean? Well, quite clearly, Hekia and her understudy don’t want the unions to exist. If teachers began paying into the Education Council instead of NZEI, then the union would cease to exist. If teachers leave unions on ‘moral’ grounds, then they will cease to exist. With all the control held within the Education Council, the Ministry can begin to tighten the screws even more on registration, and essentially drive out existing teachers. This has already begun to happen by using the whole vulnerable children act and finding “predators” that exist in the system. Each new case of child abuse from teachers or workers in schools as fuel to the fire of tightening the registration process, until even those of us who are great teachers, trained fully, and have a wealth of experience will be forced out as well.

    But it’s okay. Because even before they have completed training (which is already so minimal it’s under question) those enrolled in the Teach First programme can begin teaching in permanent positions around the country to replace the teachers who leave.

    No doubt, Hekia will come out with her standard response “It’s simply not true”, and the fact that there is no evidence to suggest this will happen is not a reason to ignore this as a threat in the future. The logical steps and the progression of this thing called GERM is taking place, and we’re seeing it happen right in front of it. They are put in for good reason, such as the registration process to weed out ‘those’ teachers, but their bigger mission opens it up to much more deviant possibilities.

    Watch this space people. Watch this space!

  • I wish David would see more…

    Today Chris Hipkins’ bill was drawn out of a hat in parliament to undergo vigorous debate as to the abolishment of the charter school policy brought in by ACT, even though all historic evidence and international examples of this have all been failures.

    It’s interesting that at the same time the Labour bill to abolish charter schools comes out, that the education world in the UK prepares for EVERY public school to become a charter school (called ‘academies’ over there).

    So, this comes with welcome news. The abhorrent dealings of charter schools in this country have been well documented. It has been an utter disaster despite what the politicians who want it to succeed will say.

    Needless to say, I was pretty disgusted with this tweet from the ACT party.

    Needless to say, it received a pretty swift response:

    Well, that’s awesome. Nice one.

    What’s more, and as has been pointed out, Chris Hipkins also gained more support from his electorate than the entire ACT party did around the country. Chris Hipkins: 19,286. ACT Party: 16,689. Just saying!

    As I went deeper into the conversation I suddenly found one DBSeymour piping up into the conversation.

    If I was unimpressed before, my impressions are now severely lacking. The lack of actual intelligence begins to show that the puppet in front of us running the country as Undersecretary of Education is little more than a the blubbering buffoon that we all thought was an act. Turns out no; its actually true. We may have just found the long tail of underachievement in this country.

    The conversation that precedes this screenshot is all centred around the privatisation of education, the choice of integrated schools for those that want choice, and the question of why tax payers should be paying for charter schools where there is no accountability and that any land, property, resources, etc… are all kept by the company behind the particular charter school.

    However, despite this all being in clear view on Twitter, and being written in basic English, and as grammatically correct as one can be in 140 characters, DBSeymour seems to think that this particular question doesn’t make sense.

    Sorry David. The question makes perfect sense. The problem isn’t the question. It is you. Obviously it’s well above your level of understanding.

    Then to make things worse; the Member of Parliament; a person who should be holding the public with some kind of respect and regard because they are the ones who may vote for you, instead of continuing to attack the question, turns personal and now says that the person asking the question doesn’t make sense.

    And this is the person entrusted with implementing changes within our Education system.

    Maybe David actually needs to go back to school and learn how to comprehend basic sentences. I’m sure that this will no doubt hold him in good stead to begin entering into the public sector such as Twitter. Ah – I mean, parliament.

     

    There is a very small chance that DBSeymour actually only wanted to reply to @actparty with “You just don’t make any sense”. In which case; it’s about time someone brought that question up!