Category: Unions

Source: Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA)

Negotiating corporate deals, private investigator, security guard, international teacher, unionist to the core. That’s a very short summary of the working life of John Dyer-Causton.

John started teaching English at Auckland Grammar School (AGS) in 2018. Pretty quickly he was drawn into the sphere of PPTA Te Wehengarua first as branch secretary and now as AGS branch chair.

Keeping the branch together

In 2023, a year of significant industrial action for PPTA Te Wehengarua members, John’s priority was to keep the branch and staff together and to keep everyone moving in the same direction.

This even extended to keeping the principal in the loop about what industrial action would look like and working to create a relationship that would serve the members well.

John took an educational approach and was not afraid of taking on a difficult conversation.

Focus on the future

John’s focus was on the fact that 2023 was going to be difficult but whatever the tensions that arose a resolution would be reached eventually. After that all the staff – members and non-members – would have to live and work together.

He framed conversations positively, insisting that the industrial actions were in the interests of the school community so that the branch was not to be seen as acting against the interests of the community.

Quiet words and backstage conversations

John was walking a tightrope, doing a balancing act, but he did so successfully. In 2023 PPTA Te Wehengarua membership increased to 87, well above previous membership numbers.

John continued to monitor any issues that arose within the membership. There were lots of ‘quiet words’ and backstage conversations with senior staff in a bid to resolve issues at the lowest level.

For John it is all about relationships, ensuring that the branch carried out the requirements of the industrial action while keeping the staff united. The employer recognised this with a Staff Award to John at the end of 2023.

PPTA Te Wehengarua is pleased to support John Dyer-Causton as the recipient of the Guy Allan Award for Branch Activism 2023.

* PPTA Te Wehengarua established the Guy Allan award in 2005 to recognise outstanding branch activism in the Counties-Manukau and Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland regions. The award commemorates the late Guy Allan — a former PPTA branch chair and an Auckland-based field officer who was renowned for his commitment to unionism and branch activism.

Source: Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA)

Jeremy began his teaching career in the lowest performing public high school in the district of a large city in the United States.

At the time – in 2012 – and still now, this city had one of the largest proportions of homeless students with about nine percent either homeless or rough sleepers. “That’s really quite staggering and a really important context for how we were affected by the charter school.

Unfair comparisions
“One of the issues that we were up against is that we in the public school were often being compared to those in the charter school in terms of test scores, general achievement levels, things of that nature. One of the arguments that was used was that students going to this particular public high school were being pooled from the same neighbourhood as those going to the charter school so theoretically it’s the same pool of kids.

“So they were trying to say it must be something happening with our school or our teachers that’s causing the disparity in the outcomes – because it’s the same students. That’s the kind of soundbite that’s really easy to repeat in meetings and it just got repeated as a mattter of fact.

“No, it is not the same pool of students, it was not a case of equal input leading to inequal output – there were a lot of mitigating factors that put us in the public school in a very different circumstance than those in the charter school.”

Automatic filtering
As part of its application system, the charter school required applicants to have an address for receiving mail. “That’s going to automatically filter out those students who don’t have consistent addresses or are completely homeless or living in shelters or are rough sleepers. When you think about it, the students who are going to need the most support, the students who are more likely to have lower levels of achievement and academic success, it’s going to be these students – you can’t do your English essay if you’re not sure where you’re going to sleep that night.”

Jeremy said his school also had services and facilities, such as a teen mothers’ unit,  that provided for students with more diverse needs.

“We were also the district centre for special learning needs so students who had mobility issues or special learning needs, or who needed additional support, were going to opt out of the charter school because they knew it didn’t have the resources available.

Students with greater needs excluded

“So whether intentional or not, it became a system where the students who needed greater support, who were less likely to achieve, who needed more individualised focus – they were taken out of the charter system entirely. So it almost became a case of by default that  the students who were more likely to succeed, the students who had more stable backgrounds or fewer needs to support their learning or their academic success  – those were the ones who were able to go to the charter school. It was one hundred percent not a level playing field. Whereas the whole idea of a public educaton is that it is, or at least it aspires to be, an equal playing field for every child.”

Charter schools not the fix
Jeremy has concerns about the possibility, with charter schools this time around in New Zealand, of state schools that are deemed to be ‘failing’ being forced to convert to a charter school. “My issue with this comes from treating the charter system as a guaranteed ‘fix by default’ where really what we should be looking at is if a school is deemed to be failing, whatever the criteria, what specifically is not happening?

“You can provide support and solutions without needing to exacerbate this two-tiered system which I think would lead to further inequities in our education landscape here in New Zealand. Do they need smaller classes? Let’s see what we can do to give the school the resources and support to decrease their class sizes.

“Are some teachers not equipped to handle some of the new challenges coming through? Well then where is the PLD and the resources from the Ministry to help those teachers to upskill? 

“There are many other approaches that could be employed without switching to a charter system in which, by looking at how other countries have been impacted by them, we see that the benefits don’t outweigh the costs and drawbacks.”

Source: Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA)

“Currently, assessing outputs is a measure of learning. Learning needs time and effort. Outputs need time and effort. AI breaks that relationship so outputs are fast and easy. All of the training we’ve done in how to do research –  AI now does it for us and it is doing it well.”

Simon McCallum encouraged teachers to think about whether they were teaching classical musicians or DJs. “Is what we are teaching on the pathway to students’ careers or what those careers used to be?

Fluid intelligence prime objective

“The quality of an education is measured not by how much you know, but on how fast you can learn. We need to change education to focus on adaptability and learning, rather than memorisation and compliance. Fluid intelligence becomes our prime objective.”

He has observed students using AI and says there are three distinct groups. “There seems to be one group who are using it a lot to avoid learning. They are replacing the effort to learn with the effort to work out how to get AI to do the task they have been asked to do. There is another group who are not using AI because they have been told not to. Then there is another group who are using AI a lot and in interesting ways. They are not using it to replace themselves, they are using it to augment themselves.So when we assess them they are moving much much faster because they are building their learning on top of AI.”

AI coming for all activities

Simon McCallum says AI has been coming for a while but society is not ready for it. “Change is now constant and the rate of change is acclerating. If AI is a five times multiplier then only 20  percent of companies need to adopt it to change an industry.”

AI is not just language models – it is  coming for all our activities. Rabbit AI for instance trains a model to do actions for you. Alpha Geometry, developed by Google subsidary DeepMInd, can solve hard problems in Euclidean geometry. It achieved a silver medal in the International Mathematical Olympiad.

Hold close to human connections

Humanoid robots, developed by Tesla, were beginning to look more human, could take instructions in English, acted autonomously, and moved in a disturbingly human way.

“We are going to have to hold close what we value, such as strong human connections.”

Dr McCallum is currently employed by Victoria University of Wellington, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and Central Queensland University, winning teaching awards in both NZ and Norway. He has 25 years’ experience lecturing in Computer Science, AI and Computer Game Development.

Source: Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA)

“The last two scheduled meetings of the Curriculum Voices group – a group of key stakeholder representatives for guidance and feedback on changes to the national curriculum – have been cancelled with no reason given. The Professional Advisory Group to the Minister on NCEA, a representative group of extremely experienced teachers and principals, has been disbanded with new members to be selected by the Minister.

“We also understand that the Ministerial Advisory Group, set up by the Minister late last year to advise her on Mathematics and English curriculum learning areas, literacy and the draft Common Practice Model, has completed its work. However, there has been no consultation on the group’s report and it hasn’t been released publicly.”

Chris Abercrombie said subject associations, whose members dedicate huge amounts of time and effort to work on the national curriculum, are not being consulted on what is happening or planned. “When they have expressed concerns to the Minister, they are not even being acknowledged, let alone given a response.  

“I was deeply disappointed and concerned that the first time the president of the NZ Association of Teachers of English learned there was a group rewriting the English curriculum was when she was contacted by the media. For a Minister who claims to have great admiration and respect for teachers, choosing not to consult with the head of English subject specialist teachers about such a critical development, speaks volumes. If this is how the Minister intends to treat the sector, we are in for some torrid times.

“We have checked with other subject associations to see if they have been contacted about their curriculum rewrites and they have not – notably Mathematics, another subject that was under the scope of the Ministerial Advisory Group.

“Secondary teachers are passionate about their subjects, how they teach those subjects, and emerging effective practice in their fields. We are extremely concerned that if the Minister shuts teachers out of the change process, she risks being misled by people who hold views about education that are very much on the fringe and not representative of national or international effective practice.

“We have serious concerns about the ability of some of these people to provide sound advice on national curriculum matters. They do not have recent teaching experience and they represent a tiny minority of conservative educationalists who want to take schools back to the last century, rather than equipping them to meet the educational needs of current and future generations.

“Not releasing the report of her Ministerial Advisory Group risks the Minister being misled about current teaching practices in secondary schools and the strength of the evidence for what is being put in front of her.  We call on the Minister to have the courage of her convictions and publicly release the report.”

Source: Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA)

“We were promised  a lot by the Minister and our expectations were pretty high in terms of more funding, for example, for schools’ operation grants and professional learning and development for secondary teachers.  That has not eventuated. Increases to school operations grants, for instance, are below inflation, leaving them worse off in real terms.

“For a government that claims that one of its top priorities is education, today’s Budget is a big let down – particularly in the face of significant roll increases due to increases in immigration. 

“The highlight of the Education announcements is property, which is necessary, but it is people who are the most important investment in education.”

“There is nothing significant for improving school attendance when we have significant work to do to re-engage students who have not attended school regularly as a result of COVID.” 

“Teachers need professional learning and development to ensure they can be culturally responsive in their teaching and develop the use of te reo and tikanga Māori. Schools can’t do this on their own, the government needs to support them to meet their obligations under Te Tiriti.”

Chris Abercrombie said the Budget further demonstrated that Aotearoa New Zealand cannot afford charter schools. “Funnelling $153 million into an unproven experiment at a time when the government cannot even ensure that schools’ operations grants can keep up with inflation is irresponsbile – and immoral.

“Despite the Minister promising that funding will be the same for charter schools as state schools, the budget announcement that charter schools will have access to the funding for period products in schools shows that this is false.

“Kiwi Mums and Dads expect their hard earned tax to be spent on ensuring their children receive a quality education at their local school. The vast majority of Kiwi parents send their children to state schools and would far prefer that they be funded and resourced fully rather than setting up a separate system, funded by taxpayers, but are neither required to teach the national curriculum nor hire only registered and trained teachers.

“The Finance Minister and Prime Minister both promised a Budget dedicated to more funding for frontline services – secondary schools are one of the key frontline services in our country and we have been let down badly today.”

Source: Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA)

The performance measures, objectives and key accountabilities, curriculum performance standards and minimum number of roles to be held by qualified teachers will all be contained in charter schools’ contracts which are not required to be available to school communities or the public.

 “The lack of transparency is extremely concerning,” says Chris Abercrombie, PPTA Te Wehengarua president. “Charter schools will not be covered by the Official Information Act like state schools are, there are no rights for any ongoing community representation as part of the governance. Once a school becomes a charter school it’s a massive black hole.”

 State schools are required to consult with their communities to develop their school’s annual report, strategic plan and annual implementation plan. These documents all must be publicly available and show how boards will meet the objectives set out in the Education and Training Act 2020. Community representation, through the school board, is mandatory.

 There will be no requirements for new charter schools to consult with impacted or interested parties – such as nearby local schools. It appears they won’t have to consult on the health curriculum, and it is unclear if they will have to publish attendance data.

“Most concerning of all is that the Minister of Education will have the power to direct local schools to enter the conversion process for being a charter school based on ‘government priorities’ or ‘based on state school performance’. This direction can happen without any input from the school board, the teachers, or the community.

 “This is a completely unjustified overreach of Ministerial power, when there are already proven interventions that can be made in the state system to support schools, such as engaging a specialist advisor to the board.

 “We know from the last failed attempt that charter schools are unaccountable and the Minister’s own officials conclude ‘it was unclear if the model had an impact on the academic achievement for specific learner groups’. 

 “Communities and school boards need to be very wary of what they are being sold. Instead of putting money into secret deals for charter schools, the Government needs to put taxpayers’ money where it belongs –supporting the diverse range of public schools already available for New Zealand rangatahi.”

List of provisions to be provided in secret contracts rather than legislation: 

• Education performance measures
• Objectives and key accountabilities
• Curriculum performance standards
• Minimum number of specified roles to be held by qualified teachers
• Distance education requirements
• Performance outcomes, measures and targets
• Areas of non-performance requiring escalated interventions
• Triggers for interventions
• Property maintenance rates for parents
• Requirements for complaints and independent review process
• Transition process for converting schools
• Tolls and data used to measure each performance outcome area
• Reporting requirements
• Curriculum
• Qualifications offered
• Provisions for termination of contract
• Provisions for renewal of contract
• Hours and dates students required to attend
• Requirement to participate in national and international studies
• Performance information and frequency
• Person or body responsible for independent review of complaints
• Intervals at which to inform parents of student progress
• Progress updates on implementation plan
• Location and premises
• Transport for students