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National's Tax Cuts Threaten Children's Education
National's Tax Cuts Threaten Children's
Education
"Children's education is threatened by National's planned tax cuts," says NZEI Te Riu Roa National President, Colin Tarr.
National's finance spokesperson, John Key, has admitted that the party's tax cuts would be partially funded by cuts to Ministry of Education staff. Colin Tarr says at least 80 percent of these staff are in fact "frontline" people working directly with special needs children.(1)
Other Ministry staff, for example Early Childhood Development unit members, work with parents and communities to help establish early childhood centres.
"Mr Key is clearly wrong if he believes these workers are not front line staff who can be cut and there will be no impact on children's education."
"It appears that Mr Key believes that anyone who works for the Ministry of Education, who is not a teacher, is not involved in education, so can be axed." "This shows a dangerous lack of understanding of how the education sector works and the support that teachers and other 'frontline' education staff need to be able to do their job effectively," say Colin Tarr.
(1) On January 1 this year the Ministry of
Education was employing 2300 full time equivalents. 1821
of them, or approximately 80% work in special education as
speech and language therapists, education psychologists,
occupational therapists, and physiotherapists and were
brought back into the Ministry in 2002. They were
previously employed by the Specialist Education Service.
NZEI Te Riu Roa
New Zealand Educational Institute
NZEI Te Riu Roa members work in every community in New Zealand, leading and advocating for quality public education.
We are the 50,000 principals, teachers and support staff who work in primary, area and secondary schools as well as early childhood centres, special education and school advisory services. We come together as NZEI Te Riu Roa - New Zealand's largest education union, a Treaty based organisation and a powerful advocate for quality public education.
We have the most important job in New Zealand - educating for the future.
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