PPTA annual conference – finding answers; fighting back

PPTA annual conference – finding answers; fighting back

1 October, 2013

PPTA members will be exploring solutions to threats “aimed squarely at the heart of public education” during the association’s annual conference this week.

In a speech titled 'Joining the dots – repelling threats to public education and attacks on workers’ rights' president Angela Roberts spoke of the attacks schools have already had to face.

“When we met 12 months ago the first Novopay payslips were starting to trickle through, schools were still hung-over from the class size debacle and the association was busy exposing charter schools lies,” she said.

This year the threats were not just aimed at public education, Roberts said, with workers facing a hostile assault on their workplace rights through proposed amendments to the Employment Relations Act.

PPTA did not simply react to issues, it was an organisation that brought solutions to the debate, she said.

“This year’s papers help us to join up all those dots, remind us of what we stand for and help us to determine the way forward. Yes we will critique the ideology and policies that undermine public education, but we will also provide an alternative when we do so. Our solutions are based on decades of institutional knowledge and research,” she said.

One of those alternatives will be presented today through a prepared by PPTA’s Waikato region. 'A hierarchy of inequality – the decile divide' examines how the most challenged students are ending up in the schools that can least afford to support them and highlights how a level playing field could be created by redeveloping the funding model.

“Our research into a profiling model to fund schools takes a more detailed look at students’ socio-economic backgrounds and allows funding to be allocated to specific learners’ needs,” Roberts said.

'Teacher ownership or government takeover?' – the second paper to be presented today, discusses the bottom lines teachers will expect from the minister of education’s proposal to reform the Teachers Council.

“It’s time to stand up against these changes which seek to remove teacher voice from the Teachers Council. As a bare minimum, the Teachers Council must be owned by the profession,” she said.

“This annual conference, for all the other things it will be, will be about fighting back. It will be the start of activities to raise education policy debates in the coming year.”

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