PPTA suspends rostering home action

Media Release

17 June 2002

PPTA suspends rostering home action

PPTA National Executive has decided to suspend rostering home action from tomorrow (Tuesday) in the interests of student – and teacher – safety.

“In an attempt to restore some calm to schools we have decided to suspend the rostering action. We don’t want a repeat, or worse, an escalation of the student protests last week. These events put student and teachers’ safety at risk; hopefully the suspension of the rostering action will take some heat out of the situation,” Mrs McCutcheon said.

Suspension of the action would also allow formal negotiations to resume before the end of the week, so a speedy satisfactory settlement of this dispute could occur. PPTA members will consider a revised claim at stopwork meetings tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. “We want this settled once and for all and as quickly as possible. As long as there is sufficient will on the part of the Government, this could happen very soon after members’ position on a revised claim is clear.”

Mrs McCutcheon said the bans on extra-curricular activities, day relief and compliance with NCEA Level 1 would remain in place this week. Members would also, at the meetings this week, vote on action for next term if there was no progress in the talks.

She acknowledged student opposition to the extra-curricular ban. “Teachers’ involvement in such activities is an enormous gesture of goodwill on their behalf; in most other countries in the world there is very little, if any, teacher involvement in extra-curricular activities. That is one of the things that makes New Zealand secondary education so great, but teachers want to be valued appropriately for their contribution and commitment to students’ learning and life opportunities. At present they are feeling extremely under-valued.”

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