Extra-Curricular And NCEA Level 1 Ban Lifted

29th July 2002

Extra-Curricular And NCEA Level 1 Ban Lifted

PPTA national executive has called off membership bans on involvement in extra-curricular activities and compliance with NCEA Level 1.

PPTA president Jen McCutcheon said the lifting of the extra-curricular ban was a gesture of goodwill towards students and parents, and an act of good faith in the alternative dispute resolution (ADR) process that begins today. Seventy-six percent of PPTA members voted to pursue arbitration as a means to solving the long-running dispute over their Collective Agreement.

She said the executive had decided to call off the ban on compliance with NCEA Level 1 partly in response to the urgent - but long overdue - action being taken by the Minister of Education and officials to solve serious implementation problems. "We have also lifted it as it is getting to the stage where, if the ban was continued, external exams could be endangered. Our dispute is with the Government not Year 11 students, so there is no way we want their life chances jeopardised."

To avoid similar problems with the implementation of Level 2 NCEA next year, the executive will recommend to PPTA Annual Conference in September that PPTA policy be to support the deferral of NCEA Level 2 until 2004, and Level 3 until 2006. "This change to secondary school qualifications is the biggest change in more than fifty years; the Level 1 debacle this year has shown that the rate of implementation of each level must be slowed. To this end, PPTA members have been directed not to take part in any work or activity which would enable NCEA Level 2 to be implemented next year, or Level 3 to be implemented before 2006."

She said existing bans on day relief and attendance at meetings outside the hours of 8am-5pm would remain in place until viable solutions to teacher work-overload were in place.

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