Rostering home reinstated – PPTA members furious

Rostering home reinstated – PPTA members furious

PPTA members are furious that the Ministry of Education - being well aware of the disruption calling off yesterday’s action would cause - responded with nothing but the promise of a talkfest.

As a result, the rostering home of students will continue until the end of the year and PPTA members will be surveyed about a range of intensified actions for early 2011, president Kate Gainsford said.

PPTA suspended yesterday’s rostering off of year 10 students at the absolute insistence of the Secretary for Education who indicated, at 2.45pm, that all negotiations would cease if the action continued.

An offer on class size limitations was promised, but only if the action was called off, Gainsford said.

Calling off the action had caused massive disruption in schools and the only move made on class sizes by the ministry was the promise of ‘talks’ on whether overlarge class sizes were a good or bad thing, Gainsford said.

“Parents and teachers know there are virtually no circumstances when class sizes of over 30 are educationally justifiable.”

In fact, the Minister of Education had just returned from an OECD education ministers’ meeting that promoted the importance of individualised learning programmes, she said,

“Anne Tolley needs to explain to parents and teachers how this can be done when the teacher has only eight minutes per student, per week.”

For teachers, the assessment load created by large senior classes was simply untenable, she said.

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