Where is the minister for public education?

2 October 2012

Where is the minister for public education? - PPTA

“It seems we have a very effective minister of privatising education. What we don’t have is a minister of public education,” says PPTA president Robin Duff.

Duff opened PPTA’s annual conference today with a speech that accused the country’s political leadership of conducting “a deliberate campaign to undermine New Zealanders’ confidence in their local public schools.

“I believe 2012 will go down as a watershed year in New Zealand education. It is the year when the public education system has been left perched on the edge of a precipicye.” Duff spoke of an “unholy alliance” of business interests and political leaders “attempting to push public education over the cliff”.

“In education, the sole strategy the government has is to drive up a feeding frenzy of anxiety about schools and teachers in the hope that it will create a massive collapse of confidence in public education. The privateers are standing by, like vultures, ready to grab whatever spoils they can,” he said.

Duff spoke of the government’s thwarted plan to increase class sizes while at the same providing generous funding to private schools and helping a failed private business integrate into the state system. “And who thinks the botched announcements of mergers and closures in Christchurch, just when schools were recruiting their 2013 intakes, was anything to do with enhancing public education?”

“Sadly there is always taxpayer money available for dodgy private ventures while public schools are constantly told to do more with less…we would like to see politicians held more accountable for the politically-inspired, poorly implemented, inadequately resourced change they inflict on schools. Public education is on the cusp but will not be going over the edge, I believe the public is awake to the spin and con tricks that are being played out,” Duff said.

Duff said PPTA annual conference was an important opportunity to present an alternative vision based on truth and understanding rather than prejudice and greed.

“Our conference papers draw together the best of New Zealand and international research with the wisdom and experience of practising teachers,” he said.

The papers that will be discussed today are PPTA’s economic model for New Zealand There is always a reasonable alternative and A Level Playing Field? The importance of local funding in financing secondary schools to meet future needs – a paper prepared by PPTA’s Waikato region that confirms schools around the country are becoming more unequal and increasingly reliant on locally-raised funds.

Today’s keynote speech From New Orleans to New Zealand with Love: A Warning About Disaster Capitalism and Public Education will be given at 2pm by New Orleans public education advocate Karran (more information can be found here: http://www.ppta.org.nz/index.php/resources/media/2420-new-orleans)

PPTA’s annual conference is being held at the Brentwood Hotel in Kilbirnie Wellington and is also being webstreamed live from www.ppta.org.nz

You can follow us on Twitter using the hashtag #pptaconf

The full conference timetable can be found at: http://www.ppta.org.nz/index.php/events/annual-conference

ENDS

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