Source: Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA)
The pressures building in our schools are unsustainable and some breathing space is needed desperately, writes Melanie Webber.
In the recent Navigating Leadership Hui for School Leaders, Education Minister Chris Hipkins talked about how somedays it feels like everything is on fire. Speaking to teachers at our conferences over the term break, it sounded like the entire term had been on fire, and that the first person to start promoting “I survived Term 2, 2022” merch could make a fortune. High student and staff absence rates are far harder to manage than a previous model where everyone was in school or everyone was working from home, and the pressures on the system are huge.
We are also seeing huge variability in how schools are managing these pressures. Some schools are rostering home while others are pushing on through with a shortage of relievers, meaning staff are losing their non-contacts at a time when they most need them. While relief costs now being covered centrally is a relief to many school administrators, it’s not terribly helpful when there are no relievers to be found.
Cart before the horse
Increasing the pressure is the weight of the ambitious programme of education reform that we are currently engaged in. We know that COVID didn’t create the inequity we see in our schools, but it has certainly highlighted and exacerbated it. Reforms such as the curriculum refresh (increasingly looking like a rebuild) and the NCEA review are needed if we are going to be able to create a system that allows students and teachers to thrive, but we seem once again to have put the cart before the horse. Having the curriculum refresh trailing the rewrite of the standards that make up NCEA carries huge risk in once again making the standards default become the curriculum in senior secondary.
We know teachers are in a state of ‘overwhelm’. At our National Secondary Education Leadership Summit, clinical psychologist and commentator Sarb Johal spoke of those who are getting by in survival mode as ‘languishing’, and the risk of these people falling apart later. He also articulated the difficulty our brains have in managing truly creative strategic work whilst they are being driven by fear and uncertainty.
That we are undertaking some of the largest changes in education in a generation in this state is of huge concern.
Schools are continuing to sign up for and engage in the pilots, but as full implementation looms ever closer and COVID disruption shows little sign of abating, the fear is the system could crack under the pressure. A recent hui of our Secondary Principals’ Council saw them counting up 31 separate pressures on the system.
Have your say on Annual Conference papers
We need to rationalise while not stopping the bus entirely. A focus on mana ōrite mō te mātauranga Māori, cultural responsiveness and literacy and numeracy can continue while pausing the review of achievement standards. This would give teachers and students breathing space and the curriculum time to catch up.
A paper encouraging discussion around this is just one of the Annual Conference papers that should now be in your branches. One of the strengths of our union is that it is member led – we all have a responsibility for the policies we advocate for. For this to happen it is critical that branches are discussing their views on these papers and feeding them into regional pre-Conference hui so we are able to have a debate at the October Conference that represents the voices of all teachers. If we are to be bold in being the disobedient teachers we aspire to being we must make sure that we agree where it is that we are heading.
The National Māori Teachers’ Conference in the July term break was guided by the words of Sir James Hēnare – “Kua tawhiti kē tō haerenga mai kia kore e haere tonu. He nui rawa ō mahi kia kore e mahi tonu.”—you have come too far not to go further, you have done too much not to do more”. Annual Conference will give us the opportunity to direct our waka so we are not simply blindly sailing on.
