First offers to teachers and principals
The Ministry of Education has made its first offers to members covered by the Primary Principals' and Primary Teachers' collective agreements.
Teachers' offer at a glance
We received this offer from the Ministry on 6 June 2018.
Recruitment and retention
Our original claim
Address recruitment and retention issues by valuing the work of teachers and ensuring that being a teachers is an attractive career option through:
- Increasing pay by 16% increase over term of CA
- 2 year term
- Renewing the salary comparability clauses with secondary teachers
- Removing the qualifications cap on the salary scale
- Applying increases in the settlement to union members only
The Ministry's offer
- 3 year term
- Differentiated pay increases
- Steps 1-7 increase by a total of $7050 over the 3 year term of the agreement (approx. 14.7%for those on step 4)
- Steps 8-12 increase by a total of $4650 over the 3 year term of the agreement (approx. 6.1% for those on step 12)
- Merge steps 1-4 of the base scale (step 4 is the entry step for teachers with a degree)
- Renew the salary comparability clause
Your negotiation team's comments
Three years is a long time to wait until we can negotiate again to address issues without big improvements in this settlement.
The pay and term offer does not come close to what we claimed and does not address years of under-investment.
85% of teachers are on steps 8-12 and therefore get an increase of between 7.8% and 6.1% over the 3 year term of the agreement.
It is disappointing that the work of union members has not been recognised through member only benefits.
Time to teach, time to lead
Our original claim
Make sure teachers have time to teach, are well supported to meet the learning needs of all children and our existing onerous workloads are addressed by:
- Introducing staffing and resourcing for every school to have a SENCO
- Doubling the amount of CRT available to teachers and renaming it 'professional practice time'
- Increase professional leadership staffing to allow more release for teachers in leadership positions
- Reduce curriculum staffing ratio to reduce class size and allow for more teachers to share workload
- Increasing the number of resource teacher positions nationally
The Ministry's offer
- Increase CRT to 12 hours per term and rename it as Professional Practice Time
- Pro-rata the payment of the unit to part time resource teachers
- Change the Tutor Teacher Allowance to a Mentor Teacher allowance and make it available in more circumstances
- Enable teachers to take up CoL leadership roles.
The ministry also listed a number of work programmes occurring over the next few years that they thought 'will or could positively impact workload'
Your negotiation team's comments
We are extremely disappointed that there is nothing about the SENCO role in the offer.
The increase to CRT is equivalent to 12 minutes per week-this doesn't even give us an extra 30 seconds per child for our prep or assessment work!
The changes to the Mentor Teacher allowance and access to CoL leadership roles will be useful but don't address any of the major issues facing us.
We urgently need solutions now, not just the possibility of solutions from long term work programmes.
Career development opportunities
Our original claim
Ensure that there are attractive career development opportunities available for teachers through the continuation of the Career Framework Development Work Programme
The Ministry's offer
'Update the PPCA/PTCA Career Framework Development Terms of Reference to reflect the interdependency with the development of the Education Workforce Strategy and milestones for continued work during the term of a renewed agreement'
Your negotiation team's comments
We want the work to continue and while we need it to fit with other work, we need to be able to develop career opportunities that reflect the unique and specific features of primary schools. We also need to ensure that there are real benefits and outcomes for members from this work.
Other matters
The Ministry's offer
Make maternity grant accessible to the primary care giver (regardless of gender) and payable only on return to work (currently payable on production of a birth certificate)
The Ministry's offer
Various language changes intended to improve the flow and readability of the agreement
Your negotiation team's comments
The gender neutral language is a positive step but this is effectively a claw-back as it would place a new requirement on principals in order to be able to access an existing entitlement.
Your negotiation team's comments
We need to ensure these do not reduce existing terms and conditions. These will be considered once we have other offers to address our key issues.
Principals' offer at a glance
We received this offer from the Ministry on 28 May 2018.
Recruitment and retention
Our original claim
Address recruitment and retention issues by valuing the work of principals and ensuring that being a principal is an attractive career option through:
- Increasing pay by 16% increase over term of CA.
- 2 year term.
- Renewing the salary comparability clauses with secondary principals.
- Conflate U1 and U2 grades into U3.
- Applying increases in any settlement to union members only.
The Ministry's offer
- 3 year term.
- Differentiated pay increases.
- U1-3 3x$3000 increases over the term of the agreement.
- U4 and above 3x$2,600 increases over the term of the agreement.
- Merge leadership literacy and numeracy base payment ($2320) and career salary components into the roll based pay. Include per teacher component into the staffing based salary scale.
Time to lead
Our original claim
Make sure principals have time to lead and our existing onerous workloads are addressed by:
- Introducing staffing and resourcing for every school to have a SENCO.
- Ensure every school has a minimum 2 FTE staffing.
- Increase professional leadership staffing to allow more release for principals and other leaders.
- Reduce curriculum staffing ratio to reduce class size and allow for more teachers to share workload.
The Ministry's offer
- 10 hours CRT per U1, U2 and U3 principal from start of 2019.
- Promote and share good management practice across the network.
The Ministry also listed a number of work programmes occurring over the next few years that they thought 'will or could positively impact workload'.
Career development opportunities
Our original claims
Ensure that there are attractive career development opportunities available for principals through the continuation of the Career Framework Development Work Programme.
The Ministry's offer
'Update the PPCA/PTCA Career Framework Development Terms of Reference to reflect the interdependency with the development of the Education Workforce Strategy and milestones for continued work during the term of a renewed agreement'.
Other matters
- Make maternity grant accessible to the primary care giver (regardless of gender) and payable only on return to work (currently payable on production of a birth certificate).
- Various language changes intended to improve the flow and readability of the agreement.