John Roughan: Teachers’ pay reflects the way they bargain
Share on Reddit reddit COMMENT: My granddaughter is in Year 2 at her nearest primary school and loving it. For that I thank her teachers. They work hard to make schools happy, lively, friendly, healthy and stimulating for all children. But teachers will never be paid what they deserve until they organise themselves professionally. I’m not talking about primitive industrial tactics and pathetic placards in the streets, though those are bad enough. I don’t know whether my granddaughter knew why we were looking after her on Wednesday. If she did, she didn’t mention it, for which I was grateful. How do you reinforce their respect for teachers who want more pay and have refused to work that day to show how angry they are? Children understand that is what a child would do but not adults in their experience. They are too young to understand that the reason teachers are not well paid is that they adhere to bargaining structures designed to protect the weakest in their ranks rather than sell their best work at its market value. Advertisement Advertise with NZME. This is teachers’ choice and they are proud of it. Their collective philosophy is opposed to markets. Their representatives are forever proclaiming education is “not a commodity”, whatever that means. Education is a most valuable commodity for which a lot of people are prepared to pay. I suppose they mean it should not be denied to those unable to pay, like the other big item of taxpayers’ support, healthcare. But providers of primary healthcare, doctors in general practice, don’t organise themselves like teachers, they don’t need to go on strike and they are paid better.The big divergence between the providers of health and education happened at the creation of the welfare state. Doctors fiercely resisted the first Labour Government’s wish to make medical services free to everyone and fought to retain the right to charge a fee. They fought for that right again in the 1980s when the fourth Labour Government changed its financing of primary healthcare from a subsidy for visits to a regular payment based on the number of people enrolled with a practice, much like schools. But too few education practitioners ever fought for the right to charge fees. Quite the contrary, most of them fiercely embraced a philosophy that state-funded education ought to be completely free. So much so, state school fees had to be styled voluntary donations and principals were apologetic about asking for them, always arguing the government grant was not enough for all the education they wanted to provide. Most parents don’t mind paying some fees for their children’s education and most could probably afford to pay much more than they are asked. My parents put five children through Catholic schools and they did it on a primary teacher’s salary, supplemented by Dad’s work in a wool store in his summer holidays. Teachers have never been well paid and never will be until they stop promoting this philosophy that school should be free. It’s a philosophy readily embraced by some well-off citizens. I was on the board of Takapuna Normal Intermediate School in the 1990s and heard the then principal’s honest views of parents he knew could afford to pay but resolutely refused. Equally resolutely they believed their children had a right to the additional delights other parents were paying for. Related articles:
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