All the Fernside School teachers would like to offer their sincere thanks to all families for their support during the protracted collective agreement negotiations. Your support has been crucial to the success of our campaign,

Last weeek the Primary teachers  across New Zealand  voted to ratify a proposed settlement that will give them pay parity with their secondary colleagues. This is  a big win for teachers, who had campaigned  for 18 months and held three strike days - including New Zealand's largest ever strike alongside their secondary colleagues.

The staff at Fernside School are really happy with the outcome, and very pleased that contract negotiations are over and we can move on.  We  particularly want to thank parents who have offered their support. Knowing you value the work we do has been  very reinforcing. At the end of the day it was the collective community support  that was critical to us achieving the breakthrough we needed.   Although we  didn’t get everything they  wanted, (who ever does)  there was significant  progress in key area. Most positive was a commitment from the Ministry to work with us to solve the really challenging issues we raised.

Unfortunately, while teachers have won parity with their secondary counterparts, the Government did not offer primary principals parity with their secondary principal colleagues. This is an anomaly which I hope will be sorted soon.  

In the meantime the staff and management at Fernside School  will concentrate on delivering a quality education programme to a student population who have inherited the responsibility  of  ...." saving the planet." Lets hope we get our bit right.